Who Speaks for Science?
4
ON THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE
Is Scientism Self-Refuting?
Dear Dr. Craig,
How would you reply to this argument that scientism is not self-refuting:
Scientism has always been successful in the past; any supernaturalistic explanations used by our progenitors have been replaced by naturalistic explanations. Never has a supernaturalistic explanation superseded a naturalistic one. Since the predictions of scientism have always been later confirmed directly by the evidence, this amounts to a good inductive argument for scientism. So Craig is wrong that scientism cannot be scientifically proven because scientism’s own success and adoption by scientists serves as evidence for its truth.
Basically, the person I quoted is a friend of mine who treats scientism itself as a scientific theory and argues that it is inductively warranted and evidenced. Hence, he alleges that it is not self-refuting. He also thinks that this strategy can be extended to evidentialism (I found this out when I tried explaining Reformed Epistemology to him). He rejects your other argument against scientism that science cannot account for mathematical truths (because he is an empiricist about mathematics and logic), morality (he is a nihilist), and aesthetics (he is a nihilist about that, too). The most disturbing thing is that I have seen other self-styled empiricists on the Internet run similar arguments to these. How should I respond to these types of assertions?
Thank you,
Neel
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
Neel, your friend is confusing scientism (an epistemological thesis) with naturalism (an ontological thesis). Scientism is the view that we should believe only what can be proven scientifically. In other words, science is the sole source of knowledge and the sole arbiter of truth. Naturalism is the view that physical events have only physical causes. In other words, miracles do not happen; there are no supernatural causes.
These theses are obviously different. A person could accept other sources of knowledge besides science, such as rational intuition, and still be a naturalist. Similarly, one could hold to an epistemology of scientism and yet be a non-naturalist. For example, the late W. V. O. Quine, who held that physical science is our only basic source of knowledge, freely admitted, “If I saw indirect explanatory benefit in positing sensibilia, possibilia, spirits, a Creator, I would joyfully accord them scientific status too, on a par with such avowedly scientific posits as quarks and black holes.”12 Thus, scientism does not imply naturalism, nor does naturalism imply scientism.
So leaving aside for the moment the question of naturalism, what problems are there with scientism? There are two that are especially significant. First, scientism is too restrictive a theory of knowledge. It would, if adopted, compel us to abandon wide swaths of what most of us take to be fields of human knowledge. Your friend admits this with regard to moral and aesthetic truths. On his view there is nothing good or evil, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. But is it plausible to think that there are no aesthetic or moral truths? On your friend’s view there’s nothing wrong with torturing a little girl to death. Why should we accept such a conclusion simply because of a epistemological restriction? Isn’t this a signal that we need rather to broaden the scope of our theory so as to encompass other types of knowledge? Your friend says he will treat logical and mathematical truths as merely empirical truths. Good luck! Truths like “If p implies q, and p, then q” or “2 + 2 = 4” are to all appearances necessary truths, not merely empirical generalizations. And what about science itself? Science is permeated with assumptions that cannot be scientifically proven, so that an epistemology of scientism would destroy science itself. For example, the principle of induction cannot be scientifically justified. Just because A has always been succeeded by B in the past provides no warrant for inferring that the next A will be followed by B. For we could be at the beginning of a chaotic series of As and Bs whose initial segment is ordered ABABAB. So trying to provide “a good inductive argument for scientism” is hopeless, since it must presuppose the validity of inductive reasoning.
Secondly, scientism is self-refuting. Scientism tells us that we should not believe any proposition that cannot be scientifically proven. But what about that very proposition itself? It cannot itself be scientifically proven. Therefore we should not believe it. Scientism thus defeats itself. Your friend’s proffered argument for scientism is not an argument for scientism but for naturalism. He’s arguing that the assumption that there are only natural causes operative in the world has achieved extraordinary success in contrast to the assumption that there are supernatural causes as well. That has no relevance to the epistemological question before us. It is at best an argument against miracles. Actually, it’s much weaker than that: it is at best an argument for methodological naturalism, that is to say, the view that in doing natural science we should assume that all physical events have only natural causes. The methodological naturalist needn’t be a metaphysical naturalist, that is to say, he needn’t deny that miracles occur or that supernatural entities exist. He contends merely that they are not the concern of science. Science just is the search for natural causes or explanations of phenomena. This methodological thesis is one that a great many, if not most, Christian scientists agree with. So your friend’s argument really doesn’t amount to much.
