God and Naturalism

I've just left a rather long comment on Lara's latest blog post. Thought I might put a copy here too.

Re Lennox's original piece
A professor of mine who was a student of Gould's has taught me to be wary of how people quote him. He made overtures to the religious community that have been taken out of all proportion (and now that he's dead he can't reply). But even a proper understanding of his "non-overlapping magisteria" thesis is completely incompatible with ID. Intelligent Design is the claim that we can infer things about the supernatural realm (broadly construed) by studying the natural world. In this article Lennox seems to understand Gould's claim that ne'er the twain shall meet. Why then is he quoting Gould in an article aimed at undermining Darwin? Because his real target is Dawkins! Why do people feel compelled to downplay Darwin's genius ever time Dawkins is rude and condescending to them? Beats me!

I think he's wrong about Sagan, though, when he says 'The Genesis statement is a statement of belief, not a statement of science. This is precisely the case with Sagan's assertion as well. He is expressing a personal belief that emanates from a world view, rather than science.' Seems to me Sagan was just marking out territory. To say "The cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever shall be." is more of an axiom than anything else; I think he's saying that no matter how far it extends in space or time, cosmologists should try to study it. Yes, tacit in this claim is the assertion that scientists should study any gods we might discover. But what's wrong with that?

Re Vic Stenger and your reply, which got printed:
You're right that it's underdetermined but, bearing in mind that you granted him "beyond reasonable doubt", that doesn't mean that we can't rule out certain things. So if we're using science to test the God hypothesis and it seems prima facie that there are no Judaeo-Christian God, then we bring in the Duhem-Quine thesis to insist that some auxiliary hypothesis failed the test.
"There's a skeptic in the room" is the best way but I think Stenger is right to say that 'a beneficent God would not deliberately hide from people who are honestly open to belief but do not believe for lack of evidence. The very presence of such non-believers in the world proves that a beneficent God does not exist.' If you grant him this, the hypothesis that was falsified is that God is not a tease. Or you can decide not to grant him that premise and simply say that people like Peter and myself are insincere in claiming to be open to belief.
Likewise, vestigial organs and childhood illnesses seem to indicate that organisms not designed by a benevolent god. Again, Duhem-Quine will allow you to lay the blame somewhere else, but where? A non-omnipotent god who couldn't have done any better? Some vague "best of all possible worlds"? (Remind me, where do you stand on the voluntarist question?)
You're quite right to use the Duhem-Quine thesis but please specify which auxiliary hypothesis have been falsified.

Re Paul Gittings's letter, your reply and on naturalism in general:
Well, the reason Gittings is attacking Lennox is not because of what appeared in the article but because of what he read between the lines. Lennox wasn't attacking Darwin in order to argue for Lamarckian evolution and from what you're said he understood Lennox's goal rightly enough.

Lennox didn't promote a god-of-the-gaps but. by invoking Gould, that's the logical result. (Because Gould's two magesteria cannot overlap, the more the natural realm grows, the more the supernatural must shrink, until all that's left is ethics and aesthetics, if that.)

As for naturalism being faith-based, that really depend on how you read it. Most claims of naturalism can be interpreted undogmatically (like Sagan's above) to mean just that science should never stop investigating, even investigate what has in the past been deemed supernatural. Methodologically speaking, it's one of the two extremes away from Gould's unhappy compromise (religious dogma being the other extreme). Still, I have to admit that it it a metaphysical claim of sorts. But of the broadest sort and somehow that seems a whole lot less metaphysical. It's the opposite to Wittgenstein's "The world is a collection of facts, not of things."