A Question for Barbara Forrest

_{Cornelius Hunter

June 16, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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In her recent paper, The Non-epistemology of Intelligent Design: Its Implications for Public Policy, evolutionary philosopher Barbara Forrest states that science must be restricted to natural phenomena. In its investigations, science must restrict itself to a naturalistic methodology, where explanations must be strictly naturalistic, dealing with phenomena that are strictly natural. Aside from rare exceptions this is the consensus position of evolutionists. And in typical fashion, Forrest uses this criteria to exclude origins explanations that allow for the supernatural. Only evolutionary explanations, in one form or another, are allowed.

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Comments

StephenB
A mind is an immaterial entity.
Do you believe in ghosts?Echidna.Levy_{June 18, 2009
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----RDK: “Perhaps a refutation of my posts is in order instead of simple ad hominem attacks about the fact that I linked you to Panda’s Thumb. Exactly how you define terms such as “mind” and “based on”?” I did not launch an ad hominem attack. I simply took note of your rude and presumptuous behavior. If you don’t like the rough treatment, then don’t ruffle my feathers. Let’s begin with a refutation of your misguided comments on methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism is simply a quite recently imposed “rule” that (a) defines science as a search for natural causes of observed phenomena AND (b) forbids the researcher to consider any other explanation, regardless of what the evidence may indicate. In keeping with that principle, it begs the question and roundly declares that (c) any research that finds evidence of design in nature is invalid and that (d) any methods employed toward that end are non-scientific. For instance, in a pamphlet published in 2008, the US National Academy of Sciences declared: In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena. Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others. If explanations are based on purported forces that are outside of nature, scientists have no way of either confirming or disproving those explanations. [Science, Evolution and Creationism, p. 10. Emphases added.] The resort to loaded language should cue us that there is more than mere objective science going on here! A second clue is a basic fact: the very NAS scientists themselves provide instances of a different alternative to forces tracing to chance and/or blind mechanical necessity. For, they are intelligent, creative agents who act into the empirical world in ways that leave empirically detectable and testable traces. Moreover, the claim or assumption that all such intelligences “must” in the end trace to chance and/or necessity acting within a materialistic cosmos is a debatable philosophical view on the remote and unobserved past history of our cosmos. It is not at all an established scientific “fact” on the level of the direct, repeatable observations that have led us to the conclusion that Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun. In short, the NAS would have been better advised to study the contrast: natural vs artificial (or, intelligent) causes, than to issue loaded language over natural vs supernatural ones Notwithstanding, many Darwinist members of the guild of scholars have instituted or supported the question-begging rule of “methodological naturalism,” ever since the 1980’s. So, if an ID scientist finds and tries to explain functionally specified complex information in a DNA molecule in light of its only known cause: intelligence, supporters of methodological naturalism will throw the evidence out or insist that it be re-interpreted as the product of processes tracing to chance and/or necessity; regardless of how implausible or improbable the explanations may be. Further, if the ID scientist dares to challenge this politically correct rule, he will then be disfranchised from the scientific community and all his work will be discredited and dismissed. Obviously, this is grossly unfair censorship. Worse, it is massively destructive to the historic and proper role of science as an unfettered (but intellectually and ethically responsible) search for the truth about our world in light of the evidence of observation and experience. In an attempt to rationalize the recently imposed “rule” of methodological naturalism, some Darwinist academics have resorted to rewriting history. As the ‘revised” story goes, Newton and other greats of the founding era of Modern Science subscribed to the arbitrary standard of ruling out design in principle. Thus, one gathers, ID cannot be science because it violates the “traditional” and “well-established” criteria for science. However, as anyone familiar with the real history of science knows – e.g. cf. Newton’s General Scholium to his great scientific work, Principia — this proposition is at best a gross and irresponsible error, or even an outright deception. For, most scientists of the founding era were arguing on behalf