Jeffery Jay Lowder said...
Aside: I see that Steve Hays has responded to my article with one of his own, but his article only quotes the informal statement of the argument, not the formal statement. The answer to at least one, if not more, of his questions are explicitly discussed in the formal statement of the argument. It's unfortunate when critics of an argument have to resort to uncharitable interpretations, selective quotations, or both.
It’s unfortunate that Jeff can’t follow his own argument. Let’s take an example from the formal statement of his argument:
1. So many natural phenomena can be explained naturalistically, i.e., without appeal to supernatural agency.2. The history of science contains numerous examples of naturalistic explanations replacing supernatural ones and no examples of supernatural explanations replacing naturalistic ones.
N: metaphysical naturalism: the hypothesis that the universe is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.
This fails to differentiate natural causes from naturalistic explanations. As he himself defines his own terminology, a “naturalistic” explanation presumes the universe to be a closed system, viz. nothing that’s not a part of the natural world affects it.
However, when science assigns natural causes to phenomena in the nature world, that’s hardly synonymous with a “naturalistic” explanation–for natural causes are fully consonant with a Christian doctrine of divine providence. Jeff keeps iterating the same basic mistake.
Moreover, selective quotation is perfectly adequate in this case. If his argument is vitiated by a fallacy of equivocation, then I don’t need to engage his entire argument to invalidate his argument.
From the site.
ReplyDeleteBut if you are stipulating that by natural you mean 'not supernatural' that is fine.
Someone should really tell BDK that that is an utterly contentless description of "naturalism".
Not to mention: what exactly counts as "natural" or "supernatural"? Since the history of science isn't "natural explanations replacing supernatural" but "explanations that would have been considered supernatural now being considered natural due to a change of definition".
And that also gets into the problem of defining just what is 'natural' or 'supernatural'. See the first line of the entry for Naturalism on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to see just the beginning of that problem. See the history of scientific explanations - and how what were considered supernatural explanations eventually came to be considered natural (action at a distance, for example) not because 'it was really discovered to be natural' but 'we casually redefined what we call natural and supernatural'.
A few more complications.
* Wouldn't 'natural phenomena' have to be explained 'naturalistically'? That's like talking about mathematical questions having mathematical answers: you've defined what kind of topic they are to begin with.
* The "history of science" would, by popular standards (certainly naturalistic standards), necessarily contain only naturalistic explanations, precisely because any explanation that isn't "natural" is automatically excluded from science.
* As you noted, "theism" does not entail that "supernatural explanations" (and remember, just what 'natural' and 'supernatural' is hasn't even been defined here, and is problematic to define - just ask Richard Carrier) will be rife in the world, certainly not necessarily rife in the limited manner of inquiry that comprises science.