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Author | Topic: Methodological Naturalism is fallacious | |||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
I don't like to "pile on" but there are important points that need to be said.
quote: This reveals a major misunderstanding. Methodological Naturalism is - as it's name should tell you - about method. It is not an argument - all it states is that science restricts itself to natural explanations. It does not claim that supernatural explanations are false - it only excludes them from science.
quote: Well there's an example of Methodological Naturalism. It's pretty clear that you don't think that it's fallacious after all. Anyway you say some other things that are wrong, too:
quote: Of course, that is not true. Excluding a true premise does not guarantee a false conclusion. Indeed, even if the missing premise is strongly relevant, an alternative false premise might be adequate - and if it is not relevant, excluding it will make no difference. Do not forget also, that there are believers in a Creator who also accept evolution. But even worse, NOT assuming a Creator would not even be Methodological Naturalism. A purely neutral, agnostic position would not make that assumption. Is even neutrality fallacious ? How ?
quote: Of course Ferrari's CAN be explained naturalistically through human design - and more importantly - manufacture. And there should be no need to assume a designer. Simply tracking back the evidence will show that. So neither Methodological Naturalism, nor failing to assume a creator will come to the wrong conclusion. So, for your "example" to be analogous to evolutionary science, you must be assuming not Methodological Naturalism, but dogmatic Philosophical Naturalism. However, that is a long way from the real situation. In fact when Darwin wrote his Origin... belief in a Creator was the dominant view - evolution succeeded by offering an explanation that was not only natural, but better explained the evidence than assuming a Creator. So in reality you agree with Methodological Naturalism - and your "fallacy" is a strawman dogmatic Philosophical Naturalism. And even your arguments against that rely on assuming that it is false. So much for thinking it all through.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: Then you know that you were wrong ?
quote: So pointing out the correct definition of Methodological Naturalism is "fallacious" now ?
quote: No, it doesn't make any claims fallacious. You simply haven't thought it through at all.
quote: I know that parsimony is not the same thing. But what you state was not parsimony. You recognised that God has no place in scientific explanations - and that is methodological naturalism. And no, I did not assume that you did not know what you were talking about - I observed it
quote: That may have been what you meant but it is certainly not what you said.
quote: Except, of course, that we are not talking about cases where design is truly obvious. And design requiring a designer works two ways. In the absence of any other evidence of a potential designer we should be wary of concluding design (and that IS parsimony).
quote: Clearly you failed to understand it. Neither Methodological Naturalism nor failing to assume the existence of a designer will lead us to the wrong conclusion in the case of the Ferrarri. Why then would these things cause us to come to the wrong conclusion when dealing with life ?
quote: You are being very unclear. There is no need to "assume that the necessity of a designer is not there" - because that necessity must be shown (it cannot itself be assumed). And it has not been shown. Moreover, science is not a competition in jumping to conclusions. Evolution is a vastly successful framework for investigating biology. Any competitor needs to show that it can do as well.
quote: You are refuted because MN does not rule out any conclusions. MN is Methodological Naturalism and it is a limit of the scientific method. It is philosophical or ontological Naturalism that rule out God.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: As I have pointed out methodological naturalism is not an assumption, it is a method.
quote: The exact events cannot be repeated (or rather we cannot know that we are repeating them) but this is not the issue. We can work out explanations for how things might have occurred. We can certainly try to make those explanations testable - and then test them. It is parsimony, not methodological naturalism that stops the jump to the design conclusion.
quote: I have thought about it and the correct answer is "so what?". Nobody insists that they have a logical disproof of a creator. And Methodological Naturalism says that science CANNOT disprove the existence of God. I suggest you go back to my initial response and consider it properly.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: That has already been shown. By finding a better explanation Darwin showed that a designer did NOT follow.
quote: Evolution did not win because of bias - it won because it explained the data better than creationism. That it was a natural explanation maybe helped its success within science but it would have been rejected quickly if it did not work.
quote: Because I don't know any such thing. What I see is that your initial post was based on a serious misunderstanding of what Methodological Naturalism is. What I see is that you responded to correction by declaring it to be "fallacious" for no reason at all. Those aren't signs of thoughtfulness on your part. I am not trying to anger, you Mike. If I were I would express my opinions with far less restraint.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: This simply makes no sense.
quote: The fact is that you DID misunderstand MN in your initial post. The fact is that you DID dismiss my correction on grounds that didn't even make sense. How can correctly pointing out what MN is be fallacious ?
quote: Evolution doesn't even cover the origin of life.
quote: That life IS designed is jumping to conclusions. I have to ask why, if life is designed, evolution should be so successful at explaining what we see.
quote: But I can't trust you because I know that much of what you say is false.
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