As Michael Rea has shown in his incisive book World without Design13 the only defensible form of epistemological naturalism (a.k.a. scientism) is that it is a methodological decision to follow a research program that takes the physical sciences to be the only basic source of knowledge. As such it cannot be justified. It just represents the naturalist’s personal decision to adopt a certain research program. Anyone else can with equal right adopt a different research program that may accept additional sources of knowledge in addition to the physical sciences.
One final note about your friend’s argument for naturalism: of course, no supernaturalistic explanation has ever superseded a naturalistic one! That’s guaranteed by science’s assumption of methodological naturalism. It prohibits supernatural explanations from even being included in the pool of live explanatory options. Thus it’s impossible for a supernaturalistic explanation to supersede a naturalistic one! Only for theorists who are willing to challenge the assumption of methodological naturalism, like creation scientists or advocates of intelligent design, is there the possibility that a naturalistic explanation might give way to a supernaturalistic explanation. They argue that it should in the case of biological complexity. But because they are working with a conception of science outside the mainstream (namely, they reject methodological naturalism), it’s highly unlikely that their view will ever become the paradigmatic view of science, no matter what the evidence.
I note as well that in nearly two thousand years no naturalistic explanation has managed to supersede the resurrection of Jesus, a supernaturalistic explanation if there ever was one, of the facts concerning the fate of Jesus of Nazareth.
On Evolutionary Theory and Theism
Dear Dr. Craig
I want to start off by thanking you for what you’ve done for Christianity and for Jesus both in your written work and all throughout your career.
However, I do still have two questions regarding the nature of evolution and God’s role to play.
1) Stephen Meyer, who is an American scholar, philosopher of biology, and advocate for intelligent design says, “Evolution is a purposeless, undirected process. No one, not even God, can direct an undirected process or give purpose to a purposeless process.” He also has called theistic evolution an oxymoron. And yet he is not alone among many biologists. There’s a trend to think like this in the United States. A 2009 poll by Pew Research Center found that 87 percent of scientists say evolution is due to natural processes, such as natural selection, genetic drift, and random mutation. So, does that really bother your theism?
2) If you do accept evolution, at what point did humans become human?
Did God sort of intervene in this point of history when He decided this creature is special? Because in evolution, a species is always the same as its parent; there is no one time in the history of any species where you can say “that’s a new species.” Why did God favor this one creature as opposed to the very similar
Homo neanderthalensis,
Homo floresiensis,
Homo habilis,
Homo georgicus,
Homo erectus,
Homo ergaster,
Homo antecessor, etc.
Many of these displayed human-like behavior and may have asked the “why” question also. So, does that bother your theism either?
Andrew
United Kingdom
Dr. Craig’s Response
No, Andrew, neither point is bothersome for theism, it seems to me.
(1) I disagree with Steve Meyer’s statement because the terms “undirected” and “purposeless” are not being used univocally by the theist and the evolutionary biologist.
INSIGHT
As simple as this comment may be, it is important to recognize in a debate or discussion whether the same terms are being used univocally or equivocally. Failure to attend to that question can (re)shape the trajectory of an interaction between two competing perspectives that use the same terms.
If they were, then evolutionary theory would be enormously presumptuous, since science is just not in a position to say with any justification that there is no divinely intended direction or goal of the evolutionary process. How could anyone say on the basis of scientific evidence that the whole scheme was not set up by a provident God to arrive at homo sapiens on planet Earth? How could a scientist know that God did not supernaturally intervene to cause the crucial mutations that led to important evolutionary transitions, for example, the reptile to bird transition? Indeed, given divine middle knowledge, not even such supernatural interventions are necessary, for God could have known that were certain initial conditions in place, then, given the laws of nature, certain life forms would evolve through random mutation and natural selection, and so He put such laws and initial conditions in place. Obviously, science is in no position whatsoever to say justifiably that the evolutionary process was not under the providence of a God endowed with middle knowledge who determined to create biological complexity by such means. So if the evolutionary biologist were using words like “undirected” and “purposeless” in the sense that the theist is using those words, evolutionary theory would be philosophy, not science (which is precisely what some theists allege).
