The Louisiana Science Education Act a decade later: Darwin not worshipped, swamp monsters not on the loose

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July 2, 2018

Darwinism, Intelligent Design, science education

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Louisiana Science Education Act From David Klinghoffer at ENST:

This week we’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act. It was a turning point in the effort to secure academic freedom for science teachers. That effort was never going to be an overnight success, but the LSEA marked an important beginning.

Yes. Who could forget Pants-in-knot and the hysteria he generated about the dark ages emerging from the swampy Bayou?

In fact, West notes, the LSEA shattered clichés like that in several ways. For one, it enjoyed broad bipartisan support — it was not a matter of Republicans versus Democrats. That’s got to be one reason it has resisted attempts at repeal led by activist Zack Kopplin, who has since moved on to other pursuits (as Sarah Chaffee notes here). For another, it enjoyed support from scientists. It was, again, not a battle of citizens versus science.

Finally, it was not “anti-science” at all but on the contrary, pro-science: that is, if by science you mean an enterprise entailing critical, objective analysis and weighing of evidence. In fact, the LSEA took inspiration from Darwin himself, who wrote that in scientific inquiries, “a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” More.

Podcast

See also: Pants in knot: “Creationism” in Louisiana schools

and

Pants in knot II: Creationism growth sparks concern in Ivy League

Comments

I am reading the book "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field", a history of how those two men and others worked to understand electromagnetism back in the 1800's. Faraday in particular was an amazing experimentalist who had intuitions that later proved to be quite correct, even though he didn't have the mathematical background to formulate the laws that Maxwell later developed in the language of calculus. They were working to explain natural phenomena in terms of natural causes and forces. I would say they were definitely using MN to conduct science. They were also religious people who believed that God had created this world and all of the natural phenomena that they were investigating. They saw no conflict between their religious beliefs and the methodological naturalism that they were using (even though they didn't know that term.) Case in point.jdk_{July 8, 2018
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jdk:
So, kf, all the Christians who accept the NSTA statement have been tricked into endorsing materialism, and just aren’t smart enough to know that?
They definitely do not understand science. Neither do you.
More seriously. how do you explain the millions of Christians who accept science as the search for natural causes of natural phenomena.
How are you defining "natural"? Are cars the result of natural phenomena? Or are they the result of artificial phenomena?
So, again, what do you think of the millions of the religious people all over the world who accept MN as the proper way to do science, and don’t think that conflicts with their religion. Are they all wrong?
No one uses MN to conduct science.ET_{July 8, 2018
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to kf. 1. I'll note that you did not address my questions in 49 at all. 2. 52 is irrelevant, as we are not discussing the flaws you see in philosophical naturalism. We are discussing whether the NSTA statement, which endorses MN, is also endorsing PN. So, again, what do you think of the millions of the religious people all over the world who accept MN as the proper way to do science, and don't think that conflicts with their religion. Are they all wrong?jdk_{July 8, 2018
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HN5, yup. That which is implicit, sub-textual and backed by institutional power is much harder to draw out, expose errors and correct than that which is directly asserted. And, when I did management, one of the points on strategic planning and decision making was that clever, entrenched advocates of business as usual can often spin out arguments endlessly. When that is going on, we are looking at the Overton Window shift challenge and how balances of power and circumstances have to move to shift BATNAs. Too often, that comes down to a power-driven fight. In this case, one that is going to be influenced by radical secularist and cultural marxist agit prop. Indeed, back in 2005, the PR person for the astroturf secularist group pushing the radical redefinition we are addressing in Kansas said in an online forum that her game plan was to make those advocating a more traditional approach seem to be bullies and donkeys. (She used stronger language.) KFkairosfocus_{July 8, 2018
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Sev (and JDK): I think it is useful to address the issue of mindedness further i/l/o Crick's 1994 remarks. First, he exemplifies how some materialists actually suggest that mind is more or less a delusion, which is instantly self-referentially absurd. For instance, in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis, Crick wrote:
. . . that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.
