Plain-spoken Ken Ham

Well, that's easy. Whenever you come up against a question you don't know the answer to, you just shut your eyes and say, "Godidit!"

I think the starting point is more like "We might be able to understand the origin of the universe." It's redundant to add "without the supernatural" because it goes without saying that if there's an omnipotent being and a "poof" somewhere in the mix, then we mortals will never really understand what's going on.

Many scientists may in fact strongly believe that we will eventually fully understand the origin of the universe. However, the only starting point necessary for science to progress is that it might be possible to understand what's going on, which is not a bias, but the only reasonable grounds on which to devote any effort at all.

I also wonder what Ham and his ilk are afraid of. If you need a supernatural entity to explain any phenomenon, then no attempt to show otherwise is going to succeed.

How 'bout a paraphrase:

"All scientists start with presuppositions. If your starting point is 'we can explain the origin of the universe without a cream cheese bagel,' that's a bias."

or

"All scientists start with presuppositions. If your starting point is 'we can explain the origin of the universe without a pair of fuzzy pajamas,' that's a bias."

Ken Ham believes that kangaroos lived in the Middle East. 'Nuff said.

You know, I've been working on ways to teach my students the fundamental importance of methodoligcal naturalism. The best I can figure so far is to use the game analogy. I know that this is unpopular in some quarters , but bear with me here while I try it out on this crowd;

Science is like a game, a sport really. It has rules that the players must agree to play by. Getting caught cheating is one of the greatest fears in science, as in golf. Methodological supernaturalism is regarded as cheating by scientists.

I think of all sports, science is most like golf. The scientist who attempts to bring in a supernatural explanation is regarded with the same disdain as a golfer who is found to have picked up the ball and surreptitiously moved it to a better lie, or closer to the hole. Sure, a person could "do it", but doing so ruins the game for everyone. Just as picking up the ball and moving it isn't golf, introducing an appeal to supernatural agency isn't science.

Why? Why shouldn't we introduce this type of play in science? Well, for a similar reason to why golfer don't accept the introduction of the "move the ball at will" rule. A long time ago, people just agreed that this was the way the game would be played.

Now, people will look at this and say, under this analogy, it seems to make the rule for methodological naturalism arbitrary, subject to the will of its players. Rules are after all what we say they are. But this is where the analogy starts to fail.

Why do we insist on clinging to the rule for metholodological naturalism? Because it works. Plain and simple. Each time we encounter a new problem that is begging for an explanation, a scientist feels like a golfer on the first tee. He knows that there is some route through the course, and that the route will change every time, but at the outset he is determined to abide by the most fundamental rule. He is determined to try to find a natural explanation for his problem, without recourse to the cheat of appeals to the supernatural.

This approach has worked, and continues to work. So long as we find naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena, we will refuse to give up on this rule. Science has yet to find a problem which hasn't either completely yielded--or at least shows signs of yielding--to this rule. Even the so called "hard problems" of philosophy such as the nature of consciousness are starting to show signs of serious progress.

So when a person comes along who appeals to the Bible for an explanation to say, the problem of the dinosaurs, it feels rather like a golfer coming along, finding some guys stuck in the rough and asks, "Why are you guys slogging it out in that rat's nest? I have this book here that tells me that dinosaurs roamed the earth with me in the Garden of Eden, which is good enough for me, so while you guys try to get out of the bunker with your silly clubs, I'm just going to pick up my ball, move it to the hole and drop it in, and declare myself the winner with a hole-in-one. So there."

The scientists, resolute in their mission, keep slogging along until they get the ball in the hole.

Here's the difference: when a scientist solves a problem using methodological naturalism, it stays solved. Furthermore, it often means that we can achieve some level of prediction of or control over nature that we didn't have before. Religious explanations mean we stay stuck, while giving us the illusion of control. Scientific explanations mean we get unstuck, and allow agonizingly slow and unsteady progress. But progress nonetheless.

One last part of analogy works well. In science, as in golf, there are no officially designated referees. It works largely on the honor system. That means it is in some sense on the honor system. Everyone has to agree to abide by the same rules, or else it isn't golf anymore, it's a free-for-all. Now, who would you rather have as a golfing buddy: the hack who sticks by the rules but never gets under 100 on a par 72 course, or the poser, who regularly picks up the ball, and claims to get sub-par scores every time out?

PaulC:

I also wonder what Ham and his ilk are afraid of. If you need a supernatural entity to explain any phenomenon, then no attempt to show otherwise is going to succeed.

This is a very good point. I think it's a desire to exert control, not a desire to 'explain with God.' If science can be controlled, they'll never have to come up with a better position on cloning or any other scientific advances.

If the deist folk got scientific, they could analyse the psychology of god as a way of predicting future behaviour. I mean, from a scientific point of view, the answer "god did it" must surely lead to the question "so what's he going to do next?"

Of course, I suspect such a study would diagnose god as a sadistic nut who is now in a vegetative state, but I'd still be keen to see the paper.

All scientists start with presuppositions. If you're starting point is 'we can explain the origin of the universe without the supernatural,' that's a bias.

"Supernatural explanation" sounds an awful lot like "round squares" and "cold fire" to me.

"A long time ago, people just agreed that this was the way the game would be played."

Well no. It's more like, if you move the ball, you won't be able to hit it any further, and you'll never have a hope of getting it in the hole.

