From Robert Larmer's 'is Methodological Naturalism Question-Begging

Larmer considers an argument as follows:

1) If one is a metaphysical naturalist then one should be a methodological naturalist. i. e. refuse ever to postulate nonphysical entities as the cause of a physical event.
2) One should not believe in nonphysical entities without good evidence.
3) There is no good evidence for nonnatural entities.
4) Therefore one should accept metaphysical naturalism, and by logical extension, methodological naturalism.

He then develops a dialogue between the metaphysical naturalist and his opponent over premise 3.

NN: I disagree that there is no good evidence for nonnatural entities.
MN: Such evidence cannot exist.
NN: Why not?
MN: Because any investigation of the causes of physical events must employ methdological naturalism, i. e., it must assume that it is never, in principle, legitimate to posit a nonnatural cause for a physical event.
NN: Remind me once more of your good reason for thinking that metaphysical naturalism is true.
MN: The good reason for thinking that metaphysical naturalism is true is that there is no good evidence that nonnatural entities exist. NN: Would methodological naturalism ever permit one to posit a nonnatural entity as the cause of a physical event?
MN: No. I have already made that clear.
NN: Let me get this right. Your acceptance of metaphysical naturalism is based on the fact that there exists no evidence that nonnatural entities ever cause physical events?
MN: Yes.
 NN: And your endorsement of methodological naturalism follows from your acceptance of metaphysical naturalism?
MN: Yes.
NN: This seems question-begging. You endorse metaphysical naturalism on the basis that there exists no evidence that nonnatural entities ever cause physical events, yet adopt a methodology that rules out the possibility of ever recognizing evidence of nonnatural causes. You are using your metaphysic to justify your acceptance of methodological naturalism, but your acceptance of methodological naturalism serves to guarantee that even if evidence for the existence of nonphysical causes exists it can never be recognized as such.

Rod Dreher's Sex After Christianity

Here. 

Is gay marriage enough?

Not for some activists, including Gloria Steinem and Barbara Ehrenreich. Here. 

Nagel's review of Plantinga's newest book

Here.

The "If you walk away I win" fallacy

From Tom Gilson. Here. 

If Jesus was not resurrected, then what?

Here is a popular resurrection argument.

1. If Jesus was not resurrected, the something else happened.  Therefore some plausible story can be spelled out which explains the known facts naturalistically.
2. The most popular naturalistic explanations are the swoon theory, the hallucination theory, the theft theory, and the wrong tomb theory.
3. The swoon theory is not plausible. Jesus endured six trials, scourging, a crown of thorns, had a purple robe rubbing against his scourged back, endured crucifixion, and burial. Then he endured three days in the tomb with no medical attentions, pushed a huge stone out of the way, put a flying tackle on an entire Roman guard, and walked on pierced feet to greet his disciples. Why is that a less of a miracle than a resurrection?
4. The hallucination theory is also not plausible. Group hallucinations do not normally happen. If three people drop acid, they always experience different things, not the same thing. Also, hallucinations do not transform lives, and turn cowardly disciples like Peter into bold witnesses.
5. The stolen body theory is also implausible. If the disciples stole the body to advance the cause of Christ, they would have had to face the very people who got Jesus crucified. A successful career as a television was not in the cards for them, instead it was the same cross on which Jesus died. Neither the Romans nor the Jewish leaders had any reason to steal the body, either.
6. The wrong tomb theory is also not plausible. Would any reasonable person forget the location of loved one's grave who was buried only 72 hours earlier?
7. Therefore, there are no plausible naturalistic theories concerning what happened with Jesus.
8. Therefore, the only alternative left is that he was resurrected.

Islam without Sharia

Here. 

Islam: Can Ijtihad make a comeback

Ijtihād, ( Arabic: “effort”) in Islamic law, the independent or original interpretation of problems not precisely covered by the Qurʾān, Hadith (traditions concerning the Prophet’s life and utterances), and ijmāʿ (scholarly consensus). (Encyclopedia Brittanica). 

Discussed here.

What does the Euthyphro really show?

It seems to me that the dilemma, as it is it typically used, is an argument in favor of the claim that moral values are metaphysically neutral. So, for example, it is used to show that Christian theism adds nothing to morality that would not be available to a metaphysical materialist. Yet. it comes in Plato's philosophy. Plato has a very strong metaphysics of morals, involving the Form of the Good. I think his actual argument is that a deity (and in this case a Greek deity such as Apollo) represents not too strong of a metaphysical foundation for morality, but too weak of one. Of course, Plato appealed to divine commands as the basis of his entire enterprise as a philosophical questioner (see the Apology). I think Plato would have agreed with religious believers today who think modern metaphysical materialism undermines morality. His morals are centered around the Theory of Forms, which are, if nothing else, nonmaterial entities. 