But the evolutionary biologist is not using those words in the same sense as the theist. This fact, unacknowledged by both critics of theistic evolution and apologists for naturalistic evolution, became clear to me in the course of my preparation for my debate with Francisco Ayala on the tenability of Intelligent Design in biology.14 According to Ayala, when the evolutionary biologist says that the mutations that lead to evolutionary development are random, the meaning of the word “random” is not “occurring by chance.” Rather it means “irrespective of their usefulness to the organism.”
Now, this is hugely significant! The scientist is not, despite the impression given by popularizers on both sides of the divide, making the presumptuous philosophical claim that biological mutations occur by chance and, hence, that the evolutionary process is undirected or purposeless. Rather he means that mutations do not occur for the benefit of the host organism. If we take “random” to mean “irrespective of usefulness to the organism,” then randomness is not incompatible with direction or purpose. For example, suppose that God in His providence causes a mutation to occur in an organism, not for the benefit of the organism, but for some other reason (say, because it will produce easy prey for other organisms that He wants to flourish or even because it will eventually produce a fossil that I will someday find, which stimulates my interest in paleontology, so that I embark upon the career God had in mind for me). In such a case, the mutation is both purposeful and random.
By contrast, when an intelligent design theorist like Michael Behe uses the word “random,” he means “not oriented to any goal.” He says, “if ‘random’ is defined as ‘not oriented to any goal’, then I think the ambiguities disappear and it does clearly conflict with intelligent design” (personal communication). Right! But that’s not the sense in which evolutionary biologists (at least when they are being careful rather than sloppy) are using the word. Meyer and Behe are right that not only the theist but scientists in general should correct naturalists who assert, on the supposed authority of science, that the evolutionary process is “not oriented toward any goal,” but such a correction is relevant, not to evolutionary theory, but to the philosophy of naturalism which tries to piggyback on legitimate science.
As for the Pew survey, I think you can now see why it is irrelevant to theism that “evolution is due to natural processes, such as natural selection, genetic drift, and random mutation.” Of course, it is! The statement as you give it doesn’t even say that it is due only to such factors. Many evolutionary biologists think that additional non-genetic factors also play a role as well. In fact, I’m shocked that only 87 percent of scientists think that evolution is due to the three factors you mention.
In a recent report from the National Center for Science Education, which self-advertises as “the premier institution dedicated to keeping evolution in the science classroom and creationism out,” Daryl Domning writes:
In truth, many (perhaps most!) evolutionists are theists of one sort or another. Their views are as sincerely and validly held as those of the atheists and have as much (perhaps more!) claim to be representative of evolutionist thinking. Atheists have every right to believe that theists are woefully misguided in failing to see the obsolescence of religion after Darwin; but that is their philosophical opinion, not an infallibly proven proposition of science or logic.15
That puts a very different face on the matter, doesn’t it?
Regardless of the numbers, however, the point remains that non-univocal use of words has misled many people into thinking that evolutionary theory presents some sort of challenge to teleology and, hence, to theism. I tell you, Andrew, this is just one more of those cases that illustrate so powerfully the importance of careful philosophical thinking about science.16
(2) As an anthropological dualist who thinks that human beings are body/soul composites, I think that a hominid animal, however advanced, which lacks a human soul is not a human being. So it really doesn’t matter whether or not there was a sharp dividing line biologically between pre-human hominids and human beings. In any case, anthropologists to my knowledge have not been able to come to any sort of consensus on the tree of human ancestry, so that all the hominids you mention may simply be dead ends on the tree of primate evolution which never led to man.
Were Neanderthals truly human? God knows! I don’t need to know exactly when humans emerged in the evolutionary process in order to maintain that in God’s providence a first human being did arrive on the scene. So while your question poses an intriguing puzzle, I don’t see that a theist needs to be able to answer it in order for theism to be rational to hold. Indeed, the existence of so improbable a biological organism as man is perhaps itself evidence that the evolutionary process, if it led to human beings, is under the supervision of a provident Designer.
Who Speaks for Science?
