Philosophy and the Integration of Science and Theology

19

Philosophy and the Integration of Science and Theology

The theorist who maintains that science is the be-all and end-all—that what is not in science textbooks is not worth knowing—is an ideologist with a peculiar and distorted doctrine of his own. For him, science is no longer a sector of the cognitive enterprise but an all-inclusive world-view. This is the doctrine not of science but of scientism. To take this stance is not to celebrate science but to distort it.

Nicholas Rescher, The Limits of Science

1—Introduction

In the previous two chapters, we have peered through the lens of philosophy at various aspects of science. We have also seen in various places just how important it is for Christians to integrate their theological beliefs with their scientific ones. In this chapter, we shall probe more deeply into integrative issues and, in the process, will see once again just how important philosophy is for the task of integration and the formation of a Christian worldview.

In chapter eighteen, we saw how the realist-antirealist debate relates to integration. For the purposes of this chapter, let us assume scientific realism, though much of what will be said could equally apply to antirealist conceptions of science. In what follows, we will, first, examine an ideology, currently quite popular, known as scientism. Next, the chapter surveys various models for integrating science and theology. Finally, we will focus on the question of whether science must presuppose what is called methodological naturalism. In examining this question, the creation-evolution debate will be used to sharpen the issues.

2—Scientism

Scientism, expressed in the quotation by Rescher at the beginning of the chapter, is the view that science is the very paradigm of truth and rationality. If something does not square with currently well-established scientific beliefs, if it is not within the domain of entities appropriate for scientific investigation, or if it is not amenable to scientific methodology, then it is not true or rational. Everything outside of science is a matter of mere belief and subjective opinion, of which rational assessment is impossible. Science, exclusively and ideally, is our model of intellectual excellence.

Actually, there are two forms of scientism: strong scientism and weak scientism. Strong scientism is the view that some proposition or theory is true and/or rational to believe if and only if it is a scientific proposition or theory; that is, if and only if it is a well-established scientific proposition or theory that, in turn, depends on its having been successfully formed, tested, and used according to appropriate scientific methodology. There are no truths apart from scientific truths, and even if there were, there would be no reason whatever to believe them.

Advocates of weak scientism allow for the existence of truths apart from science and are even willing to grant that they can have some minimal, positive rationality status without the support of science. But advocates of weak scientism still hold that science is the most valuable, most serious, and most authoritative sector of human learning. Every other intellectual activity is inferior to science. Further, there are virtually no limits to science. There is no field into which scientific research cannot shed light. To the degree that some issue or belief outside science can be given scientific support or can be reduced to science, to that degree the issue or belief becomes rationally acceptable. Thus we have an intellectual and perhaps even a moral obligation to try to use science to solve problems in other fields that, heretofore, have been untouched by scientific methodology. For example, we should try to solve problems about the mind by the methods of neurophysiology and computer science.

Note that advocates of weak scientism are not merely claiming that, for example, belief that the universe had a beginning, supported by good philosophical and theological arguments, gains extra support if that belief also has good scientific arguments for it. This claim is relatively uncontroversial because, usually, if some belief has a few good supporting arguments and later gains more good supporting arguments, then this will increase the rationality of the belief in question. But this is not what weak scientism implies, because this point cuts both ways. For it will equally be the case that good philosophical and theological arguments for a beginning of the universe will increase the rationality of such a belief initially supported only by scientific arguments. Advocates of weak scientism are claiming that fields outside science gain if they are given scientific support and not vice versa.

If either strong or weak scientism is true, this would have drastic implications for the integration of science and theology. If strong scientism is true, then theology is not a cognitive enterprise at all and there is no such thing as theological knowledge. If weak scientism is true, then the conversation between theology and science will be a monologue with theology listening to science and waiting for science to give it support. For thinking Christians, either of these alternatives is unacceptable. What, then, should we say about scientism?

Note first that strong scientism is self-refuting (see chap. 2 for a treatment of self-refutation). Strong scientism is not itself a proposition of science, but a second-order proposition of philosophy about science to the effect that only scientific propositions are true and/or rational to believe. And strong scientism is itself offered as a true, rationally justified position to believe. Now, propositions that are self-refuting (e.g., There are no truths) are not such that they just happen to be false but could have been true. Self-refuting propositions are necessarily false; that is, it is not possible for them to be true. What this means is that, among other things, no amount of scientific progress in the future will have the slightest effect on making strong scientism more acceptable.