Christian theology treated Platonism (as opposed to Epicureanism, Stoicism, and even Aristotelianism) as the most friendly philosophical theory in the ancient world. Christian theology tended to absorb the Form of the Good into their conception of God, which might permit those philosophical concepts to get around the Euthyphro dilemma. 

Aesthetic Arguments for the Existence of God

By Peter S. Williams. Here. 

I suggest that the four categories of aesthetic arguments for the existence of God deserve greater attention than has traditionally been the case. Secular philosophers, like Anthony O'Hear and Roger Scruton, recognize that aesthetics lends itself to religious treatment, and it is noteable how strong a pull towards God they feel when considering aesthetic phenomena. However, being unprepared to follow this evidence where it leads, secular philosophy ends either by denying the objectivity and meaningfulness of beauty, or by requiring a leap of blind faith into Schaeffer's `upper story' if the validity of aesthetic creativity and appreciation is to be retained. A theistic world-view, on the other hand, provides a natural environment for the existence, appreciation and rational understanding of aesthetic reality.

Evidence-based reasoning failures amongst the secular elite

This is a comment by Luke Breuer here. 

In this case, you may be interested in a few books which target a failure in (i) critical thinking and (ii) evidence-based reasoning:

• Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline
• Ronald Dworkin's Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate
• Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason
• Mary Douglas' and Steven Ney's Missing Persons: A Critique of the Personhood in the Social Sciences
• Steven D. Smith's The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse
• Christian Smith's The Sacred Project of American Sociology
• George Yancey's Compromising Scholarship: Religious and Political Bias in American Higher Education

In all these cases, the failures being examined are largely among the secular elite, not the religious masses. In Jesus' time, one reason the Pharisees' error was so great is that they were the epitome of excellence, the character ideals for everyone. If you wanted to be righteous, you became like them. In our time, the character ideals for the kind of population aren't measured by level of righteousness, but by ability to reason based on the evidence. What if, on average, those who are supposed to best be able to do this are pretty massive failures in areas critical to the future thriving of democracy?

From Lennox's God's Undertaker: Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Conceptual Confusions

At least some of the heat results from the fact that the term ‘intelligent design’ appears to convey to many people a relatively recent, crypto-creationist, anti-scientific attitude that is chiefly focussed on attacking evolutionary biology. This means that the term ‘intelligent design’ has subtly changed its meaning, bringing with it the danger that serious debate will be hijacked as a result.

Now ‘intelligent design’ strikes some as a curious expression, since usually we think of design as the result of intelligence – the adjective is therefore redundant. If we therefore simply replace the phrase with ‘design’ or ‘intelligent causation’ then we are speaking of a very respectable notion in the history of thought. For the notion that there is an intelligent cause behind the universe, far from being recent, is as ancient as philosophy and religion themselves. Secondly, before we address the question whether intelligent design is crypto-creationism we need to avoid another potential misunderstanding by considering the meaning of the term ‘creationism’ itself. For its meaning has changed as well. ‘Creationism’ used to denote simply the belief that there was a Creator. However, it has now come to mean not only belief in a Creator but also a commitment to a whole additional raft of ideas by far the most dominant of which is a particular interpretation of Genesis which holds that the earth is only a few thousand years old. This mutation in the meaning of ‘creationism’ or ‘creationist’ has had three very unfortunate effects. First of all it polarizes the discussion and gives an apparently soft target to those who reject out of hand any notion of intelligent causation in the universe. Secondly, it fails to do justice to the fact that there is a wide divergence of opinion on the interpretation of the Genesis account even among those Christian thinkers who ascribe final authority to the biblical record. Finally, it obscures the(original) purpose of using the term ‘intelligent design’, which is to make a very important distinction between the recognition of design and the identification of the designer. These are different questions. The second of them is essentially theological and agreed by most to be outside the provenance of science. The point of making the distinction is to clear the way to asking whether there is any way in which science can help us with the answer to the first question. It is therefore unfortunate that this distinction between two radically different questions is constantly obscured by the accusation that  intelligent design’ is shorthand for ‘crypto-creationism’ 

Nonadaptive order: a problem for Darwinism?

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/03/a_nightmarish_s102692.html

Stump your Darwinist friends by asking them to explain, in evolutionarily adaptive terms, biological features like the precise pattern of the maple leaf or of an angiosperm flower. "That's a fantastically serious challenge to Darwinism," says Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton in this brief but delightful video conversation -- a "nightmarish scenario." Why? Because Darwinism by definition must justify such features, including the taxa-defining novelties, as having been seized upon by natural selection because they were adaptive. I mean, that pattern specifically and not some other.

