I really don't see that line being crossed by science. Science depends on methodological naturalism, not philosophical naturalism. As to why methodological naturalism is preferred over others, it quite simply just works the best in explaining how the natural world works. You don't have to be an atheist to do well in science today, there are many scientists (about 40-50%) that self identify themselves as religious, most of them are Christian.
I see this common claim as problematic. First, many of the pioneers
of modern science were not only theists, but freely appealed to God and His presumed role as Creator/Designer (e.g. Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, etc.). The fact that men of such persuasion were so instrumental in launching the modern scientific enterprise should by itself dispel the notion that methodological naturalism is Ã¢â‚¬Ëœthe best way to do scienceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. (This is quite apart from whether or not Christianity was philosophically necessary for science).
Consider one concrete example from contemporary science: the Anthropic Principle. The fact that the Universe is Ã¢â‚¬Ëœfine tunedÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ for life is acknowledged by scientists of all stripes. Sir Fred Hoyle
Sir James Jeans
Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule." Of course you would . . . A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.
~Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November, 1981. pp. 8Ã¢â‚¬â€œ12
To my mind, the laws which nature obeys are less suggestive of those which a machine obeys in its motion than those which a musician obeys in writing a fugue, or a poet in composing a sonnet. The motions of electrons and atoms do not resemble those of the parts of a locomotive so much as those of the dancers in a cotillion. And if the Ã¢â‚¬Å“true essence of substancesÃ¢â‚¬Â is for ever unknowable, it does not matter whether the cotillion is danced at a ball in real life, or on a cinematograph scree, or in a story of Boccaccio. If all this is so, then the universe is best pictured, although still very imperfectly and inadequately, as consisting of pure thought, the though of what, for want of a wider word, we must describe as a mathematical thinker.
In the stately and sonorous diction of a bygone age, Bishop Berkeley summed up his philosophy in the words:
All the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the might frame of the world, have not any substance without the mind...So long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit, they must have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.
Modern science seems to me to lead, by a very different toad, to a not altogether dissimilar conclusion. Because of our different line of approach we have reached the last of the three above alternatives first, and the others appear unimportant by comparison. It does not matter whether objects Ã¢â‚¬Å“exist in my mind, or that of any other created spiritÃ¢â‚¬Â or not; their objectivity arises from their subsisting Ã¢â‚¬Å“in the mind of some Eternal SpiritÃ¢â‚¬Â.
~ The Mysterious Universe, 1930, pp. 147-148
Now the entropy of the universe has not yet reached its final maximum: we should not be thinking about it if it had,. It is still increasing rapidly, and so must have had a beginning; there must have been what we may describe as a Ã¢â‚¬Å“creationÃ¢â‚¬Â at a time not infinitely remote.
If the universe is a universe of thought, then its creation must have been an act of thought. Indeed, the finiteness of time and space almost compel us, of themselves, to picture the creation as an act of thought; the determination of constants such as the radius of the universe and the number of electrons it contained imply thought, whose richness is measured by the immensity of these quantities. Time and space, which for the setting for the thought, must have come into being as part of this act. Primitive cosmologies pictured a creator working in space and time, forging the sun, moon and stars out of already existent raw material. Modern scientific theory compels us to think of the creator as working outside time and space, which are part of his creation, just as the artist is outside his canvas. Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nom in tempore, sed cum tempore, finixit Deus mundum.Ã¢â‚¬Â Indeed, the doctrine dates back as far as Plato:
Time and heavens came into being at the same instant, in order that, if they were ever to dissolve, they might be dissolved together. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of time.
And yet, so little do we understand time that perhaps we ought to compare the whole of time to the act of creation, the materialization of the thought.
It may be objected that our whole argument is based on the assumption that the present mathematical interpretation of the physical world is in some way unique, and will prove to be final. To resume our metaphor, it may be said that to describe reality as a game of chess is only a convenient fiction: other fictions might describe the motions of the shadows equally well. The answer is that, so far as our present knowledge goes, other fictions would not describe them so fully, so simply, or so adequately.
~ The Mysterious Universe, 1930, pp. 154-155
To-day, there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like the a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter - not of course of our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown exist as thoughts.