The "rules" of science aren't arbitrary. They are simply the only way to move forward. Breaking the rules doesn't just mean that scientists will think you're cheating - it'll actually stop you from playing the game altogether.

"Why are you guys slogging it out in that rat's nest? I have this book here that tells me that dinosaurs roamed the earth with me in the Garden of Eden, which is good enough for me, so while you guys try to get out of the bunker with your silly clubs, I'm just going to pick up my ball, move it to the hole and drop it in, and declare myself the winner with a hole-in-one. So there."

To be more accurate in your analogy, though...he doesn't pick it up and move it. He announces that he's praying to god to levitate the ball into the hole. It doesn't, actually, but he pretends that it did.

And there is a referee on science: reality. We don't have a way to "cheat" in the sense of moving the ball in some other way. We can only cheat in reports about what happened.

I'm disappointed that Ken Ham hasn't come up with an 'divine rubberband' theory for gravity yet. 'cause I'm sure it says so in the Bible. I don't think Ken is quite literal enough in his interpretation of the holy scripture.

"Someday, I want one of these guys to explain to me how they propose we do supernatural science"

Simple. Read the Bible. Look at the world. When you can't reconcile the latter with the former, cover your ears and shout "Lalalalalalalalalala!"

I'm disappointed that Ken Ham hasn't come up with an 'divine rubberband' theory for gravity yet. 'cause I'm sure it says so in the Bible. I don't think Ken is quite literal enough in his interpretation of the holy scripture.

That's because gravity doesn't (superficially at least) contradict the young Earth Ken Ham believes the Bible teaches.

Indeed, Ken Ham isn't really that interested in proving that the Earth is only 6,000 years old using science at all. AIG is an apologetics website (his words, not mine) that happens to employ a few people with scientific qualifications. They don't publish any original research, the "papers" in their "Technical Journal" are a joke.

They're armchair critics, plain and simple--sitting there, reading the latest press releases and newspaper arcticles and finding ways to ridicule, dispute, and poke holes in them. All they need to do is cast doubt on the science. Religious indoctrination does the rest. After all, Young Earth Creationists believe that if you can't accept the "literal young Earth of the Bible" then you can trust nothing the Bible says and so their faith would be meaningless.

Oh my, so close yet so far....

ONE: There MUST be a better, snappier title than "Methodological Naturalism"

TWO: One thing all the (christian) fundamentalists forgety, quite deliberately, I'm sure, are the teachings of (St.) Thomas Aquinas.
This is conventional xtian doctrine for all xtian sects, execept the reall kooks....
Namely, that if the "Bible" says something, and natural observation, etc says something else, then the Bible is wrong, because, although divinely inspired, it was written a long time ago, by fallible human beings.

This is why and how the RC church, and the C of E for instance, deal with evolution/age of the Eartg, etc, etc.
Why can't the fundies?

This is a serious theological question, that THEY deliberately ignore.

Next question - why?
And ask them why.

OK thanks for the well reasoned and insightful comments on my golf analogy.

I guess we could say that people have already tried to play the game of science with a rule that allows for supernatural explanations, its just that every time we do, it ends up leading us down dead ends, when we think we're solving the problem. Take for example the "demonic-possession model of insanity", or the "God's Wrath model of catastrophic weather events." So perhaps the reason we can tell supernaturalists we reject that approach is we can say with a lot of justification "Been there, tried that, doesn't work"

And, yes PZ, reality is the ultimate referee. I'll be sure to remember that the next time I try it out on an audience.

I love the sports analogy, but I think that football is a better one. As I stated in my comments at Red State Rabble, just imagine this "without the supernatural, it's bias" technique being applied everywhere else, particularly engineering ("Where is God in that bridge? If you don't factor in Jesus in its construction, you're biased!"), math, literature, and sports. Just imagine telling a football fan that his team did not win that game--Jesus did. Jesus "did it all," and the two opposing teams were simply placed there by God to test our faith by their apparent struggle! Imagine telling a sports fan that there really is no such thing as a "sport," because that would emphasize materialist/naturalistic human effort and chance, rather than the supernatural, since man can do nothing without God! (They pray before football games, don't they?) The Taliban actually made this kind of thinking a part of their ideology, and Afghans were therefore not allowed to cheer or boo at games--it applied that they did not accept God's Will. Man, would I love to make that a rule at all sports fields--we'll see how long this "Goddidit" fad lasts in this country then.

Yeah, there's a conflict already between Sunday football and Sunday church. I really think that all this religious addiction today is just a pious game that people are playing, a withdrawal into make-believe that won't last when it stops being fun.

I think what the science vs. creationism debate may be missing is a concordant definition of the supernatural. Supernatural, to science, is something that can't be tested because by its nature it is something that can't be proven and is used as a placeholder for situations where its not required to have proof anyway. But the religious types think they're doing research to find proof of a supernatural being and the thing is, if they reached that goal to make it observable and testable, then it wouldnt be supernatural according to science anymore.

I'd say Charles Darwin did super natural science. Mr Ham presumably disagrees because God told him so. God also recently told the Pope that he needed to speak our again on the matter of gay marriage, and some Bishops in the British House of Lords. God told them that a terminally ill person in the last six months of life and in unbearable pain may request help with ending their own life. My headmaster in primary school said a few things that God must have told him, too. He used to foam at the mouth and was very fond of caning children. I understand he also told Mr Bush to go to Iraw, but maybe that story got messed up coming acros the atlantic and it was just the voices.

