Jeff's Quixotic history of science

I’m going to comment on this post.

If there is a single theme unifying the history of science, it is that naturalistic explanations work.

i) One problem with this claim is Jeff’s equivocation of terms. For instance, a natural cause is not equivalent to a naturalistic explanation. A natural cause involves a created medium. That’s entirely consistent with a Christian doctrine of providence.

By contrast, “naturalistic” goes beyond natural causation to a worldview that excludes supernatural agency in principle.

ii) Put another way, what makes Jeff imagine that Christian theism is incompatible with science? How are natural causes out of character with divine providence?

The history of science contains numerous examples of naturalistic explanations replacing supernatural ones and no examples of supernatural explanations replacing naturalistic ones.

Of course, Jeff is dusting off the old warfare chestnut of John Draper and Andrew White. And there are several problems with that popular myth:

i) Mainstream Christian theology always made allowance for second causes. To take a classic formulation:

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established (WCF 3.1)

God, in His ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure (WCF 5.3)

Likewise, folks in Bible times knew that you usually had to plant seed, water the ground, and weed the garden, to have a crop. They knew that to make a baby, normally a man had to impregnate a woman. And even the Virgin Mary had to nurse baby Jesus. They could also see that rain came from clouds. And so on and so forth.

On the other hand, they also made allowance for the possibility of direct divine interaction. Both principles were always in play. One doesn’t replace the other.

ii) There are Christian physicians who pray for their patients, medicate their patients, and operate on their patients. They don’t exclude either natural or supernatural causes, as if these were contradictory principles.

iii) Intelligent design theorists like Behe and Dembski don’t think natural causes systematically replace supernatural causes. Lowder may disagree with them, but he can’t act as though Christians buy into his historical narrative.

iv) To take another example: M. Scott Peck was a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who treated two patients for demonic possession. Peck didn’t start out believing in demonic possession. His professional bias was to seek natural causes. His professional bias was “naturalistic.” He arrived at his demonic diagnosis in spite of his prior beliefs.

So here’s a reversal. A supernatural explanation replacing a natural or “naturalistic” explanation.

Cf. Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (Free Press, 2005)

Indeed, naturalistic explanations have been so successful that even most scientific theists concede that supernatural explanations are, in general, implausible, even on the assumption that theism is true.

What is Jeff’s evidence for that sweeping claim?

Such explanatory success is antecedently more likely on naturalism...

Why?

--which entails that all supernaturalistic explanations are false--than it is on theism.

How does he go from probability to necessity? How does he go from what’s (allegedly) “unlikely” to a logical entailment of falsity?

Thus the history of science is some evidence for naturalism and against theism.[1]

How does he go from “some evidence for naturalism” to entailing the falsify of theism?