Naturalism, pt. I
February 18th, 2007 by 
drunkentune
When Confucius entered the Grand Temple, he asked about everything. Someone said, ‘Who said Confucius is a master of ritual? He enters the Grand Temple and asks about everything!’
Confucius, hearing this, said, ‘This is the ritual.’ (Analects, 3:15)
Religion – belief in a supernatural entity inhabiting a supernatural (non-natural), transcendent dimension of reality – is either epistemologically justifiable or unjustifiable. The alternative to naturalism is supernaturalism; for supernaturalism it is naturalism. If one is incorrect, the other must be correct. This is a two-part series on why I chose to follow naturalism both methodologically and philosophically. I hope to stay out of a convoluted argument, and instead I intend to show a bit of candor about what I believe, and why.
I. Everyday Naturalism
I am a naturalist, but I wish to make clear that many people in the modern world who believe in the supernatural take a naturalist position to life. For example, a methodological naturalist thinks…
If we are sick, we take the prescribed medicine; if we break or fracture a bone, we reset it, rest and give it time to heal; if something of ours is missing, we search for it; when falling asleep, we’re not afraid that we will float out the window – we’re confident that gravity will not lose its universal hold.
In each of these cases, some may hope or pray to a higher power that things will be better, but most do not solely rely on wishful thinking. By excising the tumor, we follow methodological naturalism. We act as if all events are explained by natural causes and events. In fact, this methodology is a requirement for science: science must operate as though for every question there is only a natural explanation.
With a moment’s reflection, it is clear that the reliability of knowledge depends on the method by which it was obtained. Methodological naturalism is itself a procedural protocol, as well as a epistemology. We act as if reliance on the scientific method of Popper’s falsibility and empiricism is the only reliable method of acquiring knowledge about the natural world.
While some supernaturalists (and attentive naturalists) may cry out, ‘Well, that’s just question-begging. You rule out the supernatural from the onset,’ I wish to point something out about the supernatural: the supernatural cannot be measured, observed, or recorded by the procedures of science. This is made clear, because anything that can be measured, observed, or recorded by science is part of the natural world. Yet, even though the supernatural could logically exist, there are innumerable possibilities to the supernatural forces we can imagine, and have yet to imagine. The supernatural can be anything not natural, be it Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, the Mayan Itzamna, or the Christian God. That means, in a rephrased quotation, that if god exists, anything is permissible.
Just as a matter of convenience in our day-to-day lives, we have to eliminate the possible, and instead focus on the probable. Our crops could have died because Corn-Woman (Native American deity) was not pleased, but we cannot know if Crom-Cruaich (Celtic deity) was displeased, or if it was Demeter (Roman deity), or Dumuzi (Mesopotamian deity), or Satet (Egyptian deity) – or even if any of them exist! Furthermore, if the natural world is influenced by something non-natural, we will be incapable of explaining anything. Our sickness may have been brought on by a curse; our broken bones may be due to evil vengeful spirits; the lost item of ours could have transmuted into a toad and hopped away. It’s not just the present that methodological supernaturalism confuses us: we would be unable to predict what will happen in the future, and our explanations of the past would be inadequate. If the supernatural is introduced, anything that is logically possible can occur, despite any violation of scientific law. Thus, supernaturalism’s lack of methodology leaves it metaphysically empty.
Furthermore, the supernatural, magical or spiritual realm – whatever it is called – and its inhabitants are unknowable to humans. We cannot gain knowledge of it in the same fashion we gain knowledge through the natural world (experience). Those that profess a belief in the supernatural have rendered their worldview unassailable and out of reach of any scientific tool of inquiry.
II. The Supernaturalist Responds
Supernaturalists claim there are other ways of observation, of gaining knowledge about the universe (or things outside the universe): there is intuition or revelation. However, there is no procedure for determining if intuition or revelation are legitimate ways of knowing, and no procedure for confirming or disproving the content of intuition or revelation. That does not make intuition or revelation wrong in their findings, only that they are logical possibilities; however, as a naturalist, I only seek from supernaturalists a method that gives legitimacy to their metaphysical claims. Without such method that can stand the possibility of falsification or empirical evidence, naturalists can tentatively reject the existence of the supernatural for the same reasons one would reject the extraordinary pseudoscientific claims of teleportation or anti-gravity without a demonstration: the absence of evidence.
Some supernaturalists claim that while methodological naturalism is fine when driving to work in the morning, walking near cliffs, engaging in a brawl or listening to someone speak, what we learn through science must be explained through a supernatural metaphysics – the supernatural as a causal explanation for the natural. This is seen today in such writings as the Catholic Church’s position on the origins of the universe, namely as the first cause:
The truth that God is at work in all the actions of His creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause Who operates in and through secondary causes…. Drawn from nothingness by God’s power, wisdom, and goodness, [the creature] can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for “without a Creator the creature vanishes. (Catechism, no. 308.)
There are two responses: (i) cause-and-effect in cosmology is outdated, (ii) even if we allow cause-and-effect to occur on a macroscopic level, or even humor the premise that all effects must have a cause, the conclusion leads to only a natural universe.
