If an unrepeatable, unobservable POOF was the way life came about, how could we scientifically infer it? Researchers of late have essentially resorted to A new mechanism of evolution — POOF. Appeals to POOF are hinted in the hopeful monster hypothesis and the mutationist/neutralist school of evolution and even punctuated equilibrium. And when Koonin appealed to multiverses to answer OOL, imho, the naturalists conceded to a POOF mechanism just like they were forced to concede to a POOF mechanism for the Big Bang. I listed the absence of seeing the Intelligent Designer and lack of direct observation and direct experiment as good reasons to reject ID. See: Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID. But on a more basic level, Read More ›

President Joanne Gora of Ball State University has publicly declared that the worldview of philosophical naturalism (PN) is the only legitimate worldview that may be taught in any science classroom at BSU.  Her comments were in response to the controversy raised by the Freedom From Religion Foundation over certain aspects of an upper level elective course taught by Science Prof. Eric Hedin on the Boundaries of Science.  Including in his reading list for the class were books favorable to the theory of Intelligent Design (ID) with respect to the origin of natural systems, including biological systems. ID stands in contrast to the favored view within science that all things in nature are the result of undirected, natural cause and effect.  Read More ›

In my earlier post on this subject, I attempted to address the question of whether or not the claim “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, or what I called the EC-EE claim, was itself an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. In this post, I want to take a step back from that and just grant that the EC-EE claim is valid, at least as a general guideline, along the order of, say, Ockham’s Razor. That granted, let’s see where that may lead us with respect to how the EC-EE claim is used as an argument against certain kinds of claims on the basis that they are “extraordinary”. For my point of departure, I’ll revisit the quote from Michael Shermer I referenced Read More ›

The late Carl Sagan is credited with popularizing the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. (hereinafter this will be referred to as the “EC-EE” claim) While the phrase has become the skeptic’s mantra, its original roots probably trace back to the French mathematician and astronomer Pierre –Simon LaPlace (1749-1827) who once wrote: “the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness”. Regardless of its origins, the sentiment expressed in the quote has, over the last few years, become one of the bedrock critiques against ID. The notion seems to be along the lines that ID’s core claim is that only an unembodied supernatural intelligence can account for the specified complexity exhibited in biological systems, and Read More ›

It is not often that one’s opinion of a book improves after reading three negative reviews of it. I haven’t yet read Professor Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, but after reading what biologist H. Allen Orr, philosophers Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg, and philosopher and ID critic Elliott Sober had to say about the book, I came away convinced that neo-Darwinism is an intellectual edifice resting on a foundation of sand… and sheer intellectual stubbornness on the part of its adherents. I do not wish to question the sincerity and learning of the reviewers, but I was deeply shocked by their unshakable attachment to Darwinism. Reading through the reviews, Read More ›

Memo to Eugenie Scott and the National Center for Science Education: the claim that scientists must explain the natural world in terms of natural processes alone, eschewing all supernatural explanations, is now being openly denied by three leading scientists who are also outspoken atheists. I’m referring to physicist Sean Carroll, and biologists Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers, who hold that there are circumstances under which scientists can legitimately infer the existence of supernatural causes. That’s a pretty formidable trio. The NCSE is perfectly free to disown these scientists if it wishes, but I think it would be severely undermining its own credibility if it did so. Let me state at the outset that Intelligent Design, while open to the Read More ›

Some of you may have already seen that Thomas Nagel’s new book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, has been subject to a blistering review in the liberal US weekly, The Nation. On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s excellent Religion & Ethics website, I have commented on this review, Nagel’s thesis, and the attempt by naturalists to present a politically correct face that avoids Nagel’s critique.

It’s been a while since we had a good discussion about Methodological Naturalism. This time around, I want to start out simple: I’m asking everyone, particularly those who believe methodological naturalism is essential to science (Matzke, I’m looking at you) to define it. More below.

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In a recent thread which has attracted a lot of lively comment, Dr. Elizabeth Liddle (a highly respected critic of Intelligent Design who surely needs no introduction here) mounted a vigorous defense of methodological naturalism (“MN”). She began by developing her view of the way science works, in a post on the thread: [T]he idea that any scientific theory stops science is completely false. Science never stops, and a successfully supported hypothesis is a trigger for more research, not less. In a subsequent post, Dr. Liddle then proceeded to explain why her view of science necessitates the adoption of methodological naturalism: Yes, rejection of “MN” is religious, for a very simple reason. It is not possible to investigate a non-material Read More ›

(Series)

Alfred Russel Wallace is the all but forgotten co-founder of modern evolutionary thought. His major book reveals a bit of why, right from the title and sub-title: The World of Life: a manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose.

In short, Wallace was a design thinker, and in fact he was also a supernaturalist. (A Spiritualist, actually.)

It should be no surprise to see, therefore, that he took on the methodological naturalism that was even then beginning to be informally institutionalised in science.  (In our time, it has now been formally written into redefinitions of science promoted by bodies like the US’s National Academy of Science and their National Science Teachers Association, in the teeth of serious historical, logical and epistemological issues and concerns.)

It is worth pausing for a few moments in this series of posts, to reflect on how Wallace responded to Hume et al, in his An Answer to the Arguments of Hume, Lecky, and Others, Against Miracles.

Clipping from p. 112 on, we may see: Read More ›

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