The latest campaign from the bowels of the Discovery Institute is a war on something at the heart of the scientific method, and that is methodological naturalism. Wikipedia says:

Methodological naturalism concerns itself not with claims about what exists but with methods of learning what nature is. It is strictly the idea that all scientific endeavors — all hypotheses and events — are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. The genesis of nature (for example, by an act of God) is not addressed. This second sense of naturalism [in contrast to philosophical naturalism] seeks only to provide a framework within which to conduct the scientific study of the laws of nature. Methodological naturalism is a way of acquiring knowledge.

In other words, science does not, and can not, examine that which is supernatural. That’s because such phenomena can’t be observed or tested, nor can their existence be objectively verified. We discussed this a while ago in Bring Me An Angel Detector!, and we distinguished methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism, which holds that only the observable world exists.

Science doesn’t require that belief and it doesn’t arbitrarily rule out the existence of supernatural entities, ab initio. But the process of science limits the kind of work that scientists can do. That is, scientists — when doing science — can only work with objectively verifiable evidence. The rest — whatever it may be — is the province of theology. In other words, methodological naturalism is an operational constraint of science, not a philosophical attack on theism.

The Discoveroids may or may not know this, but it doesn’t matter. They insist that science should include their admittedly transcendent designer — blessed be he! — who, they claim, is a “better” explanation of everything, notwithstanding that such an entity is utterly outside the purview of science. Their latest post on this topic is William Dembski Explains Why Intelligent Design Does Not, and Cannot, Make Sense Under Materialist Premises. They say, with bold font added by us:

It often seems that in conversation with our Darwinist interlocutors, there’s a fundamental non-meeting of minds. For them, intelligent design doesn’t make sense, as if the language itself that we use were incompressible [ sic ] to them.

Yes, “incompressible.” They go on:

That’s because under their premise — methodological naturalism, their picture of the world and how it must work — ID can’t make sense!

Oh, we understand intelligent design. There isn’t much to understand, really. It’s just that science can’t do any work with it — or with Zeus’ thunderbolts, or Aphrodite’s enchanting spells, or any other activity attributed to a supernatural being. They continue:

In his forthcoming book, Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information, eminent ID theorist William Dembski sketches the alternative scientific worldview based on information theory where ID becomes intelligible.

“Eminent ID theorist.” BWAHAHAHAHAHA! It’s conceivable that in his latest book, Dembski has finally made his rambling thoughts intelligible, although we haven’t seen him accomplish that trick yet.

The final paragraph of the Discoveroids’ brief post is an ad for the book. If you act swiftly, you can take advantage of a pre-publication discount, and the price of this paradigm shattering tome will be only $22.95, “which includes free shipping!” Well, dear reader, what are you waiting for?

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