01.31.07
Have I been had?
Am I being deceived?.
Reasonable Kansans, the blog, puts the confusion over methodological naturalism nicely.
Your other big concern is the definition of science, which you feel must invoke methodological naturalism. What has happened because of this term is that we have put ourselves in a position that we may never be able to attain truth in regard to origins. If we have a prior commitment to naturalism and reject any arguments against Darwinian evolution, we may find ourselves stuck with a dead end theory. Obviously, there are implications of design in nature as even the most staunch atheists will attest to this. Yet, the “scientific community” takes the position that any hypothesis inferring design should be scrupulously avoided, regardless of the evidence. It makes no sense.
There are two ways in which we can define science:
1. Science is the activity of seeking explanations for natural phenomena.
2. Science is the activity of seeking only natural causes as explanations for natural phenomena.
The first one is an objective definition. The second is a science stopper because we cannot be certain that all that we observe in nature is due to natural causes. On the other hand, it may be that there is a natural designer that is responsible for the design we see in nature. If we don’t consider a designer which is either natural or supernatural, that leaves us with the first cause of our existence as nothing other than a purely undirected, unintelligent chance occurrence. That is being rather close minded to the obvious design in nature that even the ardent atheist Richard Dawkins refers to time and time again.