That is certainly not what I mean by "religious." My usage of "religious" includes nontheistic, pantheistic, animistic religions such as Shinto, Buddhism and Hinduism as well.

I'll be explicit about my view on this: I don't think that a belief in God and being a competent practicing scientist are mutually exclusive. That is obviously true based on simple observation of Christian scientists. I also don't think a belief in God and accepting a scientific methodology as the best way to understand the world are mutually exclusive.

As far as I am aware, our current scientific models don't give us any good reason to believe that a God exists. Furthermore, most of the things people used to believe needed the existence of a deity to explain have either been explained in natural terms, we have alternative natural explanations for, or we don't need an explanation for at all. However, barring a few philosophical arguments like the problem of evil, I am not aware of any scientific evidence that demonstrates that a God doesn't exist.

Presumably you are adopting a further claim - don't believe in things for which there is no scientific evidence. Fair enough, but this rule is not part of science itself, but rather a controversial philosophical claim.

I didn't follow your argument with tame_deuces that closely, so I'll just note that I agree with him that philosophical naturalism is not an assumption of science as either a social or intellectual project. This seems really obvious to me.

Thanks for at least being honest you really have that high level of disdain for religious scientists that you can't accept that they have a reasonable belief system that they're working from. It goes quite far to show how poorly you understand the things and people you're criticizing.

Also, as a point of reference, it does not appear that MB has moved from his previous conception of science:

He is forcing some sort of wedge that says "if you allow X then you lose all confidence in Y." This is clearly not required in any sense. He also is very clear that he takes "naturalism" as an assumption of science. (In other places, he explicitly declares that science "rejects" the supernatural as opposed to it being ignored or viewed as being irrelevant.)

However, he has also demonstrated that his sense of "natural" is quite broken, as evidenced by his attempt to dissect the following thought experiment:

No they aren't, but are you sure those electrons are obeying the laws of physics or is god giving them a little push? Or maybe it's ghosts. Or chi, or some supernatural energy field we can't detect yet.

Fine, simply extend what I said to include those non-deity 'religions', the pertinent point is that they rely on supernatural or superhuman claims. In that respect they're not really 'scientific'. (Hinduism has gods...?)


I don't consider what they do to be scientific (in the sense that they can never derive a truly scientific 'theory' from it) because whilst they might be able to produce practically useful results, they cannot rely on the ideas or concepts that support those results since they won't rule out the possibility that the cause is supernatural. A christian scientist can't rule out that gravity isn't simply a magic property that god gave to matter and actually has no explanation within the naturalistic laws of physics. To that scientist, gravity is something god could turn off if he wanted to, so he can't make predictions about it, it's not useful, it's certainly not falsifiable, it's not testable etc etc etc....

They can call it science, but it's not far removed from witch doctoring, it simply borrows some methodology from naturalistic science and has a hypothesis (god) that they can never contradict or disprove. It's not objective.

I'm not sure why you're saying this, isn't it obvious that science can't disprove god?

Actually I'm not making this claim. I don't think science can claim objective truths nor do I think it's the only paradigm that can provide answers, I simply think that the scientific paradigm and the religious paradigm are mutually exclusive. That's my only point here.

I'm not sure what this means.

Right... So even though the scientific community accepts the scientific findings of Christian scientists, you think it's all witchcraft.

No. Because I just quoted you saying that science could disprove God.

I'm expecting that you're going to now quibble on what you mean by disproving God or something like that. But essentially, you require a complete redefining of all of the relevant terms to make yourself correct.

And yet elsewhere, you've claimed the following:

It's not picky, as I said earlier religion is a very broad concept.

I wouldn't call religion and science "paradigms". Both contain many different paradigms.

But do I think science and a belief in god(s) is mutually exclusive? No, not by any means. George Lemaître, for example, was one of the 20th century's greatest physicists and he was also a catholic priest. You might know a little model he came up with, called the big bang theory.

The question is not whether they are scientific, but whether they are mutually exclusive with science.