(i) Imagine a perfect sphere balanced at the peak of a hump between two wells. The slightest nudge will send the ball down one of the two wells. A passing air molecule or even a single photon can shift the ball’s position, so that it comes to rest in the trough either to the left or right. Thus, there is cause and effect. Action breed reaction. This was a classic view of metaphysic; however, the cosmological proof of a first cause is fundamentally flawed. Galileo observed that motion was far more abstract than once thought. Once dissipative effects such as friction and air resistance were removed from the experiment, the ball would continue up one trough, then return to its starting position, and continue down into the other well forever. Only then do we realize that matter wants to retain its motion at a constant speed, until it is acted upon by an external force. Yet, matter doesn’t want anything – matter’s intrinsic property is to move. In modern physics, there is no ‘cause’ or ‘effects’. Matter acts in accordance with certain dynamic laws, known as ‘equations of motion.’ In other words, the universe runs all by itself. The planets orbit the Sun, not because anything ‘caused’ them to do so, but because it is their behavior that follows in the presence of gravity. With conservation of momentum, the cosmological argument for a supernatural cause to natural effects is empty. The universe can just be. In a cosmological context, a supernatural entity being the root cause looks fairly bleak.
(ii) As Arthur Strahler responds,
Consider the analogy of cosmic history as an unbroken chain [of causal explanations] made from all possible combinations of two kinds of links, a [supernatural cause, as in religion] and b [natural cause, as in science] … When a theist declares any link in the chain to be an a-link (whereas all the others are b-links), an element of the science set has been replaced by an element of the religion set. When this substitution has been accomplished, the entire ensuing sequence is flawed by that single antecedent event of divine creation and must be viewed as false science, or pseudoscience. The reason that replacement of a single link changed the character of all ensuing links is that each successor link is dependent upon its predecessor in a cause-effect relationship… that divine act can never be detected by the scientist because, by definition, it is a supernatural act. There exists only the claim that such an act occurred, and science cannot deal in such claims. By the same token, science must reject revelation, as a means of obtaining empirical knowledge. (Strahler, Understanding Science, p. 345-346)
I must point out that it is logically possible for the natural and supernatural to exist on different ontological levels, but invoking the supernatural as an answer is illegitimate because there is no procedure of ascertaining the way the supernatural cause operates, or even the supernatural cause itself. Ultimately, if the supernatural is permitted, then the universe one attempts to explain is a non-natural one; if the supernatural is not permitted, and only natural causal factors are legitimate explanations, then only a naturalist metaphysics is justifiable.
While the subjective appreciation of a role for supernatural causation may be important for personal fulfillment, it does not afford a basis for objective knowledge, nor can it be counted as a means of comprehending the universe in a scientific manner…
The assertion that ‘only natural mechanisms have existence’ is equivalent to the claim that ‘no supernatural causes exist.’ That is an example of proving a negative, and can only be regarded as a statement of faith, since it requires omniscience on the part of the claimant… humans cannot establish a supernatural cause by experimental reproduction of that cause. No human is capable of producing a supernatural cause… natural and supernatural causation are confounding; suspected supernatural causation may simply be due to currently indiscernible natural ones. Because of the confounding nature of the interaction, the only way to establish supernatural causation is through the elimination of all natural alternatives. This is simply another case of proving a negative, which is a intractable problem (Wesley Elsberry, Philosophy and the Practice of Science)
If we accept Elsberry’s analysis of the supernatural, there are metaphysical implications: if the supernatural ‘does not afford a basis for objective knowledge,’ it’s implied that methodological naturalism does. Furthermore, since it is procedurally necessary to exclusively follow methodological naturalism in science and any other method for gaining existential import is unavailable, any other view of the cosmos is epistemologically unjustifiable. Supernaturalism must provide the epistemology and methodology to support its metaphysics, while there is a consistent history of methodological naturalism doing just that. For this to change, all the supernaturalist must do is do demonstrate its existence and mechanism.
Extras
(from Pharyngula)
>Scientific and unscientific conclusions: now with pictures!, by Janet D. Stemwedel
>Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, by Peter Atkins
>Evolution vs. Creationism, a short video series.
Posted in atheism, epistemology, naturalism, philosophical issues | 
February 18th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Great post, very cogent discussion. I would point out that there could be a different origin of revealed truth for the supernaturalist than the diagram for faith shows. For example, when Abraham began perceiving God speaking to him and continued to have these revelations throughout his life, he very well may have questioned the source. Am I insane? Is an angel or demon speaking to me, or God? Is the wind carrying the voice of Igor from the next tent? The same could be said for Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Malachi, Jesus, Paul, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, or whoever in history claimed supernatural revelation. So, if such questioning occurred, that would tend to make us think that perhaps the person was not insane (mad people tend to accept their delusions). If it was Igor’s voice, it likely wouldn’t have been significant enough to be remembered for generations. So the person of faith isn’t necessarily always locked into your diagram, and in fact, ought not to be. There are rational methods for trying to understand if a claim of supernatural interaction has any basis (the best one being a handy natural explanation, Igor having a distinctive voice that projects well). I think that a reasonable faith cannot derive from “get an idea, keep it forever”, but instead “listen to the reliable reports of people who for millenia have experienced the supernatural in a profound way, have questioned it and tested it, and have recorded it so that it forms a coherent system for understanding the supernatural as best it can be in this life”. And remaining open to supernatural evidence that contradicts one’s understanding of that faith. I don’t plan on throwing a hissy fit while entering the Pearly Gates just because something of what I believe by faith turns out to be wrong.
