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Mark (and those who agree with his view), is that your philosphy, that philosophy should not be separated from science? That seems self-refuting to me. What about the "assumption that there are natural explanations for what we see in the physical world"? That sure looks like a philosophy or a belief system to me.

Philosophy has a branch called logic which includes inductive and deductive reasoning. Should those be excluded from science classes?

No, what you mean is all philosophies should be excluded from science classes except materialistic naturalism, no matter how illogical it can be at times. I think Darwinist and Harvard genetics professor Richard Lewontin summarizes it best when he says: "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

You see, Darwinist, materialist, naturalists, atheists, et al. will invoke two definitions for science interchangably to make their points, committing the logical fallacy of "equivocation". The first is the methodology of science (experimentation, observation, etc), which I have no problem with. The second definition is the philosophical definition of materialism and naturalism that everything MUST have a materialistic explanation. That is the definition that is arbitrary and that I take issue with. That is the definition that Lewontin admits to so reluctantly. Darwinists will do everything in their power to defend their philosophy, including preventing challenges to their theory in classes, scientific journals, etc. Slowly, this scam is being exposed and they don't like it one bit.

Here we go again.

what you mean is all philosophies should be excluded from science classes except materialistic naturalism, no matter how illogical it can be at times
...
he second definition is the philosophical definition of materialism and naturalism that everything MUST have a materialistic explanation. That is the definition that is arbitrary and that I take issue with.

It is not arbitrary... the assumption of materialism is fundamental to practicing science. It doesn't necessarily mean that that's the way the world is, it's just that this assumption is useful for making science work. By definition, the supernatural, or immaterial can't be quantified or observed by science. So trying to make such explanations a part of science is incoherent.

And you know what? This assumption of materialism.... it works. How's that computer that you're typing on working out for you? Have any lifesaving medical procedures done lately? Evidence of the usefulness of the assumption of materialsim in science is all around you.

Anthony, I'm not arguing that there is NO material world out there. I'm not a Hindu! Looking at JUST the material aspects of the universe is a LIMITATION of science. My problem is with those who think that if scientific discovery cannot explain something, then it doesn't exist.

My main point was that it is IMPOSSIBLE to separate philosophy from science. It becomes a self-refuting argument to even attempt to do so.

ECUMAN,

I can appreciate that. It's true that materialism is indeed a limitation of science. However it is a self-imposed limitation that's there for a specific and useful reason. I understand how you might see it as a problem when people deny the existence of things science can't explain. However, to me, that could only be a problem for those individuals, if anyone. To my mind, a greater problem is people trying to impose non-materialistic philosophies on science, or in the science classroom, as that has an effect on the foundation of science. Science is a very useful tool. To try to remove materialism from it would be to damage that tool. You'd do as well to remove the bit from the drill before trying to use it.

Anthony, thanks for your comments. The other problem I have forcing materialistic answers when the evidence is not strong or nonexistent (see Lewontin's quote above).

The scientists that are in the ID camp use the same methods materialists use. They just come to a different conclusion than the materialists do. I think their information should be allowed in the discussion. At the very least, materialists should admit their shortcomings and say "I don't know" when they don't know. They can keeping looking if they want to, but until there is good evidence, just be honest about the limitations or lack of evidence. Too many of them seem Hellbent (excuse the pun) on "proving" that there is no Creator. Just go where the evidence leads.

The other problem I have forcing materialistic answers when the evidence is not strong or nonexistent (see Lewontin's quote above).

Again, that's because for science to work properly, it can only consider materialistic answers. That's one of its limitations, and I think that's all that Lewontin is pointing out. What has made science successful in what it does is that it does not allow itself to look for supernatural answers.

At the very least, materialists should admit their shortcomings and say "I don't know" when they don't know.

But that's what scientists do all the time. The ones who can't bear to say "I don't know" are the creationists. If you look at ID arguments, you'll see that they are all just criticisms of evolution. They look for an area where something is not fully explained, or where there is disagreement, and rather than say "we don't know that yet" they say "an intelligent designer did it".

Anthony, with all due respect, the accusation that ID only criticizes evolution and does not offer positive evidence is a bald face lie on the part of evolutionists (I'm not accusing you persoanlly of lying). For a good SUMMARY of the evidence offered by ID, you might read "The Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel. This is not a science book, but again offers a good summary that the average person can understand.

Thanks ECUMAN. I'll try to pick up a copy at the library. In the meantime, maybe you could pick out the strongest two or three scientific arguments from the book and summarize them here?

Anthony, I don't want to spoil the book for your so I'll give you some bullet points in no particular order:

1) The evidence for the Big Bang
2) The difficulty of life beginning in the cosmos, this solar system and this planet by accident.
3) The complexity of biological life.
4) The amount and complexity of information found in DNA.
5) Accounting for human consciousness.
6) The problems with the evidence for macroevolution.

That's all I can remember for now. It's been a few months since I have read it. Thanks for having an open mind to read it. Let me know what you think after you have read it.

ECUMAN, it's hard to tell for sure from the bullet points (through no fault of your own... I don't expect a rewrite of the book of course), but I suspect that many of those arguments will boil down to philosophical ones, rather than scientific ones. Scientific theories should be testable, and make predictions. I'm not saying that philosophical arguments have no merit -- they do. Only that if that's the bulk of the ID argument, then it's philosophy, and not science.