Philip Johnson aptly replied that Sir Francis should have therefore been willing to preface his works thusly: "I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Johnson then acidly commented: “[t]he plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit exception be made for the theorist.” [Reason in the Balance, 1995.] In short, it is at least arguable that self-referential absurdity is the dagger pointing to the heart of evolutionary materialistic models of mind and its origin. For, there is a very good reason we are cautioned about how easily self-referential statements can become self-refuting, like a snake attacking and swallowing itself tail-first. Any human scheme of thought that undermines responsible [thus, morally governed] rational freedom undermines itself fatally. We thus see inadvertent, inherent self-falsification of evolutionary materialism. But, “inadvertent” counts: it can be hard to recognise and acknowledge the logically fatal nature of the result. Of course, that subjective challenge does not change the objective result: self-referential incoherence and irretrievable self-falsification. (An audio clip, here, by William Lane Craig that summarises Plantinga's argument on this in a nutshell, is useful as a quick reference.) A key point of relevance, is of course, that we here see that the very mindedness required to do science (and especially Mathematics!) is not properly explained on blind mechanical and/or stochastic causal chains in GIGO-limited computational substrates. Reppert and Haldane are right, we inherently need something that transcends the inherently non-ratiional nature of blind, GIGO-limited causal chains. We need instead responsible, rationally free contemplation that moves to conclusions through insightful ground and consequent logic and prudent judgement of the degree of support empirical evidence gives to inductive conclusions. There is a fatal self-referential hole in the naturalistic, evolutionary materialistic account. Starting with the scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and even educators and media personalities involved. The evolutionary materialist worldview is intellectually bankrupt by way of irretrievable, inescapable self falsification through self referential incoherence. As Sir Francis Crick so clearly (and inadvertently) demonstrated. KFkairosfocus_{July 8, 2018
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JDK, I have already noted how that which is implicit is much harder to discern than that which is plain; and that is how the implicit or hidden curriculum takes effect -- especially if it seems plausible given the tides of opinion and institutional power in a given day. In this case, I have taken time to highlight the significance of "natural" ("-ISTIC" is in the subtext) concepts and explanations. I.e. for education in schools, science is in effect radically and ideologically redefined as the best evolutionary materialistic explanation of the world from hydrogen to humans. With, a further tendency to brand questioning and alternatives as appeals to the suspect "supernatural" and/or pseudoscientific. This then came out, five years later, in an attempt to brand and drive out a definition that was demonstrably historically [and philosophically] well-warranted and avoids ideological loading or question-begging. Where, definition of science, properly, is an exercise in history and philosophy of science. Where, too, it seems reasonable to me that an exercise in such definition of science and its core methods needs to start with Newton's classic statement in Opticks, Query 31, which is the obvious root of the traditional school level definition. That then needs to be updated to address the broader understanding of inductive reasoning and the significance of inference to the best explanation. Last but not least, instead of the loaded contrast, natural vs supernatural, it would be advisable to consider Plato's contrast in The Laws, Book X: natural vs ART-ificial -- causes tracing to mechanical necessity and/or chance vs intelligently directed configuration, these being studied i/l/o inductive inference on reliable signs. I am fairly sure that if such were done properly, we would reach a very different conclusion than the NSTA did in 2000. KFkairosfocus_{July 8, 2018
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Many people of all viewpoints are confused about "methodological" naturalism. A big part of the reason is that superficially it sounds so much like empirical science.hnorman5_{July 7, 2018
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So, kf, all the Christians who accept the NSTA statement have been tricked into endorsing materialism, and just aren't smart enough to know that? More seriously. how do you explain the millions of Christians who accept science as the search for natural causes of natural phenomena. Are they confused (which is what one ID advocate said one time), or are they in fact "worse than atheists because they hide their materialism behind a veneer of religion", which is what Johnson said one time. What do you think about all those religious people who believe MN is a proper approach to science, don't think it is hidden materialism, and don't think it is a threat to their religious beliefs? How do you account for that? Are they all just wrong?jdk_{July 7, 2018
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JDK, Lewontin wrote as a leading member of the guild who knew their mindset. That mindset is what the NSTA statement of 2000 documents, as does the joint NSTA-NAS letter of 2005. The imposition of a priori evolutionary materialism on science education by materialists dominating key institutions, is not a ho-hum, so what. As to RW, kindly note language of inappropriate dismissal, such as "traps," and failure to recognise the contrast natural vs artificial causes that may and often do leave empirically observable traces. As SB often points out, one may infer arson or burglary on signs without knowing more than that it is possible for designing action to have been involved. The root problem -- which Lewontin and Rational Wiki highlighted and which NSTA and NAS demonstrated, is a priori imposition of evolutionary materialism.kairosfocus_{July 7, 2018
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PPPPS: It is also relevant to note that the "god of the gaps" rhetorical gambit fails when it is used to try to dismiss the design inference on tested, empirically reliable signs backed up by assessment of search challenge in config spaces beyond 500 - 1,000 bits. For, inferring intelligently directed configuration as relevant best current causal explanation points to the only empirically observed cause of the sort of phenomenon in question, and to the only plausible cause in light of search challenge to blind search on sol system or observed cosmos gamut. This is an inference to what we do know, not a speculation about what we do not know. And given that the explanatory filter prioritises mechanical necessity and/or chance, it is not a question-begging assumption either.kairosfocus_{July 7, 2018
