Posted on 10/15/2009 8:15:58 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
I thought the “table” was the forums of formal scientific discussion and acceptable theory.
We were using examples from FR, but those aren’t unique to the issue of methodological naturalism and theology in science. A solution that requires the same rules of engagement that exist here can only work at large if you can impose those rules outside of the forum.
Earlier I was commenting on the crevo debate itself and sidebarred off into a discussion of parenting. Rules of engagement in a forum (this or any) are much like parenting. The owner(s) of the house dictates the rules. This is Jim's house, Jim's rules. The rules on Darwin Central would be their own. Ditto for talk origins, etc.
And long before that (on another thread as I recall) we were discussing methodological naturalism per se in science and my suggestion for improvement, namely that scientists ought to approach problems like mathematicians and declare only whatever axioms/postulates are necessary for a particular investigation.
One of my last comments was that this suggestion would not apply to routine investigations where protocols are already in place, i.e. the presuppositions for investigating an antibody are part of the protocol.
Then we apparently started mixing them much earlier. The discussion started off in the context of discussing involvement of philosophy/theology in scientific methodology at large. If the debates here are an entirely different subject then there was some non-sequitur association made somewhere that got us where we are now.
In common usage, this often results in non-physical causation being excluded. That presupposition cannot continue in my view.
Information theory (Shannon, successful communications) entails non-physical causation (e.g. final cause/Rosen) which is necessary to understanding biological life (Rosen, Yockey, Schneider/NIH et al.)
The success of using information theory in molecular biology for cancer research, pharmaceutical research and creating the polio virus in the lab (Wimmer) makes the point very clear (at least to me) that methodological naturalism has become a stumbling block to scientific investigation.
Notice that I have raised no theological issues at all in advocating this point. It is mathematics. It is science. And it is philosophy.
The debate about meaning involves theology. And that's where forums and house rules come into play.
Science has done all it can do using the scientific method when it includes non-physical causation. People debating what it means might see Logos, the Word of God, God the Creator - or they might attribute the existence of information (Shannon, successful communication) and temporal non-locality (inversely causal metainformation) in biological life to some as yet unidentified cause.
I see these as two separate issues - on the one hand, what should science entail - and on the other, how should the debate be prosecuted, e.g. is the debate appropriate for publicly funded venues such as K-12?
The debate about meaning involves theology. And that's where forums and house rules come into play.
That you have raised no theological issues doesn't address the problem of the demands of others that they be made part of the discussion at large, and the impracticality of meeting those demands interfering with an objective assesment of non-natural causes.
In my view, science is out-of-bounds to theorize about meaning. That is the domain of theology and philosophy and is appropriate according to the rules of engagement of the forum, e.g. at home, in church, on Free Republic, in an eighth grade public classroom.
As I said before, my beef with science is that it should pitch methodological naturalism and instead only declare the axioms or postulates that are appropriate for a particular investigation.
I a sense, I beleive they have. Methodological naturalism declares a set of axioms that are appropriate for all investingations. The proposition at hand seems to be that biology should be exempt so that philosophical arguments can be entered against ToE.
Are these the same sort of "axioms" you speak of, and are you proposing new axioms?
For example, a postulate of special relativity (Einstein) was a four dimensional space/time continuum. Not everyone reading the theory accepts this as a "given" but by his having stated it as a postulate, the boundaries of his work are clear, e.g. his theory wouldn't be applicable to a different geometry.
That seems intuitive. I can't think of an example where a theory doesn't include the postulates that go along with it.
But "postulates" and "axioms" are two different things. Why "postulates and axioms", and not just "postulates"? If the inclusion of "axioms" is necessary, but they are not the same as mathemtical axioms, what exactly are they?
I might agree that they should "declare their axioms and postulates" if I knew what it was I was being asked to agree to.
Okay. Typically, "given" implies a tacit agreement with already established and accepted theories, like the laws of thermodynamics. Do all of those need to be explicitly re-stated at length whenever a theory is proposed?
Question, tacticalogic: Was methodological naturalism the scientific approach that Darwin used?
In that he looked for a natural explanation to explain the physhical evidence, I believe so.
But there's more to methodological naturalism than its presupposition that all natural phenomena have natural causes exclusively. Little things like: direct observation, replicable experiments, falsifiability of results, and predictive value where results stand up to falsification tests.
What does any of this have to do with a "common ancestor," which has never been directly or even indirectly observed by anyone, ever? And in what way is random mutation/natural selection not an intuitive (i.e., subjective) strategy to explain what has never been observed, as opposed to something established by means of the reigning scientific method, that is methodological naturalism?
I've seen those arguments, and they're valid within the context of investigations that allow those tests to be made.
"Direct observation" isn't possible in any investigation that involves phenomena outside our range of sensory perception, or happens in timescalse outside our lifespan. Currently the standard is that those direct observations are not required where they are not possible, but indirect evidence is allowed.
Do you have some other methodology that you submit would be more appropriate for those investingations, or simply that they should not be pursued on that evidence?
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