But of course science is methodologically naturalistic, not ontologically naturalistic.
No. You apparently don't understand what "ontological" means.
ontological /ŏn′tə-lŏj′ĭ-kəl/
Of or relating to the argument for the existence of God holding that the existence of the concept of God entails the existence of God.
As you know, science, being limited to the natural universe, can neither affirm nor deny God. Science cannot rule out miracles happening in the universe; it just can't say anything about it.
More importantly as it relates to theistic evolution theory, the scientific method cannot transform naive empirical experience into knowledge of nature.
That's what it does. Someone notices something interesting. Someone suggests an explanation for it. Someone goes out and tests the explanation. If the evidence confirms it, a theory results. If not, back to a different suggestion. This might seem wrong to you, but nothing else humans can do, works better for understanding the physical universe.
And scientists are pragmatists. If ID worked, they'd use it, regardless of who complained. But it doesn't work, so they don't use it.
Knowledge of nature must be based on direct experience or repeatable experiments, not textual statements by authorities.
And that's why ID and YEC are not used by scientists. They are religious beliefs, based on textual interpretations by people who have deemed themselves authorities.
Natural phenomena cannot be explained as effects of natural causal agents alone.
So far, it's worked. No point in denial. Natural phenomena work according to natural causes. That's the way God created it to work. Notice that He is not compelled to do a miracle now and then to make it work. Miracles are done because God goofed; they are done to teach us something.
In as much as evolution theory, atheistic or theistic
There are no atheistic or theistic theories in science. There are only theories.
, provides neither direct experience nor repeatable experiments to support its claims
You've been very badly misled about that. Undergraduates in universities do that regularly. Would you like to see how that's done? I suspect that (like many YECs) you've confused evolution (change in allele frequency in a population) with universal common descent (which is a finding of genetics, not evolutionary theory). Would you like to see some experiments to test evolution?
I notice you twice declined to tell us which of the four points of Darwin's theory have been refuted or not confirmed by evidence. Wouldn't it be a good idea to find out what they are, and bring some evidence to the table?
Indirect experience coupled with fallible reasoning to support any claim is not scientific and must always be suspect.
Not all IDers are like that. Some of them actually do pretty good work, when it doesn't involve their religous presuppositions.
Indirect experience coupled with fallible reasoning to support any claim is not scientific and must always be suspect. Bias, presuppositions or even fraud by the authors of such evidence taints its provenance, e.g., Haeckel’s Embryos, Archaeopteryx, etc.
I once had to deal with a very angry YEC, who told me that Haeckel's drawings were used in textbooks to show recapitulation. I showed him that the drawings had been replaced with actual photographs of the embryos (which showed the same things). He wasn't pleased. Would you like to talk more about that?
The story of Archaepteryx is instructive for you, if you knew the whole story.
- At first, it was considered to be a small dinosaur.
- Then, one with feathers intact was found, and it was considered to be a bird.
- Later, a closer analysis of the specimens showed that it was a maniraptoran dinosaur, close to the line that gave rise to birds.
Since then, we've found a lot of feathered dinosaurs, some of them actually birds and some not. And now you know the whole story. Interestingly, the feathered fossils were found after Huxley predicted that birds evolved from dinosaurs based on the structure of the ear of archosaurs. Since then, there's been a lot more information. Would you like to talk more about that?
And why not take an afternoon, learn about Darwin's theory, and tell us which of the four points of his theory have been refuted? Third time I've asked.
