Tag Archives: science

Philosophy

Does This New Argument for Scientism Work?

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It’s been a while since we’ve beat up scientism on the blog, so I figured we were due again. It’s an “ism” that just keeps rearing its head over and over and thus needs to be slapped around over and over. Philosopher Edward Feser, in one of his blog posts, reviews yet  another version of the argument for scientism that he then critiques. Here is the argument:

  1. The predictive power and technological applications of science are unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.
  2. So science is a reliable source of knowledge.
  3. Science has undermined beliefs derived from other purported sources of knowledge, such as common sense.
  4. So science has shown that these other purported sources of knowledge are unreliable.
  5. The range of subjects science investigates is vast.
  6. So the number of purported sources of knowledge that science has shown to be unreliable is vast.
  7. So what science reveals to us is probably all that is real.

Feser grants premise 1 and 2, but thinks that premise 3 is not sustainable (in the post he explains why). However, in order to move the critique along, he grants, for the sake of argument, premise 3, and then proceeds to look at premises 4-7.

[P]remise (3) simply doesn’t give us good reason to believe step (4).  To see why not, suppose we replace “science” with “visual experience” in these two steps of the argument.  Visual experience has of course very often undermined beliefs derived from other sources of knowledge.  For example, it often tells us that the person we thought we heard come in the room was really someone else, or that when we thought we were feeling a pillow next to us it was really a cat.

Does that mean that visual experience has shown that auditory experience and tactile experience are unreliable sources of knowledge?  Of course not.  To do that, it would have to have shown that auditory experience and tactical experience are not just often wrong but wrong on a massive scale and with respect to a very wide variety of subjects.  And it has done no such thing.  But neither has science shown any such thing with respect to common sense.  Hence (3) is not a good reason to conclude to (4).

But do premises 4 and 5 support premise 6? Not really.

(4) and (5) also don’t give us good reason to believe (6).  Suppose we label the range of subjects science covers with letters, from A, B, C, D, and so on all the way to Z.  Even if science really did show that other purported sources of knowledge were unreliable with respect to domains A and B (say), it obviously wouldn’t follow that there were no reliable sources of knowledge other than science with respect to domains C through Z.

Feser, referring to his book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Editiones Scholasticae), summarizes the case against scientism:

In any event, a theme that is developed at length throughout my book is that there are absolute limits in principle to the range of beliefs that science could undermine, and these are precisely the sorts of beliefs with which metaphysics is concerned.  The book aims in part to set out (some of) the notions that any possible empirical science must presuppose, and thus cannot coherently call into question.

Or put another way, science is built on a foundation of mathematics, logic, reliability of the senses, truth-telling, language, uniformity of nature, and so on. Without that foundation, science crumbles to the ground in a heap of debris.

Philosophy

Why Do Science and Reason Transcend the Material World?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

We live in an era where science and reason are highly valued, but at the same time many intellectuals doubt the existence of anything but matter and energy. Philosophers, such as Thomas Nagel, have pointed out the  built-in contradiction of the worldview that says only physical matter exists, and that reason and science tell us that.

Thomist Joseph Owens provides a useful explanation, from metaphysics, of why science and reason require more than the existence of matter. Owens first recalls the amazing progress of human science and reason:

The freedom from limitations to a particular space and a particular time makes possible the astounding progress of human knowledge through the arts and sciences. Knowledge gained in one piece of research or one experiment is communicated to thousands of other minds and is handed down to succeeding generations. The scientific reasoning of one man becomes the common property of all who pursue the science from one generation to the other. The enormous body of knowledge is not lost with the death of the individuals who so far have been bringing it into being. It is not limited to the conditions of individuation and change, conditions inevitably imposed by matter.

What Owens is saying is that matter is necessarily characterized by individuation and change. If this is the case, then how are the universal and fixed truths of science and reason discovered or communicated?

Scientific progress, accordingly, requires that the intellects through which it takes place function in a way that is independent of the strictly material principle in the knowing subjects. Even the very process of reasoning itself could not take place without this independence from material limitation.

In deductive reasoning, the argument features a major term, minor term, and middle term. How does this process work if everything is material?

The universality that allows the major notion to include the middle one, and the middle to include the minor, would be impossible for any operation that was determined to individual conditions. The inclusion of one term in the other, moreover, is an inclusion in being; for instance “A man is an animal.” If the object “animal” were individuated, it could not share the one being any more than Khrushchev could be Kennedy.