There are two more problems that count equally against strong and weak scientism. First, scientism (in both forms) does not adequately allow for the task of stating and defending the necessary presuppositions for science itself to be practiced (assuming scientific realism). Thus scientism shows itself to be a foe and not a friend of science.

Science cannot be practiced in thin air. In fact, science itself presupposes a number of substantive philosophical theses that must be assumed if science is even going to get off the runway. Now each of these assumptions has been challenged, and the task of stating and defending these assumptions is one of the tasks of philosophy. The conclusions of science cannot be more certain than the presuppositions it rests on and uses to reach those conclusions.

Strong scientism rules out these presuppositions altogether because neither the presuppositions themselves nor their defense are scientific matters. Weak scientism misconstrues their strength in its view that scientific propositions have greater epistemic authority than those of other fields like philosophy. This would mean that the conclusions of science are more certain than the philosophical presuppositions used to justify and reach those conclusions, and that is absurd. In this regard, the following statement by John Kekes strikes at the heart of weak scientism:

A successful argument for science being the paradigm of rationality must be based on the demonstration that the presuppositions of science are preferable to other presuppositions. That demonstration requires showing that science, relying on these presuppositions, is better at solving some problems and achieving some ideals than its competitors. But showing that cannot be the task of science. It is, in fact, one task of philosophy. Thus the enterprise of justifying the presuppositions of science by showing that with their help science is the best way of solving certain problems and achieving some ideals is a necessary precondition of the justification of science. Hence philosophy, and not science, is a stronger candidate for being the very paradigm of rationality.

Here is a list of some of the philosophical presuppositions of science: (1) the existence of a theory-independent, external world; (2) the orderly nature of the external world; (3) the knowability of the external world; (4) the existence of truth; (5) the laws of logic; (6) the reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as sources of justified beliefs in our intellectual environment; (7) the adequacy of language to describe the world; (8) the existence of values used in science (e.g., “test theories fairly and report test results honestly”); (9) the uniformity of nature and induction; (10) the existence of numbers.

Most of these assumptions are easy to understand and, in any case, are discussed in more detail in other parts of this book. It may be helpful, however, to say a word about (9) and (10). Regarding (9), scientists make inductive inferences from past or examined cases of some phenomenon (e.g., “All observed emeralds are green”) to all cases, examined and unexamined, past and future, of that phenomenon (e.g., “All emeralds whatever are green”). The problem of induction is the problem of justifying such inferences. It is usually associated with David Hume. Here is his statement of it:

It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular, that alone, without some new argument or inference, proves not that for the future it will continue so. In vain do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past experience. Their secret nature, and consequently, all their effects and influence, may change without any change in their sensible qualities. This happens sometimes, and with regard to some objects. Why may it not happen always, and with regard to all objects? What logic, what process of argument secures you against this supposition? My practice, you say, refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question. As an agent, I am quite satisfied in the point; but as a philosopher who has some share of curiosity, I will not say skepticism, I want to learn the foundation of this inference.

We cannot look here at various attempts to solve the problem of induction except to note that inductive inferences assume what has been called the uniformity of nature: The future will resemble the past. And the uniformity of nature principle is one of the philosophical assumptions of science.

Regarding (10) (the existence of numbers), in general, if we accept as true a proposition like The ball on the table is red, we thereby are committed to the existence of certain things, for example, a specific ball and the property of being red. Now science uses mathematical language much of the time, and such usage seems to presuppose that mathematical language is true. This, in turn, seems to presuppose the existence of mathematical objects (e.g., numbers) that are truly described by those propositions. For example, the proposition Two is an even number seems to commit us to the existence of an entity, the number two (whatever our analysis of numbers turns out to be), which has the property of being even. The same theory of truth used outside of mathematics (the correspondence theory) applies within mathematics as well. Now the debate about the existence and nature of numbers is a philosophical one, and thus stating the debate and defending the existence of numbers is another philosophical task presuppositional to science.

There is a second problem that counts equally against strong and weak scientism: the existence of true and rationally justified beliefs outside of science. The simple fact is that true, rationally justified beliefs exist in a host of fields outside of science. Many of the issues in this book fall in that category. Strong scientism does not allow for this fact and therefore should be rejected as an inadequate account of our intellectual enterprise.

