Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Reason in the Balance

I've finished reading it. Philip Johnson's argument seems to be that Methodological Naturalism [herein MN] (assuming that causes and explanations for objects of scientific investigation must be purely natural (as distinct from supernatural). One of his primary evidences of the evil MN is that the well-known spokesmen (Dawkins, Suzuki and so on) are all philosophical naturalists also. That is, they believe that not only can Science not discover Supernatural Causes, but that they cannot exist at all.

I'm still not persuaded, however. A biologist who is ready to stop investigating because he's satisfied that the explanation for the phenomenon he's studying is "God did it" doesn't seem to be much of a biologist to me.

For the record, in case there was any doubt, I agree that Science cannot discover God. For the same reason it cannot pronounce him non-existent or make teleological claims: These issues belong to philosophy and theology, not Science. To say otherwise is to engage in scientism, which is bunk, thank you very much.

No comments: