Quote of the Day: "No Miracles Allowed"

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"One of the rules of science is, no miracles allowed. That's a fundamental presumption of what we do." -- Douglas H. Erwin, Smithsonian Institution

This could mean one of two things.

It could mean scientists rule out the very possibility of miracles as an a priori assumption, in which case science predicates itself upon an undemonstrated, unproven, empirically empty, unscientific presumption and becomes the intellectually-stunted unscientific pursuit of explanations that fit its preconceptions.

Or, it could mean that miracles may in fact occur, but science, self-constrained by methodological naturalism, will formulate only naturalistic explanations, in which case science becomes the ardent pursuit of false explanations.

Science is a tool. Because of its methodological naturalism constraint, if science as a hammer is confronted with a screw, it's going to insist it's really a nail. That's the way science works.

And that pretty much describes what's going on in cosmology and biology. The more they discover about the fine-tuning of the universe and the complexities of the cell, the more they must realize there's something screwy with their methodological blinkers.