Moreover, some propositions believed outside science (e.g., Red is a color, Torturing babies for fun is wrong, I am now thinking about science) are better justified than some believed within science (e.g., Evolution takes place through a series of very small steps). It is not hard to believe that many of our currently held scientific beliefs will and should be revised or abandoned in one hundred years, but it would be hard to see how the same could be said of the extrascientific propositions just cited. Weak scientism does not account for this fact. In fact, weak scientism, in its attempt to reduce all issues to scientific ones, often has a distorting effect on an intellectual issue. Arguably, this is the case in current attempts to make the existence and nature of the mind a scientific problem.

In sum, scientism in both forms is inadequate. There are domains of knowledge outside and independent of science, and while we have not shown this here, theology is one of those domains. How, then, should the domains of science and theology be integrated? To this question we now turn.

3—Models for Integrating Science and Theology

There are at least six different models for integrating science and theology. These models are not mutually exclusive unless, of course, one of them is taken to be the whole truth about integration. It is not always easy to identify clearly when some issue is a scientific or theological one. Still, there are clear cases where they can be differentiated, and in any case, there is an actual division of academic disciplines in the university. Thus the question may be fairly asked about how those disciplines, as they are actually practiced, should be integrated. According to these models:

Let us look at these in order. Position (A) surely accounts for certain areas of science and theology. For example, debates about the extent of the atonement or the nature of angels and debates about the structure of a methane molecule focus on very different areas of study and reality.

Position (B) is also useful, especially in areas where God operates via secondary causes. The distinction between primary and secondary causal action by God is important here. Roughly, what God did in parting the Red Sea was a primary causal act of God, and what he did in guiding and sustaining that sea before and after that miracle involved a secondary causal act. Secondary causes are God’s normal way of operating by which God sustains natural processes in existence and employs them mediately to accomplish some purpose through them. Primary causes are God’s unusual way of operating, which involve direct, discontinuous, miraculous actions by God. The complementarity view (position B) is especially useful when God operates through secondary causes. For example, chemical descriptions of the synthesis of water from oxygen and hydrogen are complementary to a theological description of God’s sustaining and providential governance of the chemicals during the reaction. Again, some aspects of conversion may be capable of complementary biological, psychological, sociological, and theological descriptions.

Views (C) and (D) are relatively straightforward. One example of (C) is theology’s assertion that fathers should not provoke their children to anger, and psychology can add important details to and practical application of this assertion by giving information about the nature and causes of anger in different personality types. Similarly, psychology can devise various tests for assessing whether one is or is not a mature person, and theology can help to fill in the details about what constitutes a mature person in the first place. Regarding view (D), the claim is that many or even most of the various presuppositions of science listed earlier in the chapter are quite at home in a Christian worldview, but are odd and without ultimate justification in a purely naturalistic worldview. Thus Christian theism is not only consistent with these presuppositions, but in some sense is also the best explanation of and justification for them as well.

An example of (E) would be the claim made by process theologians that science shows that events and not substances are the fundamental building blocks of reality and that everything is in process. Thus one ought to build his or her theological model of God on the basis of some form of process philosophy wherein God himself is constantly evolving and is not immutable. If taken at face value, position (E) is unacceptable for theological and philosophical reasons. It can be understood as an expression of weak scientism, which has already been subjected to criticism. Moreover, theological models, while certainly aided by insights from general revelation, nevertheless, ought not conflict with clear teachings of Scripture.

Does this mean that science can never contribute to a change in our understanding of theology? No, it does not, and a weakened form of view (E) can be helpful in integration. This weakened form implies that if two theological propositions are rivals, say two different interpretations of some text, A and B, and if A removes an intellectual tension with science and B does not, then A is to be preferred to B, all other things being equal. In particular, both interpretations would have to be exegetically justifiable on their own terms apart from scientific considerations and both would have to be consistent with good hermeneutics and with the nature of the Bible as an inspired, inerrant revelation from God. For example, passages that contain pictures of the earth having four corners should not be taken literally in light of modern science. This practice can be abused, though, and the appropriateness of this weakened form of (E) can be assessed only on a case-by-case basis.