A non-Christian (or non-theistic) scientist also can't rule out that gravity isn't simply a magic property, so where's the difference? It is true that atheistic scientists usually don't believe that gravity is simply a magic property, but then neither do Christian scientists.

I'm curious, how do you justify or decide on the criteria you use for deciding what "science" is?

Yes, it is obvious, which is why I don't understand your claim that believing in god is mutually exclusive with science. Science can't prove the objective truth or existence of morality either (so far), but I wouldn't claim that believing in objective morality is mutually exclusive with science, or that scientists who believe in moral truths are closely related to witch doctors.

By "mutually exclusive" you mean that you can accept one or the other, but not both, yes? If so, you need to be more specific about the contradiction. So far, you've claimed that the religious paradigm commits people to accepting certain claims about reality that are not proven by science to be true (or false). I think you're wrong that the religious paradigm commits people to these beliefs, but laying that aside, it is not part of the scientific paradigm that you must only accept claims that are proven by science. This extends to supernatural as well as natural claims. Thus, it would be compatible with religious paradigms which accept these other claims.

I mean that in my view science as a social project (i.e. as actually practiced) or as an intellectual project (i.e. the intellectual underpinnings to science) doesn't require or assume philosophical naturalism.

wasn't Isaac Newton a religious believer?
Didn't Isaac Newton develop a "truly scientific 'theory'" regarding gravity?
Thus, history demonstrates that religious scientists are able to develop properly scientific theories.

Non-religious scientists cannot rule out that gravity "could turn off" either. It's not possible to know gravity will still hold at e.g. (current time of universe) + 24 hours. This video is directly on point:

obeying the laws of physics? We came to an understanding of the laws of physics because we observed the behaviour of electrons and recognised patterns and made hypotheses. It is possible to do this, and believe in god at the same time. you could even believe that "god is giving them a little push", and still come up with the patterns and hypotheses.

when it comes down to it "obeying the laws of physics" and "god giving them a little push" are essentially the same. "obeying the laws of physics" tells us nothing, gives us no information

A scientist adhering to methodological naturalism as philosophical method can rule out magic, and any other supernatural explanation.

I've seen that they are what is applied while I've read up on this over time. Whenever I've looked for defitions of what a scientific theory is, I've always come across concepts like Observable, Testable, Predicitve, Repeatable, Falsifiable (As well as there being evidence to substantiate a theory), Internal and External consistency, Useful, and of course 'Natural', that are considered to be criteria that must be met for the theory to be considered more than just an idea but an accepted explanation. It's not simply evidence that qualifies something as a theory.

How can a paradigm that won't accept the existence of the supernatural be anything other than mutually exclusive to a paradigm that assumes the existence of the supernatural (god)? If you applied the idea of natural and non-natural to morality, you would have a similar situation where now objective morality and the existence of god are mutually incompatible, but that hasn't been done.

My impression (it's difficult to support with numbers) is that the vast majority of scientists adhere to some form of philosophical naturalism and the number rises the more the particular field of science is one that tends to contradict religious claims, so the highest number of atheist scientists is found in Physics, for example. Also, the higher the level of the scientist, the more likely they are to be atheist. I think that this is because they struggle to reconcile the two conflicting paradigms and have to abandon one.

I don't think you understand what the word 'law' is doing in science. A law is far more than just something that has been observed. Physics is the study of the 'material', that which can be detected with the senses, and god, by defition is non-material. He is spirit (it says this in the bible), and so cannot be detected by any method aplied by science, so science, in applying philosophical naturalism simply rules out the possiblity of the supernatural and will not accept supernatural explanations.

So, by definition, the 'laws of physics' preclude there being a god. And no, he didn't create the laws of physics, they can't exist if he exists, because if he does exist, then there is more than the 'nautral' world and now those laws would be incomplete and based on a flawed understanding of reality, so they're contradictory paradigms.

While I don't agree with MB's strict limitation of science to mean only empirical Science, since I know from experience it's not correct in practice (many scientists do work outside empirical method), I do partially agree here.