of the proposition that God, as a super-rational being, does not act frivolously, unpredictably, and without purpose. For such men, and for their time, searching for “natural causes” was a testimony to the belief that the Christian God, unlike anthropomorphized Greek gods, did not throw capricious temper tantrums and toss lightning bolts out of the sky. In other words, the issue was not natural causes vs. design; (they were all design thinkers) it was orderly and intelligible natural processes vs. chaos. That directly contradicts Lewontin’s dismissive assertion that “[t]o appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.” Indeed, the theologians and philosophers will remind us that for miracles to stand out as sign-posts of more than the ordinary being at work, they require that nature as a whole works in an orderly, intelligible and predictable way. So, for the founders of Modern Science, science (as a delimited field of study within a wider domain, i.e., “natural philosophy” and “natural history”) was primarily about discovering the underlying principles, forces and circumstances that drive observed natural phenomena. But, as Newton so aptly illustrates, it was simply not in their minds to insist dogmatically that only “natural” causes — i.e. blind mechanical necessity and even more blind chance – exist or may be resorted to in accounting for the nature and functions of our world. They made a provisional judgment based on the best information available, but they would never have dared to presume that they knew enough to close off all other options. Further, in their estimation, the foundational scientists were “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” Obviously, they could hardly have believed in Methodological Naturalism while, at the same time, believing that God, as Creator, purposely left clues about his handiwork so that his creatures could interpret them as evidence of his existence and plan for the orderly conduct of the world that are also accessible to us to use for our betterment. Even apart from their religious inspiration, they understood that only the individual scientist knows what he is researching and why, so it is s/he who must in the first instance decide which methods are reasonable, responsible, and appropriate for the task Indeed, it was their love of truth and the disinterested search for it that made them great. They were always ready to challenge rigid conventions and seek new answers. More importantly, they were wise enough to know that someone new could come along and make their ideas seem old, just as they had made the ideas of their predecessors seem old. Now, in our day, a new idea has indeed come along, and it is embodied in the information found in a DNA molecule. It is beyond ridiculous, then, to suggest that men like Francis Bacon, Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Faraday, Maxwell or Lord Kelvin — all of whom were in part motivated by religion and whose religion gave meaning to their science — would ignore or dismiss such evidence of design because of its possible religious implications. Please pass this information on to your friends at Panda’s thumb.StephenB_{June 18, 2009
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Barbara thinks science must find physical causes and as well as effects. Science must only observe physical EFFECTS and can infer any CAUSE. Science can be completely supernatural if it wants to be, while inferring a million miles a minute, as long as it ends with heuristic effects. This is lost on anti-IDer's with their cause (where's god?) arguments. Science moves towards defining cause or simply defining more accurate effects when causes aren't being found. (eg observing and predicting more CSI found in future) That thoughts are too amorphous unquantifiable and so "not science" per Barbara is a good point. But all material objects are unquantifiable. To turn the quantum physics argument against materialists, aren't all atoms in all locations at once until observation? Don't atoms move via information alone? How is this stuff measurable when the underlying CAUSE mechanisms aren't known? It's EFFECTS are known and new experiments can be made and tested via heuristics, so physics still belongs in science, and so does ID. If evolution can detach itself from abiogenesis for the time being, why can't ID take the cause out too and detach from God for the time being? All the while both sides can have a stated hopefull end goal in mind. The scientific method allows for bias, it's a suitable filter. Evolution would say it's superior because the chain of established causes is longer. The question is does this mean one research path should be dropped for another? Barbara is taking the super radical position of literally dropping a research path to "make way"? for evolution or something? Besides, almost all Neodarwin cause linkages are falling apart, all that's left is ID'd evo in labs and some micro-ev, which no one's disputing.lamarck_{June 17, 2009
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StephenB:
I oppose Barbara Forrest because she wants to define science in ways that will characterize ID as non-scientific.