Erratum: should have been Iraq.

wow not a bit of sense ,let alone science ...pity that all christians get tarred with the same brush ..we're not all that ignorant or deluded

Unfortunately the sports analogy seems to miss the (in my opinion) essential fact that when something is scientifically supported (it has a theory, it has experiments, the body of data confirms the theory) then it is by definition natural. Supernatural science is not just breaking the rules -- it's nonsense. There is no useful context in which it can be parsed. If we developed a working theory for the operation of astrology and found no evidence contradicting the hypothesis that the movement of the planets dictates our personalities in ways that the theory predicts, then astrology would be by definition a natural phenomenon.

Methodological naturalism is, then, in many ways a sorting mechanism by which we can put things into the "fact", "maybe fact", and "bullshit" categories. I suppose the rules of the game are, then, the mechanism by which we can sort hypotheses. Proposing a "supernatural" explanation is not breaking the rules. We use the rules to determine whether said explanation is natural or crap.

With apologies, boojieboy and Kristine, I don't think sports analogies are going to cut it. As others ahve already pointed out, the rules for science are necessary rather than arbitrary. Also, the goal is assembling the best possible explanation rather than winning. My favorite source for useful analogies for explaining science is detective work. Police detectives have to assume human agency and cannot call on demons, magic, and so forth. They must produce hard evidence rather than a gut feeling, and their conclusions have to be tested by hostile peer review. They potentially have several different lines of proof, and generally the more the better (potential causality regarding capability, motive, location, and timing; documentary evidence; eyewitness evidence; supporting clues with no unexplained contradictory evidence, and so on.) Their work has to meet specific standards - no sloppy lab work, and all the evidence supporting an arrest & prosecution needs to be verified carefully. They need to be very cautious about being led astray by a wrong assumption or a misunderstood fact (or outright lies).

TWO: One thing all the (christian) fundamentalists forgety, quite deliberately, I'm sure, are the teachings of (St.) Thomas Aquinas.

Speaking as a 'deconverted' Christian and current Atheist, I'm very happy that Aquinas is being ignored. He was of the opinion that Heretics should be summarily killed.

It's a shame to see how how thoroughly everyone here is mischaracterizing what Ham said. He's talking about metaphysical naturalism, not methodological naturalism. That is, talking about the origin of the universe, compared to how the universe works. Ham (and AIG) does not appeal to supernatural explanations for the way things work. In that sense, their thinking is in line with that of the founders of modern science (like Bacon, Newton and Pasteur), who viewed science as the study of how the created universe works.

Methodological naturalism, on the other hand, is the belief that "nature is all that there is (and can be)". A supernatural origin of the universe is not allowed, by definition.

Don't know for sure which naturalism I'm using, but a supernatural origin isn't allowed in it because that would involve a contradiction: A supernatural (not natural) event having an effect. Everything that has an effect is, by definition, natural (and thus not supernatural). Even if the origin of the universe involved everything in a D&D Monster Manual and then some, it would be considered natural (though weird).

The advantage about my definition: Allows for testing of events typically called "supernatural" like psychic powers and such. Just ask James Randi for some examples.

All scientists start with presuppositions.

Isn't that an example of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie ?

About the only presuppositions I can think of that science starts with are those of any non-solipcist.

Bronze Dog, I love your posts. It's like you can use "Be Totally Frickin' Awesome" as a spell-like ability a number of times per day equal to your level plus your Cha modifier.

*blush* Those who'd like more can click on my name to read my team blog. I've been hogging it lately, but my teammates are probably having meatspace troubles that reduce their posting.

Might as well put up some relevant links:
An interview with Michael Behe.
Spreading a Pharyngula-originating meme.
Ryan covers Behe's stupidity.
Ryan deflates Irreducible Complexity with an analogy.

We're looking to change the name of the place, since I'm a non-rockstar.

That's it for my shameless, but hopefully somewhat relevant, plug.

Messed up a link: Ryan deflates IC

N. Wells, don't apologize for a good point made. I agree that the detective story is a much better analogy for science (Dawkins uses it a lot); what I was proposing, because I was thinking of a snappy comeback, was a way to ruin someone else's fun (football) the same way that a "Goddidit" applied to life's development takes all the fun out of science for me, to make a point. I wanted to think of a way to show a creationist how supernaturalism is a cop-out by applying it to an area where they seem to accept naturalist and chance phenomena without a problem. And also, as I said, the Taliban actually did this to soccer. (The Taliban sure knew how to have fun, I tell ya.)

db, what Ken Hammie is advocating is metaphysical supernaturalism. That's all that he cares about, okay? There is no such thing as a methodological supernaturalism, and supernaturalism is what Ham's selling. He's not interested in metaphysical versus methodological naturalism--that's for educated theologians, not for his agog, bussed-in home-schooled victims, and the slack-jawed teen-aged guests on daytime talk shows that they are sure to become. Everything that Ham says is a piece of crap pulled out of his ass to make himself rich. He is not an educated Christian (or whateverian) advocating any kind of method whatsoever; he's a lying, shameless self-promoter. He showed the audience an anthropod and claimed that it was a living Trilobite, and that's a lie. Got it?

I nominate Bronze Dog for rockstar. All those in favor, say...sorry, I've been to too many DFL conventions.

Oops, isopod, not anthropod. My bad.

