This title is an incisive quote from our regular responder, Karl K. My personal and immediate response to this statement is, “Duh”. Naturalism, or the acceptance of the results and conclusions from the application of the Scientific Method, has created huge advances in the survival and comfort of all humanity. In the couple of centuries since the Enlightenment, more progress has been made toward that goal than in the previous 50 centuries under theistic ruling philosophies. There is great utility for society as a whole in following naturalistic views.
However, then Karl proceeds with the following non-sequitur:
Can I therefore assume that you would concede the point that if somebody has to die to solve some of the world’s problems it should be people like ERIK who preach religious dogma in a manner that offends you. In fact this would apply to anyone who says interpretive science needs to be knocked out of its prominent position in our secular society be they Christian, Muslim, Hindu, […]
Actually, evolutionary theories (one subset of naturalistic conclusions) prove that variety (a wide bell curve in every characteristic) is necessary to the long term survival of societies, as well as species. Only people with narrow world views advocate eliminating non-aggressive adversaries. Genocide is practiced by theists, not naturalists. Usually by theists of the newly-formed personality-cult sort as with Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. These cult leaders claim to be scientific to the world, yet the first thing they do is purge actual scientists and intellectuals, leaving a core of pseudo-scientific yes men to lead their institutions. They all refuted Darwin. Look how well that worked out for them.
It is a scientific necessity to keep around those who disagree, if only because they might be right despite all evidence currently available. Even if there is no God, maybe the belief itself has social utility. The basis of the scientific method still is adversarial in nature. Advances come when someone disproves currently accepted theories. But solidly disproved ideas that keep appearing as new insights by those who refuse to peruse the news of the views they refuse are not helpful.
The problem with the term “Utilitarian” is that it means different things to different people. To the Saved-by-Jesus crowd, it appears to mean selfish and without regard to society. It seems that many of the Faithful were raised with the odd idea that morality comes from carefully following ancient rules, rather than understanding the effects of ones own actions as a part of living society and its future. To rational atheists like myself, the morality of Utility is implicit. If an action provides for the greater good, then it is useful, has utility. If it also gains something for myself, then great! See Utilitarianism.
The growth of Utilitarian philosophy around the time our nation was founded led to things like our Bill of Rights. Read about Jeremy Bentham and James Mill and their Utilitarian ilk.
Science is not dominant because those in politically and socially powerful positions say so. It is dominant because those who follow its methods create such visible benefit that they are often elevated to positions of social or political authority. Read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin for the life of a true theist who gained in rank largely because of his diligent applications of the scientific method to everyday life. He believed in the guiding hand of a benevolent god, yet taught that “God helps he who helps himself”. Very utilitarian.
To knock the methodology of science off of its pedestal in a society would have the same effect now as it did when the Romans did it to Greece. It took a couple of generations to really feel the damage done, and then it was too late. Europe recovered from the loss about 2,000 years later. I don’t want that to happen to my own nation for purely pragmatic, Utilitarian reasons. I don’t want it to happen in other nations, because they try to share their anti-scientific enlightenment in non-utilitarian ways, as on 9/11/2001.
The capitalized Erik to whom Karl refers demonstrated repeatedly that he wears tight blinders to prevent any ideas from penetrating his preconceived conclusions. He was essentially banished from this discussion board for repeatedly violating posted policies after many warnings. He’d be welcome back if he would accept the paradigm of rational discussion of ideas, even though his views are antithetical to those held by several (but not all) of our regular authors.
Do we agree then that naturalism is a philosophy?
Again with the "science is the only thing that has ever contributed to human progress" mythology!
Instrumental reason, capitalism and Industrial Revolution been bery bery good to you but let's not pretend that it has led and continues to lead to the immiseration of millions of humans.
I couldn't disagree more with the Utilitarian "ends justify the means" philosophy. Human beings must never be used as a means to an end.
Your history of philosophy is also weak,or you would realize that Bentham was an enemy to the idea of natural or inalienable rights that motivated the Founders such as Jefferson. There's quite a body of scholarship that attributes the idea of "all men created equal" to the religious idea that all humans are created in the image and likeness of God. (Note to Karl: It is not necessary to believe that "god" "exists" to find this idea compelling.)