FWIW, I too disagree with Forrest's approach, but for terminological rather than logical reasons. I have yet to find usable definitions for the natural/supernatural and material/immaterial distinctions. Ill-defined as they are, they're a weak basis on which to reject the scientific status of ID. I think we would be hard-pressed to find working scientists who decide what methods to use and which hypotheses to pursue on the basis of philosophical rules rather than pragmatism. Scientists have to produce results in order to be successful, so they do what works. Given convincing empirical evidence for ESP, ghosts, etc., how many scientists would refuse to study and test these phenomena because of a commitment to the ill-defined principle of methodological naturalism?R0b_{June 17, 2009
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Hi Stephen, Perhaps a refutation of my posts is in order instead of simple ad hominem attacks about the fact that I linked you to Panda's Thumb. Exactly how you define terms such as "mind" and "based on"? Thanks in advance.RDK_{June 17, 2009
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---RDK: "P.S: Also, refer to any of the recent posts I’ve made in this thread if you’re having trouble understanding why the “mind” is based in the material." I have no difficulty understanding your error, but you apparently have difficulty understanding the meaning of "mind," and the meaning of "based on." In any case, anyone who would, as you just did, send one of us to Pandas Thumb in order to learn something has already lost all credibility.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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Lenoxus, You started out with an arrogant joke and you just keep digging deeper by insisting now on explaining to me how science works. "OK, I do feel compelled to respond to this as follows: Science is not about arriving at the answer that just plain happens to be correct." Really? Could've fooled me. Then why do evolutionist keep publishing and teaching "answers" as correct FACTS to children? Talk to those producing shoddy work as "correct" "answers" "that just plain happens". The problem is shoddy teaching habits based upon faulty conclusions by scientist and teachers who in your words keep, "arriving at the answer(s) that just happen to be correct." I'm not at fault, nor is science. It is the people you are trying to defend committing the very acts you say science does not represent. "It’s about figuring out which answer the evidence points to as most likely." I agree, so preach it brother to the Darwinistas and Evolutionist that create shoddy science education, teachers and lobbyist like Forrest who keep "arriving at the answer(s) that just happen to be correct." Your argument is with todays shoddy practitioners of science in these fields, not me. "And prior to that one incredible finding, all the evidence pointed to something like the Yucatán collision." No, all the evidence obviously did not point to it. It is called shoddy workmanship. I do not have time to verify, but I imagine there were counter proposals and hypothesis that were ignored, silence or derided. All the evidence allowed in pointed to their "correct" "answer(s)" as the consensus opinion - taught as fact. Those who possibly countered the argument were silenced from textbooks and education. Get it yet? Or are you still in that bubble? It was shoddy work. The kind of work that does not pass in the hard sciences of engineering. This shoddy work ethic and false evidence allowed in as FACT, are the result of failed education policy. It is not good science. Teach these hypothesis or failed conjectures at college level all you like where they can be genuinely debated, but stop teaching them as FACTS to children who do not yet have necessary skills of critical thinking and logic to counter fictional stories as scientific facts. Again, put away your projections. I've been through college chemistry, physics, biology. I was taught the scientific method since at least 7th grade. I was taught these same shoddy scientific guesses as if they were facts from early ages and tested on them. I was not allowed to openly rebut them as "WRONG" answers. It is called indoctrination. This is why I posted the Time article, since the writer himself points out the very same experience I had as a child growing up and millions like me. You miss the the Big Bird picture. One single intepretation is allowed even when it fails again and again, yet it is taught as if each new discovery or prediction is FACT. When it is shoddy, unproven science with failure after failure. So much for peer review and good education. It is one thing for this to perculate at upper level academics. It is quite another to pass it along as FACT to the public at large in forced educational systems where debate is not openly allowed to counter the shoddy guesswork. If we built bridges this way, our nation would be at a standstill. Applicational science, operational sciences are good to teach young children. But to indoctrinate them to faulty guesses and flimsy science ficition stories should be ended today in the 21st century. All I ask is stop teaching these research guesses as FACTS to children. Admit they are best estimates. Otherwise it is unethical. Instead, teach children how to debate the best conjectures put forward on both sides and question the new