Karey: as far as I can tell (and I'd be very interested to get feedback on this) there are actually two definitions of "supernatural".

One is "thou shalt not invoke Gods, ghosts, goblins or boogedy-boogedy creatures". That one's a guideline - an heuristic rather than an absolute rule. It's a matter of historical record that attempts to explain phenomena by that approach have been vastly unsuccessful, yet have continued to be made regardless. Thus, we apply "don't say 'Goddidit'" as a general rule because it's easier than specifically debunking each nutjob who comes along. If there is a God who affects the universe in a detectable fashion, science will locate Him eventually; until then, this version of naturalism is a useful way to curb people's apparent tendency to invoke Him every five minutes.

The other version is "thou shalt not invoke entities that aren't amenable to the scientific method of hypothesis testing". That rule is, pretty much by definition, essential to science - entities that don't fall into it can be scientifically described as "bloody useless". The reason for the confusion between the two is that many entities (such as a sufficiently secretive God) fall squarely into both categories. The conflation of the two, however, allows for all sorts of creationist word games as they attempt to paint science as being a sport that's unfairly weighted against them.

Any thoughts?

Oh, and science doesn't start with presuppositions. That's what maths is for. Science starts with data, and works backwards to the most useful set of presuppositions.

I'm just wondering... I'm no linguistic...um... thingie, but what's the difference between starting with presuppositions, and just starting with suppositions? If there is a difference, then how do you approach a problem with your suppositions in mind without them tilting over into presuppositions?

Does this involve some sort of double-blind theorizing?

"wow not a bit of sense ,let alone science ...pity that all christians get tarred with the same brush ..we're not all that ignorant or deluded"

Posted by: brightmoon

Perhaps you and the other non ignorant and non deluded christians should stand up and denounce the Ham and Hovinds and Robertsons as ignorant and deluded. That would certainly lend some credence to your statement but I don't see a lot of chrstians doing that.

Well. I think PZ and many other folks are wrong about this. Or if not wrong, at least stuck in some fairly sloppy terminology.

First, there is no operational way to distinguish the natural from the supernatural. This very distinction is part of a vocabulary that presupposes a limit on what man can or should investigate. Second, science makes no presupposition about what does or doesn't exist. If a future spaceship exploring some distant solar system encounters Odin, Yahweh, or Q, those are facts that we can then start to develop various scientific theological theories about the gods so encountered. The only reason gods and ghosts and vampires are absent from current scientific theories is they have been remarkably shy about showing themselves.

The presupposition science makes relevant to Creationism is that ignorance is not a substitute for evidence. Science doesn't presuppose that no god was involved. It merely hasn't found evidence for that. (Except, perhaps, for Bostrom's argument about the probability that our universe is a simulation.)

I've been thinking about what science presupposes, and the best I've been able to come up with is this:

Science presupposes that the universe operates in a consistent manner; that the rules and data discovered by observation and experiment are true going back into the past, and will remain true going forward into the future (absent additional data showing that the previous information is incomplete).

I think that covers it.

said,"If we developed a working theory for the operation of astrology and found no evidence contradicting the hypothesis that the movement of the planets dictates our personalities in ways that the theory predicts, then astrology would be by definition a natural phenomenon."

Exactly! We don't exclude Astrology because it's "supernatural" (Whatever that means), we exclude it because it doesn't work.

Here's how I look at it:

I start with three assumptions
1. Things exist
2. Those things have some characteristics and lack others (I have two legs and not three or four)
3. We can observe these characteristics

These may be axiomatic, or presuppositions, or whatever, but they seem necessary if we want to talk about anything at all.

Now, how do we know if an observation is correct?

Well, if it is consistant over many observers and observations, then we can assume that it's correct and useful. We can make predictions based on consistant observations.

If it isn't consistant, then it isn't useful. God is excluded not because of some arbitrary rule about excluding the supernatural, but because observations about god are inconsistant. People can use the same observational technique and one will observe god as polytheistic, and the other will observe god as monotheistic.

So, therefore, we can't make any statement about whether god is mono- or polytheistic.

Note that the term "observation" is not limited to certain techniques; In this system, even just making things up off the top of your head can be an observation.

The reason we rarely use the "Make shit up" ethod of observation is because that method yields highly inconsistant, and therefore highly useless information.

It's not at all an arbitrary exclusion.

Much like Bronzedog, I don't know whether this is methodological or metaphysical naturalism, or naturalism of any kind, for that matter, but it seems like the only possible process to go through if you want to talk about things.

The term "supernatural" has no coherent meaning in this system.

Science derives its ideas about nature from observations of the world. It is therefore impossible for us to observe anything against the laws of nature. If we see a thing that our understanding didn't encompass, it means that our understanding was likely wrong and at best incomplete.

One cannot begin to conceive of supernatural existence unless you think that nature and existence are not identical categories. Identifying something as supernatural requires making assertions about what can and cannot be natural -- and how exactly are those assertions justified?

Maybe mystic gnomes, crystal power, and prescient Tarot readings exist. But if they do, by science's definition they are natural -- just as lightning, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and airplanes are all part of the natural order, even though most people would once have viewed them as outside of and contrary to nature.

Science is designed to encompass and incorporate new information. Faith rejects that which contradicts it.

I think db is confusing methodological and metaphysical naturalism somewhat. When Ham is saying "All scientists start with presuppositions" he is attacking methodological naturalism.