I would also like to point out that much truth dervied from naturalism does not lend itself to experimentation. For example, looking into past phenonema relies much upon assumptions that cannot be tested. Sometimes the best we can do is extrapolate.
February 18th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Ed-
It is my belief that all of the authors who’s works have been remembered for generations were inspired to write down their thoughts by something or someone, but what criteria do you use to determine which is divine inspiration and what is not? For example: Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” Stephen King’s “The Shining,” Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Bob Dylan’s “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” or Joseph Smith’s “The Book of Mormon,” and Mohammed’s “Quoran?” Even my post was inspired by your comment. I believe that the Bible and all the other texts of a religious nature were written by man and express his opinions based on unknown motives or inspiration. Every year around Halloween a local KC newsperson retells old haunting stories that pertain to local landmarks. He has statements from several people who have actually seen these ghostly apparitions. Maybe many atheists like me are ‘intristically disordered’ and these phantoms steer clear of us. It’s a shame, I’d love to be frightened out of my wits by a supernatural being. I think that’s the root of our disbelief: We haven’t been contacted personally by any of them. I have visited Delphi, home of the reknowned Oracle. I wonder whatever happened to her, and Zeus and the rest of the 12 Immortals? And Egypt’s Isis, Osiris, and baby Horus? After centuries of adoration all abandoned as myth…
February 18th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Blame Plato. I know I do.
February 18th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Mr. I, oh course, you are right in pointing out that many things have been believed by many people for many years, and are now largely abandoned as myth. Indeed, there are many aspects of the beliefs of historical Christians of various times and places that I regard as total myths (relic worship, demonization, a literal timeline in Genesis). However, what I’m saying is that even naturalists can’t put everything in a lab and study it. Especially eye witness accounts of historical events. Here is a recent eyewitness account to a remarkable event: Anita M’s NDE
How does a naturalist explain this woman’s experience? It makes no sense that she could have remembered a conversation from another area of the building when her brain was inactive in near death. Nor does it make any sense that she remembers an experience during that time more vividly than any other she encountered in life. Nor does it make any sense that her terminal illness disappeared simultaneously. Now, if all these occur in the same brief narrative, it seems you are left with the three choices CS Lewis presented about the New Testament: a fabrication, an elaborate delusion, or an evidence of the transcendent, supernatural working of God. I still don’t get why the atheist insists upon personal experience of such things, after all, no scientist has personally tested every theory, nor could she, and yet she accepts the teachings of other scientists (theist and atheist scientists alike).
February 18th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Ed,
Virgin birth?
February 18th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
And Ed,
The three choices are actually neigh infinite: a fabrication, she was mistaken, it was a delusion, it was a hallucination, the supernatural working of Zeus, God, Allah, Jehovah, unicorns, my magic rock, a massive hyperintelligent football in the center of the universe, etc.
I demonstrated in the post above that the supernatural is not a useful answer, so the woman either fabricated it, was mistaken, or innocently elaborated on it after the fact. You’re defining ‘I don’t know how it happened’ as ‘it was the supernatural’, so if it looks unlikely that she lied or fabricated it, then we don’t know how it happened. I’d leave it there, while you take not just a leap from naturalism to supernaturalism, but from naturalism to belief in a specific supernatural entity.
Furthermore, I’m sure you know there are thousands - perhaps millions - of people that have experienced abduction by aliens. By your logic, does this make their experience real? I’d guess that at least a billion people have experienced deja vu - is deja vu then real? There’s thousands of people in India convinced that they are reincarnated - therefore is their experience real? Thousands have seen ghosts, angels, the Loch Ness Monster, the Devil (1855 in Devonshire, for instance), ESP, zombis, etc. Does that mean anything whatsoever other than when you’ve got several billion people, it’s easy to find a group that has experienced something weird they can’t explain?
February 18th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Platonic Dualism
February 19th, 2007 at 1:48 am
It seems to me your idea that the supernatural is not a useful way to explain such events is an a priori assumption on your part. You are defining a useful explanation as only one that derives from naturalism. Of course, when a natural explanation is not available or even seems nearly impossible, then why not consider a non-natural explanation? My a priori assumption is that the universe is not entirely explainable by naturalism. I can still be a “methodological naturalist”, but I don’t need to become credulous to every strange report of the supernatural by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Just from every Mary, Peter, and Paul. Empiricism isn’t the only means to know things in the world of the religious person, as you point out, but it seems to play a role. Perhaps that is why we must demand to put our hands inside the wounds, as Doubting Thomas did, and his report confirms the veracity of the revelation from the witnesses to the resurrection.
February 19th, 2007 at 7:17 am
RE ed
I think drunken addressed the concept of a priori with the extract by As Arthur Strahler.
RE: “Of course, when a natural explanation is not available or even seems nearly impossible, then why not consider a non-natural explanation? My a priori assumption is that the universe is not entirely explainable by naturalism.”
I am going to get “into trouble” for this, but why not just assume that if we don’t have a naturalistic explanation, that the flying spaghetti monster did it? Or more plausible still - practice saying - We don’t know.
The supernatural preference in this case seems to me to just be a case of “god of the gaps.”