Likewise, in passing from one judgment to another in the process of reasoning, the notions have to remain the same. If they were liable to change, demonstration would be impossible. What was established in the predicate of one judgment could be changed when carried over to function as subject in the next combination.

But it’s not just deductive reasoning that requires the transcendence of the material. Owens claims something much more basic is at stake: communication itself.

Communication in speech, further, is based upon this same immunity to change and transcendence of individuating dimensions in the intelligible objects. Culture and civilization, accordingly, provide ample evidence of the human intellects functioning in ways that break through the limitations of matter.

If you are a materialist, someone who believes that all that exists is matter, then your worldview completely undercuts science, reason, and even communication. You need to add some beef to your ontologically thin soup.

Philosophy, Science and God

Are Scientists Superhuman?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Those who identify “good science” with the current mainstream practitioners of institutional science seem to think so. Professor of biology Austin L. Hughes, however, sees serious problems with the adulation of scientists in his essay, “The Folly of Scientism.” Hughes points to the core issue with this line of thinking:

The fundamental problem raised by the identification of “good science” with “institutional science” is that it assumes the practitioners of science to be inherently exempt, at least in the long term, from the corrupting influences that affect all other human practices and institutions. Ladyman, Ross, and Spurrett explicitly state that most human institutions, including “governments, political parties, churches, firms, NGOs, ethnic associations, families…are hardly epistemically reliable at all.” However, “our grounding assumption is that the specific institutional processes of science have inductively established peculiar epistemic reliability.”

Is this correct, that scientific institutions have escaped the weaknesses of humankind that plague other human institutions? Hughes strongly disagrees:

This assumption is at best naïve and at worst dangerous. If any human institution is held to be exempt from the petty, self-serving, and corrupting motivations that plague us all, the result will almost inevitably be the creation of a priestly caste demanding adulation and required to answer to no one but itself.

Hughes moves on to accuse philosophers who have indulged in scientist worship:

It is something approaching this adulation that seems to underlie the abdication of the philosophers and the rise of the scientists as the authorities of our age on all intellectual questions. Reading the work of Quine, Rudolf Carnap, and other philosophers of the positivist tradition, as well as their more recent successors, one is struck by the aura of hero-worship accorded to science and scientists.

In spite of their idealization of science, the philosophers of this school show surprisingly little interest in science itself — that is, in the results of scientific inquiry and their potential philosophical implications. As a biologist, I must admit to finding Quine’s constant invocation of “nerve-endings” as an all-purpose explanation of human behavior to be embarrassingly simplistic. Especially given Quine’s intellectual commitment to behaviorism, it is surprising yet characteristic that he had little apparent interest in the actual mechanisms by which the nervous system functions.

Does Hughes not believe that the scientific method is reliable? Is he anti-science? Not at all. Read on.

Ross, Ladyman, and Spurrett may be right to assume that science possesses a “peculiar epistemic reliability” that is lacking in other forms of inquiry. But they have taken the strange step of identifying that reliability with the institutions and practitioners of science, rather than with any particular rational, empirical, or methodological criterion that scientists are bound (but often fail) to uphold.

Thus a (largely justifiable) admiration for the work of scientists has led to a peculiar, unjustified role for scientists themselves — so that, increasingly, what is believed by scientists and the public to be “scientific” is simply any claim that is upheld by many scientists, or that is based on language and ideas that sound sufficiently similar to scientific theories.

Hughes is a keen observer of our current culture. Listen to what he is saying: scientists have become the new priests of our time. Whatever comes out of their mouths, we swallow without question. Most of us don’t really understand what they are saying, or whether what they are saying makes any sense. We just parrot what we hear, because, after all, they are scientists, and they must be right.

Philosophy, Truth

Is Science Dependent on Other Disciplines?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The use of the scientific method as a way of learning about the natural world has yielded fantastic technologies and discoveries over the last few hundred years.  Nobody can doubt the power of the scientific method – collecting data, developing hypotheses about that data, and then testing those hypotheses with empirical experimentation.

In fact, some people are so enamored of the scientific method that they declare that this is the only way we can gain true knowledge about anything.  Philosopher J. P. Moreland was once told by a man finishing his doctorate in physics that “science is the only discipline that is rational and true.  Everything else is a matter of mere belief and opinion. . . . if something cannot be quantified or tested by the scientific method, . . . it cannot be true or rational.”

Is this true?  Does science stand on its own without any support?  Is it the only way to know anything?

The answer, my friends, is an unequivocal no.

Moreland explains that the statement “only what can be known by science or quantified and empirically tested is rational and true” is self-refuting.  Why?  Because this statement itself is not a statement of science but a statement of philosophy about science.  In other words, at least one philosophical statement must be true for science to even get started.  The aims, methodologies, and presuppositions of science must be upheld by disciplines other than science, for science cannot pull itself up by its own bootstraps.  Science is like the second story of a house; it cannot stand without the first story and the foundation underneath.

What are these things underneath science, supporting it?  Moreland provides several examples.

First, “one must hold that the senses are reliable and give accurate information about a mind-independent physical world.”  This is a philosophical position and there are some in academia who would deny its truth.  The scientist must take this philosophical statement to be true before he can start doing science.

Second, “science must assume that the mind is rational and that the universe is rational in such a way that the mind can know it.  Science must assume some uniformity of nature to justify induction (i.e., science must assume that one can legitimately infer from the past to the future and from the examined cases to unexamined ones of the same kind).”  For example, just because hydrogen and oxygen have formed water in the past, why should we believe it will continue to happen in the future?  Again, this is a philosophical presupposition of science.  In fact, the assumption that the universe is rational such that we can know it is a big surprise if you are a naturalist who denies the existence of a rational creator.

Third, science assumes that “the laws of logic are true, that numbers exist, . . . that language has meaning, . . . that truth exists and involves some sort of correspondence between theories and the world.”  None of these things are demonstrated by science.  They must all be true for science to work in the first place.

Fourth, “science assumes certain moral, epistemic, and methodological values.  Regarding moral values, science assumes that experiments should be reported honestly and that truth-telling is a moral virtue.  Regarding epistemic virtues, science assumes that theories ought to be simple, accurate, predictively successful, and so forth.  Regarding methodological values, science often values such things as disinterestedness, organized skepticism, and procedural rules.”

Fifth, and finally, boundary conditions are not accounted for by science.  “The mass of a proton, the rate of expansion of the big bang, the existence of the big bang itself – in short all cases of genuine brute givens not subsumable under higher laws – are boundary conditions for science.  They are givens which cannot be accounted for by science.”

The idea that science is the only way to find truth is obviously false.  Science rests on piles of presuppositions and assumptions that science-worshipers seem to forget.  Why is this important?  Because there is a whole world of metaphysics, ethics, logic, mathematics, and linguistics that must be studied and understood.  As soon as these things are pushed aside as irrelevant, and forgotten, science dies.

Existence of God, Philosophy, Science and God

Can the Mind Be Explained by Physics?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some naturalists are betting on it, because ultimately physical laws, in their worldview, have to explain everything.  For the naturalist, there is nothing but physical reality which is governed by physical laws.  That being the case, everything, including the human mind, must be reduced to the purely physical and mechanistic.

Philosophers have pointed out serious problems with this attempt to reduce the mind to physics.  In a fascinating discussion of the origins of modern science, philosopher Richard Swinburne explains that mental states have been purposefully excluded by scientists because mental states were not seen as anything that science could measure or investigate.  Here is Swinburne:

Thermodynamics was conceived with the laws of temperature exchange; and temperature was supposed to be a property inherent in an object.  The felt hotness of a hot body is indeed qualitatively distinct from particle velocities and collisions.  The reduction was achieved by distinguishing between the underlying cause of the hotness (the motion of the molecules) and the sensations which the motion of molecules cause in observers. . . .  But this reduction has been achieved at the price of separating off the [sensation] from its causes, and only explaining the latter.  All reduction from one science to another dealing with apparently very disparate properties has been achieved by this device of denying that the apparent properties (i.e., the ‘secondary qualities’ of colour, heat, sound, taste, etc.) with which one science dealt belonged to the physical world at all.  It siphoned them off to the world of the mental.

But then, when you come to face the problem of the sensations themselves, you cannot do this.  If you are to explain the sensations themselves, you cannot distinguish between them and their underlying causes and only explain the latter.  In fact the enormous success of science in producing an integrated physico-chemistry has been achieved at the expense of separating off from the physical world colours, smells, and tastes, and regarding them as purely private sensory phenomena.  The very success of science in achieving its vast integrations in physics and chemistry is the very thing which has made apparently impossible any final success in integrating the world of mind into the world of physics.

Swinburne’s point is profound.  Modern science was never meant to deal with the mind and its mental states.  Not only that, but its very avoidance of explaining the mind is what has made it so successful.  Naturalists who demand that science explain the mind are asking it to do the impossible.  Maybe the mind is not reducible to physical laws.  Maybe it’s just the opposite – physical laws are ultimately reducible to The Mind.

Intelligent Design, Philosophy

How Can We Tell the Difference Between Real Science and Pseudo-Science?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common charges that intelligent design (ID) opponents hurl at ID theorists is that ID is not real science.  They will say that a real scientific theory must be testable against the empirical world, must make predictions, must be falsifiable, must be explanatory by reference to natural law, and so forth.  They point to ID and say that it doesn’t meet all of these criteria, and therefore ID must not be science.

But is that true?  Are there really criteria that define whether something is science or not science?  Well, if you ask philosophers of science (the academic experts on this question), they will tell you that no such criteria exists.  Every attempt at formulating an ironclad set of criteria has ended up accidentally excluding what scientists consider to be legitimate scientific fields.  There is no set of agreed upon criteria for separating science from pseudo-science; it just doesn’t exist among philosophers of science.

According to philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, leading philosophers of science such as Larry Laudan, Philip Quinn, and Philip Kitcher have argued that the question of whether something is science or non-science is both “intractable and uninteresting.”  Meyer explains that “they and most other philosophers of science have increasingly realized that the real issue is not whether a theory is ‘scientific’ according to some abstract definition, but whether a theory is true, or supported by the evidence.”

That is the key.  Theories should not be rejected or accepted with definitions of what is or is not science, but with the evidence that supports the theory.  This concept seems so simple and obvious, but the attempt at demarcating between science and non-science is a favorite technique of ID opponents.  By calling ID non-scientific, opponents never have to look at the evidence.  How convenient!  Call it pseudo-science and move on, without ever stopping to examine the evidence or evaluate the arguments offered by ID proponents.

Meyer quotes one philosopher of science, Martin Eger, who concludes, “Demarcation arguments have collapsed.  Philosophers of science don’t hold them anymore.  They may still enjoy acceptance in the popular world, but that’s a different world.”  Indeed it is.

For further reading on this issue, see this article by Stephen Meyer.

Atheism, Evolution, Existence of God, Intelligent Design, Miracles, Skeptics

Can Science Test for the Supernatural?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Christians believe that a supernatural being can be reasoned to by working backward from effect to cause.  We observe ourselves and we observe the world around us (those are the effects) and we reason that a supernatural cause is the best explanation for the things we observe.  This is how almost all arguments for God’s existence work.

Science can shed additional light on what we observe in the world around us, so in that sense science can be employed in arguments for God’s existence.  For example, science seems to have shown that the universe had a beginning and that the physical laws and constants that govern the universe are fine tuned for advanced life.  Both of these scientific finds are often used in arguments for God’s existence.

Those who hold a naturalistic worldview (the natural world is all that exists) seem to be divided on this subject.  Some naturalists deny that science can ever be used to test the existence of God and others affirm that science can test for the supernatural and that those tests have all turned out negative.  Still others, like evolutionary scientist Donald Prothero, appear to hold both views at the same time.  Consider the quotes below from Prothero’s book Evolution.

Prothero first suggests that scientists “cannot consider supernatural events in their hypotheses.”  Why? Because “once you introduce the supernatural to a scientific hypothesis, there is no way to falsify or test it.”  He adds that scientists are not allowed to consider God or miracles (i.e., the supernatural) because they are “completely untestable and outside the realm of science.”  All right, it seems that Prothero is firmly in the camp of those who say that science cannot say anything about the supernatural.

But in the very next paragraph in his book, he completely reverses course.  Prothero explains, “In fact, there have been many scientific tests of supernatural and paranormal explanations of things, including parapsychology, ESP, divination, prophecy, and astrology.  All of these non-scientific ideas have been falsified when subjected to the scrutiny of scientific investigation. . . . Every time the supernatural has been investigated by scientific methods, it has failed the test.”

Huh??  Is your head spinning like mine?  Prothero first claims that science cannot test the supernatural and then he says that science has tested the supernatural.  Which is it?  It can’t be both.

