Why is methodological naturalism not scientific?

Naturalism postulates sufficiency of methodological atheism in science.

Naturalism maintains that all observable phenomena can be explained by chance, law-like necessity and their combinations. It claims to be the basis of science. However, naturalism, despite its claims, is unscientific because science itself is non-physical, formal, whereas naturalism rejects the dominance of formalism and puts an exclusive emphasis on the physical side of reality. A truly scientific position would be to acknowledge the incompleteness of chance and law-like necessity in explaining a whole number of phenomena, notably protein life, that can be satisfactorily explained only in terms of decision making, and to include choice contingent causation as a valid causation category.

The question is, why is scientific inquiry at all possible? Why can we discover the world using our intellectual capacity and why is this knowledge true and objective? Naturalism cannot adequately answer this question. Yet, the answer is simple: objective rational knowledge about this world is possible because this world was intelligently designed and created, which placed formalism at the core of objective reality.

Источник

1. David Abel, The First Gene, The Formalism > Physicality Principle.