Suppose “good” was defined as “conserves angular momentum”. In other words, it’s good to leave it unchanged, and bad/wicked/evil to create angular momentum out of nothing. (Without balancing it with it’s negative.)

Now the law of angular momentum conservation becomes a commandment from the Goddess, and with her omnipotence she makes sure nobody can break it.

It’s certainly a natural law, it’s certainly testable. Does it fit with what you meant, though?

Ow. There’s nothing quite like inducing a lengthy, well-thought out and presumably time-consuming answer to entirely the wrong question because one didn’t express oneself clearly. Sorry about that.

(And no, your answer wouldn’t have offended me anyhoo. Indeed, I’m sort of curious what you imagine my faith to be.)

At any rate, let’s try again:

Say that there exists a god, with all three omni’s, who has a full-fledged conception of what is “good,” and that the god only behaves in accordance with that conception. In that sense, this god’s actions are entirely circumscribed, regular, and predictable. Further suppose that, for the purposes of this hypothetical, that this god does intervene in the world–that god’s good nature doesn’t require it to butt out.

Now, if this is the case, I’d argue that (weirdly) morality becomes a sort of natural law! It’s in theory testable, though the actual test would be so hideously complex that it would be quite outside our actual capabilities, and might even be tied to a physical state of the universe (though it would be obviously nonlocal). We could conceivably experiment on this god, though that seems, well, fraught with danger to say the least.

Now does this make the study of this god compatible with methdological naturalism? (Also, doesn’t it arguably make an “is” out of morality, since this concept of goodness becomes basically a feature of the system itself?

I don’t see why. Take the question of the age of the earth, or the universe. Science finds their age numbers in the billions.
One set of theists accepts the findings and understands it as their god letting nature take it’s course. After all, their god is infinite and why shouldn’t a perfect god be able to create a universe sufficient to evolve life without interference?
Another set of theists say, no, that’s false. God created everything 6,000 to 10,000 years ago and it’s the devil who planted evidence in such a way as to make us turn away from the bible.

But somewhere along the evolution of science, a consensus was reached that that if there was a god (and let’s remember that the road to scientific methodology that we have now did go through religious scientists) then whatever god there is does not lie to us and does not allow other supernatural beings to lie to us.

Because, after all, if you allow for a trickster god or a powerful demon, nothing we perceive, nothing we touch, taste or experience, can be taken as real. Theologically, that’s a dead end because that would allow for the bible to have been written by demons.

Another assumption is that there is no supernatural, there are no gods or demons to interfere. Still another, what I ascribe to, is that we can’t know either way.

Those three assumptions get you to the same place: What we discover about the natural world using the scientific method is reliable. And over time this common assumption has proven not only reliable but successful in all kinds of ways. Scientifically, we can’t really test for any of those. What kind of experiment can you design for a god or a devil? (Well, not quite true – agnosticism is most consistent with science. )

So if we consider the claim that the age of the earth is is 6,000 to 10,000 years old, we can say that science shows that if you want to claim this age of the earth, what you’re claiming is a conspiracy of demons so complete, so pervasive and consistent across incredible broad spectrums of scientific findings that the only conclusion is that this god is lying to us – either directly or de facto by allowing demons to mess with the natural world to the extent they would need to.

And if god lies or allows lies of this magnitude, then nothing can be considered true and that includes the bible. If god were testing us, then the test was rigged from the beginning. I don’t know why anyone would worship such a god.

So the findings of science help us reject a specific claim about god, and one reason we reject it is because not to do so would undermine all assumptions about reality – gnostic, agnostic and atheist. We accept these findings as true because they are consistent with our common notion of reality.

38. George Locke Says:
“Prayer studies are interesting only in that we’re testing some assumptions about prayer.”
Wouldn’t it be fair to say that they test hypotheses about an interventionist God?”

They could test some hypotheses about an interventionist God. But remember, at least for the Christian god, you’re not supposed to test him. So, since god knows everything, even in double blind tests there’s always a chance that he’s not going to participate. In which case, the results don’t matter.