This leaves us with position (F), labeled theistic science. This view, more than any of the others, allows for the possibility that science and theology may directly interact with each other in epistemically positive or negative ways. That is, (F) implies that some propositions of theology may support or gain support from science or they may conflict with and count against a scientific belief or vice versa. For example, the theological proposition that the universe had a beginning a finite time ago could gain support from the big bang model but would conflict with a scientific model (e.g., the oscillating universe model) that implies a beginningless universe with an actually infinite past. The degree of strength of support or conflict could vary.

For example, a theological and a scientific proposition may be logically incompatible with each other as in the oscillating universe case just mentioned. Or they may be logically consistent with each other but, nevertheless, odd bedfellows that are not mutually re­inforcing. For example, the view that living organisms have natures (e.g., there is such a thing as human nature possessed by all and only human beings), while logically consistent with evolutionary accounts of their origins that are rooted in philosophical naturalism, is nevertheless not as reasonable to believe as it would be thought, given some type of creationist account of the origins of living organisms. Evolutionary naturalism tends to reduce living organisms to property-things (see chap. 10). Position (F) implies that in the formation and testing of hypotheses and in explaining things in science, Christians ought to consult all they know or are justified in believing, and among the things they ought to consult are items of theological knowledge or justified theological beliefs. For example, if theology tells us that the universe had a beginning, that humans are sinful, that human beings arose in the Mideast, that life arose from a direct primary causal act of God, and so forth, then these beliefs ought to be used by Christians in developing testable hypotheses, in evaluating whether to accept some scientific theory (e.g., that human life arose in China), and in explaining certain things.

Not everyone is happy with position (F). Some claim that (F) violates the complementary nature of science and theology and the fact that science must presuppose methodological naturalism, according to which answers to scientific questions are sought only within nature, within the contingent created order. Let us probe this dialogue more deeply.

4—Theistic Science and Methodological Naturalism

The main area where the debate about (F) has been focused is in the creation-evolution controversy. It may be helpful, therefore, to use that controversy as a way of spelling out the broader question of integration and the nature of science.

4.1 Theological Options in the Creation-Evolution Controversy

The term evolution has several meanings. It may simply mean “change over time.” This sense of evolution is uncontroversial if taken to mean that microevolution has occurred, that is, that organisms can and have changed in various ways within certain limits. The second meaning of the term is the thesis of common descent: all organisms are related by common ancestry. This is sometimes called macroevolution, especially when coupled with the third meaning of evolution: the blind watchmaker thesis. This is a thesis about the mechanism of evolution, an explanation of how evolution in the first two senses has occurred. This thesis states that the processes of evolution are nonintelligent, purposeless, and completely naturalistic (e.g., through mutation, natural selection, genetic drift).

There are three main camps (with different subgroups within each camp) among Christians regarding the creation-evolution controversy. First, there is young earth creationism. Advocates of this view have been Duane Gish, Henry Morris, and John Morris. They hold that God’s work of creation took place in six literal, consecutive days of twenty-four hours and that the original creation of the universe took place recently, say, ten to twenty thousand years ago. Moreover, most young earth creationists hold that the flood of Noah, understood as a universal deluge, is a major key for understanding the earth’s geological column.

Second, there is progressive creationism (sometimes called “old earth creationism”), held by people such as Bernard Ramm, Walter Bradley, and Hugh Ross, who hold that theistic evolution is scientifically and biblically inadequate. More positively, they hold that there is strong scientific and biblical evidence for the claim that God has acted through primary causation to create at various times. Progressive creationists differ over just how often God has done this, but many progressive creationists say that God directly created each “kind” of organism (which is in need of more clarification), and most of them agree that God directly created “the heavens and earth,” first life (especially animal life), and Adam and Eve. Progressive creationists do not take the days of Genesis to be consecutive, literal, twenty-four-hour periods, preferring instead to take them as long, unspecified periods of time or as six twenty-four-hour periods separated from each other by long periods of time. Either way, they view the age of the universe and earth in terms of billions of years, though most progressive creationists hold that Adam and Eve are recent creations. Progressive creationists are divided as to whether Noah’s flood was a universal or a local flood, but they all agree that the flood is not the major factor to be consulted in understanding the earth’s geology.

