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Naturalism is a choice these disciplines of science make because they presume that anything that can be known will be physical or natural (methodological naturalism.)

And we've been utterly correct so far.

It is a choice, a philosophy and nothing more. When a discipline declines to look at the non-spatial, non-temporal, non-corporeals (such as God, spirit, soul, conscience, mind, information or successful communication, autonomy, forms, geometry and other mathematical structures, qualia such as likes and dislikes) - it should not then be declaring that "all that exists" is all that it considers (microscope to telescope, matter in all its motions.)

Show us your pixie, your leprechaun, your Invisible, Pink Unicorn; dazzle us with your repeatable and measurable phenomena and we will change our minds.

And when that is the assertion it amounts to no more than a sleight of hand.

That, unlike any other philosophical approach, yields repeatable and demonstrable results.

Give it a good thrashing right here on the Religion Forum! “All that there is” is not microscope to telescope.

See above on pixies - otherwise you are just babbling nonsense.

After all, encouraging science to abandon the presupposition of "methodological naturalism" was the original goal of the intelligent design movement.

Why is encouraging scientists to abandon the only guaranteed knowledge-producing process in the history of mankind is a good thing in your mind?

Thank you for your reply!

And we've been utterly correct so far.

Well sure, after all, nature is the only place certain disciplines of science have looked for answers. Even so, I wouldn't say methodological naturalism has been "utterly" correct. If it were, there'd be nothing left to do for mathematics including information theory, physics, et al wrt biological systems.

Show us your pixie, your leprechaun, your Invisible, Pink Unicorn; dazzle us with your repeatable and measurable phenomena and we will change our minds.

The mathematicians and physicists who were invited to the table are already investigating such things as autonomy, self-organizing complexity, information theory and molecular biology, semiosis, qualia and so forth. They will continue to change minds IMHO.

Why is encouraging scientists to abandon the only guaranteed knowledge-producing process in the history of mankind is a good thing in your mind?

It expands the intellectual space by not making any presuppositions which do not have a direct bearing on the investigation. Mathematicians and physicists do this all the time - they begin with only the necessary axioms and postulates, they don't declare a "philosophy" to control their investigation, layout a blueprint into which their conclusions must "fit" - or write "here there be dragons" along the boundaries of where they presume the answers must lie.

Oh, and it is not "the only guaranteed knowledge-producing process". Knowledge accrued long before the philosophy of "methodological naturalism" - e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Newton, Galileo to name a few.

Refusing to look beyond naturalism shoves half of the Aristotlean causes right off the table - it is a reduced view of reality, an illusion.

AG: It is a choice, a philosophy and nothing more. When a discipline declines to look at the non-spatial, non-temporal, non-corporeals (such as God, spirit, soul, conscience, mind, information or successful communication, autonomy, forms, geometry and other mathematical structures, qualia such as likes and dislikes) - it should not then be declaring that "all that exists" is all that it considers (microscope to telescope, matter in all its motions.)

I said the same thing to BB yesterday: There is absolutely nothing preventing the DI, or Templeton, or Penrose & Yockey, or anyone else who's interested, from sponsoring such research and showing its utility.

AG: After all, encouraging science to abandon the presupposition of "methodological naturalism" was the original goal of the intelligent design movement.

B666: Why is encouraging scientists to abandon the only guaranteed knowledge-producing process in the history of mankind is a good thing in your mind?

Good point, Balrog. LIke I said above, they're free to explore the non-material stuff, and if it pans out, they might be able to interest scientists. That is, it will need to make interesting predictions, research programs, survive review by skeptics, and so on.

However, the ID movement's real purpose has always been to be a Trojan Horse for creationism, Christian here, Muslim in Turkey. Dembski said "ID the the Logos of John's Gospel and information theory" (paraphrasing, too lazy to check the exact words)