Methodological naturalism seems to be the general description of the methods of science. These methods are basically saying that we need to observe phenomena, repeat observations, form theories, validate them, et cetera.

In the discussed perspective there are some important things here. The methods of science has proven themselves by being used successfully. The only assumption is that observations are used to find phenomena, and that consequently the theories must be validated by observations. That we call these phenomena "natural" seems to me to be just a nametag. Corkscrew summarises this best, science merely works backwards from observations to useful theories.

So Ham is wrong, scientists makes no presuppositions whatsoever. The methods of science work, but they work only on observable phenomena.

Metaphysical naturalism, that Ham may think he is arguing against, is the claim that everything is natural. There seems to be many ways to approach that conclusion, especially in philosophy. One way that may illuminate CCC clever question, is that one find that this supposition is consistent with science, so one can as well make it a presupposition. (An axiom or basic assumption.)

You see, I'm not a linguistic thingie either, perhaps this makes CCC questions really about prepresuppositions? Which I don't think we had, in this case. There were many ideas of souls, animisms, and such, before science got really going. These were the (pre)presuppositions.

I find that I agree much with Corkscrew's description of the two sets of gods. The first one may be natural or supernatural. The second set is the straightforward deistic description "things said to exist, which can't be observed". It seems like a dualistic idea to me, that natural observable things aren't the only things there is. The other dualisms like souls et cetera has expired...

I find that I agree much with Karey's idea of a concordant definition of 'supernatural', since I have had similar ideas for other purposes.

One idea is to use "nonnatural" to describe what 'supernatural' means, concordant with scientific methods. If we look at simple characterisations of natural phenomena, we see several simple conservation theorems that we could use. Conservation of classical or quantum probabilities are one. The classical Noether's conservation theorems or their quantum analogs are another, and here the most general conserved property is energy.

So a concordant definition of nonnatural phenomena could be whose that could be observed to break those conserved quantities. I don't expect them to. But if we did such observations, we would certainly have to redefine the most basic ideas of how natural phenomena behaves. However, I don't think such a concordant definition satisfies Karey's intentions fully.

Owlmirror says:
"Science presupposes that the universe operates in a consistent manner; that the rules and data discovered by observation and experiment are true going back into the past, and will remain true going forward into the future (absent additional data showing that the previous information is incomplete)."

Um, no. This is observed too. The only assumption that seems to be inherent is that phenomena that explains observations are taken to be natural, but that is merely a description.

Other general assumptions can be explained as derivative and being observations. Order instead of chaos follows in large enough mathematical or physical structures, and is observed. Universality is parsimonious, and is observed. Causality follows from order and observers proper time, and is observed. And so on and so forth.

Science has posed and verified universality. So we know that our theories worked, is working and will continue to work, with in principle quantifiable uncertainty. Trust is not needed since we know that a repeated experiment will work if done correctly.

Trust is not needed since we know that a repeated experiment will work if done correctly.

The problem is that we "know" that only through inference. We can determine that inference works only if we presume inference works -- otherwise we cannot rule out the possibility that it may have seemed to work in the past, but that we might stop observing states consistent with the principle at any time.

The idea that inference can produce meaningful conclusions is a necessary assumption, yes. It seems that it's even built into the workings of our minds. But it's still an assumption, even if a very, very strong and reasonable one.

I think db must have merely mistyped when he stated:

Methodological naturalism, on the other hand, is the belief that "nature is all that there is (and can be)". A supernatural origin of the universe is not allowed, by definition.

That belief would seem to be the very definition of metaphysical naturalism.

However, the statement that Ham is being mischaracterized is unfair. The assumption most scientists would make (in this example) is that it may be possible to understand the origin of the universe. I would contend that "God did it" is no more informative than "I don't know."

The starting point for any study is "I don't know". The problem with saying "God did it" is not that it is cheating - it is simply that "God did it" is no more meaningful than "I don't know." Perhaps "I don't know" is the best answer possible to some problems (even if there is no God involved), but it seems senseless to use it as a starting point, even if one does not necessarily embrace metaphysical naturalism.

Caledonian says:

"The problem is that we "know" that only through inference."

Um, no. Deduction and inference is used to propose theories, not to validate them. Validation with attempted falsification makes us accept working theories. Sometimes a randomly choosen line is drawn, for example in physics often 5 sigma is used to say that an observed phenomena exist.

"we might stop observing states consistent with the principle at any time."

Only if you think universality is a philosophical notion, or subject to Last Thursdayism. Alas, universality, conservation theorems, causality and gauge theories are basic notions and theories that has been amply verified. It is a whole different class of notions with robust observationally causes. They are also subject to the notion of theories being valid until observed false, as you say, which gives them further (perhaps falsely so) rigidity.

Ed Braun says:
"However, the statement that Ham is being mischaracterized is unfair. The assumption most scientists would make (in this example) is that it may be possible to understand the origin of the universe."

Perhaps, but I thinks Ham mistakes methodological naturalism for metaphysical, it is such a common mistake.

You are however right that this is one case where scientists may have used the metaphysical idea at one time. Now there are several independent cosmologies that incorporates the origin, so it has stopped being a metaphysical question. The usual concept of course being that bigbang is embedded in infinite time universes/multiverses, so there was no origin. And the related question of why the universe exist, instead of not, is at the same time answered as being an observer effect.

"Only if you think universality is a philosophical notion, or subject to Last Thursdayism."