discoveries made. Doing this would increase skill sets and knowledge of how to think criticially in these fields. A new open method would teach children to be better scientist and to be skeptics in their own fields, instead of lemmings. I'm not saying stop teaching geology, paleontology or any other field. I am saying to teach those issues that are not 100% known as speculation, conjectures, hypotheses, but not as FACTS. Open them up as debates and allow the children the freedom to develop critical thinking skills, to realize much of these areas are not written in stone. When you do not allow debate on the topic, silence the minority opinion, robots appear that do not question existing old beards wedded to their dogma. This creates failures reported today in public schools. Educating children on false data, shoddy science, and dogma strains the credibility of the field in question. It ends up with people not trusting the claims made by scientist. It creates the exact opposite reaction of what you, I and we all want, which is a rich involvement of people in science. Instead, by closing doors, stopping questions, and silencing all opposition(in one case for centuries, in another for 37 years), you end up with dull boys and girls, turned off by rote memorization of "facts" that will change a year, 10yrs, or 100yrs from now. If you refuse to see the failure as a result of such narrow views in public education today, the problem is your own blindness to reality. Shoddy science parading as facts have ruled our public education systems now for more than 40 years. As a result we have less Americans interested in science and more foreigners getting PhDs. As much as you or others like to joke about the Creationist, the blame falls squarely on people like the ACLU, Barbara Forrest and other militant atheist who have hijacked our entire system and rights to free and open discussion on unsolved and unknown evidence. What we get is the stupid jokes like yours from uninformed people who treat people with derision. In fact I bet you somewhere this minute some evolutionist trained person from our public schools is laughing and jeering at someone questioning dino-bird evolution fiction. We end up with ignorant people who lamely insult others and then more failuers taught to children as truth. It is a maddening cycle of ignorance. What I posted about the dino-bird, dino extinction, JunkDNA, etc., is real evidence we need to overhaul our entire education system to allow in more opposing opinions, not less in areas of science where we simply do not have all the evidence. Do not limit it to one failed and hypocritical view who calls itself liberal education, when in fact it is a narrow brand of Orwellian education that shuts out all other educated opinions. Admit when we cannot say something is 100% fact. Just admit it. Say, this is conjecture, inference, hypothesis, even a theory, but still unproven. Now children, how do we use science to debate this latest research? Allow each side to put forth their best information and opinions. Math does not have to be this way today at lower levels because it is solid. The more esoteric stuff is kept at higher levels where debates take place over the validity of different proofs and conjectures. Not so with paleontology or biology. We get lame, faulty, shoddy work being taught to children as fact. It needs to stop. Paleontology is one big guessing game and it should be approached as such, that it may change any day and is unreliable in comparison to the hard sciences. Frankly, anyone with common sense understands these issues about education. On the one hand, we can teach children about chemistry, physics, biology, math, english. On the other, we create stories of history when no human being existed on best educated guesses. This kind of stuff should be optional classses, not force fed to younger childen. Leave the evolutionist story telling to the colleges. If you want to have optional advanced classes at lower levels to teach pure applications, software, and modeling aspects as operational science, great. But it should still be taught as best guesses. And students should understand that evolutionist predictions fail because the theory fails as an explanation according to many educated and bright scientist who dissent from the majority opinion.DATCG_{June 17, 2009
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---RDK: "Stephen, since you still seem to be stuck in an erroneous conclusion about methodological naturalism, allow me to educate you on the origin of the term." RDK, I am not the one who needs educating you are. The "enforcement of Methodological naturalism is about 25 years old. The idea is a little older than that, but not much. I have been refuting Panda's Thumb for a long time, and the information they provide is incorrect. Will you, along with your colleages please read the FAQ and stop asking me to visit Pandas' Thumb, whose false information I have refuted many times. Once you have read the FAQ get back to me.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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P.S: Also, refer to any of the recent posts I've made in this thread if you're having trouble understanding why the "mind" is based in the material.RDK_{June 17, 2009