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I knew Lewontin would show up sometime! :-) But Lewontin was not on the team that wrote the NSTA statement. And yes, there are materialists. So what? There are also many religious people, Evangelical Christians included, who accept strongly the ideas in the NSTA statement. Also, once again, you do not quote enough to put a statement in proper context. From Rational Wiki, with the part you left out bolded.
Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic; which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically. However, this assumption of naturalism need not extend beyond an assumption of methodology. This is what separates methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism — the former is merely a tool and makes no truth claim; while the latter makes the philosophical — essentially atheistic — claim that only natural causes exist.
jdk_{July 7, 2018
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PPS: I am aware that Rational Wiki has backed away from the cat-out-of-the-bag direct phrasing that was in place a few years ago. That historic phrasing is still valid and directly shows the point I have made about the nature of so-called methodological naturalism.kairosfocus_{July 7, 2018
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PPS: It seems I need to expand a little on Haldane's remarks also. Okay, for starters, here is Reppert:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
In short, inherently, a computational substrate is not about intelligent inference (apart from that of its designer), but instead is about mechanical chains of cause and effect acting on organised components tied together in an information-rich fashion. The notion that such could somehow achieve self-conscious, understanding-driven, rationally contemplative ground-consequent inferences or cogent judgement as to the degree of support empirical evidence gives to a conclusion, is a speculation driven by the same a priori imposition of evolutionary materialism already noted. That's in part why Philip Johnson's remark in reply to Lewontin is so relevant:
For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence.
[--> notice, the power of an undisclosed, question-begging, controlling assumption . . . often put up as if it were a mere reasonable methodological constraint; emphasis added. Let us note how Rational Wiki, so-called, presents it:
"Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses."
Of course, this ideological imposition on science that subverts it from freely seeking the empirically, observationally anchored truth about our world pivots on the deception of side-stepping the obvious fact since Plato in The Laws Bk X, that there is a second, readily empirically testable and observable alternative to "natural vs [the suspect] supernatural." Namely, blind chance and/or mechanical necessity [= the natural] vs the ART-ificial, the latter acting by evident intelligently directed configuration. [Cf Plantinga's reply here and here.] And as for the god of the gaps canard, the issue is, inference to best explanation across competing live option candidates. If chance and necessity is a candidate, so is intelligence acting by art through design. And it is not an appeal to ever- diminishing- ignorance to point out that design, rooted in intelligent action, routinely configures systems exhibiting functionally specific, often fine tuned complex organisation and associated information. Nor, that it is the only observed cause of such, nor that the search challenge of our observed cosmos makes it maximally implausible that blind chance and/or mechanical necessity can account for such.]
That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
kairosfocus_{July 7, 2018
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PS: The above shows the telling relevance of Lewontin's notorious NYRB remarks, of January 2000 . . . the same timeframe as the NSTA statement:
. . . to put a correct [--> Just who here presume to cornering the market on truth and so demand authority to impose?] view of the universe into people's heads
[==> as in, "we" the radically secularist elites have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge, making "our" "consensus" the yardstick of truth . . . where of course "view" is patently short for WORLDVIEW . . . and linked cultural agenda . . . ]
we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world [--> "explanations of the world" is yet another synonym for WORLDVIEWS; the despised "demon[ic]" "supernatural" being of course an index of animus towards ethical theism and particularly the Judaeo-Christian faith tradition], the demons that exist only in their imaginations,
[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]
and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth
[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]
. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident
[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]
that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]
kairosfocus_{July 7, 2018
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Sev, I actually demonstrated in 33 above from the SEP remarks that there is an agreed core meaning of naturalism across the past 100 + years, which is tantamount to the descriptive summary phrases I have long used. Namely, [1] evolutionary materialism and [2] evolutionary materialistic scientism. That summary also fits the CED definition, which will pivot on summarising typical usage of terms by those who exhibit exemplary standard of English speech or writing. So, appeal to other usages or to vagueness or to differences peripheral to that core will fail. Next, I went on to show the connexion, where if reality is a priori deemed evolutionary materialist, then it will seem appropriate to censor scientific thought, forcing it to become the "best" evolutionary materialistic account of our world from hydrogen to humans. And, frankly, that is the effect of so-called methodological naturalism. In that context, it is also clear why there is often an insistence on suggesting that the relevant contrast is natural vs supernatural, where the "supernatural" is part of what is being pushed out of the domain of possible knowledge. But in fact, ever since Plato in The Laws Bk X, there has been another