Yes, the powerful always appreciate new ways to make money and better weapons for themselves.
Yes, science can make you comfortable and stave off death, for a while. It does not help you deal with the inevitable suffering and death that life brings. It doesn't help you want to do the things you know you ought to do. In a word, it can't make you a better person or make a society based on selfishness and greed into a better society. Only the cultivation of virtue can do that.
Vicki writes:—"It doesn’t help you want to do the things you know you ought to do. In a word, it can’t make you a better person or make a society based on selfishness and greed into a better society. Only the cultivation of virtue can do that."
All by itself, no, but I would disagree insofar as science, which so powerfully demonstrates causal links between action and consequence, is the one concrete tool we have that actually makes people responsible. The old ways of throwing up ones hands and crying "It's a mystery!" or "we don't know why it's that way, we just have to suffer it!" fall in the glaring light of causal elucidation.
Not, I hasten to add, that it automatically does make people more responsible, but that it really does have the utility of taking away excuses.
As to equality, it has been biology and its steady progress as science that has removed every single argument of the race bigot to establish that idea as a quantifiable fact. It has torn down the facade of manifest destiny (as practiced by any group against any other group). It has been science that has destroyed the whole edifice of privilege based on "bloodlines" and given us a sound argument for doing away with assumptions of "natural" divisions of class.
(And before anyone raises the spectre of Hitler, let me hasten to add that his was a regime built on the ideas of bloodlines in contradiction to even then-current biology—Hitler was a techno-phile, and had no use for science other than as a way to get bigger toys. People are in error to claim that Hitler was an atheist—his regime was religious to its core, just not christian. He believed in destiny, occult manifestation, and the rituals of the Third Reich were nothing if not religious pageantry.)
I did not read in Dan's post that he believed science is the "only" thing that has ever contributed to human progress, but without its fruits that progress has in the past been the benefactor of those few who could afford to isolate themselves from a world they could not understand.
I never said that science is the only thing that has contributed to progress. It is the most spectacularly successful tool ever devised by the minds of man. But I also know that "Any toy, however intricate and complex, will be used by a small child as a hammer." Science is an intricate toy, and has often been misused. Especially by those who don't know what it is.
Science (careful documentation) leads to the conclusion that one can forecast the success of a culture by noting how it treats its poorest members, the slaves, the serfs, the homeless. Human dignity is necessary to a healthy culture. As long as this is part of your means, your ends are likely to go well. It is a narrow and short-term view of "ends" that leads to anti-social "means".
Note how Sir Benjamin Thompson, (Count, Riechsgraf, Baron von Rumford) handled the homeless of Munich. His ends were cheap military uniforms. His means were feeding, clothing, housing and educating a neglected class (men, women, and children) via scientific practices. Granted, it began with the means of incarceration. But compared to other 18th century practices, it was very polite.
Yes, Karl, naturalism is a philosophy. Science is a tool to separate wishful thinking and belief from solid understanding.
Is there inherent value in Naturalism or are the values of the wielder of naturalism the ones who actually dictate when and how it is applied?
"Human dignity is necessary to a healthy culture."
You're taking a value – your idea of a "healthy culture" – that has been shaped and developed by a multitude of complex cultural forces, and assuming that it is some kind of logical axiom. If you measure health by longevity, certainly there have been many civilizations that have built stable, long-lasting empires without even token acceptance of the idea of universal human dignity.
Mark says:
James Watson didn't get the memo I guess.
I agree with Jane Smiley and others that the novel has done more to advance the idea of human equality than scientific theories, by allowing a vicarious experience of the subjectivity of "others" who may be quite different from oneself.
Oh, by the way, has it escaped your attention that the refinement of ever more efficient techniques of providing a portion of the Earth's human population with a comfortable life has brought our species, along with most others, to the brink of extinction?
For me, I think science has helped to create and cultivate a sense of virtue more than any other force in my life. Science has helped to bring about terrible things, it is true- bombs and Tuskegee Syphilis experiments and deadly gasses- but it also imbued in me a strong sense of ethics. Because of all of the terrible things science has had a hand in doing, I had to learn a great deal about ethics before taking part in psychological research. I was struck profoundly by the notion of informing other people of the things to come, ensuring that no undue harm is caused, and justifying any hindrance with the promise of future help.
