I can’t say I find this analysis of “such and such a philospher said such and such” terribly interesting either. I’m sure you could find people on both sides of the question. An examination of how real scientists like Newton worked seems to me far more relevant.

And what do you think about the issue of science being emperical? Do you think it’s alright to rule explanations out for reasons other than lack of warrant?

“By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as “perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages,” contrasted the philosopher’s search for “appropriate natural causes” with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, “there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we belive are well known to us.”

Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world. “The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy, insisted that nature “never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her.” ((p. 267 of: Ronald L. Numbers, 2003. “Science without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs.” In: When Science and Christianity Meet, edited by David C. Lindberg, Ronald L. Numbers. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, pp. 265-285.)

The phrase “methodological naturalism” seems to have been coined by the philosopher Paul de Vries, then at Wheaton College, who introduced it at a conference in 1983 in a paper subsequently published as “Naturalism in the Natural Sciences,” Christian Scholar’s Review, 15(1986), 388-396. De Vries distinguished between what he called “methodological naturalism,” a disciplinary method that says nothing about God’s existence, and “metaphysical naturalism,” which “denies the existence of a transcendent God.”

(p. 320 of: Ronald L. Numbers, 2003. “Science without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs.” In: When Science and Christianity Meet, edited by David C. Lindberg, Ronald L. Numbers. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, pp. 265-285.)

In other words, it was creationists themselves who defined the term “methodological naturalism,” and took pains to differentiate it from “metaphysical naturalism” (what I prefer to call “ontological naturalism”), which cannot be either proven nor disproven. Compare this with T. H. Huxley’s “agnosticism,” by which he meant a philosophical position that asserts essentially the same thing: that neither “ontological naturalism” nor “ontological theism” are empirically verifiable. This is one of the reasons why Stephen J. Gould asserted that religion and science constitute “non-overlapping magisteria” (”NOMA”).

The Panda’s Thumb article goes on to point out that “By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as “perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages,” contrasted the philosopher’s search for “appropriate natural causes” with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, “there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we belive are well known to us.”In other words, Christian theologians asserted essentially the same metaphysical position as Huxley and Gould: that “scientific explanations” not only don’t but shouldn’t include reference to supernatural causes.

So where does that leave ID?

In the meantime, and to follow up on last week’s post on creationist-like abiogenesis, The Panda’s Thumb - has a great post “On the Origins of Methodological Naturalism.” Quite timely, considering The Design Paradigm’s latest post, criticizing Jud…