February 19th, 2007 at 8:31 am
The “god of the gaps” concept reminds me of those old maps that had mythological creatures and gigantic sea serpents represented in the blank parts of the map, because no one was quite sure what was there. So they supposed that fantastically unusual and strange creatures lived there. Many people probably believed it.
The Carta Marina (marina map) is a great example of this.
It dates from the 1500’s CE so goodness knows what they believed in prior to that time. Probably that the gods impregnated virgins, or something like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carta_Marina
February 19th, 2007 at 9:38 am
I don’t think you give a sufficiently detailed definition of “natural”. Your implicit definition seems to be something like, “that which has been observed”, but I expect that’s not really what you mean.
Or maybe it is?
February 19th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Matthew,
John Herman Randall defines naturalism as ‘essentially a philosophic method and program’ which ‘undertakes to bring scientific analysis and criticism to bear on all the human enterprises and values so zealously maintained by the traditional supernaturalisms…’ Naturalism is dominated by method, marked by a skeptical attitude toward claims that cannot be substantiated with public, sharable, empirical evidence. Popper writes, ‘The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified; they can be established neither as certainly true nor even as ‘probable’. (Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, preface)
There’s a merge between ‘Popper’s falsifiability and empiricism.’ The outside world cannot be certainly true since there is always, no matter how close we are to being correct, the chance we are wrong (a dream, a delusion, or just plain wrong, etc.). Thus, theories are always tentative until proven otherwise. So, in order to get closer to what is true, we try to rigorously prove ourselves wrong. (I am not sure when a theory is right, but I know when it is wrong.) Those theories that survive such rigorous attempts to falsify are then tentatively accepted, but it’s never accepted into a mystical cannon off grounds to criticism. Everything found through falsifiability and empiricism is part of the natural world: it must be able to be observed through rigorous testing, able to be falsified, and we must attempt to falsify the evidence - repeat.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:19 am
I’m considering the completely impracticle nature of Popper’s method for what I do for a living. As a psychiatrist, of course I cannot hope to understand even a fraction of the total workings of a mind, let alone a sick one. But I’ve got to consider some things as probable versus others that are improbable. Otherwise, I’d be useless in any pragmatic sense. In the same way, invoking the flying spaghetti monster is plain silliness. Saying “I don’t know” is fine, a nicely agnostic stance, but again, sometimes we become quite impractical when we refuse to consider something as probable (?workably true). For example, in my own experience of moving from agnosticism to Christianity, there was a process in which I investigated the probability that there was a transcendence that may interact at times and places with our world. Do I even today know for certain this is 100% true, or is there still doubt? I’ve said before, 25 years ago, when I decided to follow Christ, I was at that time only 60% convinced, but the ensuing life experience has brought me to 99%. I am more certain, 99.99%, of many scientific concepts, because they derive from reproducible, easily tested, and highly public endevours. Most scientific data are far less reliable, but the probability value of p
February 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Ed,
You’re 99% sure of a virgin birth? You’re 99% sure a man came back to life after being very much dead?
February 19th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Ed,
Hypothetically, when speaking with someone with an eating disorder, there are signs you can see of an eating disorder, and not, say, dementia. Do you go through a process of ruling out what ’sick[ness]’ a person does not have? Well, they don’t fit the criteria for a dissociative disorder, and they don’t show signs of cutting, but they’re very thin, have thinning hair, and are self-concious about how they look, so it’s likely to be an eating disorder. It doesn’t look like bulimia, so it might be anorexia… but I need more information to know for certain.
You do not say, Well, they don’t fit the criteria for a dissociative disorder, and they don’t show signs of cutting, but they’re very thin, have thinning hair, and are self-concious about how they look, so it’s likely to be a curse by the local witch or warlock.
I agree, but I’d push it even further. You don’t postulate the FSM for anything. It’s just silly to do that. So…
Why postulate God?
February 19th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
So we’re not really talking about substance here: “natural” vs “supernatural”, but methodology. OK.
So the primary difference between a naturalist and, say, Ed, is that the naturalist is inclined to reject claims that can’t be examined empirically, and Ed tends to accept them.
This naturalistic approach seems a little constraining to me - if I spend some time talking to a person and find out that they’re a thoughtful, honest, sane person, I would like to be able to, by default, accept their claims about their experiences. So if you told me you watched the sunset last night, and that it had these particular characteristics, I would prefer to accept your assertion as true, rather than calling you a liar.
February 19th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
RE matthew:
But how are beliefs in supernaturalism equivalent in veracity to someone telling you about a sunset?
February 19th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Matthew,
The post is about methodological naturalism. The next one is about philosophical naturalism, and why I reject the supernatural philosophically.
By the way, how is the naturalistic appreach ‘constraining’? I think of it as intellectual humility seeking to avoid unlimited credulity. Methodological naturalism doesn’t provide an exhaustive invitory of what exists and what does not. It does, however, provide any and all aspects of reality where there is sufficient warrant and justification. Because of this, I do not accept revelation or intuition as ways of gaining knowledge. There is no process provided to know if the claims of supernaturalists are true or false.