It's the specificity that's the problem. This is a deep point by Denton. For classic evolutionary theory, the curse of non-adaptive order resides in the fact that non-adaptive patterns -- beautiful and complex ones -- absolutely pervade life. An aesthetic choice might explain the act of selection. But blind, dumb natural selection, focused like a laser beam on fitness, carefully designing these thing to be just as they are and no other way? Sorry, that doesn't fly.

The confirmatory fine-tuning argument

From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

Robin Collins defends a more modest version of the fine-tuning argument that relies on a general principle of confirmation theory, rather than a principle that is contrived to distinguish events or entities that are explained by intelligent design from events or entities explained by other factors. Collins's version of the argument relies on what he calls the Prime Principle of Confirmation: If observation O is more probable under hypothesis H1 than under hypothesis H2, then O provides a reason for preferring H1 over H2. The idea is that the fact that an observation is more likely under the assumption that H1 is true than under the assumption H2 is true counts as evidence in favor of H1.

This version of the fine-tuning argument proceeds by comparing the relative likelihood of a fine-tuned universe under two hypotheses:

1. The Design Hypothesis: there exists a God who created the universe such as to sustain life;
2. The Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis: there exists one material universe, and it is a matter of chance that the universe has the fine-tuned properties needed to sustain life.

Assuming the Design Hypothesis is true, the probability that the universe has the fine-tuned properties approaches (if it does not equal) 1. Assuming the Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis is true, the probability that the universe has the fine-tuned properties is very small—though it is not clear exactly how small. Applying the Prime Principle of Confirmation, Collins concludes that the observation of fine-tuned properties provides reason for preferring the Design Hypothesis over the Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis.

At the outset, it is crucial to note that Collins does not intend the fine-tuned argument as a proof of God's existence. As he explains, the Prime Principle of Confirmation "is a general principle of reasoning which tells us when some observation counts as evidence in favor of one hypothesis over another" (Collins 1999, 51). Indeed, he explicitly acknowledges that "the argument does not say that the fine-tuning evidence proves that the universe was designed, or even that it is likely that the universe was designed" (Collins 1999, 53). It tells us only that the observation of fine-tuning provides one reason for accepting the Theistic Hypothesis over the Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis—and one that can be rebutted by other evidence.

The confirmatory version of the fine-tuning argument is not vulnerable to the objection that it relies on an inference strategy that presupposes that we have independent evidence for thinking the right kind of intelligent agency exists. As a general scientific principle, the Prime Principle of Confirmation can be applied in a wide variety of circumstances and is not limited to circumstances in which we have other reasons to believe the relevant conclusion is true. If the observation of a fine-tuned universe is more probable under the Theistic Hypothesis than under the Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis, then this fact is a reason for preferring the Design Hypothesis to Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis.

Nevertheless, the confirmatory version of the argument is vulnerable on other fronts. As a first step towards seeing one worry, consider two possible explanations for the observation that John Doe wins a 1-in-7,000,000 lottery (see Himma 2002). According to the Theistic Lottery Hypothesis, God wanted John Doe to win and deliberately brought it about that his numbers were drawn. According to the Chance Lottery Hypothesis, John Doe's numbers were drawn by chance. It is clear that John's winning the lottery is vastly more probable under the Theistic Lottery Hypothesis than under the Chance Lottery Hypothesis. By the Prime Principle of Confirmation, then, John's winning the lottery provides a reason to prefer the Theistic Lottery Hypothesis over the Chance Lottery Hypothesis.

As is readily evident, the above reasoning, by itself, provides very weak support for the Theistic Lottery Hypothesis. If all we know about the world is that John Doe won a lottery and the only possible explanations for this observation are the Theistic Lottery Hypothesis and the Chance Lottery Hypothesis, then this observation provides some reason to prefer the former. But it does not take much counterevidence to rebut the Theistic Lottery Hypothesis: a single observation of a lottery that relies on a random selection process will suffice. A single application of the Prime Principle of Confirmation, by itself, is simply not designed to provide the sort of reason that would warrant much confidence in preferring one hypothesis to another.

For this reason, the confirmatory version of the fine-tuning argument, by itself, provides a weak reason for preferring the Design Hypothesis over the Atheistic Single Universe Hypothesis. Although Collins is certainly correct in thinking the observation of fine-tuning provides a reason for accepting the Design Hypothesis and hence rational ground for belief that God exists, that reason is simply not strong enough to do much in the way of changing the minds of either agnostics or atheists.

C S Lewis on Scientism

Here. 

The Curry-Merriam debate on whether science points to God.

Curry says it does, Merriam says it doesn't. Here.

How would the God of the Old Testament reply to Dawkins?

