Heretic Thomas Nagel and The Derision of Naturalists

From the April 02, 2013 eNews issue
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"Intelligent Design is just another Creationist attempt to get their religious views passed off as science. It’s the same old dogma dressed up in a new suit."
— Anonymous Geology Professor

"Science is rooted in creative interpretation. Numbers suggest, constrain, and refute; they do not, by themselves, specify the content of scientific theories. Theories are built upon the interpretation of numbers, and interpreters are often trapped by their own rhetoric. They believe in their own objectivity, and fail to discern the prejudice that leads them to one interpretation among many consistent with their numbers."
— Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (1981), Chapter 3.

An atheist named Thomas Nagel has been coming under massive mortar attacks from the general science community for his book Mind & Cosmos, which dares to question the great explanatory power that has so often been attributed to Darwinism.

According to his secretary at New York University, Nagel’s not taking any of the hundreds of phone calls from people trying to reach him. Not Thomas Nagel, whom The Weekly Standard recently dubbed "The Heretic" and portrayed tied to a stake amidst flames.

Thomas Nagel became the subject of derision last fall in Berkshire, England, where philosophers gathered for a workshop called "Moving Naturalism Forward." According to The Weekly Standard, Nagel’s new book had just come out, and it was not appreciated by those present.

As Daniel Dennett mournfully disdained philosophers still engaging in "old-fashioned armchair philosophy with relish and eagerness" producing cute and clever worthlessness, Alex Rosenberg, author of The Atheist’s Guide, commented, "And then there’s some work that is neither cute nor clever. And it’s by Tom Nagel." Thomas Nagel had questioned Darwinian orthodoxy and had mortified the naturalists!

"Science" is often presented as a sterile institution free from the troubles caused by emotion and faith. It’s not that simple. While opponents of Intelligent Design like to classify the ID/Evolution debate as one in which religion attempts to undercut science, neither side is truly void of philosophy. The controversy is not science versus religion so much as Metaphysical Naturalism versus… something-bigger.

Scientific Naturalism is a philosophical position which argues that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws. Many people who are scientific naturalists are also metaphysical naturalists; they believe that nature is all there is, and that there is no reality outside of the natural realm.

In today’s universities, science students are taught they must be philosophical naturalists in order to be good scientists. If they don’t know the answer to the questions "why" or "how" in nature, they need to research until they find a natural explanation. To do otherwise is cheating.

For instance, if they get stuck on an answer to the question, "why does the wind blow?" it’s not scientific to say, "Well, it blows because God makes it blow." That’s giving up. They are taught that a good scientist keeps hunting until a natural explanation is found.

Scientific Naturalism is easy to appreciate. It encourages tenacity in scientific research and erases the images of angry gods in volcanoes or thunderclouds. A philosophy of Scientific Naturalism has helped scientists to push past superstition and find the bacteria that cause disease and the poor farming practices that cause famine. Scientists have been able to show that disease and famine have natural causes that go beyond the anger of local gods.

Yet, a healthy dose of Scientific Naturalism can become a strangling dose of Metaphysical Naturalism when it comes to the origins debate. This is an area in which faith and science naturally butt heads. It is one thing to say that a good scientist needs to find the natural explanation for things, and quite another thing to say that nature is all there is. Unfortunately, too many scientists in the universities have gotten Scientific Naturalism confused with Metaphysical Naturalism.

The Crime Scene Scenario
The origins debate is a great deal like a crime scene. Let’s say a man is found hanging in a warehouse with his mouth gagged and his arms tied behind his back. The philosophical positions of the crime scene investigators determine how they handle the crime scene:

The scientific naturalist says, "We have to use the things we have available in the room in order to determine the cause of this man’s death."

The metaphysical naturalist says, "Yes, and only the things in this room can be considered as the cause of his death. We can see no murderer in the room, therefore the man must have killed himself."

The Intelligent Design advocate says, "We can use the things in this room to argue that somebody murdered this man. We can’t say who, but his tied hands and gagged mouth indicate that he was murdered."

The creationist says: "We believe this man was murdered, and we know who murdered him because we have notes left by somebody describing the murder."

The physicist says, "There are more rooms outside this one. We’re busy trying to find a door."

The person of faith says, "We already found the door."


Who is correct? It all depends on what is actually outside the room. The Intelligent Design advocate is not necessarily a religionist. He is simply a scientist willing to believe there is more to the universe than what can be found in the warehouse.

The metaphysical naturalist, on the other hand, doesn’t have the scientific upper hand. If there really is no world outside the warehouse, he is certainly in the best position to find the true cause of the man’s death. If the metaphysical naturalist’s philosophy is wrong, though, he is going to spend his life fruitlessly trying to prove that a murdered man killed himself.

The Humanists
In 1933, when education guru John Dewey and 33 others signed the Humanist Manifesto, they were casting off what they saw as the outdated chains of established religion. They were forming a religion of their own, one in which man made the ultimate determinations of good and bad,
right and wrong. While there have always been atheists and there have always been "religious" people who were ignorant of God's ways, the humanists made a religion of it. They boldly proclaimed that they did not recognize God (or His laws) and took the position that they were capable of using their human reason and intellect to determine morality.

Like all religions, the humanists have a statement of beliefs, which they presented in their Manifesto. They state, there at the very beginning, "FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. SECOND: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process."

Bam, right up front the religious humanists present the foundation of their belief system. Yet, somehow, every respectable scientist in our culture these days is expected to be a philosophical humanist and to embrace Naturalism. They can’t prove the Universe was self-existing and not created. They can’t prove that men emerged as a continuous process from apes. They believe, and all scientists are expected to follow the same religious path or … get burned at the stake.

Thomas Nagel is not even an Intelligent Design theorist. He is merely a man, an atheist, for whom the evolutionary model has proved intellectually unsatisfying. Woe to him for presenting his honest views to the world and challenging the humanist's belief system protected so viciously in the name of "science." As the world watches the allegedly unbiased scientists hammer at each other, it would be wise to recognize the philosophical positions of both sides of the debate.

Related References
• Leading Atheist Branded A ‘Heretic’ For Daring To Question Darwinism - National Post
• The Heretic - The Weekly Standard
• Topical Bible Study: Creation/Evolution - Koinonia House
• Center for Science and Culture - Discovery Institute
• Humanist Manifesto I - American Humanist Association