What’s not substantial about falsification and empiricism? Their track record under science has led to considerable advancement in the human species. If there’s another way, please tell me about it.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Ed,
In AnitaM’s NDE I don’t find it unbelievable that she overheard the doctor’s comments about her illness and prognosis. We know so little about the workings of the human brain we cannot say with certainty what is actually processed at a time like this. I believe survival rate often has a direct link to the patient’s attitude, whether they concede defeat or vow to fight. The power of a positive outlook can be healing. Studies of the mind are your field and not mine by a long shot but I have a friend who is now battling her 3rd bout with cancer and she can still joke about it. Laughter is the best medicine I know (and there is scientific evidence to justify my belief). Scientific theories are ever changing as new evidence is uncovered or new theories tested so I’m not closed minded in regards to any subject. We nonbelievers just have not had a “WOW” moment like you and Soulster had during your religious conversions so accepting the idea of a divine, all-knowing being is a concept as foreign to us as the tooth fairy. It’s as simple as that. I linked to this site originally because I liked the idea–believers and atheists having conversations about our beliefs, or lack thereof, and how we arrived at them. I enjoy your intelligent, thoughtful posts and even though we don’t agree in theory it’s a learning experience for both sides. I have mentioned to Soulster in the past my belief that the hostility non-believers sometimes show toward Christians is based in part on our TV exposure to your self appointed religious leaders: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Oral Roberts are not, nor have they ever been, good spokesmen for your faith. Surely there is someone out there who does not preach hate and bigotry that would be a much better communicant for your cause.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Thanks, Infidel, I do appreciate the interchange as well, and find it enriching on many different levels. Actually, I am also very negative toward the self-professed leaders/spokepersons for my faith. However, realize that Christianity is not really one set of beliefs. I’d say that in its most basic aspect it is more of a description of relationship between the individual and their understanding of God through the revelation by Jesus. In some places and times, this has been had group and communal aspect, in others very individualistic. Some Christians have been utterly credulous about foolish claims, such as accusing people of witchcraft, seeing the non-believer as a threat who needs vanquished by the sword, etc. But there are many, many who have tried to live lives that would please their God in the best meaning of the phrase. I am untrained in theology or philosophy, being more of a math/science buff, and you can see from my understanding of the world that I have more in common with the modern atheist than most historical Christians and many modern ones. This guy, Kenneth Miller, is a better example of a Christian who has really thought through his faith and commitment to science: http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/miller.html His book, Finding Darwin’s God, is a good read if you want to examine the topic raised in this thread on naturalism.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Is Ken Miller talking about “Darwin’s God” or is he shoehoring his OWN religious beliefs to fit what the science shows?
February 19th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Specifically, is he shoehorning his own religious beliefs to fit Darwin’s science?
February 20th, 2007 at 12:07 am
Thanks Ed, and you too Infidel. It’s been a good discussion so far, I think. I’m not one to coddle people for what and why they believe certain things. I think I’ve made this very clear. I don’t think any thought should be exempt from criticism, and I’m extremely glad that such longstanding commenters as Matthew and Ed are open to such criticism.
February 20th, 2007 at 1:29 am
I think what you’ll find with Kenneth Miller is a man who is a very strong scientist. He is an author for one of the major textbooks used in public schools in the US (no, it has no creationism or ID, it is strictly evolutionary theory). He has even engaged in public debates with Henry Morris, a young earth creationist. In his book, he does a great job of integrating science with the concept of God. I especially like how he strongly opposes the concept that God “fills in the gaps”. He points out that well-meaning but foolish Christians tend to use such arguments to hold onto some claim on the need for the supernatural, but that such an endevour is ultimately a retreat into a very limited domain. His book shows how a Christian can be true to science because all truth is God’s truth. Another fellow I’ve not yet had a chance to read is Francis Collins, a former atheist who is now a Christian, and the head of the human genome project. His book is: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Obviously, such people have found a strict naturalist methodology wanting in developing their worldview.
An answer about the question “why postulate God?” In a sense, anyone who postulates God is, by definition, attempting to use a concept that is unfathomable to our minds. So, if I try to say, “God gave me this awful male pattern baldness,” the statement is really out of my ability to fully comprehend anyway. The only kinds of postulates about such a being as the trancendent, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, outside-of-time God that could ever make any sense would be ones that God himself translated down to my level. Kind of like when the Star Trek characters interface with cavemen on a planet, they must be the ones to take care what they say and do, or the cavemen misinterpret and create another great plot for the series. So, in that way, naturalism can only approach the knowledge of who God is from below, and can only get us a knowledge of the created universe He made. So, if there is any other knowledge from such a transcendent being that is derived from his effort, it would by its nature be revealed. It is then up to us to try and ascertain what among all such claims, if any, makes any sense in terms of our experiences. So, the FSM or Moby Dick just don’t measure up for me, but neither do Mohammed or Joseph Smith. What I said in one of my first posts, I repeat: “From my perspective, the most intellectually honest perspectives are those of the agnostic who says I’m just not sure I know enough to make a decision about the existence of the supernatural; or the believer who says I know the supernatural exists, but now I have far more questions that I have answers, so I’ll continue to be a seeker for truth, only moreso.”
February 20th, 2007 at 3:01 am
RE ed;
I am aware of Ken Miller’s scientific credentials. He was at the forefront in the debate against ID and showed at the Dover trial the evidence concerning human chromosome 2 as being the result of the fusion of 2 primate chromosones.
Ken Miller is a catholic and certainly not a protestant creationist. So, I am aware that he is a theist. What I was asking was whether or not in his book, “Darwin’s God”, he is showhorning, because of his own god belief, his own version of religion into Darwin’s scientific findings and claiming that to be Darwin’s God.