Dear Bill:
I hope you’re doing well. A couple of people forwarded me (in distress) your response to “Evolutionary Theory and Theism.”
As you no doubt know, your answer is similar to the one that Al Plantinga gives in his important book Where the Conflict Really Lies. Unfortunately, I think you’re making the same mistake that Al makes. (I still love his book and have made it required reading for our summer seminars). You and Al are two of the most prominent and able defenders of the faith on the planet. So a mistake on this point is profoundly consequential.
Of course you’re right that scientists are not justified in claiming that the history of life is the result of a purposeless process—that is, the empirical evidence doesn’t establish anything like that (quite the contrary, in my opinion). The question, however, is what Darwinists typically claim for their theory and for the evidence. I think you’re confusing what evolutionary biologists are justified in saying with what they typically are saying.
It’s true that if the word “random” in evolutionary theory, Neo-Darwinism, etc., means merely something like “irrespective of their usefulness to the organism,” then it’s logically compatible with theism and teleology (though even this definition clearly excludes all sorts of possible divine activity and goes far beyond the empirical evidence). In your post, you quote Francisco Ayala to establish the official definition of “random” in biology. But why would you trust Francisco Ayala on something of this nature? He has devoted much of his career since he lost his faith by studying (Darwinian) evolutionary theory, trying to convince Christians that they have nothing to worry about (he had been a Dominican priest). He tells Christians that there’s no conflict between Darwinism and Christianity, but if that is so, one might wonder why Ayala lost his faith once he came to identify with Darwinism.
But that’s a tangential issue. The crucial question is this: Do evolutionary biologists, Neo-Darwinists, etc., consistently and representatively restrict their explanations in this way? Absolutely not. Biologists in general, and most presentations of (Neo-Darwinian) biological evolution, are not careful to circumscribe the meaning of “random” or “chance.” One can construct an ideal form of the theory that avoids the metaphysical pretentions, but that’s a private language game.
In fact, if one reads for long in the relevant literature, one discovers a common bait-and-switch strategy used by Darwinists, which is to present a metaphysically minimal definition of the word/theory in contexts such as “Debating William Lane Craig in public,” and quite another definition in, well, every other context. Their equivocation is often coordinated and intentional. Other times, it’s simply the Darwinian default. Surely one of the important services of “careful philosophical thinking about science” is to identify and expose this equivocation, rather than to obscure it or miss it.
The distinction between “popularizers” and scientists is common but artificial. The problem started with Darwin, who relied heavily on the argument form, God wouldn’t do X that way, so X must have evolved by selection and variation, and it persists across the discipline to this day. If you doubt that the theory is normally and pervasively defined in a-teleological ways, I’m happy to send you quotes from scores of biology textbooks and official statements making it quite clear that the theory is intended to explain biological adaptation as an alternative to design. Words such as “blind” and “purposeless” turn up everywhere. This practice has been ubiquitous since Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species. In the quote from Steve Meyer that you discuss, Steve is paraphrasing the famous quote from G.G. Simpson: “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” Simpson was hardly a “popularizer.” It’s inaccurate to treat the a-teleological part of the Darwinian theory as an accidental but easily detachable piggybacker.
I have a hard time understanding the wisdom of defining a theory in a way that fails to accommodate the language and explanations of the theory’s founder and defenders. Surely they have a privileged claim on the question of what they mean by the theory.
Ayala himself often slides into anti-teleological language when talking about evolution even when he’s trying to give a more nuanced definition of the theory. See, for instance, his “Darwin’s greatest discovery: Design without designer,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in 2007 (Vol. 104:8567-8573, May 15, 2007). PNAS isn’t exactly a populist publication. He provides some nuanced definitions of “random” and “chance” there as well, and yet notice the very title of the article. He even uses “natural processes” in a teleological way, as if natural processes by definition exclude divine activity. He says that by finding that “the design of living organisms can be accounted for as the result of natural processes,” Darwin completed a “conceptual revolution” that “is nothing if not a fundamental vision that has forever changed how mankind perceives itself and its place in the universe.” Now, why would that be?