I guess that should be inverted Last Thursdayism. Those silly religious notions, I can't get them right, ever! ;-)

Coming back, I see that I forgot that there are further strength in the notions that back up repeated experiments. Those theories I mentioned touching this subject are interrelated and supports each other, I should make that explicit. Furthermore, scientific theories are naturally strengthened in relation to philosophical ideas by using notions like parsimony et cetera. It is a larger mechanism that is involved, not an isolated phenomena we observe.

"It may be possible to understand the universe" isn't an assumption. It is a lack of assumptions.

"It definitely is possible to understand the universe" is an assumption. So is "It definitely isn't possible to understand the universe". (At least, until either of them is justified by evidence, and assuming key terms like "understand" and "universe" are rigorously defined.)

But saying it *may* be possible isn't saying anything. It's equivalent to saying that either it is possible or it isn't possible, which is a tautology.

Here are some of the real presuppositions of science:

1. The Universe exists.

2. Some statements about the Universe are true and others are false.

3. Given some true statements about the Universe, deductive logic can produce additional true statements about the Universe.

4. Observations of the Universe are at least sometimes accurate.

5. When several independent observations of the Universe agree, they are often (but not always) right.

6. Observations, especially repeated and careful ones, and logical reasoning based on those observations, are the most reliable and therefore most useful way to distinguish true from false statements.

(Some people may say that #6 is a conclusion and not an axiom, but I can't come up with a non-circular proof of it. You can't match up the predictions of Method X against reality unless you've already agreed how to determine what reality is saying.)

A bit more problematic is
7. Laws and processes that have operated consistently for some time in the past will continue to do so in the future.

This can't be justified by observation because we can't observe the future - at least, not while it still *is* the future. We can point to a variety of times in the past where, if people had made this statement, they would have been correct and we can now prove it; but we can't generalize from those examples without applying this very principle.

Nonetheless, there's something that *feels* wrong about this objection - like our brains are hardwired with Axiom 7.

Chris: I come at Axiom 7 (And, really, all of your axioms) from a standpoint of practicality. Axiom 7 may be right or wrong; without looking into the future we can't know. However, if we treat it as being wrong, we can't function.

Making a statement about a trait that an object has takes a certain amount of time. In fact, just making an observation and becoming cognizant of the results takes time. If Axiom 7 is untrue, then by the time we've finished making a statement like "God exists" then the veracity of that statement is called into question. All possiblities become equally likely; I might as well stand in the middle of the street because the cars are just as likely to disintigrate as they are to stay solid.

Or, to put it another way, we can't meaningfully talk about or react to observations if Axiom 7 is false.

I think of Axiom 6 the same way; in terms of practicality.

Life consists of making observations and then reacting to them. An observation can be said to be likely if it is consistant over several observers and instances of observation. This is because of all the other axioms; We're assunming that things exist and that they have traits that last for a given amount of time.

If a thing exists and has a stable trait, then a correct observational technique would result in us seeing that trait every time we applied it.

So, working backwards from that, we can say that the more consistant an observation is, the more likely it is to be accurate.

These things are axiomatic because we can't really prove that they're true. However, these are axioms that underly all human thought, and, I believe, must underly human thought.

This is why I no longer take people seriously when they talk about "other ways of knowing" then science. Science to me is those axioms, and nothing more. All other systems, for example, Religion, also assume these axioms to be true (especially if you construe "observing" as widely as I do).

If somebody can come up with a sort of non-Euclidian way of looking at the world that denies some of these statements, I'd love to hear about it, but I don't think Mr. Hovind is going to do this.

Incidentally, where do the ideas we're discussing, like Chris' and my idea of what science is, fall in the spectrum of philosophy? Is it methodological naturalism, or what?

Back to an earlier part of the comments.

While I see problems with the golf analogy, if it helps illustrate the point, I say use it.

As a comment in general about the suggestions in these comments about what can be done to improve science education to the public is that just about every idea I've seen arise on these comments had been heavily criticized. I have no problem with that, the criticisms are usually valid and to the point.

However, just because an model is not exact doesn't mean it cannot be useful. In many ways the golf example is good because the audience understands games far better than it understands the scientific method. So what if the analogy is a bit strained? That can be corrected once the basic concept is in place.

The professional educators reading this may not agree (or maybe they do, I don't know) but as a non-educator trying to help my co-workers understand principles of statistics, I often find an slightly incorrect analogy which they can intuitively grasp far more useful than diving into conditional probablilities.

A model doesn't need to be fully accurate to convey an idea.

-Flex

I want one of these guys to explain to me how they propose we do supernatural science.

I think you have to start with wearing your underpants on the outside.
Then try have an industrial accident with some sort of chemical/radioactive material/mysterious space stuff/genetic experiement gone wrong and proceed from there.

I think you have to start with wearing your underpants on the outside. Then try have an industrial accident with some sort of chemical/radioactive material/mysterious space stuff/genetic experiement gone wrong and proceed from there.

Except for the underpants part, that's how it worked for me: I was bitten by a radioactive human. That's how I can type. Would be nice if I had some thumbs, though.

Ed Braun said:

I think db must have merely mistyped when he stated:

Methodological naturalism, on the other hand, is the belief that "nature is all that there is (and can be)". A supernatural origin of the universe is not allowed, by definition.

That belief would seem to be the very definition of metaphysical naturalism.