February 20th, 2007 at 3:02 am
tsk tsk “shoehorning”
February 20th, 2007 at 10:02 am
I think they’re very closely related. In the second case, someone tells you, “the sky looked like this, and it made me feel like this,” and you have no way to verify either claim. This seems very similar to, “I experienced God like this, and it made me feel like this”.
Yeah, I think this is a significant difference in what you and I want out of a belief system. You want one that primarily guards against saying something is true when in fact it is not. But sometimes, I think it’s more important to avoid saying something is false when in fact it is true.
I guess I would advocate empiricism when dealing with propositions that are easily falsifiable, and something that gives a little more flexibility when dealing with propositions that are very difficult to address empirically (”I feel happy.”)
February 20th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Shoehorning seems to imply force fitting something that shouldn’t fit. I suppose Miller gets such criticism from biblical literalists and metaphysical naturalists. Of course, being likeminded to his views, I fit. A very comfortable moccasin. He gets us to walk a mile with him by showing that the universe allows for truly independent creatures to function within a predictable order. Then we walk another mile with an appeal to both extremes to understand one another, from someone who understands both worldviews. It is a good read for any philaletheia.
February 20th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Mattthew,
So, you’re advocating, if I get this right, to use the scientific method for science, but not for pedestrian ‘faith’, if you will? We can both accept that we experience love, the walls aren’t going to collapse on us, you understand what I’m saying, I understand what you’re saying, the Earth isn’t going to be burnt to a crisp in the next five minutes, etc.
Isn’t that just navigating through the end result of a naturalistic worldview? It may be a fault on my part, but I fail to see where the supernatural comes in to accepting anyone’s word. …I should remind you that someone I do trust with my life religiously follows astrology and sees psychics, but I don’t take their word for their extraordinary claims when it comes to the orbit of the sun, planets and stars or the power of the human brain.
Surprisingly enough, I’ll be writing a bit on truth is manifest as an intermediate piece between parts I and II. Personally, I find what you are saying shocking. Of course, something may be plausible, but that says nothing on its truth.
The truth can survive any rigorous criticism or attempted test to debunk it - or, do you think the truth (whatever it is) cannot stand on its own? Does the truth deserve to be treated lightly, like a glass vase, in case it might break under the slightest pressure?
Why should your claim, ‘you told me you watched the sunset last night (Comment#16)’ be exempt from analysis? Why can’t we examine the details and come to the conclusion that If I did say I watched the sun set, I was utterly wrong in my observations? I know it’s a colloquial term - but you must understand that I may have believed that the sun was setting, and I may have told you what I thought was the truth, but the sun does not set; the Earth revolves around the sun. It is an illusion, not the truth, to say I ‘watched the sunset’. The truth is not manifest, and even if you trust someone that they believe they are telling you the truth, that does not make it true. We need more.
February 20th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
RE matthew:
“I think they’re very closely related. In the second case, someone tells you, “the sky looked like this, and it made me feel like this,†and you have no way to verify either claim. This seems very similar to, “I experienced God like this, and it made me feel like thisâ€.”
Obviously I don’t think they are as closely related as you do.
One has the means to assess and evaluate the natural world. It is a world which even theists agree exists unless they wish to play the game of, “I am not sure of the existence of anything except god.”
(That game has always seemed kind of pointless to me, as the person playing it then goes on the fix lunch, drive the car and converse with 10 people at work all the time never questioning whether the natural world exists or not.)
But because sunsets and sunrises are part of the natural world, we can all have similar experiences and thoughts concerning them. Most of us don’t, for example, debate whether or not a sunset exists. It is accepted as part of the natural world. We know about the pattern of the sun’s movements and the earth’s relationship to it. We know that the sun will appear to set at a time which is comparable to our position on the earth. We know many thngs about sunsets that do not put their existence into question. We know that visual displays of this kind can elicit a variety of emotional responses and that these emotional responses are influenced by the experiences of the person who is viewing the sunset. But through all of this, people agree that they are seeing and experiencing something which is part of the natural world.
So, if you said to me after you had viewed a sunset, even if I wasn’t present at the time - “That sunset reminded me of my Great Aunt Mabel’s cardigan.” And if a tear welled in your eye as you remembered Great Aunt Mabel, I wouldn’t consider that to be an odd or potentially unverifiable statement.
It would be believable even if it wasn’t true because:-
1. I know that great aunts exist or have existed.
2. I know that sunsets exist.
3. I know that cardigans exist.
4. I know that the majority of people have memory. (Even if that memory is not accurate.)
5. I know that visual and auditory stimulation can trigger a memory response.(Even if the memory triggered isn’t accurate.)
6. I know that memories can have an emotional component.
7. I know that tears exist.
So, as I have a large amount of information concerning sunsets, your experience of the sunset is believable EVEN if it isn’t true.
If it isn’t true, it hardly makes a difference unless you are using it as a tool to elicit sympathy in hopes of a quick shag. It makes very little difference whether it is true or not, as you are not requiring me to worship the sunset, pray to the sunset, get naked and dance while the sun sets, provide food offerings to the sunset to keep it happy, or give money to the “Relief of Sad Sunsets Fund.” So, it doesn’t matter to me or to anyone else if your experience of the sunset is true or not, even if it is believable.