Again, I’m not worried about people praying. Frankly if one of my children was endangered and there was a microscopic chance that prayer might help save them, I’ll pray. I love my kinds, I’m not proud and I’m not a doctor. If I’ve done all I can do and that’s all that’s left, I’d probably pray.

You might not in that situation and I don’t have a problem with that.

38. George Locke Says:
“(snip) but the question of whether methodological naturalism is a necessary part of science or not is also worth our attention. I assert that it does not. I assert that if it were, prayer studies would be unscientific. Whether they are “scientific” or not, they are rigorous and trustworthy and demonstrate that methodological naturalism is not necessary to produce rigorous and trustworthy results using the techniques of science.”

Well, you’re free to make that assertion but I don’t have to buy into it.

As for prayer studies, I don’t know what you mean by “scientific,” but they can’t account for a deity who A) acts in such a way that’s indiscernible from what you would expect to find in the natural world; B) won’t participate in the study; or C) responds to prayer in ways other than what the study accounts for (which goes to the question of what is the purpose of prayer?).

So sure, their findings can be rigorous and trustworthy, but findings aren’t the same as conclusions. And if you’re concluding something about god from these studies, then you need to account for at least those three conditions. I have yet to read of a prayer study that successfully does so. If you have, please point that out.

As for the idea that “methodological naturalism is not necessary to produce rigorous and trustworthy results using the techniques of science,” I defer to Barbara Forrest who wrote: “Methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism are distinguished by the fact that methodological naturalism is an epistemology as well as a procedural protocol, while philosophical naturalism is a metaphysical position.”

Does this bother you? I mean, I’m not challenging your philosophical stance, which I assume is atheism. But, while a person’s philosophical assumptions may allow them to do science, those assumptions are not in themselves science. Or, is that your philosophical stance – that philosophical naturalism isn’t just a metaphysical position, it’s the scientific method?

If that’s the case, the existence of religious and agnostic scientists who do good science does successfully challenge that assumption.

I will say right at the start – some people don’t like their faith to be challenged. I intend no offence, but if you’re easily offended, you might want to give the rest of this a miss. I treat religion as just an interesting philosophical thought experiment, and talk of it that way. I only say this because in the past some people have got upset and things have got unpleasant. I don’t want that to happen here.

–

What if the rules are, “You obey god’s laws out of love for other human beings?”

That particular rule doesn’t make any testable predictions. As I read it, it’s a moral imperative about what people should do, not a rule describing what they do do. You can’t deduce an “is” from an “ought”, as Hume said.

Nor could it be a universal rule – different gods/goddesses had different rules, sometimes changing the rules at different times, a lot of them had nothing obvious to do with love, and the classic, most common reason given for obeying them was so as not to get smited. (Or tortured for eternity in the afterlife.)

One of the first things a scientist would note if they were to study divinity seriously is that there are lots of different gods and goddesses, and the information available about them is inconsistent. Their creation stories are inconsistent, ranging from the Mbombo story of the Kuba, in which the world and the nine different sorts of animals were vomited up by god, to the Yoruba version, where god lowers himself from heaven on a dangling chain carring some iron, earth, and a chicken. They likewise have a variety of different and inconsistent rules, ranging from which hand to use when going to the toilet through to the proper method of human sacrifice.

It’s very easy for people who believe in one particular god (or goddess) to assume it as the sole context for any question about religion – when asking whether god exists, for example, they tend to wind up asking whether their god exists, and assume gods must necessarily have the properties their own god supposedly has.

But any scientific answer has to be generally applicable, if it is to seek out universals. So whatever test we apply to Allah, or the Christian god, we must also apply to Odin, Shiva, and Tlaloc. What reason do we have for picking any one of them over another? If we find scientific reasons for rejecting one, we would have to try to apply those reasons to all the rest. And if we show that we have to take any one of them seriously, why would we not have to take all the rest equally seriously? They can’t all be true.

Considering your specific question – whether we follow rules out of love for other human beings – I would think that as a description of how people work, it fails the test of history. Religious warfare has been rife, even in Christianity, and personal observation suggests that tradition, fitting in, fear of persecution, feelings of guilt, maintaining the social order, and the desire to feel morally superior to their fellows are bigger motivators. Love of humanity does come into it, but you can love humanity without religion, or in several different religions to varying degrees. Atheists feel love and compassion, too. There doesn’t seem to me to be any obvious connection.