I am not pointing this out to poke fun at Prothero, but because I see some skeptics making this mistake over and over again.  They want to desperately cling to the claim that science can say nothing about the existence of God (so that they can remove science as a tool in the Christian’s evidential toolbox), but they also desperately want to tell people how science has shown that God doesn’t exist (they retain science as a tool for skeptics to nullify the supernatural).  Unfortunately, holding both of these positions at the same time is flatly contradictory.  The skeptic must choose one or the other. Either science can test for the supernatural or it cannot.

I have seen this same mistake made in the intelligent design/evolution debate.  Evolutionists will claim that Michael Behe’s idea of irreducible complexity is non-scientific or scientifically untestable, but these same evolutionists will then produce scientific research they claim scientifically disproves irreducible complexity!  If it’s not scientifically testable, then how are they producing research which scientifically disproves it?

If you’re a Christian talking to a scientific skeptic, watch out for this skeptical two-step.  If you’re a scientific skeptic or naturalist, make up your mind which it is, because you are really confusing me.

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Bible Interpretation, Creation, Essential Beliefs, Evolution, Human Nature, Theology

What Do God and Science Have to Do with Each Other?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Ever since I became an evangelical believer in Christ, about 12 years ago, I have noticed that there is uneasiness among my evangelical brothers and sisters with certain fields of science.  This uneasiness, I quickly learned, has much to do with the age of the universe and the origins of mankind.  There are other areas, as well, but those are the two primary areas of dispute.

Because of the perceived hostility of science toward basic beliefs of Christianity, some evangelicals have forsaken science altogether.  So what I want to address today is what science and God have to do with each other.

Christians have long recognized that there are two ways that God communicates with mankind: special revelation and general revelation.

Special revelation is what is communicated about God through the incarnation of Christ and the Bible.

General revelation is what is communicated about God through the natural world, including physical nature, human nature, and human history.

Science offers a method for observing and then explaining facts about the natural world, so science is the study of God’s general revelation.  Christians that forsake science are, in effect, dismissing God’s general revelation.

Why?  Because they feel that the findings of science contradict the teachings of Scripture (special revelation).

But the answer is not to throw out one of God’s revelations.  In cases where general and special revelation overlap, we must examine our fallible interpretation of Scripture and compare it to our fallible interpretation of scientific findings.

You see, the Bible is infallible, but our interpretation of it is not.  Likewise, God’s revelation about himself in nature is infallible and will never contradict his revelation in Scripture.  But our interpretation of general revelation is not infallible.

What do we do when our fallible interpretation of science conflicts with our fallible interpretation of the Bible?  We seek the interpretation that seems more certain and we go with that.  If the special revelation interpretation seems more certain than the general revelation interpretation, then we go with special revelation.  If the general revelation interpretation seems more certain than the special revelation interpretation, then we go with general revelation.  We can’t just assume one is always right and the other always wrong.  That will lead to error.

Notice that this method of seeking the right interpretation requires the Christian to study diligently the Scriptures and the findings of science.  We cannot just study the Bible, but we must also dig into science if we want any hope of finding the answers to these tough questions where science and the Bible seem to conflict.

Fortunately, these perceived areas of conflict are few, and usually do not have to do with essential doctrines of Christianity.  However, they are still important and we owe it to God to honestly and earnestly seek the answers.

Atheism, Philosophy, Religion

Can Science Answer the Most Important Questions of Life?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Have you ever noticed that the most important questions in life cannot be conclusively answered by the scientific method of empirical observation and experimentation?

We can use science to study the weather, to create wireless communication, to study the respiratory systems of whales, to better see the stars, to learn about soil erosion, to build skyscrapers, and to fly aircraft.

All of these subjects yield themselves to scientific investigation such that mankind can eventually come to know these areas in extraordinary detail and precision.  We just continue collecting data, analyzing data, and testing hypotheses – over and over again until we finally understand.

These subjects are all wonderful, in and of themselves, but they aren’t what’s truly important.  What about God, love, friendship, morality, heaven and hell, human consciousness, the meaning of life, the origin of the universe?  These are the questions that strike us in the middle of the night when a loved one is in the ICU at the hospital, or when we witness the birth of a child, or when we suffer financial ruin, or when we contemplate marrying the person we love, or when we just have some peace and quiet and can immerse ourselves in deep thought.

None of these questions ultimately lend themselves to the scientific method, but they are the most important questions.

My family loves the silly movie Nacho Libre.  In the movie, one of the characters is asked if he believes in God, and he answers, “I don’t believe in God.  I believe in science.”

