Methodological Theism!

You've probably heard that modern science proceeds on the basis of 'methodological naturalism'. This is said to indicate that it assumes determinable causality within the closed system of the physical reality, at least in principle.

Thus, it eschews supernatural causality.

But it does this firstly on the misapprehension that the supernatural produces a root metaphysic that produces pagan inconsistent causality and arbitrary intervention of gods.

That is, 'miracles' are out.

This first misstep is that Christian theism is the same as paganism. It is not.

Harrison show in his paper Naturalism and the Success of Science (Religious Studies, 2020) that this is not so.

We always encounter the world within a metaphysic. The metaphysic drives the method in science as in life.

The Christian theist metaphysic is that God created a universe of consistent and predicable interactions, regular and rationally consistent causality, amenable to human examination and understanding.

The pagan metaphysic rejects this and regards the universe as riven with inconsistent causality, unpredictable interactions, and a general reality that is not coterminous with our life experience. No wonder it can do nothing useful.

The second misstep is that methodological naturalism is built on metaphysical naturalism. It is not, and cannot be. It makes profound assumptions about the world that flow directly from the Christian world view, informed at root by Genesis 1.  The world view that fostered modern science.

This makes for a world that we can regard in reality as one that can know, study, understand and predict outcomes of within its contingently closed system. In fact it is only a partially closed system. It is open to ontological overlap of God's participation. But not as an arbitrary 'ghost in the machine' but one of measured order within a grand personal world frame of clear intention and warranted action.

Modern 'science' as revealed in its both professional and casual  rhetoric, attempts to graft its underpinning Christian Theistic metaphysic onto an asserted methodological naturalism. But it fails. It operates on the basis of methodological Christian Theism!

Christian Theism establishes the world as it really is. Metaphysical naturalism presumes that the world 'just is', an arbitrarily determined system of random interactions in which the person is at best a accidental and impersonally arbitrary epiphenomenon of matter.

If science truly was based on methodological naturalism it would be static. It would start with the metaphysical position that everything 'just is' and is inexplicable, providing no basis or incentive for scientific exploration because in a universe that 'just is' everything else also 'just is'.

As usual, modern western atheism, a heresy of Christianity, insists on freeloading on the Christian fundamental description of reality.