Dawkins: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

But what if a being matching just this description were to, in fact, be real. Would he say back to Dawkins:

But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

Some arguments for the historicity of John

Here.  Although John is supposed to be the latest of the gospels, it is the one that claims to be written by an eyewitness. And John seems clearly to have been Jewish and familiar with Jerusalem. .

Arguments for John's historicity were made in the 19th Century by Westcott.  Have they ever been answered?

HT: Eric Vestrup

Why shouldn't we treat some people as inferior?

Some of the most historically influential arguments for not treating groups of people are inferior are religious in nature. They say that everyone was created by God, Jesus died for everyone, therefore, no person, in virtue of being a member of a group, should be treated as inferior.

On the other hand, if you assume the secular view that human beings are in the groups they are in through evolution, then you have to deal with the idea that creatures are entitled to the survival advantages that evolution has provided them. Thus if being white, or male, gives you a position of power that makes you, (as opposed to others) better able to pass on  your (selfish) genes than other people, then why shouldn't you take advantage of that superior power?

I realize that the former kind of argument has not prevented religious people from exploiting others, nor has the second argument prevented secularists from being nonexploiters. But what would be the secularist rebuttal to the latter argument?

Two books on revelation

One by William Abraham, the other by Menssen and Sullivan. Here. 

From Menssen and Sullivan:

Sandra Menssen and Thomas D. Sullivan provide a straight- forward defense of using revelation to defend belief in God’s existence...Menssen and Sullivan specifically target what they call the “tacit assumption” of philosophy, namely, that one must show that God exists before one can ask whether God has revealed.

The tacit assumption is that a claim to have received a revelation can be evaluated only after the existence of God has been proved. In opposition to the tacit assumption, they make the following claim: If it is not highly unlikely that God exists, then it is reasonable to examine particular claims to revelation from God as evidence for God’s existence. It is not highly unlikely that God exists; therefore, it is reasonable to examine particular revelation claims as evidence for God’s existence. More boldly, they contend that if the existence of God is not highly unlikely, then a reasonable inquirer must actually examine a number of revelation claims before a judgment can be made that God does not exist.

Consider, they say, the proposal that a single person named Homer was responsible for the Iliad. In the course of history, many have rejected that possibility because it was believed that no preliterate person, such as Homer, could have composed such a work. Given the complexity and length of the poem, the argument reasoned, a single individual could have produced it only if that person had the capacity to write. If it were impossible for a preliterate person to produce the poem, no amount of contrary evidence internal to the poem would raise the likelihood that a single person produced it. In other words, the probability of an impossibility is zero and any evidence added to an impossibility does not improve the odds.

Suppose, however, that it were possible for a single individual, in a preliterate context, to produce such a long and complex poem. The probabilities change, and evidence for authorship does matter. Once such a possibility is recognized, then internal evidence derived from the content of the poem itself becomes relevant for judgments about authorship.

Menssen and Sullivan take revelation claims to be closely analogous to arguments about the production of the Iliad. If the possibility of God’s existence were nil, or next to nil, then no appeal to the internal content of revelation could support belief in the existence of God. On the other hand, if it is not highly unlikely that God exists, then just as it is relevant to look at the content of the Iliad to determine authorship, so is it reasonable to look at revelation claims for evidence of God’s existence.

HT: Triablogue

The Argument from Reason and Natural Theology

III. The Argument from Reason and Natural Theology
We might ask the following question: In what sense is the argument from reason a piece of natural theology. The job of natural theology is supposed to be to provide epistemic support for theism. However, the argument from reason, at best, argues that the ultimate causes of the universe are mental and not physical. This is, of course, consistent with various world-views that other than traditional theism, such as pantheism or idealism.
It's a good idea to look at what happened in the case of the argument from reasons’s best-known defender, C. S. Lewis, to see how the argument contributed to his coming to belief in God. Lewis had been what was then called a "realist", accepting the world of sense experience and science as rock-bottom reality. Largely through conversations with Owen Barfield, he became convinced that this world-view was inconsistent with the claims we make on behalf of our own reasoning processes. In response to this, however, Lewis became not a theist but an absolute idealist. It was only later that Lewis rejected absolute idealism in favor of theism, and only after that that he became a Christian. He describes his discussions with Barfield as follows:
(He) convinced me that the positions we had hitherto held left no room for any satisfactory theory of knowledge. We had been, in the technical sense of the term, “realists”; that is, we accepted as rock-bottom reality the universe revealed to the senses. But at the same time, we continued to make for certain phenomena claims that went with a theistic or idealistic view. We maintained that abstract thought (if obedient to logical rules) gave indisputable truth, that our moral judgment was “valid” and our aesthetic experience was not just pleasing but “valuable.” The view was, I think, common at the time; it runs though Bridges’ Testament of Beauty and Lord Russell’s “Worship of a Free Man.” Barfield convinced me that it was inconsistent. If thought were merely a subjective event, these claims for it would have to be abandoned. If we kept (as rock-bottom reality) the universe of the sense, aided by instruments co-ordinated to form “science” then one would have to go further and accept a Behaviorist view of logic, ethics and aesthetics. But such a view was, and is, unbelievable to me. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (San Diego, Harcourt Brace, 1955), 208.