Aaargh! You're right, that's a typo. A very, very stupid typo!! I shouldn't have posted right before I left work for the day. Sorry to all for any confusion.

However, the statement that Ham is being mischaracterized is unfair. The assumption most scientists would make (in this example) is that it may be possible to understand the origin of the universe. I would contend that "God did it" is no more informative than "I don't know."

The starting point for any study is "I don't know". The problem with saying "God did it" is not that it is cheating - it is simply that "God did it" is no more meaningful than "I don't know." Perhaps "I don't know" is the best answer possible to some problems (even if there is no God involved), but it seems senseless to use it as a starting point, even if one does not necessarily embrace metaphysical naturalism.

Well, I'd disagree about Ham being mischaracterized. (just look at "the amazing kim's" post). Ham (and AIG) talk about Origins and Operational science, making the distinction about what we can observe and test. How the universe came to be falls into the Origins category, while chemistry, biology and physics fall into the Operational category.

You're right, one day we may understand the origin of the universe. Then again, if there is a God who created it, we might not. You can only find a natural explanation for the universe if one exists. A creationist's belief that "God did it" doesn't mean that they aren't interested in studying the universe's origin. Humphrey's "White hole" cosmology is an example. I think they're looking for a scientific way to explain why the universe looks the way it does.

In any case, one's belief about how the universe began doesn't mean they're looking for a supernatural explanation for how the universe works (Operational science).

People are big fat liars. To stop people just pulling stuff out of their arses, science demands that they back up what they say with evidence.

Sounds reasonable to me.

What gets me is that, for every idiotic superstition or unfounded tradition, there was either a liar or a nut to start it off. Someone had to say: I know how the world was created! Or: God told me this stuff by talking inside my HEAD! Or: bleeding the patiant will make him better! Or: give me that donkey or god will smite you!

People make stuff up. They always have, always will. Science is that wonderful thing that calls the liars out to prove what they say, and when they can't, it mocks them.

Science PWNS!

Kristine said:

db, what Ken Hammie is advocating is metaphysical supernaturalism. That's all that he cares about, okay? There is no such thing as a methodological supernaturalism, and supernaturalism is what Ham's selling.

Kristine, when it comes to origins, I think you're right that Ham is a "metaphysical supernaturalist". I think he'd agree with that. But, I think his point would be that modern science is advocating "metaphysical naturalism" (when dealing with origin). Concerning origin, both sides take a metaphysical position.

When it comes to how the universe operates, Ham is advocating a supernaturally created universe that works by naturalistic rules. Really no different than a car or computer. We know that they don't work by magic or voodoo, but work according to natural rules and laws. Yet, we also know that there isn't a natural origin to their function. Engineers use natural things like electricity, torque, combustion, friction, the properties of various metals, etc, and then impose the car or computer's function upon them.

Whatever you may feel and say about Ham, you have to realize that, for the most part, you're saying the same thing about Newton, Boyle, Linneaus and many others.

daenku32: Ironically, one of the great examples of an ad hoc hypothesis in the history of science was an invisible "rubber band" - Hobbes postulated that a "finiculus" was involved in the Boyle air pump experiments which had some mysterious function or other. Hobbes may have been a genius, but he (like Spinoza) didn't seem to appreciate the air pump experiments.

Halfjack: Curious - would you call Aristotle's views of how the superlunary part of the universe operates to be a supernaturalistic one?

T_U_T: Science begins with (and confirms) quite a few presuppositions. Most of them are quite obvious to most people when (at least momentarily) free from ideologies. Unfortunately, many philosophers have denied some or all of them. Here are two, one ontological, one epistemological:

The world contains objective patterns.
Some of these patterns can be understood partially by humans.

Chris: Your #7 is not needed: we can assume (and see confirmed) that there are laws of change of other laws. For example, before planets formed there were presumably no liquids as there was insufficient pressure and the right temperature range for them to exist. Now that a new "thing" has come into being, it has its own laws. But the process by which liquids arose is itself a lawful process (of gases and gravity and so on). All we need is a postulate of general lawfulness (the first of the two examples I provided) to account for this.

(Recommended initial reading for all interested in the presupposition issue: §5.9 of Bunge's Philosophy of Science and vol. 6 of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy.)

This garbage about methodological vs. metaphysical naturalism is just more creationist derailment. Not only do I not care much about the metaphysics involved in science, but my metaphysics don't change the experimental and observational evidence supporting the theory of evolution. Neither do yours, and neither do Ken Ham's.

Creationists are doing this because they haven't got a sound leg to stand on in terms of empirical evidence, and when it comes to arguing the evidence, they lose. They're trying to draw you guys out of the arena of science, so that you're not actually arguing about science at all, but rather trying to defend a philosophical position that they can easily label with emotionally charged words like "reductionism" and "materialism", and you're letting them do that.

So, would someone here like to talk about science?

I think statements like the following are unfair -

Whatever you may feel and say about Ham, you have to realize that, for the most part, you're saying the same thing about Newton, Boyle, Linneaus and many others

Newton, Boyle, Linneaus et al. were people of their times (just as we are). I would argue that there is a fundamental difference between Newton and Ham that would be there even if their world views were absolutely and completely identical. That difference is simply the fact that Ham is holding these views in the 21st century.

