Sorry to have taken so long to get back to this conversation. Life happens.
I want to start with the Lewontin quote.
I am glad to see you linked to the whole essay and did not just cite this often mined quote. There are other parts of the essay that are more interesting.
But first let's juxtapose another quote:
Darwin on Trial
STEPHEN J. GOULD:
To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists. If some of our crowd have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism disproves God, then I will find Mrs. McInerney and have their knuckles rapped for it (as long as she can equally treat those members of our crowd who have argued that Darwinism must be God's method of action).
Mrs. McInerney was Gould's grade three teacher. Emphasis in the original.
Note that both Lewontin and Gould are/were reputable scientists; neither is a believer (though Gould called himself agnostic rather than atheist). Yet they come to diametrically opposite conclusions about science implying materialism.
So why cite Lewontin as if his authority on this issue is final and unimpeachable? Isn't Gould just as good a scientist (and for that matter, just as good a philosopher of science) as Lewontin?
Lewontin's conclusions do not come from the methods of science. As he himself points out it is not the methods of science that compel a material explanation of the world. It is an a priori commitment to materialism.
So, without that a priori commitment, do the methods of science still compel a philosophic God-denying naturalism?
Let's go back to Gould as he surveys the scene:
Forget philosophy for a moment; the simple empirics of the past hundred years should suffice. Darwin himself was agnostic (having lost his religious beliefs upon the tragic death of his favorite daughter), but the great American botanist Asa Gray, who favored natural selection and wrote a book entitled Darwiniana, was a devout Christian. Move forward 50 years: Charles D. Walcott, discoverer of the Burgess Shale fossils, was a convinced Darwinian and an equally firm Christian, who believed that God had ordained natural selection to construct a history of life according to His plans and purposes. Move on another 50 years to the two greatest evolutionists of our generation: G. G. Simpson was a humanistic agnostic, Theodosius Dobzhansky a believing Russian Orthodox. Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs-and equally compatible with atheism, thus proving that the two great realms of nature's factuality and the source of human morality do not strongly overlap.
Now to go back to the beginning of your post:
The exclusion of the supernatural causation is not just about the fact that it cannot be tested,it is about the belief that it is not present in nature,or that it is unreasonable and unnecessary for explaining natural things. Science is not all about experimentation and data,it also involves speculation and theorizing upon data. That is where the naturalism of methodological naturalism comes in. Experiments and data do not always speak for themselves,they are interpreted along the lines of the naturalistic view.
True, science does involve speculation and theorizing, but these are also submitted to empirical testing. They are not admitted to the corpus of scientific knowledge unless they can yield hypotheses which can be tested empirically. Until the empirical implications of a speculative theory can be spelled out, it isn't science. For it is only when there are empirical implications that research into the viability of the theory can be carried out.
So, again, there is no need for an a priori commitment to philosophical naturalism/materialism/atheism involved: only the dependence of science on empirical testing of its theses.
If scientists recognized that divine power was behind the natural causes of life,species,order and the existence of matter,they would have to revise the scientific explanations for these things to include divine power.
The experimental methods of science are no reason to exclude the supernatural from consideration,because the results of experimentation would still be the same even if the supernatural causation was admitted in explanations.
This is an interesting self-contradiction. If the results of experimentation would still be the same if supernatural causation was admitted, why would scientific explanations have to be revised?
Now I want to say that I agree with your second statement and disagree with the first one. I don't think scientific statements would have to be revised at all. I do think that even with an a priori commitment to the reality of divine causation, the scientist's observational and experimental results (and therefore theories) would still be the same as they are today.
MN is an a priori rejection of the supernatural in nature. It isn't the methods of science that determines what is within the purview of science,it is scientists who determine that. The methods do not give explanations for natural phenomena.
Again, an interesting self-contradiction. Since the methods don't give explanations, how can methodical naturalism reject the supernatural?
Thanks for posting this although it would have been helpful to post the alternative which Coyne actually supports namely Provisional methodological naturalism.
Again, Intrinsic MN does not reject the supernatural, but simply excludes it from scientific consideration. "Science is not equipped to deal with the supernatural" does not mean "Science rejects the very concept of the supernatural" nor "Science rules God out of nature." It just means the dependence of science on empirical testing leaves it unequipped to deal with what cannot be tested.
This, in fact, is the view you just endorsed when you said that "the results of experimentation would still be the same even if the supernatural causation was admitted in explanations." They would still be the same because there is no way to test for supernatural causation.
By contrast, Coyne's preference (Provisional MN), would admit the supernatural, but only when there is empirical evidence of a supernatural cause (he gives the example of more effective healing in patients for whom prayers are made) would lead to denying the active role of God when no such evidence exists. For Coyne God is identified with "supernatural" in only the most narrow sense of "miraculous"; so, for example, he would not take your earlier reference to the blooming rose as evidence of "miracle" or "divine causation" or "creation". But under Intrinsic MN, that would be a permissible interpretation--just not one that can be affirmed or denied by scientific methods.
