I appreciate how you’re fired up by these questions of scientism, pantheism, and the metaphysical status of natural laws. I do have numerous other comments to respond to, and I plan on writing something else today, so I won’t be able to respond in much detail.
But I agree with some of your comment. Certainly, the scientific attitude towards natural laws is a pragmatic one: the laws are about well-test regularities that needn’t be construed as anything absolute. And I agree that the question about the ultimate source of that regularity or of the very notion of natural order is more philosophical or religious than scientific. Davies treats that question as scientific, which means he blurs the line between philosophy and science, and that’s what won him the Templeton Prize.
We disagree on the scientism/positivism and pantheism issues. The critics of Davies on that Edge post aren’t saying just that Davies’ concern about natural laws is out of bounds because it’s unscientific. Carroll speaks for them all when he says the laws are brute facts. That is pure scientism because it implies that Davies’ question is meaningless. A brute fact is what it is, and no one can know anything more about it, which means the philosophical and religious issues amount to something like language games in the positivist’s sense.
Davies denies that the question is meaningless, but he also doesn’t concede that the question about natural laws is best discussed in philosophical or religious terms. He thinks scientists can handle the philosophical issue.
And critics of positivism have pointed out that our practices often presuppose answers to philosophical questions, even if we decline to consciously think about metaphysical, epistemological, or moral issues. That’s what seems to be happening here: scientists posit natural laws, decline to address the matter further or to credit the validity of philosophical or religious inquiries, and thus fall victim to the deistic implications of their discourse. Positivists don’t escape philosophy altogether; rather, they just do philosophy badly because they do it unconsciously, having failed to examine their prejudices.
Thus, the scientist’s hostility towards philosophy and religion is quite revealing. That hostility is evident in the critics’ denigration of Davies’ point about the relation between faith and the positing of natural laws as brute facts. Of course, I’m hostile to much of religion, too, but I draw distinctions between the exoteric and esoteric kinds, and between Western and Eastern religions. Religion is a big subject which would include transhumanism, consumerism, and any atheistic cult or implicit idolatry.
As for pantheism, you say this is just a desire for there to be gods. But that mixes up pantheism and theism. We agree that theism goes too far and is based mostly on fallacies, wishes, overextended social instincts, and so on. But pantheism is based on scientific knowledge plus the philosophical strength of atheism. Pantheism says that the highest powers are impersonal. We agree on the atheism (on denying that a supernatural deity created the universe), but you seem to be denying that nature itself is a supremely awesome creator power. I’d back up that awe just by citing scientific theories. Nothing more is needed than reflection on what scientists tell us about the universe’s inhuman scope.