Recently I received an email from a student wanting answers to some basic questions about design, Darwin, creation, and all that.
Her email provoked me to begin a series over the next week on this important topic. Here is the first part.
“If we can furnish accounts no less likely than any other we must be content, remembering that I who speak and you my judges are only human, and consequently it is fitting that we should, in these matters, accept the likely story and look for nothing further.”
Timaeus in Plato’s Timaeus
Religion and science are in the news. The state of Kansas reduced the importance of the theory of evolution in the science curriculum. Soon editorials around the world were written denouncing Kansas. They were composed by newspaper people that had to look up the location of Topeka in an almanac. Prestigious scientists were willing to act as expert witnesses in cases dealing a local school board that dared to teach “creationism” . Why all the fuss?
Religion is important to many members of modern culture. The products of modern science pervade society. If the two clash, then it is important. Both religion and science furnish accounts of the world. If these two “stories” contradict each other, then the culture has a fundamental problem. Such problems are news.
The Christian religion has been the most important single philosophy in shaping Western culture. The ethics of this faith direct the daily lives of millions. It claims to be not just a truth, but the truth. As such it provides a basic framework for looking at all of human existence. From the works of art produced in the Renaissance to the rise of the modern university, Christianity has been at the heart of the production of much of the “stuff” that created Western civilization. It also has had a long relationship with science.
Christianity helped produce the scientific revolution. The work of Christian thinkers like Roger Bacon, Aquinas, and Ockham helped lay the foundation for the methods of modern science. When applied, these methods yielded a rich harvest of knowledge. This increase in the scientific understanding of the world ushered in a new age of progress. Though humans do not live in utopia, few would deny the tangible improvements brought by science. Fewer brave souls would risk living without mass communication, transportation, modern medicine, and technology.
So what about it? Is there a war between religion and Christian faith? Or is the war over with one side already the victor? How should the Christian react to these issues? What is science any way? What kind of questions should it be answering? The answers to all of these questions are philosophic in nature. Christians need a philosophy of science.
A Christian Philosophy of Science
Conservative, evangelical, Christians have not spent much time developing a philosophy of science. Those believers who have thought much about the nature of reality have tended to be simple Baconians. What does that mean? Followers of Francis Bacon believed science to be the mere accumulation of facts. Only after the most careful examination of the world would a scientist risk a hypothesis. These theories were tied to the “facts” in a naïve way. The facts would simply lead the dispassionate researcher, the Man of Science, to the truth.
The only problem with such a view is that it does not always fit the way a modern scientist successfully works. Many scientists theorize and then search for facts that confirm or disprove their theories. Even more important, successful scientists may make assumptions that are not even readily testable. An idea may be valued because it is fruitful for further research, not just because it fits some simple pile of facts. “Facts” can lead to numerous, sometimes contradictory theories. The truth may be out there, but it can be hard to know.
Christians have tended to act as if “science” is philosophically neutral. Since the Christian faith is true, science should confirm the faith. Believers are horrified when science seems to disagree with their religious doctrines. Christians are thrown on the defensive. Scientists donning the authority modern culture gives them pronounce against the traditional faith. Many believers use this as an excuse to retreat deeply into anti-intellectualism.
Why do Christians get into this mess? Religious believers have tended to think of the religion and science issue as boiling down to the Bible and science. Too often creationism has been merely a hermeneutic in search of an apologetic. Christians think they know what the Bible says. They hear what modern science is telling them about the world. When the two clash, the quest is on for facts that can be used to support their preferred reading of Scripture. Whatever the position of a Christian on some detail of Genesis, this is a defensive and losing strategy.
This defensive strategy has had another sad result. Too few Christians have given themselves the intellectual freedom to examine their own point of view critically. Often what passes for Christian thinking amongst believers is neither very thoughtful nor very Christian. This is true on both the right and the left of the Christian community. Liberal Christian scientists like Howard Van Till fall into a theistic naturalism. Science is restricted to matter and energy in mindless motion. Religion is excluded from making a difference in scientific theorizing. Such a view of science leaves little room for traditional Christian beliefs like the existence of the soul. On the right, apologists invent academic degrees and repeat long discredited arguments to demonstrate that their favorite view of Scripture is true. This can amount to lying for Jesus. Too often both camps are locked in the naïve view that “science” gives humans “truth” about the world unmediated by the philosophic bias of the investigator.