Science has the power to do great physical and emotional harm, and so it must be wielded with a slow and deliberate consideration. Perhaps it is only for science's past foibles that people like me now glean ethics from it. But by learning to think over everything I do in an ethical light, I feel I've become more "virtuous". I'm not sure whether science, or the modern culture of science, gets the credit, but I'm thankful for it either way.
Naturalism is not about morality, but about reality. People who believe in a completely natural universe get their morality from their society, not from that philosophy. Values are a human judgment, and nature doesn't make any special provisions for us.
I didn't ask if naturalism deals with morality. That's only one classification of what a value could be. Naturalists have morality of one sort or another that does shade their interpretations of their observations and calculations.
Preferential interpretations have a reason (within the individual) for why they are chosen.
I should have specified the question like this, is the scientific method devoid of values, or does the personal subjectivism of the scientist enter into his or her work?
Reality and truth are abstract human constructs that are not any where near the same thing as "real and true." Two different people or groups of people can look at the same observations, even scientific evidence, and come up with much different interpretations. To the naturalist the interpretation that is more correct is the one that agrees with their premises about life and existence, personal beliefs, morality and other values as well. Calculaltions devoid of personal values have very little significant meaning even to the scientist besides being able to say that the calculation probably does have some meaning.
Naturalists and creationists should be able to agree at some fundamental level about which scientific facts are real and true. It is when they postulate axiomatic meaning into extensions of that meaning based upon their philosophical worldviews that they diverge to different preferential and chosen views of personal reality and truth.
When asked about values in a philosophical context, I assumed the type of values that are subjective judgments about interactions based on ones moral foundation. This is as opposed to scientific values, that are measurements or relationships based on well resolved and proven math.
If you meant the latter, then yes, naturalism is all about values. Otherwise, I stand by my answer. You cannot have personal values without a specific moral framework.
If you know of a context of Values besides subjective personal judgment and objective measurement, please let me know. The definitions of Value all seem to fit one or the other.
Dan stated:
"When asked about values in a philosophical context, I assumed the type of values that are subjective judgments about interactions based on ones moral foundation. This is as opposed to scientific values, that are measurements or relationships based on well resolved and proven math.
If you meant the latter, then yes, naturalism is all about values. Otherwise, I stand by my answer. You cannot have personal values without a specific moral framework."
Karl Says: I repeat myself – Numbers and Calculations lack any serious ability to prove any model or theory until they are associated with some specific personally held value or worldeview. When attempting to establishs the meaning of the numbers and calculations, it is the individual scientist with their worldview (which is full of non-numerical values) that is either chosen consciously or unconsciously.
Naturalists claim the perogative to both make their observations and claim what they must mean. This is a philosophic system suportted by a mutual admiration society of circular reasoning and logical fallacy.
Dan says:
"If you know of a context of Values besides subjective personal judgment and objective measurement, please let me know. The definitions of Value all seem to fit one or the other."
I propose that there is very little that man calls knowledge that is one or the other as you believe. That's what gets people into all manner of the messes they find themselves in. People take a feeling, idea, observation. measurement, calculation, hypothesis, model, theory or what ever you want to call it, (I call is a philosophical position) and then they label it good or better than its antithesis which they call evil.
Sound familar to anyone. The human condition is such that it can not clearly separate objective facts and true statements from the reality and truth that they chose to believe in.
It doesn't matter what you firmly believe when you drop a rock. The rock will hit the ground at a predictable speed, unless the ground is moving away faster than the rock can fall, as in the case of the moon and other orbiting bodies. This was Newton's first breakthrough idea. This is the sort of thing that science can prove.
Science doesn't care what supernatural abilities or overseers one claims, nor what location on the good-to-evil spectrum one might attribute the falling rock. The rock will fall. It always has, and it is a good assumption that it always will (within the parameters defined by Newton, Maxwell, Bernoulli, Einstein, Hawking, etc.)
That future assumption is a matter of faith. One that people have always bet their lives on. Those who believe strongly enough, have deep enough faith, that they can experience an exception to the man-made rules of Pythagoras, Gauss, Newton, Galileo, Maxwell, Darwin, Avogadro, Heisenberg, Einstein, and so on often become eligible for Darwin Awards.