Let’s take it a little bit further. You recount your experiences of the sunset with a few added extras. You also add that while you were staring at the sunset, you heard Great Aunt Mabel’s voice boom out from the sky ” I love you Matthew and I want you to make sure that everyone wears red because it is my favourite colour.”
At about this stage of your recounting of the sunset and your emotional and psychological responses to it, I am beginning to have some serious doubts about the veracity of your claim. So, I ask you if perhaps you just imagined Great Aunt Mabel’s voice in your head. You agree that this might be so, but that it is a revelation, a sign from Great Aunt Mabel and you will do your utmost to make sure her wishes are carried out.
I then ask if you are going to demand that I wear red also. Your reply is that of course I must wear red and not only that, I should be part of a mission to make sure that EVERYONE wears red to honor Great Aunt Mabel and her great red cardigan which is evidenced by the existence of the great red sunset.
You then go on to claim that the reason that the sunset isn’t as red as it was yesterday, is because Great Aunt Mabel is sad because I am not wearing a red cardigan. That, in fact, if I don’t comply with the demands of Great Aunt Mabel, and don’t wear a cardigan or a cardigan which is red, I will be sorry and will never be able to join Great Aunt Mabel in the sunset where everyone is happy and content for eternity in their red cardigans.
My lack of compliance in this regard, not wearing a red cardigan and not telling others to wear a red cardigan, is in fact dooming a whole lot of people to an afterlife which is bereft of Great Aunt Mablel and her multitudinous goodness and red cardigan comfiness. You also claim that Great Aunt Mable told you that if you hear any other voices in the sky or in your head that you are to ignore them, and only listen to her instructions.
Now consider a guy called Abraham on a mountain somewhere. He may also be looking at a sunset, or he might be twiddling his thumbs. I don’t know. He claims to hear a big booming voice, either in his head, or emmanating from the sky. This voice is telling him that all the male members of his tribe must chop a bit of their penis off. He claims that not only is this true, but that all males of his tribe must have this done with no exceptions. The voice in the sky, or in his head, tells Abraham that those who are not prepared to sacrifice a bit of penis to him, will not be considered part of the tribe and the benefits that he can bestow upon the tribe will NOT come their way. In fact, they will no longer be special and they will have no chance of meeting him in the sky later on to live in happiness forever.
From my position, both sets of claims are equally unbelievable, but from your perspective both sets of claims should be equally believable. If you choose to believe one above the other, it isn’t because the claims are markedly different.
Your experiences of the sunset have very little impact upon my life UNLESS as part of your experience, you insist that I too will share the same experience if I view the sunset with you. Or if you insist that I worship the sunset with you because you adored your Great Aunt.
So it is with Abraham’s experiences on the mountain and with your god beliefs. What you believe about a god or gods makes absolutely no difference or impact upon my life UNTIL, you insist that what you are experiencing is true, whether I believe it or not. And that coupled with this insistence that it is true, that everyone, including myself, must comply. That all laws must comply with your god belief and that all people must obey the laws of this faith, regardless of whether they believe in the existence of said god in the first place.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
“You want one that primarily guards against saying something is true when in fact it is not. But sometimes, I think it’s more important to avoid saying something is false when in fact it is true.”
An real example from my psychiatric practice: A person who is autistic and severely mentally retarded is seen due to problematic agitation and compulsive behaviors in her group home and structured workshop. She has had adverse effects from a prior trial of SSRI antidepressant. Another factor: one of her past problems has been that she tries to steal food from the plates of other residents, which creates a dangerous situation. I reason that the next logical medicine to try is ziprasidone, so I start her on some samples and submit a prior authorization to Medicare for approval for coverage of that agent. Some highly rigid methodological naturalist rejects my request in favor of a related agent which actually has FDA approval for autism. I write back that the FDA agent indeed has more scientifically valid evidence than my choice, but in my judgment, it greatly increases appetite, especially in autistic people and that there is a good reason not to try it next. I receive the reply, again rejecting my plan because it is not scientifically validated by double blind placebo controlled data. I continue to provide her with samples, as her problems have largely resolved on the ziprasidone without any effect on her appetite or a resultant stolen food crisis. So, my practice was based on the art of medicine, not on strictly applied methodologic naturalism, and it was indeed the truely best choice. When doctors treat patients, they owe a great deal to methodologic naturalism, but they treat people as individuals, so there is always an N=1, and some degree of art, even involving avoiding taking the more scientific route is sometimes the wisest choice. In my example, it was foolish of the Medicare pharmacist to say that my statement was false when indeed it was true, while clearly she was following the methodology of naturalism as you’ve described it better than I was. I just hope the sample supply in the clinic holds out until she can read this post.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Hey, what happened to my post?
February 20th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Great Aunt Mabel supernaturally added a long section advocating everyone get red-dy for the sunset!
February 21st, 2007 at 12:00 am
I am not Great Aunt Mabel!