relevant contrast: natural vs artificial. Where, on this sense, natural causes and processes would be those driven by blind chance and mechanical necessity acting on a physical substrate in a causal-temporal succession. Such cases, obviously are amenable to study that highlights the role of mechanical necessity and/or stochastic, chance based processes and circumstances. However, that is not the only causal dynamic studied in the sciences [think archaeology, forensic sciences, medicine, engineering sciences, etc]. Artificial causes are intelligent and purposeful, often leaving observable characteristic and reliable traces which may therefore be studied by scientific investigations that are not straightjacketed and blinkered by a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism. But of course seeing such to be reasonable pivots on willingness to accept the possibility of intelligent causal agents at relevant times and places, and/or to be open to the demonstrated reliability of key characteristic signs of intelligently directed configuration as a relevant causal factor. Which is precisely what is being locked out a priori on worldviews grounds as is implied by SEP. We are back to imposition of a worldview that censors possibilities that should sit at the table by right. In this context, it is only fair comment to point out that the NSTA was gravely wrong in 2000 and was worse wrong in 2005. The attack on a historically well-warranted school level understanding of science and its methods is a red flag warning on what has gone wrong. KFkairosfocus_{July 7, 2018
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jdk:
The enterprise of public school science education is not the place to hash out philosophical and fringe (although possibly true) issues: public school science education needs to teach solidly substantiated facts within a context of empirical evidence, and to represent the mainstream understanding of what science is and does:
And yet evolutionism is being taught- a subject that does not have any solidly substantiated facts.ET_{July 7, 2018
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Seversky:
No, we are back to insisting on a rigorous application of methodological naturalism as science’s best defense against those who would warp science to conform to their own personal religious or political agendas.
Yet MN warps science for those who refuse to deal with reality and who have personal and political agendas.ET_{July 7, 2018
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Sev writes,
No, we are back to insisting on a rigorous application of methodological naturalism as science’s best defense against those who would warp science to conform to their own personal religious or political agendas.
This is an important point. It is MN and its insistence on natural evidence that invalidates, among other things, young-earth creationism being taught in school. And as I pointed out earlier, there are vastly more teachers teaching, blatantly or indirectly, that YEC is true than there are teachers teaching that materialism is true. The enterprise of public school science education is not the place to hash out philosophical and fringe (although possibly true) issues: public school science education needs to teach solidly substantiated facts within a context of empirical evidence, and to represent the mainstream understanding of what science is and does: and that's what the NSTA statement does.jdk_{July 7, 2018
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jdk:
Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements in the production of scientific knowledge.
Nonsense. Science cares about reality, period. If the reality is we are here by supernatural fiat then so be it. To say otherwise would be unscientific. The problem is the desire to contrast natural with supernatural when you should be contrasting natural with artificial.ET_{July 7, 2018
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Seversky:
I don’t understand the problem you have with naturalistic explanations and empirical, evidence-based research.
Evolutionism doesn't have that. The origin of the universe, earth and solar system doesn't have that. The origin of life doesn't have that.
From this computer to understanding the causes of diseases and providing effective treatments to sending space probes to where distant planets will be many years in the future, MN works.
Except that MN had nothing to do with any of that.ET_{July 7, 2018
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Methodological naturalism limits science and it has not helped anyone discover anything. Teaching evolutionism is a clear red flag to anyone who cares about science and it is a clear and present danger to society.ET_{July 7, 2018
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kairosfocus @ 33
Sev (and again JDK by endorsement), What part of the SEP cite (with which I am familiar) contradicts the summary in the CED (which I have come to respect for its repeated powerful summaries)?
The CED, like all dictionaries, lists past and present usages without offering any judgement about which, if any, is the "correct" one. You quote two out of a list of some fifteen. The SEP entry discusses the notion of naturalism at some length, pointing out that there is some agreement on what it means in a broad sense but that it is poorly-defined and far from a single monolithic concept. This means that you need to define at the start what you understand by the "naturalism" you are attacking because it may be different from the version I am prepared to defend.
Let me clip key parts of SEP that bring this out:
The self-proclaimed “naturalists” [of early-mid C20] . . . urged that reality is exhausted by nature [= the physical], containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality [–> i.e. if all that is is ultimately physical, the point of knowledge is to understand how that matrix gave rise to all things we see], including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003) [–> this of course runs into the challenge of reducing mindedness to a GIGO-limited computational substrate, thus becomes self-refuting as I and many others note. This is the historical context of Haldane’s sawing off the branch remark] . . . .