Columbus almost earned a belated Darwin by doubting Eratosthenes. He got lucky. Children of Christian Scientists are frequently eligible-by-proxy for doubting Pasteur and Darwin and other bases of modern medicine. Savvy Naturalists don't usually qualify for the award. Faith against scientific discoveries has no utility in society.
Science is primarily a process for separating what one believes from what really happens. That's it. The best scientists are regularly wrong; this is a given. But provably correct ideas prevail. Keeping track of the proofs of both the wrong and the right ideas is what enables progress. Re-testing all these ideas is part of normal scientific training. Whatever faith one comes from, they get the same answers when they actually look.
Why have all the "Scientific" Creationist organizations refrained from publishing for decades? Because they also get the same results when they run the experiments. But unlike actual science organizations, they don't publish their failures and then modify their hypotheses to match their results.
Nature doesn't care what you believe when you test her.
Karl said:
Naturalists don't label things good and evil. Failed and successful, perhaps. Useless and useful, for sure.
My philosophical position is that, if I drop a brick on my patio then it will fall to the pavement and make a sound, or on my foot and I'll make a sound. I believe in gravity, even though it is just a theory. If I didn't believe in gravity, I may have to tack on some supernatural explanation for why I had to scream shortly after I placed a brick on the air in front of me. Sin was a popular reason cited for why man was bound to the Earth. Those completely without sin could therefore bodily rise to heaven. Newton largely broke up that idea.
I also believe in Einstein's photoelectric effect, that explains how light from the sun eventually bounces off the brick and kicks electrons loose in my eye to let me see it. If I didn't believe in it, I believe that I would still be able to see, much as people did before Einstein explained how it worked. But neither the theory nor its "antithesis" (all the earlier theories?) hold values of Good or Evil. Unless you believe in the Evil Eye theory from back when everyone knew that rays emanating from your eyes is how you saw. Newton also shot that one down, but it took centuries to die out. See Superman.
Karl: hard as it may be for you to imagine, many, many people who do not have a strictly utilitarian world view are also interested in the question of how well their beliefs and worldview stack up to reality – a.k.a "knowing the truth".
It is true that complete objectivity is impossible for the human mind, so good at making up stories and so bad at staying alert. But some people at least try to apply the same yardstick for truth in all areas of their lives. Please don't project onto everyone else the tendency you have shown to apply widely divergent standards of evidence for what you want to believe vs. what you don't.
Let me put it this way: there are times that I really want to know if an outfit makes my butt look big, and there are other times when I just want reassurance. In either case, I know who to ask to get the answer I need.
So you fully think it is not an assumed personal interpretation of the data (a value) that the earth must be at least 4.6 billion years old and that there is absolutely no evidence of any sort for a world wide flood in the Biblical time frame as documented.
Dan, You've looked at radiometric data. You know the ifs, ands, or buts they have to use to select data that fits this model. Newton never had to say his results weren't reliable in such and such a case. People don't argue with basic mechanics because the predictions are highly correct and without bias. They apply irregardless of the situation under study.
Something did produce the ratios of isotopic nuclides in rocks, sediments, fossils and even ice cores. We can run ourselves around in circles for eternity believing we know what caused it, but anyway you state it – it is a belief based upon an interpretation of the data. Human interpretation of evidence (values) to non-witnessed events (data) has been wrong before and it will be wrong again in the future.
What if the flood was real and it caused most of the apparent age i.e., most of the geologic column, fossilization, sedimentation, glaciation, mountain building, erosion, chemical depositions, plate techtonics, sea floor spreading, anthracite coal formations as well a few other unheard of natural catastrophies like electric currents so large that they fused many sediments into igneous structures.
Is it conceivable that the majority of university scientists could be wrong? They were not there to witness things they say the evidence points to.
I know your response will be naturalism is not perfection, it's just capable of being proven wrong, but creationism in incapable of being proven by naturalistic science because it is too supernatural to discuss in a science class.
I'm just trying to help you see that skepticism of prevailing beliefs about the interpretation of any historical geologic evidence is largely based upon the philosophy of naturalism's freedom to do what ever it deems possible given enough time and a mechanism for it to have occurred.
What if the huge evident changes to the earth's crust and continents are directly related to a single catastrophic cascading sequence of events?
