The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

by Steven Novella

Philosophical naturalism is the metaphysical belief that nature is all there is, while methodological naturalism is proceeding as if nature is all there is while remaining agnostic about the deeper metaphysical question.

Methodological naturalism posits that nature is all that we can know, regardless of whether or not it’s all there is (which by definition we cannot know).

Does science require methodological naturalism? Yes.

The key feature of methodological naturalism that makes it essential to science is that its ideas are testable.

Science doesn’t say—and cannot say—that all life on earth was not created in an instant by an all-powerful designer. It is agnostic toward such a belief. It can only say that such a hypothesis is outside the realm of science, because it cannot be tested scientifically. That’s methodological naturalism.

Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not part of science.

We are in agreement with Plaintiffs’ lead expert Dr. Miller, that from a practical perspective, attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world is a “science stopper.

As Dr. Miller explained, once you attribute a cause to an untestable supernatural force, a proposition that cannot be disproven, there is no reason to continue seeking natural explanations as we have our answer.

ID posits that animals did not evolve naturally through evolutionary means but were created abruptly by a non-natural, or supernatural, designer. Defendants’ own expert witnesses acknowledged this point.

It is notable that defense experts’ own mission, which mirrors that of the IDM itself, is to change the ground rules of science to allow supernatural causation of the natural world, which the Supreme Court in Edwards and the court in McLean correctly recognized as an inherently religious concept.

The Wedge Strategy

ID proponents feel that their spiritual ideological worldview is threatened by the findings of modern science, and so they have decided to undermine it. They want this to be an ideological and cultural war, because in the arena of science they lose.

They set out to pretend to do science and to make scientific arguments (the thin edge of the wedge) so as to break into the established scientific infrastructure, but their farce had a predetermined goal—to undermine the materialist basis of modern science.

Their beef is not just with evolution but with the methods of science.

But What If the Supernatural Exists?

What if we lived in a universe in which there were supernatural phenomena? We again are faced with the problem of how to define “supernatural,” as you could always argue that if the supernatural existed it would be part of nature and therefore “natural.” That’s why we have to define the supernatural by how it behaves, not by what it is.

If such a thing existed, how could we know about it? By definition, I think you can’t, at least not scientifically. At best, science could identify anomalies that it could never resolve.

Science encounters anomalies all the time. Scientists love anomalies because they point the way to new discoveries, to new knowledge. But if the methods of science can’t identify a cause, because there is no natural cause, it would be stuck in an endless loop of failed hypotheses. The anomaly would never be explained.

If we live in a universe where every effect has a natural cause, then science should work well. We will encounter anomalies but they will eventually be explained. Science will progress. If we lived in a universe with supernatural phenomena, science would encounter persistent anomalies with which it could make no real progress.

True believers will always have anomalies to point to, but they are always changing. As we explain phenomena, they move on to new mysteries. So far, science has not encountered any true anomaly that defies scientific exploration.

20. Skeptics’ Guide Entry: Postmodernism

Section: Science and Pseudoscience

See also: Epis...

Postmodernism, as it applies to science, is the philosophical position that science is nothing more than a cultural narrative and therefore has no special...

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities—perhaps the only one—in which errors are systematicall...

In this context, postmodernism is the notion that all ideas and beliefs can be best understood as subjective human storytelling—a narrative dominated by culture and bias, with no special relationship to the truth. When applied to science, it negates the implication of methodology and reduces all scientific research to a cultural narrative.

The notion that science is socially constructed is a convenient way to dismiss the findings of science that you don’t like for ideological or any other reasons.

Thomas Kuhn

Kuhn’s basic point was that new ideas in science do not arise from any rigorous methodology but as a chaotic by-product of sociology and scientific enthusiasm. During “normal” periods of scientific progress, scientists work incrementally to tweak existing ideas. They’re working within a theoretical framework—that framework is what Kuhn calls a paradigm.

A paradigm in science is relatively stable over a period of time, but it may suddenly shift to a new paradigm for quirky reasons.

The key question is this: Is one paradigm objectively better than another, and is there therefore real progress in science, or is it all subjective? The postmodernists claim it’s all subjective.

There are two main criticisms of the Kuhnian postmodernist position. The first is that it is a false dichotomy. You can’t separate scientific progress cleanly into normal incremental change within a paradigm and dramatic paradigm shifts. Rather, scientific change occurs along a continuum. Some discoveries are bigger and more disruptive than others, but you can’t lump them into two categories.

The second and more devastating criticism of the postmodernist position is that this interpretation of the history of science confuses the context of discovery with the context of later justification. It actually doesn’t matter how scientists come up with their ideas. They can get them from science fiction, popular culture, or a drug trip. It simply doesn’t matter. What does matter is how those ideas are tested—later justification.

The history of science isn’t one of wholesale replacement of one theory with another. That kind of complete change did occur when we were shifting from an essentially prescientific view to a scientific one. Once a scientific theory is well established, however, it’s not replaced, only refined.

Each scientific discipline is not a world unto itself, but part of the overall scientific endeavor to explain reality. Since all science is exploring the same reality, it all has to agree. This is what E. O. Wilson called “consilience” in his book of the same name.

These aren’t just culturally determined stories we tell each other. Science is a method, and ideas have to work in order to survive.

It is true that science is a human, and therefore cultural, endeavor. In this respect there is a kernel of truth to some of the more reasonable postmodernist claims. The institutions of science may be biased by prevailing cultural assumptions and norms.

This doesn’t mean, however, that science cannot or does not objectively advance. Because the process of science is inherently self-critical and the methods of science are all about testing ideas against objective reality, cultural bias is eventually beaten out of scientific ideas.

21. Skeptics’ Guide Entry: Occam’s Razor

Section: Science and Pseudoscience

See also: Principle of...

The principle of Occam’s razor, attributed to William of Ockham (1287–1347), states that when two or more hypotheses are consistent with the available data, then the hypothesis that introdu...

We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. —Isaac Newton

Stated another (and more accurate) way, Occam’s razor is the principle that the introduction of new assumptions should be minimized.

Occam’s razor is ultimately all about probability. Every time you introduce a new element to an explanation or make a new assumption, you reduce the probability that your explanation is correct.

Occam’s razor provides a practical guiding principle whenever someone sees a light or object in the sky that they can’t identify—by definition an unidentified flying object or UFO. We know there are a host of natural and man-made phenomena that could result in a UFO. Invoking such explanations doesn’t introduce any new assumptions into our view of reality. On the other hand, since it hasn’t been established that an alien technological race exists and is currently visiting the Earth, invoking alien spacecraft as an explanation requires the introduction of a massive new assumption.

22.

Skeptics’ Guide Entry: Pseudoscience and the Demarcation Problem

Section: Science and Pse...

See also: De...