I agree completely that "one's belief about how the universe began doesn't mean [that one is] looking for a supernatural explanation for how the universe works ". But, the very motto of AiG shows that they are not interested in determining how the universe works in an unbiased manner. After all, they state:

AiG teaches that "facts" don't speak for themselves, but must be interpreted. That is, there aren't separate sets of "evidences" for evolution and creation--we all deal with the same evidence (we all live on the same earth, have the same fossils, observe the same animals, etc.). The difference lies in how we interpret what we study. The Bible--the "history book of the universe"--provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on. Therefore, we are able to use it to help us make sense of this present world. When properly understood, the "evidence" confirms the biblical account.

Fundamentally, any interpretation of data must conform to the Bible, regardless of Ockham's razor. While I admit that parsimony is an imperfect means to make a choice among models, it is probably the best option possible (and it trumps consistency with the Bible, Qu'ran, etc. in the minds of most scientists).

That and, you know, Ham is distinctly lacking in Newton's mathematical ability (and that was Newton's single saving feature).

Newton's mathematical ability (and that was Newton's single saving feature)

Yeah, when your own students are happy at the prospect of the Black Plague closing the university because it gets them away from you, you know you're not exactly Teacher of the Year or anything.

Oy. I take for granted that anything that comes out of Ham's mouth is pure bullshit, but is the phrase an actual written quote, sic, of his? If so, in addition to not knowing crap-all about science, he's also got no grasp of his (presumably) native language. It's "your" not "you're", which drives me up the wall.

"Someday, I want one of these guys to explain to me how they propose we do supernatural science"

Simple. Read the Bible. Look at the world. When you can't reconcile the latter with the former, cover your ears and shout "Lalalalalalalalalala!"

*********************************************************

Were you eavesdropping on my Mothers Day supper???

It's "your" not "you're", which drives me up the wall.

Before you hurt yourself consider it could be MS Word "helping". I don't know how many time's I've had to ignore it's red squiggle because it was plain wrong.

See? I always run my comments through MS Word to catch misspellings. It didn't catch that time's is wrong in my previous comment.

Christopher says:

"Incidentally, where do the ideas we're discussing, like Chris' and my idea of what science is, fall in the spectrum of philosophy? Is it methodological naturalism, or what?"

I think it is metaphysics. These types of philosophical discussions have a hard time to connect to science, however. Science is about observation of facts and validation of theories. It is true that formalising theories makes deduction and inference tools to suggest new hypotheses, but I fail to see that discussing this subset can capture what the methods of science are, can do, and will mean.

Dustin says:

"They're trying to draw you guys out of the arena of science, so that you're not actually arguing about science at all, but rather trying to defend a philosophical position that they can easily label with emotionally charged words like "reductionism" and "materialism", and you're letting them do that.

So, would someone here like to talk about science?"

But I don't agree with this either. When Ham says that "All scientists start with presuppositions" he lies, and he uses this lie to suggest two more lies, that science is unfair to religion and that science is a religious undertaking.

It is essential to make these points clear to ourselves and to the public, for science. So I think we discuss science.

I don't understand how Mr. Ham could accuse us of exclusionism because of what we're saying. I mean, we've made three suppositions here:

1. Things exist.
2. Things have traits.
3. We can observe those traits.

Which one would Mr. Ham disagree with? Hell, the simple statement "god exists", which I assume he feels is true, requires belief in all the axioms Chris and I talk about (And, as an obvious consequence, this means that those axioms aren't inherently incompatible with Mr. Ham's brand of supernaturalism).

Our whole point is that science is neither reductionist nor materialistic, and that the only assumptions required to do science are those assumptions required to interact with the world.

So where would he attack us? Where's the reductionism and materialism?

As for Mr. Larsson's comments, I can't agree with your assertion that my ideas have a hard time connecting with science.

I mean, what does a scientist do?

A scientist makes numerous observations, and if they lead to a consistant conclusion, then he considers them likely to be true, and if they don't, then he simply concludes that he can't make a positive assertion.

I mean, maybe it's metaphysics, but it's aslo a description of what scientists actually do. How can a straightforward description of what every scientist does be hard to connect with science?

Christopher says:

"As for Mr. Larsson's comments, I can't agree with your assertion that my ideas have a hard time connecting with science."

Science is about observation of facts and validation of theories. When you say that things exist, you are assuming a reality behind. This is metaphysics.

I don't say that it's bad metaphysics, in fact many scientists believe that this is so and it is a very productive method.

But the fact is that metaphysics are making (unnecessary) assumptions, which is what you confess to when you mention axioms. OTOH it is a way of formalising parts of science. By equating facts with truths, it helps when one wants to make deductions and inferences to make hypotheses.

But there are also problems with equating scientific facts with philosophical truths. When we validate theories we let uncertainties in, for example by drawing randomly choosen lines for when an observed phenomena is said to exist. Validation isn't the same thing as assuming a philosophical inference, and facts aren't exactly truths.

That is perhaps a small philosophical problem. Maybe there is a consistent description of facts and validations somewhere.

A larger problem is that there is no philosophic theory that exactly describes everything that we do when we use scientific methods. Popper mentioned falsifiability as a decisive method, but in reality not every statement a theory makes can or need to be falsifiable. So where do we draw the line and why? Why is parsimoniosity good for the basic theory taken isolated but not when also considering the applications of it that then can become quite messy? And so on and so forth.

This is what makes me hesitate to think philosophy (or science) is up to the task yet to describe even the properties of the scientific method, let alone the properties of the results of these methods.