As an example of the difference between excluding factors that are irrelevant and the claim that such irrelevancies don't exist, I often use the following example:
Did I have anything to do with what you had for breakfast today? Did I plant the food? Grow it? Harvest it? Transport it? Process it? Package it? Ship it? Market it? Purchase it? Select it? Prepare it? Serve it?
No?
Does that mean I don't exist?
One of the fundamental questions that those who cannot handle methodological naturalism need to answer is this:
Is there anything that happens on its own or is god required for everything?
For example, if I were to take a handful of change and toss it on the ground, do those coins land where they do all on their own or does god come down and personally, deliberately, and consciously place them?
Science does not deny the existence of conscious entities making things happen. However, science is interested in finding out things behave all on their own. If I were to take some hydrogen and oxygen gas, put them in a tube, and then leave the lab for two hours, my return to the lab to find the cylinder containing water does not lead me to conclude that leaving the gases alone in a cylinder for two hours causes them to react. My lab partner could quite easily have done it and the job was to find out what happens when the gases are left alone.
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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
™ Version 4.2
