Most of us think of science as the enterprise of seeking truth by formulating hypotheses and testing them against the evidence. This is empirical science. It has broadened and deepened our understanding of the world, and, together with human creativity, it has contributed to the advances in technology and medicine on which modern civilization depends.
Sometimes, however, science is defined as the enterprise of providing natural explanations for everything — that is, accounting for all phenomena in terms of material objects and the physical forces among them. Many scientists defend this definition on the grounds of “methodological naturalism” — the view that science is limited to naturalistic explanations because repeatable experiments can be done only on material objects and physical forces. In principle, however, this is only a limitation on method; it is not a claim about reality, which can include entities that defy explanations restricted to material objects and physical forces.
In practice, however, many scientists assume that they will ultimately find natural explanations for everything. This assumption is not merely methodological. It is equivalent to materialistic philosophy, which regards material objects and physical forces as the only realities; mind, free will, spirit, and God are illusions. Materialistic philosophy also has no place for intelligent design (ID) — the view that some features of the world and of living things are due to an intelligent cause rather than to unguided natural processes. In 1999, biologist Scott Todd wrote a letter to Nature stating that “even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”1
Obviously, this is not empirical science; it is
materialistic science.