He claims that the Darwinian revolution, like the Copernican Revolution, brought a part of nature under the explanation of “natural laws.” One of many problems with this common claim: the selection/mutation “mechanism,” unlike natural laws in physics and chemistry, has no predictive power or mathematical expression, and no significant evidence in its favor apart from some trivial examples within species that no one has ever doubted. He also endorses the old historical myth about Copernicus “displacing the Earth from its previously accepted locus as the center of the universe and moving it to a subordinate place as just one more planet revolving around the sun. In congruous manner, the Darwinian Revolution is viewed as consisting of the displacement of humans from their exalted position as the center of life on earth, with all other species created for the service of humankind.” Notice the metaphysical water that Darwin is carrying here. It is ever thus.
He then goes on to explain: “Biological evolution differs from a painting or an artifact in that it is not the outcome of preconceived design. The design of organisms is not intelligent but imperfect and, at times, outright dysfunctional.” (This doesn’t make sense, since a design could be both intelligent and imperfect. This mistake is ubiquitous with Darwinists but isn’t central to my point here.) He also explains: “The design of organisms as they exist in nature, however, is not ‘intelligent design,’ imposed by God as a Supreme Engineer or by humans; rather, it is the result of a natural process of selection, promoting the adaptation of organisms to their environments.” Notice the word “rather.” He concludes the article by saying that “[n]atural selection does not have foresight; it does not anticipate the environments of the future,” and thus “in evolution, there is no entity or person who is selecting adaptive combinations.” This is how Darwinian Theory is usually explained by its proponents. The entire point of Ayala’s article is to argue that the Darwinian process provides “some appearance of purposefulness” without actual purposefulness. Notice the explicitly theological language, in an article in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.
The Meyer quote, incidentally, looks like a garbled quote from a transcript of an extemporaneous speech. I know it’s not from anything he’s written, and it doesn’t come up on an Internet search. In any case, Steve obviously wouldn’t argue that “evolution” is by definition purposeless. His point, no doubt, was something like this: If evolution is a blind and purposeless process, then, by definition, not even God could guide it. If He guided it, then, by definition, it wouldn’t be purposeless. Do you think it’s plausible that Mike Behe and Steve Meyer, after all these years of studying, reading, writing, and debating on the subject, have failed to understand what Darwinian theorists are saying, and that no one had bothered simply to explain to them that the word “random” has a specialized, metaphysically neutral meaning when biologists use it? On the contrary, I can assure you that Steve, Mike, and every other prominent [intelligent design] advocate is intimately familiar with this Darwinian language game.
Although it’s a separate issue, I’m surprised you would cite a report by Darrell Domning at the National Center for Science Education to the effect that “most evolutionists are theists of some sort.” The NCSE, like Ayala, works to persuade religious people that there’s nothing metaphysically problematic about Darwinian theory, and so has every motivation to misrepresent the facts here. It’s headed by Eugenie Scott—a signer of the third humanist manifesto—and employs several village atheists. This is not exactly an organization we should trust to represent the subject under dispute.
In any event, in most polls, biologists are consistently identified as one of the most atheistic of the scientific disciplines (mathematicians and physicists tend to be the most theist-friendly). And in polls of biologists who are members of the NAS, 95 percent say they are atheists. In a well-crafted 2003 survey, Gregory Graffin and Will Provine polled 149 elite evolutionary biologists and found that 78 percent were “pure naturalists.” Strikingly, “[o]nly two out of 149 described themselves as full theists.” (See http://bit.ly/AmericanScoemtost).
In short, Darwinism as it is taught, explained and understood by most of its proponents, and as it is identified with evolutionary biology itself, is not captured by Ayala’s stipulated definition of “random,” which you focused on in your response. In fact, by following Ayala in this way, I fear that you’ve taken the Darwinian bait but missed the switch.
All the best regards,
Jay
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
Thanks for these trenchant insights, Jay! Lest distressed readers miss the forest for the trees, we agree on the central point: that insofar as a person claims that the evidence of evolutionary biology has shown that the evolutionary process, based as it is on genetic mutations and natural selection, is undirected, purposeless, or non-teleological, he is making a claim that hopelessly outstrips the scientific evidence and so is unjustified. The remaining question is: is this vaunted claim, as I suspect, really philosophical, though masquerading as science, or is it, as you believe, in fact part and parcel of the scientific theory itself? If I am right, we should chastise biologists who transgress the bounds of science in making such a philosophical claim; whereas if you are right, we should reject the scientific theory that makes such a claim. In either case, the claim itself is rejected as unjustified; but are we rejecting a philosophical claim or a scientific claim?