Your implied question as to whether the absolute goodness of god enables predictions is a very interesting one, and has indeed been followed by some earlier thinkers. You may have heard Darwin’s famous comment: “What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature!” This is essentially following this argument that god’s goodness allows us to predict that god’s creations would all operate in an essentially good (and competent) way. So examples of obviously bad design, and the existence of certain insects and other parasites with lifecycles that can only be described as pure evil, act as a scientific falsification. (I can give examples, but they’re unpleasant.) Of course, the “problem of evil” has a long history in Christian theology, so I won’t say there are no answers on offer, but I will say that trying to make falsifiable predictions from God’s essential goodness is fraught with difficulty.

(Other religions, where the creator is neither necessarily good nor competent, don’t have that difficulty. Their other predictions are not noticeably better, though.)

That’s why many Christian theologians have stated that God’s purpose surpasses all human understanding. As such, science necessarily excludes it. There are no fixed and simple rules – regarding the Christian god at least – for us to find.

What if the rules are, “You obey god’s laws out of love for other human beings?” (This corresponds with the old theological idea that God was absolutely good and thus, in that sense, absolutely predictable.)

Naturalistic or not naturalistic? If it is naturalistic, then does that turn morality into a form of a natural law?

This question was posed to me when I had put forth the idea above–that the Christian God was inherently unpredictable and therefore inherently unreachable by science–a phenomenon that, if it were to exist, science could not test. I still haven’t found an answer with which I’m entirely comfortable.

Prayer studies are “naturalist” in the sense that they hypothesise a law-like relationship between a natural cause and a natural effect. Pray, and they get better, don’t pray, and they don’t. The fact that it is hypothesised to go through a supernatural agency in between cause and effect doesn’t stop you testing the parts you have access to.

If on the other hand you ask why some of those people you prayed for didn’t get better, and the answer offered was that the god in question just didn’t want to, there’s no way to test that. The cause is now in the supernatural realm (what the deity decides) rather than the natural (whether you prayed or not). It’s not something you can predict, control, or independently measure. You can’t eliminate it as an explanation, but you can’t confirm it either. The hypothesis is unfalsifiable. There is no universal law governing it for you to test.

The term “natural” in this sense – contrary to the common usage – does not actually exclude non-material entities. Science had no problem with things like the electromagnetic field permeating a vaccuum for the many years before we had an explanation, for example. “Naturalism” is meant in the sense of being ruled by natural laws: rules and relationships affecting what we can observe that apply universally, by the nature of things. If interventionist gods follow rules, they’re a part of nature, and we can find out what those rules are.

Pick the tactic that works best for your personality and resources and go for it. Tut-tutting that one faction is being noisy and rude, or berating another faction for being quiet and wimpy is just a waste of time and bandwidth. We all want the same basic thing, right? Act from the overlap.

You say that science can test hypotheses/assumptions about prayer, but you’ve also said that science assumes that gods do not interfere with nature. Such an assumption precludes science from testing the hypothesis of a god that interferes with nature. My point was that these two ideas you’ve expressed are mutually exclusive.

“Prayer studies are interesting only in that we’re testing some assumptions about prayer.”
Wouldn’t it be fair to say that they test hypotheses about an interventionist God?

“But I’m not really worried about that assumption. It’s when someone assumes that prayer is a good alternative to professional medical help. And I think that even many people we could describe as fundamentalists accept that.”

I agree that this is a more important issue, but the question of whether methodological naturalism is a necessary part of science or not is also worth our attention. I assert that it does not. I assert that if it were, prayer studies would be unscientific. Whether they are “scientific” or not, they are rigorous and trustworthy and demonstrate that methodological naturalism is not necessary to produce rigorous and trustworthy results using the techniques of science.

Not quite true. There’s also the idea of a god whose actions are indiscernible from the range of natural possibilities. For all practical purposes untestable.

Not quite true. There’s also the idea of a god whose actions are indiscernible from the range of natural possibilities. For all practical purposes untestable