In almost any controversy one can find words being employed whose meaning everyone understands until someone asks for a definition. Then it turns out, sometimes, that the meaning isn't so clear after all.
In the controversy over Intelligent Design (ID) disputants often speak piously about science as a discipline which deals only with the realm of nature and which does not concern itself with supernature, which is the province of religion. Since ID allegedly relies on supernatural causes of biological complexity it's ipso facto religious rather than scientific. Perhaps, though, we should ask exactly what is the distinction between what's natural and what's supernatural. Where's the boundary between them?
Cornelius Hunter puts his finger on the problem in a post on anti-ID philosopher Barbara Forrest. Hunter says:
In her recent paper, The Non-epistemology of Intelligent Design: Its Implications for Public Policy, evolutionary philosopher Barbara Forrest states that science must be restricted to natural phenomena. In its investigations, science must restrict itself to a naturalistic methodology, where explanations must be strictly naturalistic, dealing with phenomena that are strictly natural. Aside from rare exceptions this is the consensus position of evolutionists. And in typical fashion, Forrest uses this criteria to exclude origins explanations that allow for the supernatural.
The question for Forrest and the evolutionists then is: What is the boundary between natural phenomena and supernatural phenomena?
Forrest tells us science must never violate this boundary, so it is important that we discern it. We need to distinguish between natural and supernatural phenomena? How can science know when it is investigating a supernatural phenomena rather than a natural one?
We've actually discussed this problem at Viewpoint several times over the years. Here's some thoughts from three years ago on this very question:
One of the fundamental problems in the debate over design is the vagueness of the terms "natural" and "supernatural." What exactly are natural or supernatural entities? Is a natural entity simply something which is part of the space-time universe and a supernatural entity something which transcends this universe?
If so, then those cosmologists wrestling with theories about "other worlds" are really doing theology, not science. If, however, we wish to consider the theorizing of cosmologists to be legitimate science then we have to say that excluding theorizing about an extra-cosmic designer from science is an arbitrary and unwarranted step.
For all we know, the designer of our universe could be a denizen of one of those other universes or it could be the "generator" which manufactures those universes.
In other words, the concept of other worlds effectively erases the natural/supernatural distinction and greatly expands the purview of science.
The question then becomes not whether talk of a designer is scientific or not, but whether there is reason to think that our universe and the living things in it show evidence of intention and intelligent engineering.
The next time someone tells you that Intelligent Design is not science because it invokes the supernatural and science only deals with what is natural ask them what they mean by those terms. Chances are they won't be able to give a coherent, non-arbitrary reply.
Indeed, the only way to meaningfully distinguish between natural and supernatural is to say that the word natural encompasses everything that exists or may exist, including angels and demons, except the creator God of theism. That is, nature is comprised of all ontological contingent entities and supernature is comprised of the ultimately necessary being. This distinction is fine with me, but then there's surely no warrant for saying that ID is religious, or non-science, since the designer of our little corner of reality could theoretically be any intelligent entity which transcends our world but which is not God.
I think that those, like Forrest, who insist on excluding ID from science, should be clear that what they're really doing is not striving for some methodological purity but rather trying, perhaps for their own religious purposes, to incorporate an explicitly anti-theistic epistemological bias into the very definition of science.
RLC