INSIGHT
Note how Dr. Craig summarizes the discussion and characterizes this as an endeavor to reject a philosophical vs. scientific claim. This, along with Dr. Craig’s answer, is a helpful reminder to think about the role of philosophy (and even theology) in relationship to a scientific theory.
The fundamental question, then, is, who determines the content of a scientific theory? Who speaks for science? Now, at one level the answer to that question is easy: the expert practitioners of a theory tell us what the content of that theory is. In practice, however, things are not so easy. For scientists, being philosophically untrained, may be blind to the philosophical assumptions and ramifications of their views, so that careless statements are often made, especially by those who have a philosophical or theological agenda, that are not really part of the theory itself. So when we find the expert practitioners disagreeing amongst themselves about the proper content of a scientific theory, that raises suspicions that extra-theoretical assertions are being made by some of them.
This is precisely the situation we confront concerning the definition of the word “random” as applied to genetic mutations. It is baffling when we hear so many expert biologists asserting that these occur wholly by chance or are wholly purposeless, since such claims could not be established scientifically. For that reason, Ayala’s explication of randomness as “irrespective of their usefulness to the organism” is so stunning. It makes sense of the theory as science.
You ask, “Why would you trust Francisco Ayala on something of this nature?” Two reasons, I think. First, he is an expert practitioner of the theory, with more decorations than an Argentine general! Second, the principle of charity demands it. On Ayala’s understanding, the theory makes sense as science. But on the non-teleological understanding, the theory turns into metaphysics, making claims that could not be established by empirical evidence. We should charitably interpret people’s views in a way that makes the best sense of them, rather than construct straw men.
So I don’t agree with you that “the crucial question is this: Do evolutionary biologists, Neo-Darwinists, etc., consistently and representatively restrict their explanations in this way?” Rather, the question is, when evolutionary biologists engage in making inflated claims about the absence of teleology, have they begun to philosophize about a theory that, strictly speaking, makes no such inflated claims? The very bait and switch strategy that you describe makes me suspect that they are, indeed, making philosophical claims on behalf of the theory which the theory itself does not make.
It’s important to understand that it is not just popularizers who make such philosophical assertions on behalf of a scientific theory. Expert practitioners, especially in statements for popular audiences, will often make such claims. I see this happen all the time in an area of science with which I have more familiarity: cosmology. Expert physicists like Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss have made outrageous claims on behalf of certain theories of the origin of the universe. The statement you quote from G. G. Simpson is similarly reckless and is a philosophical inference from evolutionary theory rather than a sober statement of it.
As for Ayala’s seemingly inconsistent statements, you need to understand that he has other reasons for thinking that organisms are not designed in the form in which we find them, namely, the problem of natural evil and examples of poor design. This fact is alluded to in the remark you quote: “The design of organisms is not intelligent but imperfect and, at times, outright dysfunctional.” Debating Ayala on the viability of intelligent design, therefore, required me to prepare briefs on the subjects of animal pain and instances of non-optimal design. Those are very different issues than just the definition of “randomness”! Here are philosophical arguments against design. Indeed, Jay, how can you be sure that the authorities you mention are not saying that the evolutionary process is non-teleological, not simply by definition of randomness, but on the basis of arguments from evil and dysteleology?
So in my view, if there is a bait and switch going on here, it is the switch from doing empirically based science to making philosophical claims which far exceed the science. Rather than missing or ignoring the switch from science to philosophy, we need to spotlight it and call naturalists on it.
12. W. V. Quine, “Naturalism; or, Living within One’s Means,” Dialectica 49 (1995), 252.
13. Michael C. Rea, World without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
14. You can access this debate for free by going to ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/CraigAyala).
15. Daryl P. Domning, “Winning Their Hearts and Minds: Who Should Speak for Evolution?” Reports of the National Center for Science Education 29:2 (March-April 2009), accessed online: http://bit.ly/Domning.
16. See Dr. Craig’s “Naturalism and Intelligent Design,” in Intelligent Design, Robert Stewart, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 58–71.