One need not be a post-modernist, and reject the notion of truth, to recognize that worldview matters. The way one views the world will constrain the questions asked and the answers accepted. It is easy to give many examples of this in science, but one will do for the moment. Early scientists like Aristotle believed that women were inferior to men. They interpreted all the data available to them in this light. Female biology was simply male biology gone wrong. Contrary data was ignored or explained away.
The truth about the world is there. The world is real and it is knowable. It is not, however, knowable with absolute certainty. This Cartesian certainty is just not available to humans after the Fall. Humanity is cut off from the world and from each other. The mere use of language to communicate guarantees that misunderstanding and mistakes will occur. Of course, science and religion do not promise men such certainty. They both give probabilistic accounts. This is not so frightening as it sounds.
Does your husband love you? You cannot be sure beyond all doubt. You can, however, be sure beyond a reasonable doubt. A good wife can look at the evidence and in very short order come to the best conclusion. The flowers sent in afternoon are one clue. The lingering look at dinner are another. The faithful commitment and hard work for the family he does daily are powerful evidence. The wife cannot be certain, but she would be a fool to come to know conclusion given these facts. In short, while humans can know that some “facts” or “theories” about the world are likely true, they cannot know they are certainly true. This is important to understand.
The goal of a Christian philosophy of science is a “likely story” that takes into account everything known about the cosmos. Since religion provides knowledge, religious truths will have to be included. Since science gives knowledge as well, it will play a role in forming the proper Christian worldview. The Christian is free to consider any number of such stories. He is not constrained to look at only one sort. For example, God may have acted in a given moment of space and time or He may not have done so. The Christian is open to both. Traditional science is locked into an established Darwinian view that does not allow for such freedom of thought.
How could that be true? Isn’t the skeptical, non-religious scientist the free thinker? Sadly, this is far from the case. Most non-religious scientists have accepted the idea that naturalism is science. Naturalism is the philosophic notion that nature is all there is, was, or ever will be. This definition of science will not allow the secularist to examine the hypothesis that divine agency had a part in cosmic history even if the evidence points in that direction. This is the sad result of adopting a philosophy that is too cramped for valuable speculation.
The odd thing is that Christians have, by and large, adopted a methodological naturalism while rejecting philosophic naturalism. No Christian believes that “nature is all there is, was, or will be.” But too often, he acts as if naturalism were true in his research. He will not allow a “miracle” or consider evidence for divine intervention any more than his secular peer. He might as well be a naturalist, since he has given up the intellectual freedom that is his birthright as a Christian.
The difficulty is that methodological naturalism closes the door to God’s detectable action in nature. Too often it leads to fruitless attempts to falsify some particular notion that naturalists currently maintain, using naturalistic assumptions. Such Christians fail to develop their own model of the world. Religious believers forget that a fully naturalistic model of Noah’s flood, for example, might be as destructive to theism as Darwinism.
The problem the secularist has with Noah’s flood is not with the flood itself. The secular scientist may believe there is not evidence for such a flood, but is in principle open to such a thing happening. Floods after all really do occur. Global catastrophes, like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs are known to have happened. The fundamental difficulty is that Noah’s flood demands an active God. God did things, like preserve the ark, during the flood. No naturalistic account of the Flood, even if produced by pious Christian, can do that fact justice. Of course, the point here is not to argue for one view of the Flood, or that the Flood even happened. Naturalism, methodological and otherwise, is the problem. It must be rooted out of science like a dandelion on a putting green. To allow even a root of it to stay destroys the ability of science to look at all the options.
The goal of science and religion, after all, should be to come as close to the truth as possible. Many secular scientists act as if the goal of science were to exclude God on a priori grounds. Like some dictionary bully, they attempt to define science as limited to naturalism. But the secularist is simply posturing. One does not, in the end, care whether Darwinism or any other theory fits some predetermined definition of science. The important question to ask regarding any theory is: “Is it true?” Put more precisely, of course, the question is: “Is this theory most likely true given all the evidence humans have at the moment?”
