From Unbelievable? at Premier Christian Radio: Eminent cosmologists Sean Carroll and Luke Barnes join Justin for an extended edition of the show debating naturalism, Theism, Big Bang cosmology and fine tuning. Sean, an atheist astrophysicist and author of ‘The Big Picture: on the origins of life, meaning and the universe itself’ argues that naturalism best fits with our scientific understanding. Luke, a Christian astrophysicist and co-author of ‘A Fortunate Universe: life in a finely tuned cosmos’ argues that Theism makes better sense of the evidence. More. Audio here. Sean Carroll at A Preposterous Universe Luke Barnes at A Fortunate Universe See also: Peter Woit on Sean Carroll and science as religion and Free live interactive webinar Saturday with fine-tuning astrophysicist Luke Barnes (U Read More ›

From Paul Kingsbury at LiveScience: Recent literature in the social sciences on paranormal cultures argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in people’s lives in the West. Because the paranormal refers to “events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with “normal” everyday life. Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream. More. Well, if it is Read More ›

From Allen Downey at Scientific American: Since 1990, the fraction of Americans with no religious affiliation has nearly tripled, from about 8 percent to 22 percent. Over the next 20 years, this trend will accelerate: by 2020, there will be more of these “Nones” than Catholics, and by 2035, they will outnumber Protestants. More. As Pew notes (2016), however, it’s partly a matter of labelling: Indeed, our Religious Landscape Study finds a clear generational pattern: Young people who are not particularly religious seem to be much more comfortable identifying as “nones” than are older people who display a similar level of religious observance. Nearly eight-in-ten Millennials with low levels of religious commitment describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in Read More ›

Here. From the paper: “Contrary to what many people believe, “Methodological naturalism is certainly NOT a ‘ground rule’ of science today”. Paper. See also: Why the “Naturalism” Part of “Methodological Naturalism” is Both Misleading and Unnecessary (Barry Arrington)

From Paul Nelson at Evolution News & Views: Seriously: Carroll himself announces this “poetic naturalism as religion” Facebook option on his webpage, without a trace of irony. If we think of religion as the sphere of one’s deepest values – i.e., those bedrock truths and commitments for which we would willingly offer ourselves, and by which we try to order our daily lives – then it is clear that “poetic naturalism” means far more to Carroll than a clever atheistic philosophy with debating tricks to throw naïve theists off-balance. He intends for poetic naturalism to provide a trustworthy guide for living, and his most recent book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself,…is a Read More ›

It would appear so from Stanford Plato: 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 Read More ›

From Thomas E. Elliott at Acta Cogitate (Eastern Michigan University): Abstract: The cultural debate about Creationism contra evolution by natural selection may be far from over, but the logic underlying it is settled. Creationism is ill-suited to take the place of methodological naturalism for the investigation of biology. In this paper, I survey how philosopher Elliott Sober uses some well-formed concepts from statistics and epistemology, including the nature of evidence, data, as well as the contemporary theory of evolution by natural selection to destroy Creationism as a viable theory once and for all. Creationism is a demonstrable logical fallacy, one that has no support biblically, or in science, but is a thoroughly political conception. I also challenge the idea that disproving Read More ›

As far as the practice of science is concerned, is there a practical difference between assuming the probability that a miracle will not occur is 1.00 and assuming the probability that a miracle will not occur is 0.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999? Tom Gilson addresses this question in his contribution to Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies in a chapter entitled Methodological Naturalism, Methodological Theism, and Regularism. Gilson starts off by quoting J. B. S. Haldane: My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my Read More ›

Summer vacation pricing for a leading book: US$7.56 From Amazon: Many volumes have addressed the question of whether or not naturalism is a required part of scientific methodology. However, few, if any, go any further into the many concerns that arise from a rejection of naturalism. If methodological naturalism is rejected, what replaces it? If science is not naturalistic, what defines science? If naturalism is rejected, what is gained and what is lost? How does the practice of science change? What new avenues would be available, and how would they be investigated? This volume is divided into three parts. The first part considers the question of methodological naturalism and its role in the demarcation problem – deciding what is science Read More ›

The book Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies describes how science can be done apart from the assumptions of Naturalism, which are usually assumed by materialists to be part and parcel of science. The book is based on a conference attended by many people in the Intelligent Design community, including several who are regulars on this site.
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From Denyse O’Leary  (News) at ENV: “Post-truth” was the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2016. The term “post-fact” is also heard more often now. Oxford tells us that “post-fact” relates to or denotes “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Post-fact has certainly hit science. Pundits blame everyone but themselves for its growing presence. But a post-fact and post-truth world are implicit and inevitable in the metaphysical naturalist view (nature is all there is) that is now equated with science and often stands in for it. Let’s start at the top, with cosmology. Some say there is a crisis in cosmology; others say there are merely Read More ›

Responding to Walter Myers III at ENV, Barry Arrington brings up a name that rings a bell: Over at ENV Walter Myers III takes a sledgehammer to the argument that the success of science compels acceptance of metaphysical naturalism, this time as argued by Barbara Forrest More. There are over 18,000 posts here but I remember Forrest from the curious case of her wholly unjustified attack on fellow philosopher Frank Beckwith in a philosophy quarterly a few years back. The story, so far as we knew it, is this: Beckwith used to hang out with ID theorists. Forrest published a savage attempt at a takedown in Synthese, without apparently having paid much attention to what Beckwith actually said. He, naturally, Read More ›

A reader writes to recommend Chapter 3 of C.S. Lewis’s Miracles: Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. … Nothing can seem extraordinary until Read More ›

Wilder Penfield was a pioneering neurosurgeon in Montreal. A friend writes to draw our attention to his approach to the mind, in The Mystery of the Mind: “The challenge that comes to every neurophysiologist is to explain in terms of brain mechanisms all that men have come to consider the work of the mind, if he can. And this he must undertake freely, without philosophical or religious bias. If he does not succeed in his explanation, using proven facts and reasonable hypotheses, the time should come, as it has to me, to consider other possible explanations. He must consider how the evidence can be made to fit the hypothesis of two elements as well as that of one only.” – Wilder Read More ›

Astrophysicist and neuroscientist Casper Hesp wrote a piece at BioLogos, reviewing physicist Peter Bussey’s Signposts to God. Hesp thinks that fine-tuning of the universe is not a good argument for theism. After all, despite massive evidence and the utter improbability of other approaches, we could find out some day that we are wrong. From Wayne Rossiter, at Shadow of Oz: Last week I posted on what I see as a growing (and concerning) trend among BioLogians: the gravitation towards full-on naturalism (even beyond cosmology). I also speculated that Bussey’s arguments had been badly misrepresented. I decide to ask Dr. Bussey directly about some of the Hesp’s claims. In a really splendid way Bussey has offered a response. I am cut-pasting Read More ›