Supernatural

Supernatural Explanation in Science

You would like to see supernatural explanation incorporated into science. I have already noted that science is in the business of naturalistic explanation. More than that, I would argue that naturalistic explanation essentially defines the realm of science. Your desire to see the supernatural incorporated into science amounts to a desire to see science step outside of its realm. No matter how you slice it, that desire is going to have ugly consequences.

Let us suppose that science can make the transition with all of its mathematical and experimental apparatus and its other heuristics such as Occam's Razor intact. Are you ready for things like belief to be quantified, or to find out that there is a conservation law for faith? What will you do when a scientist announces that she can experimentally determine whether you will end up on the good side of the afterlife? Or what if, at some point, the simplest possible explanation excludes something in which you have always believed, such as God? Would it be any better if religious theoreticians determined that no less than five Gods are required to explain what we see?

Now let us suppose that science cannot make the transition with all of its mathematical and experimental apparatus and its other heuristics such as Occam's razor intact. Could such a thing even be called science? If science were to abandon mathematical models, what kind of models would it use? If experiments could not be run, how would we decide which of many competing hypotheses is more likely? If Occam's razor were given up, what decision procedure would we use to decide how many entities we should posit in our explanations?

I hope that now you agree that supernatural mechanisms cannot enter into scientific explanation. Yet there is no reason to think that they cannot peacefully or even fruitfully coexist. Please proceed to Fruitful Coexistence to see how this could be so.

Those that stopped in here from 'Is Intelligent Design theory scientific?', should return to Empirical Doubts.