I think they were careless with their use of "philosophical" in the first sentence. It is not necessary, and in fact, the rest of the definition is pretty good, especially if you include the next paragraph:
However, this assumption of naturalism need not extend beyond an assumption of methodology. This is what separates methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism - the former is merely a tool and makes no truth claim; while the latter makes the philosophical - essentially atheistic - claim that only natural causes exist.
So, in fact, the methodological use of naturalism in science does not make any claim that God is non-existent or inactive. It does not support any claim that only natural causes exist. (Note that the editor is using "natural" here to imply the exclusion of God, so there is an unstated premise even here.) Nor does MN support any claim that "nature" excludes divine causation.
So, where does that leave us. It leaves us with the presuppositions of atheism that so often claim science as support, but in fact have no scientific support at all. Consider another part of Lewontin's essay:
The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of, for that vast project is, in its entirety, hopeless. Rather, the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth.
This is the first presupposition: that science (Science) is "the only begetter of truth". Tell me, in all the realm of science is there any scientific support for such a claim? Clearly not. This is an a priori philosophical commitment to science (Science) as "the only begetter of truth". IOW, the atheistic believer says: "If it can't be shown to be scientifically true, then it is not true at all. There is no truth other than scientific truth."
One of our huge problems is that over the last two centuries, many Christians have come to believe this assertion, even though it has no real merit. And if you think for a minute, you can see what a problem this is. To the extent we accept that science and only science begets truth, we desperately need science to underpin our belief in God. We need to convince ourselves through science that God exists and that God operates in nature. So we have Christians doing foolish things like trying to find examples of "miracles" of the sort Coyne refers to--"miracles" that leave empirically testable evidence; trying to prove a concordance between a literal reading of Genesis (or many other parts of scripture) and scientific findings, or trying some other way to find empirical evidence of intelligent design in nature.
None of this would be necessary or even advisable if we simply recognised that science is not the only way we learn truth. Science is very good with revealing a certain kind of truth, but it is far from being "the sole begetter of truth" or truthful explanations of the natural world.
Get rid of the notion that science is the only source of true knowledge and we can admit a great deal of non-scientific knowledge that is perfectly compatible with science: like the constant creative role of God in all natural processes. We don't have to change any science to do this. We just have to take down the mental barriers we have erected to acknowledging the possibility that there is truth beyond science.
Of course, the other part of Lewontin's argument is that unstated assumption that "natural" is an alternative to "divinely caused" such that if you have a proper scientific explanation of a phenomenon based on empirical evidence, you have ipso facto proved God had nothing to do with it.
Here we need to understand another of the pitfalls of looking for empirical evidence of divine causation. Just what do we mean by "empirical"? How do we test anything empirically? Basically a scientist tests anything which can be counted, weighed or measured in some way. (New advances in science often occur when we develop the technology to measure something we could not measure with older equipment.) So at its most basic a scientific experiment contrasts a measurement when Factor X is present with the same measurement when Factor X is absent. e.g. the function of a gene is often determined by removing the gene to see the effect of its absence.
Apply this now to God as a causative agent. If a scientist is to come to a conclusion about divine causation, the scientist must treat God as Factor X--as a factor that can be removed from the phenomenon. This means that in order to prove empirically that God is present on some occasions or in some natural phenomenon, it is equally necessary to prove that God is absent (or inactive) in others.
This is not only a pragmatic problem for the scientist (how could a scientist ever verify that God has been removed and is not a factor in what is being researched), it is theological nonsense in the extreme. God is never absent. There is never anything happening in nature from which God's ever-present sustaining power is removed. It is precisely because God is always present, always providing, sustaining, upholding, creating, nurturing his creation, that no scientific experiment can ever prove that he is or isn't.
It is also the truth that undergirds your statement that "the results of experimentation would still be the same even if the supernatural causation was admitted in explanations." They would be the same because God is always there to assure that they will be the same. We simply have no experience, nor could we have any experience, of God being absent from nature.
But can science with its methods affirm this? No, because it is limited to what it can test and it cannot test for what shows no contrasting control.
So it comes down to how you view nature philosophically: as devoid of God--an alternate explanation that excludes God, or as filled through and through with divine activity.
Despite Lewontin and other prominent atheists who try to hijack science into denying God, scientific methods do not and cannot support one assumption over the other.
Naturalistic science explains almost everything in nature,but not all the explanations are true or adequate,because God's power is directly involved in life,order,organisms,the beginnings of species and of matter.
There is nothing really wrong with the scientific explanations: they are not inadequate as science. But science itself is inadequate to teach us of God's creative power in nature. That falls into a realm of truth science is not equipped to deal with.
