Science and origins

In a thread on the link between ID and creationism, an interesting quote was posted, made originally by Robin Collins. I have expanded this quote slightly here. This is an issue that I find very interesting. I disagree with Robin here.Science does exclude transcendent designers from all hypotheses currently but this is because there is currently no evidence that any exist. No scientist can make the proposal that a transcendent designer should be a component of a scientific theory unless they can produce scientific evidence that there is such a being.Do others agree with me or with Robin?Edited by Richard Townsend, : No reason given.Edited by Richard Townsend, : No reason given.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Science rests on reproducability. If the supernatural is allowed in, then it becomes difficult to show that something happened because you cannot reproduce it reliably. IF a supernatural deity can do something by fiat, then it, by definition, cannot be scientifically studied. Science does not say those things can't happen or don't happen, it just turns a blind eye to them as being outside its purview.

I view this topic in a slightly different light.Why can't we test for the supernatural in a reproducable way? As a matter of principle, I don't see why we couldn't. Instead, it is those who believe in the supernatural that have defined the supernatural as a "mystery". It is a problem of their own making.Just as an example of what I am talking about . . .Let's say that the deity Ubergod swooped down above the city of New York and told everyone at once that if they hopped on one leg and said "Ubergod" three times that a dollar bill would magically appear in their pocket. With a few minutes everyone in New York hops on one leg and says "Ubergod" three times and sure enough, a dollar bill appears in everyone's pocket. This is reproducible, empirical evidence of a supernatural deity.It's not that the supernatural can not be tested for. Rather, it is the believers in the supernatural who will not let any test shake their faith in the existence of the supernatural.

I agree with you on this one. It's like the old saying (about parsimony): If you hear hoof beats, think horses.Of course, this only holds if you are not currently in the African savannah. So far we have no proof that we are on the savannah, and it's been horses every time (metaphorically speaking of course)As long as naturalistic explanations keep working, there's no reason to change them. That is how science works. Newton's laws, for example, work really well. Hell, they got us to the moon. However, once we started looking at really big things moving really fast, and really little things moving in all sorts of weird ways, we developed the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics respectively. That's the beauty of science. We use things that work until they don't and then we find something that works better.

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

Collins would clearly have a point if science a prior exclude references to a transcendent designer, but that's not the case. Look how many times we've gone round and round in this forum begging for some bit of evidence explainable only by invoking a designer. Scientist would have a field day trying to find an explanation.Furthermore, if science were excluding the wind as an explanation there would be a vast number of phenomena readily recognizable and agreed upon for one and all to scratch their heads over."The curtains are moving again, Holmes""Yes, Watson, they are.Currently there are not. I'm not saying there aren't plenty of things we don't understand, but how many of those things are common phenomena that can be defined by laymen in a way we'd tend to agree upon."God was with the Bo Sox in 2004, Holmes.""You're a straight up loon, Watson. The St. Louis Cardinals spent the night before smoking marijuana cigarettes with a stand-up comedian*."Scratching ones head under such circumstances is surely the best course. Attributing cause, especially non-examinable cause, would be a waste of time.*All case studies are hypothetical and hold no reference to any person or persons alive or dead. Any similarity with any person or persons alive or dead is incidental.

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Genesis 2
17 But of the ponderosa pine, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou shinniest thereof thou shalt sorely learn of thy nakedness.
18 And we all live happily ever after.

Science requires methodological naturalism if it is going to use evidence to test (and perhaps falsify) hypotheses. The evidence must be observable and, as others have pointed out, repeatable.Such evidence must be "natural" mustn't it? I'd like an explanation of how it can not be. From this methodological naturalism follows.The testing against evidence that science uses to discern wrong from possible right requires methodological naturalism. Science doesn't exclude a transcendent designer specifically. The designer is excluded, as other point out, by the very people who want to suggest it as an explanation for anything.

It would be a lot different if religious believers could agree on one version of the TRVTH, but there are some 4,300 world religions and tens of thousands of different sects or branches, each with its own interpretations of its selected sacred books or revelations. Many of the claims are internally inconsistent and/or contradictory. That's no way to instill confidence that one out of thousands has the TRVTH.Nor is there any empirical way to judge among all of the competing claims, as they all ultimately go back to "trust me" somewhere.Science uses verifiability as one of its keystones. If it can't be reproduced by other scientists it is not likely to be accepted for long (think cold fusion).

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

But is there any reason why we can't, as a rule, verify supernatural activities? I say no.Ned mentions methodological naturalism, but that only shifts the question to "what is natural?". If you define natural as anything that affects the natural world then supernatural actions, such as turning water to wine, are natural. Ubergod putting a dollar bill in everyone's pocket is part of the natural world.Let's look at this in reverse. I proclaim that gravity is supernatural. Does this mean that scientists must, as a rule, stop studying gravity because it is now supernatural? Of course not.It is this line of thought which led me to conclude that "supernatural" is a throw away term. It is nothing more than a collection of unevidenced beliefs that no one wants challenged. It is philosophical baggage, sophism, and wishful thinking. When we make a demarcation between the natural and supernatural we are doing nothing more than appeasing beliefs in the supernatural.