Finally, theistic evolutionism, represented by Howard J. Van Till and Richard Bube, generally holds that theology is complementary to science, that Scripture is not a science textbook, and that methodological naturalism (according to which answers to questions are sought only within nature, within the contingent created order) is the correct posture to take while doing science. Thus theistic evolution is the proper view to take regarding origins. Accordingly, the general theory of evolution is to be taken as approximately true. Most theistic evolutionists accept all three senses of evolution listed above, except they would modify sense three. They would hold that naturalistic processes were, indeed, operative in the creation of all life and these are complementary to God’s creative and providential activity. Some theistic evolutionists hold that when God created the world in the beginning, he caused it to have functional integrity—the created world had no gaps, no functional deficiencies that would require God to act through primary causation. Rather, God implanted potentialities in his original creation such that all the various kinds of creatures would arise through normal processes as these potentialities unfolded. Others hold that God simply guides and sustains the widely accepted processes of evolution and creates through secondary causation solely by means of those processes.

The main debate between young earth and progressive creationists is over the use of the Hebrew word yôm (day) in Genesis, and thus over the age of the universe and earth and over the usefulness of the flood for doing geology. They are agreed, however, that the general theory of evolution is false and that some sort of theistic science is appropriate. Theistic evolutionists, on the other hand, usually hold that science presupposes methodological naturalism, that science and theology are complementary to each other, and that evolution is only a problem for Christians when it is coupled with philosophical naturalism as a broad worldview, that is, the doctrine that the natural world is all there is. Thus the dialogue among these groups is not merely one about scientific fact. It never has been, because beginning with Darwin himself, the creation-evolution controversy has significantly been a debate about philosophy of science: Should theology directly interact and enter into the very fabric of science or should science adopt methodological naturalism?

4.2 Theistic Science

The idea behind theistic science is simple. When Christians engage in any intellectual activity, including science, they should consult all they know or have reason to believe is relevant to that activity, and theological beliefs should be among those consulted. Moreover, some theological propositions are clearly relevant to the practice of science and thus should be part of the Christian’s scientific practices. For example, theological propositions that the universe had a beginning, that human beings (and animals) have souls and are not merely physical entities, that humans are fallen, that they arose within a certain time frame in the Mideast, that the basic kinds of life were directly created by God, that the flood of Noah was universal—these could all be used to form hypotheses with testable implications, to serve as background knowledge to evaluate the plausibility of various, especially competing, scientific hypotheses and to explain certain things that are scientifically accessible. Thus theistic science can be understood as a research program that, among other things, utilizes the insights of theology, where appropriate, for doing science.

In chapter seventeen, we already saw some ways that theology can enter into scientific methodology and we have just listed some theological propositions that could be relevant for the practice of science. In addition, here is a brief list of some ways that theological ideas can and should enter into science according to advocates of theistic science. The list includes examples of the points being made, which often tend to be more debatable than the points they illustrate. Thus, even if the illustration is rejected, the point illustrated could still be reasonable.

Theology can provide propositions “from above” for guiding research and, in keeping with the hypothetico-deductive method, can generate positive and negative test implications (e.g., that evidence of human origins should be found in the Mideast, that models of the universe entailing an infinite past like certain big bang models will be falsified).

Theology can provide and help solve external and internal conceptual problems (e.g., problems of overcoming the improbabilities of life originating by chance without a guiding intelligence).

Theology can provide explanations for certain scientific problems and data. Some of these explanations involve the use of a primary causal act of God, and thus the use of personal agency (e.g., in solving the problem of gaps in the fossil record by noting that they are to be expected due to God’s primary causal activity in creating discrete “kinds” of organisms). Other explanations involve theological propositions that do not directly include personal agency (e.g., the notion of original sin to help explain different types of psychological defense mechanisms).

Theology can shed light on various issues in the confirmation of scientific hypotheses in at least four ways: (a) by providing ration­ally justified background beliefs against which rational assessment of a specific scientific theory can be made (e.g., given the belief that humans were created by a primary causal act of God, then various evidences for prehuman ancestral forms will carry less weight than they would without this background belief); (b) by yielding positive and negative results that can be tested (see [1] above); (c) by recommending certain methodological rules over others (e.g., preferring explanations of living organisms on a substance model over those that treat them as machines and property-things when the two come into conflict—see chap. 10); (d) by specifying a certain ranking of epistemic virtues in certain cases (e.g., in origin of life research, preferring theories that solve external and internal conceptual problems theologically to theories that claim to offer avenues fruitful in guiding research for naturalistic mechanisms as to how life arose).