I think we all agree that the "hard problem" of consciousness is far from being solved, the problem being to elucidate a chain of causation from the electro-chemical activity of the physical brain to our individual experience of consciousness. I would say that opponents of this concept have an even harder problem to solve, to wit, creating a explanation which not only accounts for the clear correlation between consciousness and the brain but also provides evidence to support an extra-corporeal model of consciousness. You are a long way from that, as well.

just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit” [–> so, naturalism, i.e. evolutionary materialistic scientism, has ruled the roost for the past century or so, and has of course had consequences] . . . .

That the naturalistic approach to science has been fruitful is, I would argue, both undeniable and its main justification. That applications of the knowledge produced by science have been both beneficial and detrimental to humanity is due to the fallibility of those human beings who did the applying. You cannot lay the blame for adverse outcomes on the science without committing the fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam.

The ontological component [of such naturalism] is concerned with the contents of reality, asserting that reality has no place for “supernatural” or other “spooky” kinds of entity [–> this a priori locks out entities not amenable to the assumptions...

No, what it means is that we are not obliged to accept the existence of conjectured entities for which we can find no correlate in observable reality.
...and it ends in self-referential incoherence regarding mind and moral government of responsible, rational freedom; thus this view is necessarily false, never mind dominance in the guild of scholarship. Notice how Haldane highlights how the very theorising of the scientist is decisively undermined through self-referential incoherence:
Naturalism in science takes no position on questions of morality and any such considerations are irrelevant to its validity as a research methodology.
It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter.

Argument from incredulity.
Thus, we are back at evolutionary materialistic scientism, redefinition of science in ways that beg big questions about truth, warping of methods by constraints tied to these challenges, and the underlying self-falsification that even undermines the ability to think. Haldane, again, captures the point.
No, we are back to insisting on a rigorous application of methodological naturalism as science's best defense against those who would warp science to conform to their own personal religious or political agendas.
The fatal error of the natural world being self-causing is already plain. We can argue to the need for a world-root that is a necessary being, and can see that a causal-temporal succession cannot credibly traverse the implied transfinite succession of stages to reach now. That is interesting, but not central.
The value of the MN approach to research is measured by the results it produces and by that measure it has been very successful. That we have no naturalistic answers for the ultimate questions of origins does not in any way invalidate the use of MN to investigate the world as we find it before us now. As for infinities, while you believe "that a causal-temporal succession cannot credibly traverse the implied transfinite succession of stages to reach now.", we both hold that if there had ever been truly nothing, there would still be nothing. The problem with that is that it implies that, since this universe exists, there must always have been 'something' whatever that might have been.
Going on, it is reasonable that definitions of science and its methods accurately respond to the history of modern science. Thus, there should be no imposed worldview level question begging or methodological lockouts that are tied to preserving in power a flawed view. That is precisely the error we see in the NSTA’s remarks. Instead, the emphasis should fall on open minded assessment of empirically accountable findings and analysis. Logic and epistemology should be acknowledged, and the underlying fact that we are in the province of philosophy, which has a better claim to being the meta discipline that explores how we can come to have confident albeit provisional empirically grounded knowledge.
In another post I presented evidence that a few high school science teachers were openly - and in blatant violation of the Constitution - teaching Christian creationism to their students, no doubt because they were convinced it was mandated by their beliefs. That is a clear red flag for all who value science that there is a pressing need to be vigilant in its defense, that there is a clear and present danger from those who would impose their own religious and political agendas on science and it is that which needs to be locked out.Seversky_{July 7, 2018
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jdk @ 31
Very good, Sev, as usual.
Thank you, I look forward to your contributions as well.