Lewis did not, however, embrace theism at this point. Instead, he opted for Absolute Idealism, a philosophy prevalent in Oxford in the 1920s, although it is not widely held today. He wrote of this again in Surprised by Joy:

It is astonishing (at this time of day) that I could regard this position as something quite distinct from Theism. I suspect there was some willful blindness. But there were in those days all sorts of blankets, insulators, and insurances which enabled one to get all the conveniences of Theism, without believing in God. The English Hegelians, writers like T. H. Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet (then mighty names), dealt in precisely such wares. The Absolute Mind—better still, the Absolute—was impersonal, or it knew itself (but not us?) and it was so absolute that it wasn’t really much more like a mind than anyone else….We could talk religiously about the Absolute; but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us…There was nothing to fear, better still, nothing to obey.

Nevertheless, further considerations drove Lewis out of idealism into theism. He wrote:
A tutor must make things clear. Now the Absolute cannot be made clear. Do you mean Nobody-knows-what, or do you mean a superhuman mind and therefore (we may as well admit) a Person? After all, did Hegel and Bradley and all the rest of them ever do more than add mystifications to the simple, workable, theistic idealism of Berkeley? I thought not. And didn't Berkeley's "God" do all the same work as the Absolute, with the added advantage that we had at least some notion of what we meant by Him? I thought He did. So I was driven back into something like Berkeleyanism; but Berkeleyanism with a few top dressings of my own. I distinguished this philosophical "God" very sharply (or so I said) from "the God of popular religion." There was, I explained, no possibility of being in a personal relation with Him. For I thought He projected us as a dramatist projects his characters, and I could no more "meet" Him, than Hamlet could meet Shakespeare. I didn't call Him "God" either; I called Him "Spirit." One fights for one's remaining comforts.So did the argument from reason that Lewis accepted make theism more likely in his mind? It certainly did. In his mind it gave him a reason to reject his previously-held naturalism. Now you might think of Absolute Idealism an atheistic world-view, but is does deny the existence of the theistic God as traditionally understood. However the playing field was now considerably narrowed.

Consider the following argument:
1. Either the fundamental causes of the universes are more like a mind than anything else, or they are not.
2. If they are not, then we cannot make sense of the existence of reason.
3. All things being equal, world-views that cannot make sense of the existence of reason are to be rejected in favor of world-views that can make sense of the existence of reason.
4. Therefore, we have a good reason to reject all worldviews reject the claim that the fundamental causes of the universe are more like a mind than anything else. 

Now if you want to hold out the idea that a idealist world-view is nevertheless atheistic, then my argument merely serves to eliminate one of the atheistic options. But suppose someone originally thinks that the likelihoods are as follows:
Naturalism 50% likely to be true.
Idealism 25% likely to be true.
Theism 25% likely to be true.

And suppose that someone accepts a version of the argument from reason, and as a result naturalism drops 30 percentage points. Then those points have to be divided amongst theism and idealism. Therefore the epistemic status of theism is enhanced by the argument from reason, if the argument is successful in defeating naturalism.

Dualism persists in the science of mind

Here. 

A book entitled "A new kind of apologist"

Here. 

Relevance for the present campaign?

“The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility...According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

When I look at Trump, all I see is arrogance.

An AFR-related trilemma argument

From Manuel Alfonseca's blog. 

On the question of human freedom, whose reality is denied by deterministic philosophy, Brigitte Falkenburg proposes another trilemma, a little different, because in this case any two of the three alternatives can be true, but then the third must be false. This is her trilemma:

1. Physical causality is closed. In other words, physics is deterministic. Every physical phenomenon has been caused by other physical phenomena.
2. Mental phenomena are different from physical phenomena. In other words, the mind is not controlled by physical phenomena. In a previous post I mentioned the four different answers given by philosophers to the mind problem. This assertion would correspond to the dualist approach, or perhaps to emergent monism.
3. We can cause physical phenomena with our minds. That is, final causality is possible. Our intentions (mental phenomena) can have physical consequences (such as pressing a button).

Trump gets evangelical support, from nominal evangelicals

Here. 

Does atheism increase interest in science?

No. 

Time Travel?

A discussion of that here. 

David Marshall's case against Trump

Here. 

