Methodological Naturalism

Energy manipulates material things in a measurable and predictable manner. Also, E=MC^2 equates the two as well.Information, however, is all in our heads. The material aspect of speech is the sound waves passing through the air, for instance. I know that Shannon Information equates information with laws of thermodynamics, but the two couldn't be more different in a material sense. You might as well equate horoscopes with weather forecasts. They both try and predict events (with about the same accuracy at times) but their methodology is quite different. Take the old adage "apples and oranges" for example, which refers to things that are different and not comparable. For the word "apple" to have meaning, do "oranges" have to exist? I think not. For matter to exist, does a vacuum have to exist? Probably not. The opposites that you contrive in your mind (or minds in general) are not binding in the actual universe. Just because we name something doesn't mean it has to exist. So for you to say that naturalism, something we can see and measure, needs supernaturalism, a contrivance of our minds and immeasurable, is stretching things quite a bit.How about this question: Does monotheism need the existence of polytheism in order for monotheism to have meaning? Or even better yet, does the belief in a god rely on the existence of no god?Not only does this mean "questions of good and evil" being kept outside of science, but there existence is meaningless and unnecessary in the scope of science, as is the existence of a diety.

Perhaps you coudl start a separate thread on information and we could discuss specific issues there. For the sake of this thread, what you call information and what I call information in reference to DNA is probably quite different. We could all go into the old arguments of "no new information" and the whole bit, but I think it would stray away from the real question of it's importance to MN. Tell me if I'm wrong, but by observing Information (Big I, in reference to something that can be attributted to an Intelligence) in DNA you hope to prove the existence of a creator? Am I very far off here? So, you presuppose that there is a creator and look for the effects and then tell us we are being selective in our thinking. If you can provide proof or evidence of supernatural code/information that is testable and verifiable then maybe we could start to talk about other entities. All you can infer from the Informatin article is that another natural, physical being started the process of life on this planet. Oops, starting to wander already. Perhaps you could point to the argument behind information in DNA and how it refutes methodological naturalism in any way? This is starting to look like a "god of the gaps" explanation. There is the explained (natural), the unexplained (not natural), and the unexplainable (supernatural). Taking energy as the example, it was found to be natural and physical in nature. It is measurable and verifiable. At one time nothing was really known of energy, but now we do know quite a bit about it due to the use of MN. Funny how that works, isn't it. How would calling on a deity help us with understanding energy if we knew nothing about it? Could you read the Bible and then build a 60Hz transformer, for instance. Or perhaps Mr. Newton recieved devine messages from God when he came up with his theories on gravity and inertia. Please tell me, how has supernaturalism extended our knowledge of the physical world we live in, because I have not seen it. It's the information that we use to judge that is important. Relying on supernatural evidence has led to nothing but suffering and injustice. Take the Salem Witch Trials, for example. People were put to death because some girls pointed a finger at them and shouted WITCH. Compare that to today, where we use naturalistic explanations in court which include DNA and fibers for naturalistic crimes. Which would you rather be judged for and judged by? Which one leads us closer to the truth?Also, do you believe that good and evil are absolute and do not change between cultures and societies, or even over time? Today we look at the Salem Witch Trials as a great injustice and "evil", but at the time it was deemed "good". Why should science be grounded in something so flimsy and fluid with no secure foundation?

Morals are not mechanical, just societal contrivances. IMO, there are no absolute morals, no absolute concept of good and evil. Take Islamic terrorism. What they do in the name of Allah is thought of as good by fundamentalist Islamists, but evil by almost everyone else. Pre-emptive war to stop further terrorism is thought to be evil by some, and good by others. The only mechanical views of good and evil are seen within religions where dieties are thought to instill absolute concepts of good and evil through inspired text. At this point, people leave their personal concepts of morals behind and mechanically follow the proscribed morality. Obediance is seen as pious while thinking for oneself has been looked upon as heresy.I would say that through methodologic naturalism morality is actually less mechanical than in a supernatural setting. Supernaturalism requires presupposition followed by blind obediance, quite the opposite of MN.

Judgementalism in science has a lot to do with how you judge the evidence. If you look through the lens of a presupposed diety as being a major factor in physical phenomenon, you are being much more judgemental than Lorenz or Darwin.Darwin looked at the evidence and made his judement from that. You presuppose an entity without evidence and exclude physical evidence because of it. Which is more judgemental?

MN sees good and evil as subjective because it can't measure it and there are no absolutes. This is what I was trying to say. So through MN we can discern what is subjective and not absolute. However, through invoking an infallible god you impose absolutes which makes morality mechanistic, i.e. it is written therefore I must do it this way.If you don't believe that morals are relative to the society, culture, or time then I could list several examples if you would like. The morality that people take away from theories constructed through MN are often a reflection of their own morals and society. It's not MN's fault that you find science preaching morals through theories, it's your own fear and prejudice that attaches morals to it. If you don't believe me, find one aspect of the theory of biological evolution that proscribes a list of morals. I sure haven't seen any lists.

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Choosing to be a skeptic puts you in some questionable company historically. Lots of lives lost to skepticism, and being lost. Love believes all things, or so I've heard.

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Skepticism has been the root of many great discoveries, from Columbus to Einstein. An unquestioning mind believes all things. A skeptical mind finds new things for the unquestioning to believe in.

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Elaborate, please. Both Columbus and Einstein are famous for believing things that others thought impossible. A skeptical mind "just says no." Only with the double negative, "I am skeptical of the idea that what we know is right." does it makes sense.

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Columbus was skeptical of the impossibility of a western passage to India. He just happened to stumble on to another continent, but that's beside the point. Einstein was skeptical of the explanatory power of Newton's laws with respect to physics. His laws of relativity added to our knowledge. Just a few more examples, Koch was skeptical of evil humors as the cause of disease, Pasteur was skeptical of spontaneous generation, and Galileo was skeptical of geocentrism. Their skepticism has added to our current understanding of our world and shifted paradigms among the "unquestioning" masses. Ask the "unquestioning" why they believe that the Earth orbits the sun and they will answer "That's what I was taught," not "Galileo's models and Newton's Laws of Gravity are well evidenced and support observed phenomena."

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I should have added that while you believe H-D is fastest at getting to the truth, one should remember the addage that haste makes waste. Of course it will get to the truth because it is a shotgun approach. It ends up hitting almost anything in front of it. The problem is then having to sort through the remnants to get to the actual truth out of the many possible truths that were bagged, when more carefully aimed shots using more precise "weapons" would have actually reduced the search time over all.

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"Shotgun approach" reminds me of a statistical joke:Three men were bird hunting, a biologist, a physicist, and a statistician. All of a sudden a pheasant bursts out of the underbrush. The biologist shoots and misses high, the physicist fires and misses low, and the statistician cries "We got him." Means and statistics are only accurate when the mechanisms of action are better ellucidated. Correlation alone does not always suffice. H-D is a great option when opening up a new area of research, but eventually H-D must actually point to a natural mechanism which then can be falsified or supported through MN.