Empirical science do operate under the assumption that the universe is governed by physical laws. These laws are seen as fact and as applying to all things in the universe. You could not in empirical science say that magic pushes electrons around, only that electrons are being pushed around.

Why?

Because assuming physical laws does not imply an ontological commitment to these laws, meaning that you aren't necessarily saying that this is how the universe is. You're saying that this is how it appears to be, empiricism is not realism! That's a very important distinction. It's basically the reason why saying "electrons are being moved by magic" is not equivalent to saying "electrons move due to physical laws". Note that I'm assuming here that the term "magic" conveys what we typically take the term to mean (some type of supernatural influence), not that it is an empty container.

All that said, I think MB needs to realize that once you start to argue for ontological naturalism, this all goes poof however. At that point Neel's objection is correct.

No, it isn't. Scientific laws are observations of patterns of outcomes.

Physics is not the study of the material. Physics is the study of things like matter, energy, motion, and time, and how all of those things are related to each other. In particular, energy is not material.

I won't repeat all of the objections again about how you're trying to define "God" with respect to how scientific inquiry may work. You're just very wrong about it.

No, they don't.

No. This is just bad philosophy. Nobody is forced to assume that the laws of physics (or any scientific law) must be complete. That's essentially putting a lid on your knowledge in the same sense that you believe a "goddidit" puts a lid on your knowledge.

The best analogy for this is to think of computer science and computer programming. We can write programs to create worlds in games like "World of Warcraft" or "Breath of the Wild." Within each game, there are rules that govern how the game operates. However, it is possible that while the game is running that various parameters are changed to impact the outcome. These are indeed a violation of the programming. It doesn't mean that the rules don't exist. It just means that they are not immutable.

Ahhhhh... the list of randomly capitalized words has returned. Except that those words don't *define* scientific theories. They are some of the characteristics that help to demarcate things that could be scientific theories. This is an important distinction that you've been unable to recognize for a while now.

You have an impression (that's likely false) that you've build upon a perspective of scientific inquiry (that's also false), which has led to you speculate on a cause (which is also likely false). Ignorance piled upon ignorance piled upon ignorance.

Intellectually, the healthier way to approach this is to begin with listening to what scientists say about science. Even if your explanation were somehow correct at all levels, it would still fail to explain why there are still as many religious scientists as there are. Basically, it would be that only a select few people are actually smart enough to do this science thing and the rest of them are just doing witchcraft.

Ironic that you're relying on empirical evidence to argue that empiricsim isn't the be all and end all.... Perhaps I'll use a rationalist approach to argue that your reliance practical experience is an articifically strict limitation and also wrong....

You stil don't get my argument do you.

A better question, for me, is to wonder why ontological naturalism tries so hard to make those apparently 'non-physical' subjects such as thought, and mind, and social behaviours, for example, be physical, or correspond to physical entitites, in the first place? Has methodological naturalism been so successful in providing explanations that correlate so well to what we observe that the non-physicalists have had no choice but to try to accomodate it? To try to own it and change it to accomodate their theories?

Why do some theists try so hard to redefine methdological naturalism to be more about a natural methodology than an application of a naturalistic philosophy? Once again, they're trying to retain and shoehorn in their own beliefs, beliefs that can't be proven to be true, against a philosophy and method that has been devastatingly effective in providing explanations and has replaced many of theirs.

It's my strong opinon that there is an ongoing battle going on between these two paradigms and that eventually, given it's already monumental successes, methodological naturalism (purely as an application of philosophical naturalism) will 'win' out and become the only method by which we can claim knowledge that we term 'scientific' and the two paradigms will be openly, mutually exclusive. No further efforts will be made to subsume it into a more generous paradigm that allows for the supernatural to exist.

What's wrong with people asking questions in the pursuit of understanding things? Does one need to have the conclusion FIRST, and then shoehorn information into that perspective? (*cough* "Once again, [you're] trying to retain and shoehorn in your own beliefs, beliefs that can't be proven true..." *cough*)

Not really. I believe you've stated elsewhere that science isn't the only approach to knowledge. So why would one lock themselves into that singular "paradigm" if there's more that can be learned from other sources of knowledge?