No one was there to eye-witness either the geologic column formation or the immense devastation cause to the earth during the flood. Why can't naturalistic science investigate the possibility of an event like the flood having cascading mechanisms like those claimed to take millions and millions of years? I'll tell you why – it doesn't fit with the premises and assumptions of naturalsim that's why.
You say show me proof. I say you wouldn't believe it if I dropped it in your lap. Can you still claim that naturalism doesn't contain premsies that are values because of how you permit yourself to consider what the evidence could actually mean? Does naturalism and evolution permit you you to be skeptical, or must they be sanctioned as beyond reproach?
Dan says:
Why have all the “Scientific” Creationist organizations refrained from publishing for decades? Because they also get the same results when they run the experiments. But unlike actual science organizations, they don’t publish their failures and then modify their hypotheses to match their results.
Creationist organizations do publish. The chief one that come to mind is the Creation Research Society as well as ICCR but there are others. The materials are not promulgated as "real science" because the peer review isn't done by the approved university peers who wouldn't permit half of what they publish because the writers happen to mention Noah's flood now and then.
As you have stated yourself, any mentioning of the global flood conjures up ideas of the Flying Spagetti Monster. Can't be taken seriously and all that.
YES: Naturalism is "is a belief based upon an interpretation of the data". Whereas faith demands an interpretation of the data based on belief. That is the essential difference. In science, the "belief" is codified and stated in such a way that it could be disproved, as in F=MA or E=MC<sup>2</sup> or "dolphins never coexisted with trilobites".
Science, as I keep repeating, is a technique for separating what is believed from what is observed. The training process for scientists involves getting them to always ask how their beliefs might be skewing their interpretation of observations. To ask how could someone possibly find fault with my argument, and then address that. Recursively, back to first principles. Attack any weakness, aggressively. Then publish so others have a chance to attack your methods and conclusions.
I wish that you'd read about the evolution of the understanding age of the earth. Everybody knew that the world was only 7,000 years old in Ben Franklin's time. Then evidence kept coming up this this object or that couldn't possibly be that young. These heretical ideas kept compounding and reinforcing each other, pushing the age back and back. Before isotopic dating, the world was already agreed to be hundreds of millions of years old by geologists and biologists, using completely separate reasoning, that happened to roughly agree.
It is not a scientific crime to mention Noah's Flood, but it is improper assume it as a fact, and then pick isolated pieces of evidence that can be interpreted as confirming the assumption. Evidence comes first, all of it, and then conclusions. Any PhD in science should have learned this.
I do read from the ICR and Discovery Institute web sites. All they publish in the way of research is self congratulatory treatises on the occasional piece of evidence that doesn't directly refute their conclusion. They totally ignore the massive pile of evidence that does. I have never seen any of these groups publish any paper in the proper format that allows peer review.
If they published in the proper format, then the scientific community would be able to address their evidence, to confirm or refute, as the case may be. Peer review isn't about who your are, who you know, or where you publish; it's about showing your new case to your opponents and proving it in spite of prevailing ideology.
I didn't mention either of these groups, although they do publish some "real science" as you would call it. Check out Russ Humphries work from ICR. Check out the RATE project which has had thoroughly documented methodology from beginning to end.
The Journal of the Creation Reseach Society does original research that doesn't fit with your worldview so of course it will not amount to anything worth your time or consideration.
Dan says:
YES: Naturalism is "is a belief based upon an interpretation of the data". Whereas faith demands an interpretation of the data based on belief.
I can just as readily say the unexamined use of naturalism uses the premises of the naturalist to believe the data speaks for itself. Meaning in this type of data comes to be when a human being with some values or another attempts to either incorporate or use the data for or against some specific model. Whether the interpretation is claimed to come from the data itself or from the model under consideration makes no difference to me.
Either way there is evidence I am not able to agree is free and clear of personal bias and perspective when it comes to looking at the age of the Earth as well as the Age of the Universe.
If it was discovered that more time was really required to make evoution possible, I have no doubt it would be found somewhere as it has been discovered in the recent past.
I have read how the model for the age of the earth changed by several orders of magnitude essentially because of some naturalsists who were motivated to find support for the various theories of evolution. Any natural support for these various theories required extremely expanded time frames to make the possibility of an unguided naturalistic process even remotely respectabe.