Sean McDowell as an atheist impersonator

I think it is good for people to be able to take a certain amount of time and present oneself as if one were someone who believes the opposite of what one actually does. Sean McDowell, Josh's son, does that here. 

Three methodological naturalisms

When people talk about methodological naturalism, what do they mean, exactly? I have noticed three different interpretations of it in reading John Lennox's  God's Undertaker. The first comes from Christian de Duve: 

"Scientific enquiry rests upon the notion that all manifestations in the universe are explainable in natural terms, without supernatural intervention. Strictly speaking, this notion is not an a priori philosophical stand or profession of belief. It is a postulate, a working hypothesis that we should be prepared to abandon if faced with facts that defy every attempt at rational explanation. Many scientists, however, do not bother to make this distinction, tacitly extrapolating from hypothesis to affirmation. They are perfectly happy with the explanations provided by science. Like Laplace, they have no need for the 'God hypothesis' and equate the scientific attitude with agnosticism, if not with outright atheism. "

Life Evolving, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 p. 284.

This version of methodological naturalism is provisional in nature. Lennox notices that de Duve conflates rational explanation with naturalistic explanations, to which he objects. However, for him, science has to try to stay within naturalism, but it is at least possible that it could be given up should the evidence point strongly toward the supernatural. Contrast this with Richard Lewontin: 

‘Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. 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 absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen.

Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons (review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, 1997), The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997. 

If de Duve is an evidentialist naturalist, Lewontin is a presuppositionalist naturalist. Further, his methdological naturalism is absolute, not provisional. We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. We can call this absolutist methodological naturalism. 

Finally, Methodological Naturalism can be not an absolute principle, but only a defining principle for the sciences. The Catholic philosopher of science Ernan McMullin writes: 

But, of course, methodological naturalism does not restrict our study of nature; it just lays down which sort of study qualifies as scientific. If someone wants to pursue another approach to nature--and there are many others--the methodological naturalist has no reason to object. Scientists have to proceed in this way; the methodology of natural science gives no purchase on the claim that a particular event or type of event is to be explained by invoking God's creative action directly.
 "Plantinga's Defense of Special Creation," Christian Scholar's Review [Sept. 1991], p. 57.

This is echoed in the Jones ruling. 

Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. …we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science…ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation…While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science…This rigorous attachment to ‘natural’ explanations is an essential attribute to science by definition and by convention.

So, if you are recommending methodological naturalism, which one are you recommending? 

What if the evidence were different?

A redated post.

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen Roberts

Suppose archaeologists were to start saying that they had found the Book of Mormon peoples. We translate a bunch of old Native American documents, and, lo and behold, those Native American documents had names, places, magistrates, and other leaders that  corresponded precisely to accounts in the Book of Mormon. Lehi, Nephi, and the rest of them are all there in the Native American documents. Suppose parts of the book of Mormon were confirmed as strongly as, say, oh, say, the New Testament.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1648...

Suppose, further, that DNA evidence matched Native Americans to Jews to such an extent that this disconfirmation of the Book of Mormon would not exist. If the evidence looked like that, it would radically alter my assessment of Mormonism. I couldn't rule out shopping for sacred underwear if I were to discover that.

These are two major problems I see with Mormonism, and no, Christianity doesn't have those problems. So, sorry,Roberts is wrong. 

Reply to Cal Metzger

Cal Metzger: VR: "It depends on what kind of explanation is needed for the factual information."

It would seem to me that the kind of explanation needed is that the stories were compiled by men who lived in the time and setting in which they wrote. I think that explains things best.

VR: "In the case of the Book of Acts, the author had extensive knowledge of lots and lots of facts concerning locations all over the Empire, from Jerusalem to Rome."

So what? Wouldn't we expect that from literate men who lived in the time and setting in which they wrote? This seems like one of the the most mundane "problems" I can imagine.

VR: "Putting that much accurate detail in an ancient document which also contains a significant amount of supernatural content cries out for explanation."

I can imagine few things less surprising in a document written by religious proselytizers. Truly, this is one of the least remarkable features of the NT.

VR: "The technique of the modern realistic historical novel was not known in that time."

By this logic no literary genre could ever emerge. Cervantes couldn't have written the first novel because the first novel wasn't known at that time. Capote couldn't have written In Cold Blood because non-fiction novels weren't known at that time. Etc.

Also, if you were going to be consistent you should find this equally persuasive (from a Muslim who believes in his book the same way you believe in yours): "When we study the Quran even superficially from the viewpoint of its wording, styles, and meaning, we will certainly conclude that it is completely different from all the other books in the world. So, in rank and worth it is either below all of them-even Satan cannot claim this, nor does he conceive of it-or above them. Since it is above all of them, it must be the Word of God."