It is fitting that the movie is a comedy because this response is truly comical.  The person who believes in only science is fundamentally punting on all the major questions of life.  They are saying, in effect, “We are going to limit ourselves to the lesser things of life, the things we can know with a high degree of scientific certainty.”

It’s comical, but it’s also sad.  What impoverished existence – cutting off oneself from the only things that ultimately matter.

Intelligent Design

Must Science Exclude Intelligence as a Cause?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

According to John Heininger, the answer is “no.”  What follows is an extended quotation from John, who submitted this as a comment to our blog.  His comment makes some great points in a succinct fashion about the nature of science, especially with respect to the ruling of the Dover trial in 2005.

Methodological Naturalism: The Severing of Science.

In recent decades there have been ideologically driven efforts by versed interests to sever science and remove it from its complete and proper context; on the mistaken notion that science must be solely about naturalistic material processes, to the exclusion of all else. This assertion is neither scientific nor realistic – and is unsustainable.

Firstly, naturalistic science falls well short of ever answering ultimate questions of origins and existence. A reality acknowledged even by hard core atheists, who, none-the-less, operate on the blind faith notion that naturalism and raw materialism will increasingly explain all of reality, to the point where nothing beyond the material world is ever necessary, including God.

The noted atheistic philosopher Jean Paul Sarte however highlighted the absurdity of this aspiration, and finally conceded that this hope could never be achieved. Said Sarte, “A finite point without an infinite reference point is meaningless and absurd.” He realized that because human knowledge would forever be finite and limited humanity would never ever be in a position to have the ultimate big picture. And science has discovered that the further we push back the frontiers of scientific knowledge the more unanswered questions we have.

This is not to say that we should not continue with increased effort to discover all we can about the natural world, and always seek “firstly” to explain the mysteries of nature and the universe in purely naturalistic terms, as the empirical and scientific science method does, and does well.

Science is about the facts. It’s about discovering truths about the natural world, entirely by natural laws and processes alone (Dover). However, this is only the “initial” part of what constitutes science and the scientific method, and utterly ignores the foundational realities on which all of science ultimately rests and operates.

The foundational truth about science and the natural world is that it cannot be ultimately explained by naturalistic laws or material processes alone. Every scientist knows that all of science ultimately rests entirely on phenomena that have absolutely no naturalistic explanation.

The Dover ID trial severed science, and turned science on its head. It was decreed at Dover that natural law and material processes alone must define what is science. This turned out to be ultimately loopy logic, as the gatekeeper itself, natural law, has no naturalistic explanation, and there is nothing to suggest this will ever change (Sarte). This is rather like appointing an unidentified alien to guard planet earth from all other unidentified aliens, particularly God.

None-the-less, this loopy logic was made both the measure, and the means of defining science. It was both inadequate and defective. While matter, energy and other natural phenomena are the principle focus of science, the scientific community has absolutely no idea of what matter and energy ultimately is, or how it came into existence. This is particularly true in regard to the origin and nature of the dependent universe itself.

A contingent dying universe that is running down towards head death and maximum entropy cannot explain itself. And there is absolutely no verifiable naturalistic explanation as to how our dependent cosmos came into being, or how a dead universe devoid of energy would ever wind itself up again to the initial state of minimum entropy, a state of maximum usable energy, information, and order.

Moreover, all of science is based on material and mathematical relationships. But no scientist has even the foggiest notion of how these material and mathematical relationships came into existence. Nor is there the foggiest notion of where the cosmological constants came from, naturalistically.

Secondly, central to science is the foundational acceptance that we live in a universe that clearly manifests regularity, predictability and mathematical order. A reality every scientist in every field automatically assumes in order to be able to do science. All scientists assume we live in a universe where reason and intelligence can be applied to science, and such a universe must of necessity clearly manifest intelligence, at every level.

Therefore, to argue that the ID concept – of the universe being intelligently designed by an intelligent cause – has no place in science or science education, is to deny the foundational reality on which every field of science and western technology ultimately operates, every day, and in every way.

Methodological naturalism severs science. It’s insistence that all of science and science education must be restricted exclusively to purely naturalistic explanations is to split science in two. And specifically excludes the principle phenomena and foundational principles on which all of science is founded. And this is exactly what happened at Dover – no intelligence allowed.

The unsustainable methodological naturalism now being imposed on science and science education must be challenged. It is nothing less than indoctrinating students on philosophical naturalism and atheism, which the highest court in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court, has ruled to be a religion, in the full sense of the word.