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Stephen, since you still seem to be stuck in an erroneous conclusion about methodological naturalism, allow me to educate you on the origin of the term. The term was coined by Paul deVries, a philosopher at Wheaton college, a conservative Christian institution. Keith Miller, editor of the book Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, has written on this, showing that deVries coined the term to support the view that Christian belief and science need not conflict, and that his use of the term and its intent had nothing to do with ID. Also, the idea that science seeks purely natural causes goes back to the beginnings of modern science, with Galileo, Newton, and others, and earlier. http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/03/on-the-origins.html If you disagree, please name a great scientist of the past whose crowning work involved anything other than a natural explanation for the phenomenon he was studying.RDK_{June 17, 2009
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----Pubdef: 'If you agree, though, I don’t know how you could disagree that this description is the very opposite of “we must study human beings as if they had no minds.” A mind is an immaterial entity. Note the phrase: "nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties as encountered in diverse contexts of inquiry." You are clearly misreading her. She is saying exactly what I said, which is why I simplified it. According to her, we must study nature "as if nature is all there is." According to her, nature consists of "material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties" Minds have none of that, so, for her, minds are not part of nature because they are immaterial. How can you study a human's mind based on that standard? Under her definition or anyone who embraces methodological naturalism, science can study only the brain, which is composed of matter. It must operate as if minds don't exist. That is why it is so perverse. Have you read the FAQ on methodological naturalism yet? If not, please indulge me and do that.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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While reading these comments I was assuming that for StephenB mind and soul are identical (it took actually >200 comments until the term soul showed up only after mind had been mentioned more 150 times). Thanks to oramus we are now at the spot and I would suggest that everyone takes the recent paper on divine interaction and science by KJ Jorgensen et al. (2009) into consideration.sparc_{June 17, 2009
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----Scott Andrews: "BTW I’m not disputing that a monist and a dualist would draw differing personal conclusions from ID. Well, then, we have no dispute.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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Stephen B., #203, quoting Forrest:
There is a second meaning of naturalism, which is as a generalized description of the universe. According to the naturalists, nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties as encountered in diverse contexts of inquiry. This is a non-reductive naturalism, for although nature is physical-chemical at root, we need to deal with natural processes on various levels of observation and complexity: electrons and molecules, cells and organisms, flowers and trees, psychological cognition and perception, social institutions, and culture.
[emphasis added by me] Before I say anything else -- my interpretation is that Forrest means to include both meanings, i.e., that "a second meaning" is a complementary, not a contrasting, meaning. If you disagree, you should stop reading here. If you agree, though, I don't know how you could disagree that this description is the very opposite of "we must study human beings as if they had no minds."pubdef_{June 17, 2009
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Cannuckian Yankee, Good insight. Actually, our souls are not super-natural in the sense that they are not caused. Only the Trinity is uncaused; all else including angels and souls are caused, therefore natural. Yet, they are immaterial, meaning not detectable by our senses. That is we, as souls can think and move. Thinking through our senses IMO actually slows our intellectual ability. There is this space (for want of a better word) when one focuses in (non-verbal) prayer that is unspeakable but truly sublime. That is where the soul longs to go, but most don't know how or are afraid to make the trip. We too seldom identify ourselves by our personality, our speech, our habits, our mannerisms. But this is not who we really are. For example, I have emersed myself in Taiwanese society. I can think and joke in Chinese at will, I take on habits and mannerisms from my wife and friends and colleagues (like a child does its parents). I can feel differences in me when I move back and forth on trips home to the States, and when I am back here in Taiwan. Does this mean I have a split personality? NO. It means I can know more about myself, I can reach what lies within and understand that it is separate from what transpires on the surface. I believe this is what Christ asks us to discover. Look within, identify with yourself not as the sum of culture and language, but beyond this. It is here that we expand exponentially our learning and experience of who and what we are. It is more fascinating and fulfilling than any other endeavor IMO.