What is truth? Since Pilate asked that question of Truth Himself in the Gospels men have puzzled to find a resolution. The full answer is beyond the reach of any merely human sage. It is sufficient for this discussion to make a small distinction in the way we normally use the term “truth.” The first way is as a term to describe what Francis Schaeffer called, “True truth.” These are truths that are logically necessary. This category includes mathematical concepts, logical relationships, and facts about the past. The second category of “truths” is things for which we have good reasons to justify our belief, but which might be still be false. Confusion between the two categories leads to problems.
Scientists often sound as if they are expounding some necessary truth about the cosmos. Theories about gravitation are held to be descriptions of necessary relationships in this or any other universe. In the same manner, theologians often make the same sort of noises. Speculative theological descriptions of the Universe are described as “necessary truths” because they are rooted in the unchanging nature of God. The problem is that both sorts of theories are claiming too much. As descriptions of reality developed by human minds, both types of ideas are always incomplete. Knowledge of their truth is under-determined by the evidence.
Scientists can never have all the facts about any matter. Scientists must, therefore, be somewhat skeptical about any idea in science. No theory, no matter how secure, is beyond the reach of some theoretical bit of new evidence. Every theory is subject to modification and so none fits the first definition of True truth. One adopts these theories, not because one is compelled to do so or by logical necessity, but for other less secure reasons. A theory may be adopted, for example, because it is the best answer available at present. Incompatible theories that both fully explain the data are possible.
This does not mean, of course, that some theories are not very secure. Many scientific views, like theories about gravitation, are very secure. One cannot discard very secure theories at will or on a whim. Such theories are very important human artifacts that should only be abandoned for good and sufficient reasons. They may come very close indeed to fully describing some necessary truth about the universe.
A comparison with mathematics should make this clear. Humans discover mathematical relationships. Scientific theories are created. Mathematical relationships are necessary relationships. There is no possibility that 2+2 are 5. It may be hard to imagine certain scientific theories receiving large-scale modifications, but the possibility cannot be excluded. The physics of Newton was the rock on which science seemed firmly built. That is until Einstein. How knows what revolutions in man’s thinking will come next?
The same thing could be said about theological systems. No matter how complete or how profound they might seem to be theological systems are human artifacts based on divine revelation. Is there any theologian so bold as to claim a complete and perfect systematic theology? All such works are open to modification or falsification with the passing of time.
This is not to introduce some sort of cheap relativism to theology. Certain formulations, like the “Apostle’s Creed,” are very secure. It is unlikely that much modification will ever be needed to such creeds. Time and much study have shown them to be very accurate descriptions of divine truth. They are true, in the second sense of that term.
What does all of this talk of truth imply? In both science and theology it is easily possible that two logically incompatible theories can be developed that both explain the evidence. There is no “last word” on any theoretical subject. There are “brute facts” of the world and of divine revelation. That rock is really there. The text of the Bible is also real. Human certainty about that is so sure as to approach the absolute. Interpreting the world and the Word is trickier. It is then that contradictory theories can develop. The contradictions may be between two theories of science, or between two theories of religion, or between a theory of religion and a theory of science. The possibility of such theories existing has profound implications for the Christian.
First, it means that naturalistic theories and theistic theories of origins will always be adopted for reasons independent of necessity. It will never be logically necessary to be an evolutionist. This does not mean that it might not be sensible to be an evolutionist and not a creationist given the state of the evidence. It might be a reasonable thing to do given the evidence as it stands at present. It might be more reasonable, but it cannot be absolute rationality itself. Rational dissent is always a theoretical possibility. Theories about the physical world will always be under-determined by the evidence.
Some secularists will maintain that to dissent from a theory that seems very well established would require an alternate theory to already be in place. This is not the case. What if the theory simply fails to satisfy the scientist or theologian in some way? Such a man knows that alternatives are possible. He would feel free to seek for them, without knowing for certain that they exist or that he would prefer the one he will find.
The real lover of truth could also seek a new scientific theory for the sheer joy of developing new theories. In personal relationships it is rational to break off an engagement without an alternative. No one would claim that their affianced should stay only because there are no better options at present. In the same manner, a person may find a scientific theory aesthetically or religiously unappealing and so go looking for another. So long as such a man deals fairly with the evidence and reasons logically, he should be free to pursue alternate theories. This is a freedom that the dominant secular scientific orthodoxy will not allow.
