Science assumes naturalism is true

Diogenes wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:23 pm I could accept the Bible “as reliable as any other book” that claims to record fantastic or supernatural events that are impossible according to known science.

Want to reiterate that they are only impossible because modern science assumes naturalism is true, not because naturalism is actually true. I touched on it before:

otseng wrote: Sat Dec 25, 2021 11:00 am Science, by definition, only deals with naturalistic explanations. It assumes that only the natural world exists and only naturalistic explanations can be used. It says nothing about supernatural causation and if it can or cannot happen.

To get into more detail about this…

“Philosophy of science looks at the underpinning logic of the scientific method, at what separates science from non-science, and the ethic that is implicit in science. There are basic assumptions, derived from philosophy by at least one prominent scientist, that form the base of the scientific method – namely, that reality is objective and consistent, that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that rational explanations exist for elements of the real world. These assumptions from methodological naturalism form a basis on which science may be grounded.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

“the more moderate view that naturalism should be assumed in one’s working methods as the current paradigm, without any further consideration of whether naturalism is true in the robust metaphysical sense, is called methodological naturalism.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)

Methodological naturalism, which assumes the supernatural does not exist, is in contrast to metaphysical (philosophical) naturalism, which claims the supernatural actually does not exist.

Science does not take the position of metaphysical (philosophical) naturalism.

Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific “dead ends” and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic, which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically.

However, this assumption of naturalism need not extend beyond an assumption of methodology. This is what separates methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism — the former is merely a tool and makes no truth claim, while the latter makes the philosophical — essentially atheistic — claim that only natural causes exist.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism

Also want to add this is more or less the approach I’m taking in the debates so far in this thread. I have not been invoking a supernatural causation for a global flood or origin of languages or even creation of the Bible. If we use science, there is a limit to where it can go and it stops at the line between the natural and the supernatural. Science, by its limitation of the assumption of naturalism, cannot take any steps further than this line. To cross this line, will have to use general philosophy to support supernatural causation.

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1066182#p1066182