~The Mysterious Universe, 1930, p. 158
would have heartily agreed
with Jeans here that we live in a non-mechanical reality. As Patricia Fara noted in her 2003 Science review of the book Isaac Newton
by James Glieck:
Like most people, Newton was a complex person.Ã‚Â His Principia reads like impeccable logic; why, then, the Ã¢â‚¬Å“apparently arcane obsessionsÃ¢â‚¬Â with Ã¢â‚¬Å“alchemy, SolomonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s temple, early Christian heresiesÃ¢â‚¬Â and other diversions?Ã‚Â Gleick feels they fed directly into his cosmological theories.Ã‚Â He probably does not have the last word on Newton.Ã‚Â From NewtonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s own pen, however, it is clear he saw the universe as the grand masterwork of the Biblical God.
Salvador Cordova has a recent post
on a similar theme over at Uncommon Descent
. Quoting Richard Henry:
Ã¢â‚¬Å“The ultimate cause of atheism, Newton asserted, is Ã¢â‚¬Ëœthis notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ã¢â‚¬Â
The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the UniverseÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable Ã¢â‚¬â€ this time, that the Universe is mental.
The Universe is immaterial Ã¢â‚¬â€ mental and spiritual.
~ Richard Conn Henry
The Mental Universe: Nature Volume 436
Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent realityÃ¢â‚¬Â¦.
Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.
~ Richard Conn Henry and Stephen R. Palmquist
Journal of Scientific Exploration Issue 21-3
There is much more at SalvadorÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s superb post; I highly recommend clicking over, reading it and following the links (fantastic job Salvador!).
Now, what have those in the scientific establishment - aside from a few, like the brave souls above - done with all of this? Well, by and large, they have latched onto the currently popular multi-verse hypothesis. Instead of conceding this powerful evidence of a conscious, intelligent Designer, they imagine a multiverse in which we live in the universe that drew the lucking number. This is the sum
of Leonard SusskindÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s book The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design
. Sean CarrolÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s new book From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
invokes the multiverse theory to explain
the Ã¢â‚¬Ëœarrow of timeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢.
And here is one more bit from Salvador's post:
I discovered this the hard way when I published my book The Physics of Immortality. The entire book is devoted to describing what the known laws of physics predict the far future of the universe will be like. Not once in the entire book do I use anything but the known physical laws, the laws of physics that are in all the textbooks, and which agree with all experiments conducted to date. Unfortunately, in the book I gave reasons for believing that the final state of the universe, a state outside of space and time, and not material should be identified with the Judeo-Christian God. (It would take a book to explain why!) My scientific colleagues, atheists to a man, were outraged. Even though the theory of the final state of the universe involved only known physics, my fellow physicists refused even to discuss the theory. If the known laws of physics imply that God exists, then in their opinion, this can only mean that the laws of physics have to be wrong. This past September, at a conference held at Windsor Castle, I asked the well known cosmologist Paul Davies what he thought of my theory. He replied that he could find nothing wrong with it mathematically, but he asked what justified my assumption that the known laws of physics were correct.
~ Frank Tipler
in Uncommon Dissent
Apparently, Davies would rather appeal to potential ignorance
than concede Tipler's rigorously mathematic & scientific conclusion.
This is all very reminiscent of the denial that Francis Crick & Richard Dawkins engaged in within the field of biology:
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
~ Francis Crick (Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology and Medicine), Ã¢â‚¬Å“What Mad Pursuit,Ã¢â‚¬Â 1990, p.138
Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.
~ The Blind Watchmaker, p. 1
What, pray tell, are these scientists doing appealing to unobservable, phantom entities like other universes in their 'scientific theories'? This is not the behavior of men employing methodological naturalism because it is the 'best way to do science'. If that were the case, they would recognize when ethodological naturalism has hit a brick wall have and would no qualms invoking intelligent agency. And they certainly wouldn't get overtly hostile to those whose minds are free enough to exercise such discernment.
No, what we have here are men running scared from the evidence of their Creator staring them in the face. The Apostle Paul nailed
it millennia ago:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualitiesÃ¢â‚¬â€his eternal power and divine natureÃ¢â‚¬â€have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to S@xual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the CreatorÃ¢â‚¬â€who is forever praised. Amen.
Modern science is willfully blind, as Cornelius Hunter demonstrates in his book Science's Blind Spot
Science doesn't doesn't depend on methodological naturalism; materialists depend on the pretense
of methodological naturalism to give them cover for their philosophical naturalism.
extra credit: Here are two good papers on methodological naturalism
by Alvin Plantinga