Notice how the above paragraph relies on 1) fuzzy and arbitrary standards ("completely different") and 2) flights of logic ("Since it is above all of them, it must be the Word of God.")

Then notice how your words above rely on 1) fuzzy and arbitrary standards ("the amount of factual data") and 2) flights of logic ("It is evidence, and I am tempted to say, it's extraordinary evidence.")

And that is why you are inconsistent, and that is what the OTF reveals. Because the method, the process, the way that you say you are selecting and evaluating your evidence, if applied consistently, should compel you to accept other, competing religious claims (like the common argument for the divine writing of the Koran, based on it's literary qualities and concordance with mundane facts known to the writers of the time).

I assume that you're being honest, and that you can't see how obvious the above is to those of us who see how all religions are similar. So your situation is like that of a man who has a sign pinned to his back. How many people have to point out that you have a sign pinned to your back, and describe it to you in the same, exact detail whenever you ask, in order for you to accept that you have a sign pinned to your back?

VR: I think you are the one who is missing the point. Look once again the the detailed list posted by Jayman, based on Colin Hemer, and simply ask yourself how he could have known all he needed to know in order to write Acts.

Suppose I were to write a story about getting arrested in various countries. Suppose, careful investigation of police procedures in each country, which are varied, showed that for each country I knew exactly how police operated differently in each of those countries. Obviously I am going to be treated somewhat differently whether I am arrested in the New York City, in Mexico, in Boone County, KY, in Thailand, in Tokyo, or in Saigon. Today, I might learn about all these differences in police procedures in all these countries through library research. But how could someone get such information about getting arrested all over the Roman Empire? I can't think of any way of doing that except by, well, getting arrested all over the Roman Empire. It is a story of people who became convinced that they had come to know a world-changing truth. It starts with Peter standing in front of the Beautiful Gate and telling the PEOPLE WHO HAD JESUS KILLED that they guy they crucified was both Lord and Christ, to Paul's arrival in Rome, this is the story of people convinced that this was true and were prepared to put their lives at severe risk to advance the story.

Why should I believe the stories in the Book of Mormon? In spite of the admitted lack of evidence, ultimately the reason why you should believe it is because you feel it in your heart. Why believe the Qu'ran. Because it comes in the just the right form, in the perfect language of Arabic. Why does Luke say that we should accept his claims? Because he has carefully investigated it, and made a serious attempt to get things right.

1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

In short, he made a serious effort to be accurate, and he gets so much right because he, and other biblical writers, worked as hard as he possibly could at being accurate. No competing religious document is built on so much fact.

Recognizing the factual foundation of Christianity is not sufficient to show that Christianity is true. The facts in the foundation are not in themselves supernatural. It is certainly possible that the supernatural elements were got wrong even though so many natural facts were got right. However, even a skeptic should acknowledge:

1) The degree of the factual foundation for Christianity vastly exceeds the factual foundation of all competing religious claims.

2) The factual foundation of Christianity is something that is surprising and stands in need of explanation. Made up supernatural stories usually take off from reality pretty thoroughly, as in Philostratus' account of Apollonius of Tyana. Why didn't that happen in the case of Christ?

3) The reasons why someone might reject these other supernatural claims, namely the lack of a factual foundation, do not apply in the case of Christianity.

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen Roberts

Suppose archaeologists were to start saying that they had found the Book of Mormon peoples. We translate a bunch of old Native American documents, and, lo and behold, those Native American documents had names, places, magistrates, and other leaders that corresponded precisely to accounts in the Book of Mormon. Lehi, Nephi, and the rest of them are all there in the Native American documents. Suppose parts of the book of Mormon were confirmed as strongly as, say, oh, say, the New Testament.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1648...

Suppose, further, that DNA evidence matched Native Americans to Jews to such an extent that this disconfirmation of the Book of Mormon would not exist. If the evidence looked like that, it would radically alter my assessment of Mormonism. I couldn't rule out shopping for sacred underwear if I were to discover that.

These are two major problems I see with Mormonism, and no, Christianity doesn't have those problems. So, sorry,Roberts is wrong. I think it's just plain delusional to think there are no relevant differences between Christianity and other religions.

A critique of pro-gay biblical exegesis

By Daniel Wallace. 

The degree of factual data in Acts cries out for explanation

A lot depends on what kind of explanation is needed for the factual information. In the case of the Book of Acts, the author had extensive knowledge of lots and lots of facts concerning locations all over the Empire, from Jerusalem to Rome. Putting that much accurate detail in an ancient document which also contains a significant amount of supernatural content cries out for explanation. The technique of the modern realistic historical novel was not known in that time. Myths normally had very little factual content. Not none, but normally not a whole lot.

