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?
So if I understand you correctly, you are saying that what you like about methodological nanturalism is its presupposition (i.e., that all natural phenomena have exclusively natural causes); but that the "nuts and bolts" of what constitutes it as a method of scientific investigation — direct observation, replicability of experiments, etc. — is really quite optional.
Can you understand why I and my dearest sister in Christ, Alamo-Girl, say that the ToE is lacking in scientific rigor — as compared with, say, physics or chemistry?
In an earlier post, you suggested that what motivates A-G and me and others who find the ToE wanting is that we want to undermine it, so philosophical arguments can then be introduced to criticize it.
But jeepers tacticalogic, can you not see that the ToE is already more philosophy than science already — for it does not hew to generally accepted scientific standards — or at least not those that would be applied in any other scientific field?