The data was interpreted in a new way simply because there was nothing in a naturalistic world view that said the data had to be interpreted only one way. Skepticism brought about a new perspective which now claims to be so well supported that anyone doubting the model is not scientific. There research can not be treated with respect, and anyone who says it can be treated with respect must be censured. Have you seen the film Expelled? To each his own is how I figure.
I didn't have ICR or The Discovery Institute in mind when I referred to scientific research, although they do some worth consideration. Look at the work of Russ Humphries for example. The RATE group of the Creation Research Society has document their reseach work and findings in a very scientific manner. The Journal of the Creation Research Society is peer reviewed, but not by any outspoken phd's on the approved secular lists. Read it if you want, I don't insist you read a certain perspective, or assume what you have to read. I incorporate less than half of what I hear in the news media including speculative models of geologic history as stuff I have to believe. I didn't need to please a professor so I also didn't have to sell myself short of a carefull consideration of avenues of knowledge besides the lecture hall.
I've looked through some of the RATE published works. It is full of scienciness. This relates to actual science as "truthiness" relates to actual evidence. It is cargo-cult science. It obeys some of the forms, but misses the structure.
Papers begin with conclusions, and then support them by citing conclusions in previous papers, mostly by the same person. I could not find any sign of actual new experiments that produced what little data might underly the waving-of-hands I read in those reports.
They set up straw men, and even then fail to properly cut them down. For experiments, they end up referring back to research done many decades ago, but with no corroboration since. Like Polonium halos (1965). Why did/do they assume that the mica could only have formed with uranium inclusions. If uranium was present, then so was polonium. It would be expected to find alpha halo examples in any given sample beginning any of several of the products in the decay chain. Just because children are seen doesn't prove that parents don't exist. And in these cases cited, parents outnumber children by a huge ratio in each given sample. Yet they claim that the unescorted children prove that the parents are of the same generation.
Anyway, geologists passed a million years back before biologists considered needing such long time frames. Geologists still define the age. Biologists also know that there is an extinction episode every hundred million years or so. F'rinstance, say it took 65 million years to make apes and cats and elephants and whales from tiny mammals since the last major extinction.
So why did geologists work up to 4,500 million of the necessary 65 million years for this to happen? This appears to be evidence that evolution does not drive the age of the world up. The first multi-cellular life appears to be a fraction of a billion years old. So why would geologists even pad the biologist-claimed 3 billion years of life on our planet with yet another 1.5 billion years? And why stop there? Why not go the the Scientology idea of trillions of years?
Because that is where the geological (and selenological) evidence points. All of it. Within a decade or two we should have data from Mars, as well.
Finally: This post is about Naturalism informing a Utilitarian ethic. Whether the world is old or not has little effect on this issue.
Dan writes
Anyway, geologists passed a million years back before biologists considered needing such long time frames. Geologists still define the age. Biologists also know that there is an extinction episode every hundred million years or so. F’rinstance, say it took 65 million years to make apes and cats and elephants and whales from tiny mammals since the last major extinction.
What were the names of the geologists and what was the driving rationale for why they selected millions of years? Was it based upon measured evidence or an interpretation of the evidence?
Let me see if you agree with this.
So while I would state that the philosophy of naturalism can appear to validate a model based upon the interpretation of data, you would say the methodology (use of the data) is essentially objective and self-correcting and is therefore not a matter of the model driving the interpretation but the data driving the interpretation.
If so, nothing I can state will allow you to understand what I mean by unscientific values at work in the handling of the data.
Individual trained scientists do have subjective prejudices and personal agendas. But the scientific method guarantees that any weakness in an idea will be ferreted out, documented, and either explained or used to replace the theory.
There are many famous public embarrassments in science, and still more that only scientists bother to learn about. The Piltdown hoax and Martian Canals come to mind. In cases like these, researchers were willfully mislead by borderline information that matched their prejudices. But the process (as always) cleared up the fallacies in less than a generation. Watson and Crick published wrong a few times before they beat the photo-finish of "first" with a correct structure of DNA.
So scientists are subject to unscientific moments, but the scientific method always will reach an objectively verifiable final answer on any topic. But in science, said final answer is always provisional; subject to testing with new data or methods.