“Supernatural” is really a man made term (as are all other terms ), for a concept that is really outside of our current understanding. I can <understand therefore, how the term can force us into a kind of thinking that reality does not enforce. Perhaps what we call “supernatural” is really natural, but outside of a material realm. I say “material,” because naturalists insist that “material” and “natural” are one and the same. Yet, we don’t really know, do we?
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----Scott Andrews: "If am wrong, then in addition to the forthcoming corrections, tell me how the science of ID would change one bit without either dualism or monism." I stated categorically that monism doesn't "affect ID science one bit." Indeed, those are the exact words I used. Would you like for me to refer you to the post where I said that word for word? So, why are you asking me how monism or dualism would affect the science when I have already made the point that it doesn't? I stated very clearly that the philosophical world view will affect the way you "interpret" the science, and I explained how. Is there something about the word "interpret" that scnadalizes you? Let's give it a test. What is your world view? Also, why don't you tell me what your main concern is here. Are you worried that ID will be unduly associated with religion? That will not happen based on my arguments.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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Oramus #204 - first, I had never heard of Padre Pio, so I googled him. I offer this quote from the Wikipedia article, not as any reliable assessment of the man (in fact, I'll freely admit that it's likely to be terribly unfair and unbalanced), but rather because I find it nicely phrased:
The founder of Milan's Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, friar, physician and psychologist Agostino Gemelli, concluded Padre Pio was "an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people's credulity."
Turning to your points:
Padre Pio’s gift of bi-location is evidence of this. If he was physically in Rome but experienced, witnessed, understood, and recorded, human activity in a separate location simultaneously, then it shows the soul’s intellectual attributes and ability to separate itself from and exist independently of the body.
I will concede that if the Padre was in Rome but saw and experienced, not as the Romans did, but as the inhabitants of some other clime, it would show something or other that would challenge my nonbelief in the sort of "soul" you are proposing. I can see no reason, however, to believe that Padre Pio did anything like that.
You may wish to dismiss thousands and hundreds of thousands of human experiences as delusions and illusions, but that will not resolve science’ impotence to study it.
I'll admit that it gave me a moment's pause to consider that I was dismissing such a multitude of experiences. But then I did some quick calculations. How many people are there in the world today -- about 6.7 billion? Let's round it down, for easy figuring, to 6,000,000,000. How many human experiences do I need to dismiss -- thousands, hundreds of thousands? Well, let's say it's 6,000, just to make the math simple. That's 0.0001%, if I worked my calculator correctly. OK, let's say it's 600,000 -- that's 0.01%. (And I'm assuming only one experience per experienced person, and that they all happened since the Earth's current population was born, to spread it around as much as possible.) Is it dogmatic or unreasonable to expect that if there were some truth to nonmaterialism, and we could know it by experience, it would be known by more than 1 out of 10,000 people?
Experience is the boundary MN can never cross. Hence MN does little to advance knowledge of ourselves; its always a day late and a dollar short.
I see it differently -- the beauty, the unparalleled utility of MN, is that it transcends personal experience, and enables communication of truths that don't rest entirely on the credibility and rationality of particular individuals.pubdef_{June 17, 2009
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BTW I'm not disputing that a monist and a dualist would draw differing personal conclusions from ID. The point is that those conclusions have nothing to do with ID. Dualism does not need ID and ID does not need dualism.ScottAndrews_{June 17, 2009
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StephenB:
When evidence for design is presented to a dualist, or someone who is open to dualism, that person will likely attribute the design to a personal first cause that transcends the universe, such as God. The monist, on the other hand, having rejected the idea of a “transcendent” creator, will attribute design to some immanent “impersonal” force.