MN science can be done – and is being done – by conservatives, liberals, Catholics, Protestants (maybe even evangelicals),…

Absolutely. I know a number of evangelical Christians who fully accept the PN/MN distinction, believe that MN is the proper way for science to proceed, and do not consider it a threat to their religious beliefs.
I find that encouraging. It's good to know that not all Christians present their faith as dogmatically exclusivist as some others.Seversky_{July 7, 2018
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Sev (and again JDK by endorsement), What part of the SEP cite (with which I am familiar) contradicts the summary in the CED (which I have come to respect for its repeated powerful summaries)? The answer is, nil. Let me clip key parts of SEP that bring this out:
The self-proclaimed “naturalists” [of early-mid C20] . . . urged that reality is exhausted by nature [= the physical], containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality [--> i.e. if all that is is ultimately physical, the point of knowledge is to understand how that matrix gave rise to all things we see], including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003) [--> this of course runs into the challenge of reducing mindedness to a GIGO-limited computational substrate, thus becomes self-refuting as I and many others note. This is the historical context of Haldane's sawing off the branch remark] . . . . The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit” [--> so, naturalism, i.e. evolutionary materialistic scientism, has ruled the roost for the past century or so, and has of course had consequences] . . . . The ontological component [of such naturalism] is concerned with the contents of reality, asserting that reality has no place for “supernatural” or other “spooky” kinds of entity [--> this a priori locks out entities not amenable to the assumptions, and it ends in self-referential incoherence regarding mind and moral government of responsible, rational freedom; thus this view is necessarily false, never mind dominance in the guild of scholarship. Notice how Haldane highlights how the very theorising of the scientist is decisively undermined through self-referential incoherence:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (NB: DI Fellow, Nancy Pearcey brings this right up to date (HT: ENV) in a current book, Finding Truth.)]</
So, we have here a dominant but necessarily false scheme of thought, which will thus warp and taint thought and what is accepted as knowledge.] By contrast, the methodological component is concerned with ways of investigating reality [--> that is, as conceived under this dominant worldview and cultural agenda: the physical or now quasi-physical domain (branes, multiverses and the like], and claims some kind of general authority for the scientific method. [--> this of course is the scientism as I pointed out already. Scientism instantly fails through its self-reference. For, the assertion of scientism is a philosophical, epistemological claim about what can be known, by what means. It thus undermines itself by way of undermining the value of such non-scientific claims]
Thus, we are back at evolutionary materialistic scientism, redefinition of science in ways that beg big questions about truth, warping of methods by constraints tied to these challenges, and the underlying self-falsification that even undermines the ability to think. Haldane, again, captures the point. Now of course, many will try to work with what rules the roost. That cannot change the fact of self-undermining. Which leads to BA77's point as was just put up, i/l/o the challenge of responsible, rationally contemplative and free mindedness rather than blind, cause-effect driven, GIGO-limited computation:
all you need to do is stop all those pesky scientists from, in a very ‘non-natural’ manner, intelligently designing their experimental equipment and set up not to mention stop using their logical and mathematical analysis of results
Without responsible, rational, ground and consequent inference-driven, support-judging freely contemplative mindedness even science itself is undermined. So, we are back at the ruinous implications of what is being imposed. That already should show a good slice of why I am concerned, the very business of rational thought that we desperately need to make progress is itself being undermined. Next, in your concluding remarks, you inadvertently testify to how the above shapes and constrains the contemporary mind:
I don’t understand the problem you have with naturalistic explanations and empirical, evidence-based research. What else is there? Where else would you start? You want to contrast ‘natural’ with ‘artificial’ but that implies that ‘natural’ is limited to non-teleological phenomena. Yet I would argue that any Intelligent Designer would, like lesser designers such as ourselves, be a part of the natural order and, hence, a naturalistic explanation.
The fatal error of the natural world being self-causing is already plain. We can argue to the need for a world-root that is a necessary being, and can see that a causal-temporal succession cannot credibly traverse the implied transfinite succession of stages to reach now. That is interesting, but not central. Now, too, it is not I who drew the point that nature [= blind chance and/or mechanical necessity at work in the physical substatum of reality] and art are two contrasted forces of causation, it was Plato, in the course of pointing out the folly and chaos of evolutionary materialism in The Laws, Bk X. That is important, to know that as long ago as C4 - 5 BC, such was tried and found severely wanting. Next, the obvious place to begin our reflections is with ourselves as able to do science and mathematics, as well as to know more generally. For such, we must be sufficiently, responsibly and rationally free to choose to follow ground and consequent, not merely driven and controlled by blind cause-effect forces in GIGO-limited wetware computational substrates. Or else, science and math fall apart. That already tells us that the dominant and too often domineering schemes of our day are clearly self-falsifying. We may not know all that enables us to think rationally and responsibly, but it already transcends what blindly mechanical computation modified by chance processes can plausibly achieve. Going on, it is reasonable that definitions of science and its methods accurately respond to the history of modern science. Thus, there should be no imposed worldview level question begging or methodological lockouts that are tied to preserving in power a flawed view. That is precisely the error we see in the NSTA's remarks. Instead, the emphasis should fall on open minded assessment of empirically accountable findings and analysis. Logic and epistemology should be acknowledged, and the underlying fact that we are in the province of philosophy, which has a better claim to being the meta discipline that explores how we can come to have confident albeit provisional empirically grounded knowledge. Surely, that is not too much to ask for. KF PS: The remarks on "verified" etc come from five years later and show how the operational force of the July 2000 declaration would play out.kairosfocus_{July 6, 2018
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jdk,now all you need to do is stop all those pesky scientists from, in a very 'non-natural' manner, intelligently designing their experimental equipment and set up not to mention stop using their logical and mathematical analysis of results.bornagain77_{July 5, 2018
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Very good, Sev, as usual. You write,
MN science can be done – and is being done – by conservatives, liberals, Catholics, Protestants (maybe even evangelicals),...
Absolutely. I know a number of evangelical Christians who fully accept the PN/MN distinction, believe that MN is the proper way for science to proceed, and do not consider it a threat to their religious beliefs.jdk_{July 5, 2018
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kairosfocus @ 17
Again, Collins English dictionary:
NATURALISM . . . 5. (Philosophy) philosophy a. a scientific account of the world in terms of causes and natural forces that rejects all spiritual, supernatural, or teleological explanations b. the meta-ethical thesis that moral properties are reducible to natural ones, or that ethical judgments are derivable from nonethical ones.

