The only difference in our views is that I would recommend taking a purely skeptical approach and you want to propose an alternative to “naturalism.” Personally, I don’t see how reviving “design” arguments is going to resolve this issue. It just causes the debate to go around in circles; something that has happened for 2000+ years.

Science is required to stay away from philosophy and religion, and so far it (scientism) has been unable to do this. This empirical science then becomes the handmaiden to philosophy (which stands on a higher platform in its persuit for truth, which finds a balance of epistemology and ontology). This lowly handmaiden position is the reverse of what scientism demands (scientism wrongly concludes that epistemology leads to the higher truth that is now independent of ontology).

The only way to move beyond the empirical science with its weaker domain of application is to note that ontology cannot be separated from epistemology. This is a now new science that is purified, and not fooled by scientism. Scientism seems to think that it is above its ontological base, and it is not. Rather a purified science must work with its own limitations, even as it embraces philosophy.

No offense, but the narrow and romantic construction of your self-limited empirical science is too weak to put a dent in scientism. Empirical science would have to publicly admit that it cannot find the answers to the bigger philosophical questions, and then it would have to vacate the debate. I’m still waiting for this narrow science to vacate. How long will I have to wait?

If you cannot control scientism, then you are in not position to demand that scientists cannot articulate their views on intelligent design. We live in a free world, with freedom of speech, and including religious freedoms.

Did you even read my previous post? That is precisely my point.

“Such a framework will always be looking for “reasons” that are permitted only in the form of chance and necessity;”

Has any other framework panned out? The “design” argument has been debunked since the time of its inception. What is wrong with admitting that we may be epistemologically limited to constructing theories in those terms?

“…therefore, it is unable to deal with that which has no reason, the starkness, the ineffable, and the feeling, beauty and ethics.”

No offense, but these romantic sentimental arguments are too weak to effectively put a dent in scientism.

I never said that chance and necessity completely captures reality. That is precisely why I have an axe to grind with the Darwinists when they turn the categories into metaphysical absolutes instead of regarding them as useful frameworks. My point is that we may only be able to create effective theories in terms of those categories. In that sense, I think the Darwinists have a point. Let’s forget Dembski’s/Mike Gene’s (among others) preposterous attempts to give “design” a methodological foundation. We need to expose the limits of chance and necessity, not come up with equally problematic assertions.

This is not to say that the spark of awareness is feeling all the way down; but I am referring to our human point of view, and I would guess that animals feel too. Perhaps plants feel, or we could agree to describe the ineffable with better words. Proto-emotionality? Proto-consciousness? Sentience? The innate vitality? Beyond a certain point there is only a word game, but the failure of science is most telling: There is no toaster that feels itself baking bread, and unless science is able to get beyond this glaring omission then a claim that life is explained is not credible. If we can’t define life, or language, then we are in no position to claim that life evolved by natural selection with no input from the ineffable.

Understand the corner stone that gives its support to vitalism is the power of the negative argument, following Socrates’s dialectic. That only leaves the stark to describe the ineffable, and so it is because the middle term can be felt that we are able to explore beyond Kant’s 3rd antinomy.

You constantly bring this up. Why do you assume that “feeling” is the sine qua non for “consciousness?”