I'm sorry, but you are 180 degrees wrong. If you are not then certainly someone else will correct me. If a person accepts ID then whether he interprets the evidence according to his religious beliefs or philosophies or does not has nothing to do with ID. ID infers an intelligent cause. Nothing more. Neither monism nor dualism have anything to do with ID. If am wrong, then in addition to the forthcoming corrections, tell me how the science of ID would change one bit without either dualism or monism.ScottAndrews_{June 17, 2009
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StephenB:
Methodological naturalism is an arbitrarily established rule which requires the scientist to study nature “as if nature is all there is.” No such limitation has ever been imposed in the history of science. The “rule” is only 25 years old, and was codified at exactly the same time ID became known. Did you know that?
Stephen, I believe you have forgotten having this discussion with Jack Krebs last March. You can refresh you memory here.specs_{June 17, 2009
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"how do you (how did they?) do nonmaterial science? What kind of experiments and studies did they do?" There does not have to be any difference in the science or the experiments. The difference is in the conclusions one reaches based on the findings of the study. They test for supernatural things all the time. The purpose is to debunk the supernatural but the studies are done. For example, suppose you want to test the value of prayer for some sick people. You could set up a group or religious people to pray for a certain group of sick people and see if there recovery rate is different from a control group that was not prayed for. If there is a substantial difference in the recovery rate for the prayed for group then one might conclude prayer had an effect. By the way I believe this has been done or something similar and the results showed no difference.jerry_{June 17, 2009
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I think naturalism (my naturalism, anyway) is actually less materialistic than non-materialism, because it takes for granted that things have inherent metaphysical value without supernatural assistance or immaterial 'substance' to materialistically 'boost' it into the world of meaning. Taste is a phenomenon which can be entirely reduced to the physical, yet has a metaphysical nature as well. This nature, however, requires no input from some outside immaterial source; it just is. (If you say that you have a non-naturalistic scientific account for it, you will lack both explanatory power and my interest. Heck, perhaps there even is something useful/interesting about calling organisms 'designed', but, for me, not about discussing the non-naturalistic however-we-want-it-to-be design process or designer.) To postulate that we cannot have emotions or beauty or free will without a supernatural emotion-beauty-free-will-giver is, ironically, to denigrate those things rather than value them in themselves. The beauty of a sunrise is not lathered on to that sunrise like strawberry jam; it is one and the same as the sunrise itself, and as the larger phenomenon of that sunrise being observed. (It's a tree-falls-in-a-forest question as to whether something unobserved can be considered beautiful).Lenoxus_{June 17, 2009
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pubdef,
Well, if methodogical naturalism is such a recent development that put a hitherto unknown constraint on science, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to come up with examples to answer my perennial question — how do you (how did they?) do nonmaterial science? What kind of experiments and studies did they do?
How about the work of Charles Tart on ESP? He has done actual scientific research on lots of paranormal topics. No way is he a materialist.herb_{June 17, 2009
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----Pubdef: "Well, if methodogical naturalism is such a recent development that put a hitherto unknown constraint on science, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to come up with examples to answer my perennial question — how do you (how did they?) do nonmaterial science? What kind of experiments and studies did they do?" Please don't challenge me on matters of fact. Consult the FAQ.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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----David Kellogg: “As to methodological naturalism, the term may be new, but so what? It came about as a response to routine abuses of the term naturalism by creationists and early IDers such as Phillip Johnson.” Tell me what abuses you are talking about with respect to Philip Johnson. Also, explain the substantive difference between “early ID,” and ID. ----“The term emerged to clarify and counter a deliberate ambiguity (it is in such clever uses of language, rather than in his handling of evidence, that Johnson’s legal training comes through).” What ambiguity are you talking about? Please be specific about how Philip Johnson manipulated the language, and, if possible, provide the words he used. ----“The concept did not need explaining until that confusion was propogated, since there is no scientific test for a non-materialist hypothessis.” Are you are suggesting that methodological naturalism was always the rule for science, but that it never needed explaining until creationism made it necessary? Earlier you said, “so what,” to the point that it is new. Which is it---New or old.