Again from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003). So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit”

As indicated by the above characterization of the mid-twentieth-century American movement, naturalism can be separated into an ontological and a methodological component. The ontological component is concerned with the contents of reality, asserting that reality has no place for “supernatural” or other “spooky” kinds of entity. By contrast, the methodological component is concerned with ways of investigating reality, and claims some kind of general authority for the scientific method.
MN science can be done - and is being done - by conservatives, liberals, Catholics, Protestants (maybe even evangelicals), socialists, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, you name it. Yes, it's founded on certain implicit, metaphysical assumptions, such as there is an objective reality out there which can be investigated and apprehended through various procedures by intelligent, rational creatures like ourselves. If you want to call that an ideology then it's common to all the aforementioned groups when they do science.
Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations [–> ideological imposition of a loaded definition] and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements [–> question-begging false dichotomy, the proper contrast for empirical investigations is the natural (chance and/or necessity) vs the ART-ificial, through design . . . cf UD’s weak argument correctives 17 – 19, here] in the production of scientific knowledge.
I don't understand the problem you have with naturalistic explanations and empirical, evidence-based research. What else is there? Where else would you start? You want to contrast 'natural' with 'artificial' but that implies that 'natural' is limited to non-teleological phenomena. Yet I would argue that any Intelligent Designer would, like lesser designers such as ourselves, be a part of the natural order and, hence, a naturalistic explanation.Seversky_{July 5, 2018
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Also, I'll note that you did not acknowledge that the full statement included statements about "controversy, correction and replacement of theories", even though you said such statements were absent.jdk_{July 5, 2018
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I am not unaware of the difficulties of demarcation arguments. But we are talking about a statement suitable for high school teachers of science, not a graduate course in the philosophy of science. Crystal power is not warranted by the evidence, but calling it "pseudoscience" is a reasonable label, not a "label game".jdk_{July 5, 2018
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JDK, perhaps you are unaware of the failure of demarcation arguments. There simply is no cluster of criteria and methods which can be used to identify all and only those fields of study termed sciences. If claims of say crystal power fail, they fail for reasons of warrant, not based on label games. When we go back to the statement, again, the points I have highlighted still stand. The "validated" issue came up c 2005, and goes to the problems I already pointed out. Okay, enough for one evening. KFkairosfocus_{July 5, 2018
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