Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 27 Dec 2014 10:40:34pm
In regard to democracy, your reading of the article is just unnecessarily uncharitable. You seem to know that many democracies are liberal, and while I am not sure whether you considered it there is a tendency, in some liberal democratic nations just to use the term democracy as a coverall. In a liberal democratic polity, which I think is clearly what Michael is talking about, freedom of speech, freedom of press and freedom of conscience, amongst other freedoms, are all valued. Of course, how much nations that were once seen as exemplary liberal democratic nations have decayed, or just fallen away from a truly liberal outlook, is another matter.

So, I don't think that David's criticism above holds, to say that democracy at its core is simply majoritarianism might be right, but that is not really what is at stake. Putting it in context it would be odd not to read the article as one directed towards those polities that are both liberal and democratic. Such as the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada...

Also, historically speaking, I would think that the idea that science was, methodologically at least, guided by a naturalistic outlook seems rather straightforward. In regard to the ontological question, are natural facts and causes the only types of facts and causes, or is all existence naturalistic existence, it would see you are right, science ought to be agnostic. But nothing Michael has said denies that - I don't see it.

Ontological naturalism is a philosophical position not a scientific one, but it does seem that in terms of explanations its fair to say that science is committed to a methodological naturalism, that is, it attempts, as far as possible, to seek naturalistic explanations. But that is all methodological, its about the norms that the scientist follows qua scientist and has little to do with what the scientist is committed to over and above following a certain set of methods. Over and above sticking with in methodological limits the scientist may be an ontological naturalist, or a theist or whatever. So I think that the methodological point - pursue naturalistic explanations as far as possible is compatible with an agnosticism about whether nature is all there is: Michael's first bullet point refers to the tools used for explanation (natural laws) the second refers to the nature of the explanations science provides.