Factual info about Heaven's gate isn't surprising. On the assumption that the central claims of the Book of Acts are made up, the amount of factual data in Acts is amazing. It is evidence, and I am tempted to say, it's extraordinary evidence.

Positive prayer research?

Here. 

Archaeological Support for Christian claims: Indirect but significant

                The argument from archaeology in support of the claims of Christianity is rather indirect, but still significant. The Book of Acts frequently has the early Christian leaders being brought up before various government potentates, and in many, many, cases, archaeology has confirmed that the city in question had the exact governmental structure that Acts said that it does.

                Now think about this for a moment. I live in the metropolitan Phoenix area, in the city of Glendale. There are five people on our city council, there are, I think nine on Phoenix’s council, but as for Tempe, Mesa, Scottsdale, Peoria, Avondale, Goodyear, and Tolleson I have no idea. I could Google these city’s websites to find out how their governments are run, but the author of Acts didn’t have the Internet. Yet, his reports of what kind of governmental structures existed in lots of cities was invariably accurate. His account of what would have happened on board ship fits with what a land-dwelling person would say about a sea voyage that encountered the kinds of problems they had.

                So how did he know this stuff? I think the sensible explanation was that he was there. There are actually passages in which the author of Acts uses the word “we”, and some scholars think he actually means “we.” Others do not, but I think his knowledge of what went on had to have been either first-hand or nearly so.

                And yet these passages in Acts are just as miracle-laden as the Gospels. Miracle claims were made concerning Paul using his handkerchief to raise the sleeping Eutychus who fell out of a window. What you have are people with lots of access to the information about what happened, who don’t have much motive to lie about it that I can see, (they were putting their lives at risk by continuing to follow someone who the powers that be had put to death) saying that many miracles happened.

                With the story of Apollonius of Tyana, there is no realistic style. Some of the incidents in there are set in Nineveh, which had been destroyed seven centuries before. The Book of Mormon would cause us to expect all sorts of archaeological artifacts from the Book of Mormon peoples near the Hill of Cumorah, which are simply not there. We should expect a close DNA connection between American Indians and Jews, not Orientals, but the reverse is true. With these two cases, when I ask the question “If the story’s not true, then what did happen” seems easy. With the Christian story, the founding of Christianity has to be very puzzling to anyone who wants to reject the Christian story itself. All the theories look very problematic. Now if our methodological naturalism is strong enough we might say “Well, anything but a miracle, so maybe we just have to say we don’t know what happened.” But if we are prepared to give miracles a chance, then I think the Christian account of what happened is very plausible. 

F. F. Bruce's The New Testament Documents Are they Reliable

A classic which provides a lot of the archaeological evidence in support of the New Testament. Here. 

Hempel's Dilemma and the Via Negativa

Hempel's dilemma concerns how we define the physical. If you define the physical in terms of current physics, then anything that is not a part of present physics becomes non-physical. If one the other hand, if future physics is needed to give an account of the physical, then future physics might include anything, including God, and calling something physical doesn't exclude anything, and so it doesn't mean anything.

One might object that any formulation of physicalism which utilizes the theory-based conception will be either trivial or false. Carl Hempel (cf. Hempel 1969, see also Crane and Mellor 1990) provided a classic formulation of this problem: if physicalism is defined via reference to contemporary physics, then it is false — after all, who thinks that contemporary physics is complete? — but if physicalism is defined via reference to a future or ideal physics, then it is trivial — after all, who can predict what a future physics contains? Perhaps, for example, it contains even mental items. The conclusion of the dilemma is that one has no clear concept of a physical property, or at least no concept that is clear enough to do the job that philosophers of mind want the physical to play.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entr...

Attempt to solve this problem usually say that a physical property is a property that, at the most basic level, is not mental. If, at the basic level, the mental is there, then it's not physical.

The retail OTF

I actually have a my own version of the OTF, which I call the retail (as opposed to wholesale) version. What you do there is rather than have a outsider test for religious questions in general, what you do is you simply compare religions two by two, and adopt an "undecided" position between those two to start. So, let's do Christianity and Islam. Well, Christianity has archaeological support Islam doesn't, so Christianity wins that one. Mormonism? Same deal. Now, if you want atheism and Christianity to go up against one another, then I have the AFR and a bunch of other arguments which I think outweigh the case for atheism. I think actually deism is the hardest one, but if you make the OTF retail instead of wholesale, Christianity passes.

Apologetics and the public square

Even though I would call myself a Christian apologist, I think there is a prior necessity of maintaining an open public square where religious differences can be discussed in a civilized manner, and I oppose anything Christians might do that undermines that kind of open public square, even if it is helpful to the promotion of Christianity at least in the short run. And I have a profound intellectual sympathy with the many atheists who see the public square in the same way.