February 21st, 2007 at 12:02 am
See, I would consider that if a person made that supernatural claim concerning aunt mabel and her red cardigan that they might be either/or:-
1. Not honest
2. Not thoughtful
3. Or perhaps insane.
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.com/2007/02/sunset-and-great-aunt-mabels-cardigan.html
February 21st, 2007 at 3:08 am
Here’s an interesting article that relates to this post: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/ntse/papers/Vuletic.html
He brings up some good points, and I especially like his “young earth creationist’s dream come true”. He’s probably right, if the methodologies empolyed by science continue to be used, they may eventually point back toward supernatural explanations. It could be that our skeptical friends are riding a sine wave of anti-supernaturalism, that will swing back toward a more consistent historical mindset by the very methods they applaud today. It only takes a handful of supernatural theories that become widely accepted to cause a strictly naturalistic worldview to crumble.
February 21st, 2007 at 3:20 am
The supernatural is an epistemological thought experiment.
February 21st, 2007 at 10:13 am
What if I don’t suggest that you wear red, or sleep with me, or do anything in particular, in response to my unverifiable personal experience?
Does that change things at all?
This is exactly the kind of pedantry I would like to avoid. When I say, “I watched the sunset,” I am not attempting to make a statement about the movement of the celestial bodies. I am trying to describe my experience of the world, and you should take my description as a good-faith effort to communicate this experience.
I understand your taking umbrage at someone who insists that you cut off a bit of your penis because God told him you should. And this definitely isn’t the sort of truth claim that I would like to let slide.
But I do want to be able to accept a person’s claims about their own religious faith (or lack of it) and their own religious experiences (or lack of them), rather than feeling forced to say, “What? you can’t provide steps to reproduce the experience? You can’t provide a proof that makes it immediately obvious that you are correct? Well then I’m right, and what you think is bullshit.”
February 21st, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Ed,
Exactly; however (don’t you just love the ‘howevers’?), theories such as the origins of the universe may look to be supernatural at first blush, but it’s still a falsifiable theory, and does not confirm nor deny the existence of a supernatural dimension, or inhabitants thereof.
Matthew,
I do hope you understand my point. Even though you may trust me and I may truthfully tell you what I observed, that does not necessarily make it true. In fact, there has been a long history of arriving at the wrong conclusion after following mere observation. We need more than mere empiricism, which is why I agree with Popper’s use of defeasibility.
A supernatural claim cannot be falsified because it is untestable by science, and only attained by revelation and intuition. I do not call a supernatural claim ‘bullshit’, only that it is untestable and unobservable, just like my refusal to show you my magic teleportation pod - trust me, I made it. As I said in the post, ‘We cannot gain knowledge of [the supernatural] in the same fashion we gain knowledge through the natural world (experience). Those that profess a belief in the supernatural have rendered their worldview unassailable and out of reach of any scientific tool of inquiry.’
February 21st, 2007 at 6:11 pm
just like my refusal to show you my magic teleportation pod - trust me, I made it
But this is my point: these aren’t the same kinds of things at all. You probably can’t produce experience X for me, but if you have an object, like a magic teleportation pod, you should be able to produce *that*.
February 21st, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Matthew,
Well, ahem. Ad hoc coming at you, but my magic teleportation pod is invisible to everyone but me, and you can’t touch it either. I won’t allow it.
Of course people experience feelings of transcendance or love or hate or pity. They are emotions and states we can be in, and looking at a CAT scan shows exactly where they occur in humans. That does not make claims of a supernatural any stronger.
February 21st, 2007 at 8:14 pm
RE matt:
“But I do want to be able to accept a person’s claims about their own religious faith (or lack of it) and their own religious experiences (or lack of them), rather than feeling forced to say, “What? you can’t provide steps to reproduce the experience? You can’t provide a proof that makes it immediately obvious that you are correct? Well then I’m right, and what you think is bullshit.”
The point of Great Aunt Mabel’s Cardigan and the Sunset is this -
Supernaturalists have no methodology with which to test the veracity of supernatural claims. Therefore they are in the position where they either have to accept all supernatural claims as being true, or they choose to accept specific supernatural claims based on their individual predelictions.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Ed-
I read the piece you linked about Ken Miller. I have many Christian friends who have no problem with evolutionary theory, even the concept of descending from apes, because they see the Genesis account as the ‘condensed’ version of the creation story. Most fundamentalists view the same text as literal fact, plus the idea of descending from ‘animals’ is repulsive to them. We have agreed in earlier posts on our admiration of Benjamin Franklin so I’m going to link an essay written about him that I think you’ll find interesting. I was always under the impression that he was a Deist, now I’m not sure what his beliefs were. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/15/weinberger.htm
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
I think that one ought to evaluate claims about a person’s experiences based on one’s knowledge of the person.
February 22nd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Matthew,
You’re looking to the origin of answers, not its valility. We’ve established that people may believe they are telling the truth while they are mistaken. So why don’t you believe me when I tell you that I have an invisible teleportation pod?
February 22nd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
My brain has already done a lot of work evaluating your personality. It says that, based on your behavior and the context and nature of your claim, you probably don’t have one.
I’m not gonna fight you about it though. If you want to insist that you have said pod, go right ahead.
February 22nd, 2007 at 4:31 pm
In fact, I’m not convinced that *you’re* convinced that you have an invisible teleportation pod.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Matthew,
So, does truth come from authority? Are the origins of answers more important than its valility? If you trusted me, you’d believe me if I claimed that I had an invisible teleportation pod?
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Re matthew:
RE: “I think that one ought to evaluate claims about a person’s experiences based on one’s knowledge of the person.”
You got to be kidding me, right?
This appears to be just a thinly veiled appeal to authority.