In terms of supernatural (as opposed to natural), science has no comment on such things, as the "supernatural world / plane / what have you" cannot be observed by scientific endeavors.Basically, once the supernatural becomes observable, it is no longer supernatural, and enters into the realm of the natural.So no, I would disagree that it is a throwaway term, although I may be misunderstanding your point. All supernatural means is an order of existence beyond the scientifically visible. As such, science is silent on it.If there were some way to link some sort of "intelligent designer" as the cause of all natural processes, then wouldn't that designer then become a part of the body of natural processes? The very fact that it is now known lumps it into that category. It is able to be observed.In any case, the word needs to be properly defined before we can even begin to debate about it.Edited by RDK, : No reason given.

There is an easy way to test whether there is a god or not. What is the effectiveness of prayer?Prayer has been proven to be ineffective. I know that christians will dispute the findings, but if you look at the findings objectively you will see that prayer has no effect.They will then make up lame excuses about unrelated things. But will in no way show that prayer does a thing.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Several people suggested that we must first agree upon a definition of the supernatural. We could perhaps agree among ourselves that the supernatural encompasses things that aren't real or that have no evidence or are made up, like the world of Harry Potter or Tolkein or the Bible, but religious folks would never accept such a definition, and unless we're content just to talk among ourselves we need a definition that they accept, and that we ourselves accept. Is that even possible?I think it would be best to just not use the word supernatural. We could just say that science deals with what we can observe. If it can be observed then science can deal with it. When Christians make claims about God or some aspect of religion like prophecy then instead of saying that science doesn't deal with the supernatural (whatever anyone thinks that is) we'd just ask for the evidence. And this is what we often do.I find that both religious and scientific people make the same mistake when asking for evidence that something is true. The religious often ask for the one piece of evidence that proves evolution true, and scientific people here often ask for the one piece of evidence that proves Christianity true.But complex theories, whether about God or science, rarely have that one piece of confirming evidence. Ask yourself what is the one piece of evidence that proves the sun is at the center of the solar system. And Tycho Brahe spent a lifetime gathering the evidence used by Kepler to derive the laws of planetary motion.So just as we talk about evolution being proved by a consilience of evidence from diverse fields, so can the religious argue that God (or prophecy or whatever) is proved by a consilience of evidence gathered from many sources ranging from the Bible to apocrypha to archeology and so on. As obvious as the conclusion that there is no Christian God might seem to us, proving that all this evidence actually supports that conclusion and not its opposite is no simple task.--Percy

Saying science deals with what we can observe is really just saying science does not deal with the supernatural. All supernatural means is above, or beyond the natural, i.e. that which conforms to the laws of physics, biology, etc. The Oxford American Dictionary defines supernatural as

quote:

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(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding of the laws of nature

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While we can muse on some ways in which the supernatural can be scientifically tested (Taq's dollar-giving Ubergod) in general I don't really think it's true. Unless the supernatural being manifests itself in ways that we can directly observe it and the actions it does, there's no way to test for it. Being supernatural, and thus not subject to the laws of nature, we have no way to predict anything about it. How do you predict the whims of an all powerful being that can somehow affect the universe without using any of the known natural forces, or leaving any trace of its action? E.g. We can scientifically determine that planes stay in the air due to specific forces having to do with fluid dynamics and such because these are predictable laws, but there's no way to test if it's really just because a god is holding it with is invisible hand that leaves no fingerprints.I guess my whole point is that the word supernatural is nothing special, it just means something outside that which we can observe.

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

The real difficulty science has with answering the God-question is in testability.To test a pair of hypotheses, you have to find a situation wherein the results of one hypothesis would be different from the results of the other hypothesis.For example, creationists often marvel at how perfectly suited the planet, its location and its chemistry are for supporting life, and conclude that this perfection of placement and condition belies the work of a divine Creator.This argument implies that a world that is not perfectly placed is not the work of a divine Creator. Therefore, can’t we conclude that God did not create Mars, Neptune and Io? And, the creationist answer is, of course, No: God created everything.Thus, we have no idea what something God didn’t create would look like, so we have nothing to compare God’s work to. So, the truth is that this test cannot answer the question of whether God created something or not, because it provides no way to compare God with not-God.I would personally be okay with their perfection argument if they would accept the conclusion that God did not also create imperfection (i.e., if they would agree that, if Earth's "perfection" is proof of God, then Mars' "imperfection" is proof of not-God). But, of course, they will not do this: they will insist that a test can provide positive evidence, even when it is fundamentally incapable of providing negative evidence.This is why science does not deal with God: because nobody will commit to a description of God and His works that is testable, and then accept the results of the test.Edited by Bluejay, : infinitives, an important English grammatical construction

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Hi, Stagamancer. I always saw this is the epitome of the "God of the Gaps" argument: we call something "supernatural" because there isn't a good explanation for it. But, there's really no way to distinguish "there isn't a good explanation for it" from "there isn't a good explanation for it yet."Because of that, I think it's a rather equivocal term, and it can be too easily abused to be meaningful in discourse such as EvC.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.