There's also the strange philosophical baggage that you have that nobody else seems to have, which is that you somehow think that believing in the supernatural means that absolutely nothing can be learned by studying the physical world.

Why do you try so hard to redefine science to make it so that you can characterize a large number of scientists as being stupid?

There's very little redefining of methodological naturalism coming from this end of the world. It's mostly you.

Ooooh... a "strong" opinion. Does that mean we should take you more seriously? I think it just means that you're hiding yourself deeper into your own construction of the world and rejecting the information that's available to you. In other words, you're basking in your willful ignorance.

I dont think YOU understand what the word law is doing. There is no law floating around making atoms behave the way they do. We observe the behaviour, and deduce rules, or laws about how they behave.

Again, laws of physics dont exist as a thing, or a force, or a phenomena or whatever, for matter to follow. What we call laws are simply patterns we have observed.


( no, this is not my usual schtick of "nothing exists" , if anyone is thinking of bringing that up).

This doesnt hold together logically, but I cant work out why.

1) the laws of physics exist ( which I dispute, depending on your definition of law)
2) the laws of physics only speak of the natural world

3) if the supernatural world exists, the laws of physics are incomplete, because they wouldnt define the supernatural world(??? doesnt follow as far as I can see, especially as you have specifically stated (2))

therefore

C) the supernatural world(god) cant exist if the laws of physics exist.


Theres something very dodgy going on here, but I cant work out what.

Would it be possible for a god to set up a universe such that it behaved exactly as ours does? If so, would it be possible for scientists to deduce the laws of physics in that universe?

No they can't. They can rule them out as a testable hypothesis, but methodological naturalism (as opposed to ontological naturalism) doesn't imply anything about whether non-naturalistic explanations are true or false.

So you justify your criteria by an argument from authority? Some (dictionary? articles?) definitions have said that scientific theories must be x, so scientific theories must be x?

The bolded is false. Your view seems to be something like this:

1) The scientific paradigm says that there is no supernatural objects or causation.
2) The theistic paradigm says that there is supernatural objects or causation.

These claims are mutually exclusive. However, (1) is false, as you yourself acknowledged when you said that science doesn't disprove the existence of God. If it doesn't disprove God, then it doesn't say that God doesn't exist.

Let me give you an illustration. Lawyers use explicit rules of evidence in the courtroom. Some forms of evidence are barred. However, lawyers do not use these same rules of evidence when, for instance, deciding whether to punish their children for misbehaving. Does that mean these rules are in conflict? No. It just means that the legal rules have a specific provenance and do not cover every aspect of life. Similarly, the rules of evidence in science are not assumed to apply to all aspects of life either. Perhaps some people do make this assumption. Fine, good for them. But it is not an implication or requirement of accepting the scientific method as the best way to investigate the natural world that you have to also accept it as the best or only way to investigate moral or spiritual aspects of life as well.

So I started what I'd hoped would be a fun thread but it turns out that I happened to pick a forum where only one person mentioned an interesting coincidence and I'd bet good money that there'd be plenty if I'd only picked a different forum out of all of these. What a coincidence!

Tell me there is no God.

It's in the parsing of the "natural" world. According to MB, the "natural" world includes everything that can be measured. If a supernatural being interacts with the natural world in any measurable way, then "science" (his understanding) concludes that the supernatural being is natural.

Essentially his argument revolves around trying to force the creation of an empty category of information. If the supernatural world exists, then "science" fails in all aspects because it cannot create a full accounting of the universe. And if "science" fails in all aspects, then the "laws of physics" don't work.

But of course, there is no necessary condition that we force this into an all-or-nothing dichotomy.

There's an obvious way to test this theory.

I think you just picked a bad way to try to set up a "fun" thread. Your examples don't even reflect what people imagine "guardian angels" do.

'Guarding Angels' is catchy. Marketing, bro.

I'll wait 6 months and make this an OOT thread. Put this forum to shame.

Clearly.

You may want to fire your entire marketing team.