Thanks for having an open mind to read it.

No problem. Just so you know, I have read a bit on ID... I used to believe in it at one point. After considering both sides, and looking at what was going on, I came to the conclusion that the ID side of things isn't all it would like to be. Having been on both sides of the issue, I'd like to think that I do have an open mind.

Anthony, I think you'll find plenty of science there. Yes, there is some philosophy there, but I think we agree that you cannot separate science from philosophy and that science has certain limitations and therefore cannot give us all truth that can be known. So why would we want to put restrictions on our thinking and discovery about this universe?

Good letter, Mark. The church has historically depended on science to validate the Christian faith. For me, my Christianity does not hang on the need to be proven by science. Both science and our view of religion can be flawed.

For example, the church once taught the earth was flat and the center of the universe. We know now that this isn't true. Christian understanding was then revised to incorporate this view.

This is not to say that evolutionary theory is correct (or incorrect). It just doesn't matter to me at all. What matters is that my faith gives meaning to my life. I don't expect science to meddle in the affairs of my religion and I don't want my religion to meddle in affairs of science. Apples and oranges.

www.ncymc.org

So why would we want to put restrictions on our thinking and discovery about this universe?

We don't necessarily want to put restrictions on our thinking about the universe *in general* or *philosophically*, however, as I pointed out, when working with science, it is necessary to use such restrictions because that's what makes science work.

Again, look around you -- you can't argue that science has not been successful at what it does, and this success is due in no small part to that restriction. You or I are perfectly welcome to entertain all sorts of philosophical ideas about the universe, but I hope you can come to see that science must maintain a materialist philosophy if it's going to continue to be successful.

Science seeks to explain the physical universe. Ascribing a supernatural cause to something is, from a scientific standpoint, no better than saying "That's just the way it is, " because the supernatural, by definition, is something that science cannot quantify, measure or observe. I'm not sure what you could hope to gain by removing materialism from science, other than a broken tool.

Anthony, I'm not saying remove materialism from science. I aware of good scientific progress. I'm asking to be aware of, or consider other possibilities IN ADDITION TO material explanations in regards to historical origin of the universe and life itself. Science can't recreate those conditions and test theories on what happened in the past. I don't consider science to be an either/or proposition. I enjoyed the discussion. Have a good weekend.

As I started this mess, I might as well respond. I usually don't muck about with these arguments as both sides tend to have a brick wall mentality and the discussions tend to get personal rather quickly. At any rate, I seriously doubt I can make any more eloquent an agrument than Anthony already has.

I wrote the letter because, as a teacher, I can't sit around and let incorrect information go uncontested. As a teacher of research methodology, the distribution of incorrect information about science was simply too much for me to stomach. Many people in the sciences have greatly lamented the sorry state of the public's understanding of science (personally, I blame the Royal Society of London for this, but that is another argument). I believe that this misunderstanding is responsible for the "shop 'til you find the science that you like" mentality of the 21st century. Many Americans have come to believe that democracy extends to science. It does not. The practice of science is NOT a democratic process. The evidence is allowed to speak for itself. A hypothesis does not gain or lose credibility because it is out of vogue or unpopular. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that an understanding of science is beyond anyone's grasp. If I can understand it, anyone can. But, people must be given good information.

Even my critics must admit that the writer's definition of science was way off the mark. The writer's definition was a rough description of 'epistemology', but certainly not of science. Now, I DO teach my students about epistemology as it relates to the practice of science. However, I am always sure to make the distinction between gathering evidence and making judgments about truth and the nature of knowledge. My students understand that we can prove nothing by the scientific method (Popper's falsifiability). We offer proof only if we can reduce our scientific results to mathematical principles. However, we CAN come up with plausible, testable hypotheses and, through reproducibility of method and result, come up with explanations and predictions that, though not error free, are much more likely than not. This 'much more likely than not' is generally expressed in terms of the probability of having made the wrong conclusion (the notorious 'p' value).

The possibility that the writer's letter was a commentary on the teaching of ID as science in schools was not lost on me. My response is predictable, simple, and one I am sure you have heard before. You may skip the rest of my diatribe if you so choose.

The evidence that evolution has occurred is beyond scientific dispute. The exact mechanism that drives evolution is still up for debate. On the contrary, Dembski's ideas on complexity, the apparent core of the ID argument, are hotly disputed; see, for example, the work of Tom Schneider. That the big bang happened is also largely beyond dispute, but certainly not proven. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (predicted by Gamow in 1948 and found in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson; the quintessential example of science at work) cleared this question for most of us. What started the whole process, we will never know. It is beyond the veil. As Hawking put it most elegantly, what happened before the big bang happened before time and is therefore the domain of the creator. ID would certainly offer an explanation for what went on before the big bang, the winding of the clock, as it were. However, any test of that hypothesis is beyond the realm of science, as is the turning of water to wine, the spontaneous creation of loaves and fishes, etc. I would think that presenting scientific explanations for any of these things would be an insult to faith AND a misuse of science.

My point in all of this is, science IS fallible. It should be fallible. It MUST be fallible or it isn't science. Faith is not and should not be held to the same test. I can poke holes in your science, but I cannot and will not poke holes in your faith.