It is easy to think of examples. In the case of human origins, large numbers of people have powerful and rational reasons to seek a new scientific theory. The conservative Christian, for example, has a satisfying religious experience to explain. He is perfectly rational to seek to preserve this, if he can. Of course, he cannot do this in any old way. He must play by the rules of reason. Even if he does all of this, however, the secularist will be upset. He will argue that the Christian has abandoned science and reason.
This is an irrational reaction. Why shouldn’t a person value his religious orthodoxy over a scientific orthodoxy? Both may be wrong or one may be right, but there can be no a priori grounds for knowing which. Of course, this does not mean any religious “orthodoxy” could be saved. Facts are stubborn things. They will not fit elegantly into just any theory. If the orthodox religious man cannot develop a new scientific theory as good as the old, then he should abandon his religious orthodoxy. Meanwhile, he should be free to pursue his vision of science without harassment.
This open philosophy of science sets the Christian researcher free. It is sensible to explore the intellectual avenues opened by a Christian worldview if for no other reason than that such intellectual exploration is good for its own sake. The Genesis story is powerful. It has had a great hold on the minds of humans for many ages. To explore that view and to show that it can or cannot be made to accord with the facts of the science would be a great service to mankind.
Non-Christians with this open philosophy of science would become much more tolerant. After all, even if the Christian is wrong, if he is working carefully, his failure should be illuminating. Religious critiques of current enable even the secularist to see that data in a new light. Imagine for example the wonderful opportunity if all biologists could examine a completely creationist biological classification scheme. Even if this view failed after study, such a scheme would have enable the non- creationist to examine relationships from a new point of view. Just as contact between different cultures can stimulate both to higher achievements if both are tolerant, this “open” philosophy of science benefits everyone. Both groups would benefit from cross-fertilization.
If all sides of the religion-science debate admit that they are at best telling “likely stories,” then they can go about their work in peace. Each side can continue to use their own philosophic assumptions to spin new theories to explain the ever-increasing amount of data collected. Each side can tell their own story and the intelligent “neutral” can decide for himself.
In fact, philosophers of science have come to the conclusion that this is what scientists do, whether they admit it or not. Oddly enough, feminist philosophers of science, normally not friendly to conservative Christianity, have led the way on this issue. Feminist philosophers and scientists have shown that science is value laden and value driven. Ideology does make a difference in how we interpret the data of the world.
Colleges and universities should, therefore, free individual scientists, philosophers, and theologians. Of course scientists with new or relatively weak scientific general theories should not demand equal time in-class in talking with students. On the other hand, “mainstream” scientists should be fair. They should point out that some scientists are disturbed by the “orthodox” point of view. This cannot be dangerous. Critical thinking about a theory, even a true theory, can do no harm.
Even given this new philosophy of science, the Christian cannot expect the secularist just to give up. Evolutionists, for example, will expand or change their view to handle any new bit of evidence. Such grand scientific and metaphysical theories about the world are very flexible. It is difficult to imagine what sort of data could force a committed individual to abandon them altogether.
Having shown that it is rational to look around, the Christian can begin to construct a sound and equally powerful theory about the cosmos. The lack of such a theory is the great weakness of any putative “creationist” worldview. There is one practical warning to the church that must be given at this point. Christian research must be free to develop as the evidence demands.
Christians must not force religious scientists to enter the lab with any theoretical constraints. The naturalists have already demonstrated the folly of such a course. A creationist scientist must be free to falsify any particular creationist view. For example, Christians must not tie religious scientists to particular Flood mechanisms. Churches must not lock their theologians into static hermeneutic techniques.
Such intellectual freedom leaves nothing for the believer to fear. No likely story could ever defeat the Greatest Story Ever Told. Before turning to the most promising alternatives now available to the Christian in dealing with religion and science, there is one final addition to make to the general philosophy of science. One can imagine, at this point, a Christian wondering why he should bother. Why focus on “evidence” and external justification for the Faith at all. Another person might wonder how to know which religion-science controversies on which to focus. The best way to discover this is to examine how thinking happens in a human being.