you do not have to believe the world is chaotic, etc. nor do you believe its lawful. you hold no view on the matter, since its of no technical use in your investigation(s). sort of a logical positivist position.
your last statement is probably true. but what sort of statement is this lynchpin? its an ideological statement. is it a scientific statement? not really. then the lynchpin of scientific practice is a non-scientific ideological notion. sort of like 'god'.
which takes me back to the point i made and you reinforced in your initial response: the notion (utterly lawful universe) serves a pragmatic purpose: one of individual motivation. so, if you go about doing science, you benefit greatly from a non-scientific ideological motivational belief. perhaps, i submit, the 'god' hypothesis provides a similar ideological motivational belief for others going about doing the act of living, or propogating a view of morality or ethics, etc.
>> but that leads me back to 'god'. the 'god' hypothesis may also be shown
>> to have "helped" (in quotes because of the ambiguity of what sort of
>> "help" it is) various accomplishments. in fact, IIRC, edward wilson, the
>> biologist, has argued that it (the "god meme" as dawkins might call it)
>> has a significant evolutionary fitness advantage.
>
> Scientific practice is not contingent on belief in God. If you had to
> help science along in the next millenium, which belief would you
> indocrinate: "God exists" or "the universe is lawful"?
but:
1) how is scientific practice contingent on the belief that the universe is [entirely] lawful? i admit the number of scientists who have such commitments might have decreased from the time of einstein and godel, but i would venture it is still a significant majority.
2) if you had to help humans along in their attempt to make sense of their lives and the events that affect them, would you indoctrinate the belief "god exists"? not me, but the people who do so seem to live a more peaceful life than i do. wtf, they even seem to get along better with each other than the assembled atheists (self included) seem to ;-).
> --And you're just pushing my button with that evolutionary argument,
> right? That's a magnitude of order goofier than the "we must have
> five fingers because of natural selection" argument.
no, not pushing your button. i do not necessarily agree with wilson. but he (and dawkins, who writes similar stuff) is a man of some intelligence and may be worth a look. dawkins IIRC is an atheist.
this is dawkins:
> Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme
> pool. Probably it arose many times by independent ‘mutation’...Why does
> it have such a high survival value?...What is it about the idea of a god
> that gives it stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The
> survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great
> psychological appeal. <...>
--ravi