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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---Scott Andrews: "What is “monistic ID?” Neither dualism nor monism have anything to do with ID. I have never seen dualism mentioned in a peer reviewed ID paper. If I’m wrong on that detail or in my understanding, then I’m sure a few people will correct me." If you know what monism is, then you must surely understand how a monist would interpret ID differently than a dualist. When evidence for design is presented to a dualist, or someone who is open to dualism, that person will likely attribute the design to a personal first cause that transcends the universe, such as God. The monist, on the other hand, having rejected the idea of a “transcendent” creator, will attribute design to some immanent “impersonal” force. It has nothing at all to do with the science, but it has a lot to do with how one interprets the science.StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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Pubdef, The most compelling evidence for intelligence existing independent of brain, is experience. Note I did not use the word mind, since mind is the interface between soul and body. Intellect resides in the soul. Mind is the physical 'effect' of soul interfacing with body. Padre Pio's gift of bi-location is evidence of this. If he was physically in Rome but experienced, witnessed, understood, and recorded, human activity in a separate location simultaneously, then it shows the soul's intellectual attributes and ability to separate itself from and exist independently of the body. You may wish to dismiss thousands and hundreds of thousands of human experiences as delusions and illusions, but that will not resolve science' impotence to study it. How could Padre Pio 'show' you how his soul did anything? What machinery could science come up with to study this phenomena? Should we wait a millennium for science to 'catch up' before we recognize and utilize the power that lies within us? Experience is the boundary MN can never cross. Hence MN does little to advance knowledge of ourselves; its always a day late and a dollar short.
... probably most pertinent for our larger purposes in this forum, there is no evidence that I have heard of for any “mind” that exists separately from and independent of matter.
Oramus_{June 17, 2009
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----David Kellogg: "Pubdef, I guess StephenB’s answer to your question is no, he can’t locate the actual words of Forrest that correspond to his reading." From Barbara Forrest. [Using the phrasing of Paul Kurtz:] ---"First, naturalism is committed to a methodological principle within the context of scientific inquiry; i.e., all hypotheses and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to depart from naturalistic explanations. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent designer or creator is inadmissible...." "There is a second meaning of naturalism, which is as a generalized description of the universe. According to the naturalists, nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties as encountered in diverse contexts of inquiry. This is a non-reductive naturalism, for although nature is physical-chemical at root, we need to deal with natural processes on various levels of observation and complexity: electrons and molecules, cells and organisms, flowers and trees, psychological cognition and perception, social institutions, and culture..." My summary of that methodology is that science is consistent with the way other methodological naturalists have characterized it: Science must proceed as if “nature is all there is.”StephenB_{June 17, 2009
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Let me simply it as much as I can. Methodological naturalism is an arbitrarily established rule which requires the scientist to study nature “as if nature is all there is.” No such limitation has ever been imposed in the history of science. The “rule” is only 25 years old, and was codified at exactly the same time ID became known.
Well, if methodogical naturalism is such a recent development that put a hitherto unknown constraint on science, it shouldn't be at all difficult to come up with examples to answer my perennial question -- how do you (how did they?) do nonmaterial science? What kind of experiments and studies did they do?pubdef_{June 17, 2009
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StephenB:
In all honesty, I think you should read the FAQ. Methodological naturalism was designed specifically to invalidate ID.
I get that, even without reading the FAQ. But it just doesn't matter one iota how methodological naturalism views dualism. By itself that offers me no reason to accept or reject it.
I agree, and I argue for it independently of ID as the most logical philosophical complement, not necessarily the only possible philosophical complement to ID. You are perfectly free to believe in a monistic ID if it makes any sense to you. It will not affect the science one bit.
I know what monism is. What is "monistic ID?" Neither dualism nor monism have anything to do with ID. I have never seen dualism mentioned in a peer reviewed ID paper. If I'm wrong on that detail or in my understanding, then I'm sure a few people will correct me.ScottAndrews_{June 17, 2009
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