Theology can provide extrinsic goals for science (e.g., to glorify God, to show that our Scriptures are not in conflict with what it is reasonable to believe from sources outside them) and can help justify certain intrinsic goals for science (e.g., as we saw in chap. 18 with those Christian theists who use their theism to justify scientific realism and thus the goal of truth for scientific theories).

These are some of the ways theology can and should enter into the practice of science according to advocates of theistic science. The specific details of each aspect listed above will not be shared by all, and a choice of specific commitments will depend, in part, on one’s understanding of just exactly what theology teaches in a certain area (e.g., whether first life arose by primary or by secondary causal action by God).

In recent years, a new movement has arisen called the intelligent design (ID) movement. Major participants in the ID movement are Phillip E. Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Paul Nelson, and Stephen Meyer. The ID movement rejects methodological naturalism and is committed to the in-principle legitimacy of theistic science. The ID movement is an entire approach to science, and as such it goes far beyond the topic of evolution. However, when applied to the issue of evolution, with a certain qualification to be mentioned shortly, the ID movement does not map neatly onto the three views mentioned above (young earth creationism, progressive creationism, and theistic evolution). In principle, advocates of young earth and progressive creationism are participants of the ID movement, though there are intramural differences among those participants. But the converse is not true. Not all participants of the ID movement are young earth or progressive creationists. There is room for a qualified version of theistic evolution within the ID movement. To understand these issues, we must probe more deeply the central intellectual commitments of the ID movement.

According to ID proponents, the central debate about evolution is not the age of the universe, it is not whether the history of the cosmos and life contains gaps due to the primary causal activity of God in creating various kinds of life, and it is not primarily a debate about science and theology. Regarding evolution, ID proponents are committed to two claims: (1) The central issue is between an intelligent design hypothesis and the blind watchmaker thesis. According to the blind watchmaker thesis, there is no scientific evidence or intellectual justification for appealing to an intelligent designer in order to explain the history of life and the existence and nature of living things and their parts. Rather, nonintelligent, purposeless, naturalistic processes are fully adequate to explain all the relevant scientific facts. Advocates of ID demur and believe an intelligent design model is superior to the blind watchmaker thesis. (2) The facts that justify an inference to an intelligent designer and the inference itself are properly construed as being within the domain of science. ID proponents reject methodological naturalism and accept theistic science.

In light of these two commitments, it becomes possible to clarify in what sense theistic evolution is and is not consistent with the ID movement. If theistic evolution is construed such that it includes a commitment to (1) the thesis of common descent (all life is related by a common ancestry), (2) the functional integrity of creation (subsequent to the initial creation of the universe, there are not gaps and God does not act in natural history by way of primary causal miracles), and (3) methodological naturalism, then theistic evolution is not compatible with ID theory. However, if theistic evolution is taken to include the first two commitments and not the third, then theistic evolution and ID theory are compatible.

The central aspect of ID theory is the idea that the designedness of some things that are designed can be identified as such in scientifically acceptable ways. ID theorist William Dembski has been the main figure in developing this aspect of ID theory. We will revisit Dembski’s analysis of design inferences in chapter twenty-six, but we close this section with a brief sketch of his theory. Dembski analyzes cases in which insurance employees, police, and forensic scientists must determine whether a death was an accident (no intelligent cause) or brought about intentionally (done on purpose by an intelligent agent). According to Dembski, whenever three factors are present, scientific investigators are rationally obligated to draw the conclusion that the event was brought about intentionally: (1) The event was contingent, that is, even though it took place, it did not have to happen. (2) The event had a small probability of happening. (3) The event is capable of independent specifiability.

To illustrate, consider a game of bridge in which two people receive a hand of cards. Let one hand be a random set of cards—call it hand A—and the other be a perfect bridge hand dealt to the dealer himself. Now suppose that the dealer had announced he felt lucky that evening and wouldn’t be surprised to get a perfect hand or that he received such a hand more than once that evening while dealing, we would immediately infer that while A was not dealt intentionally, the perfect bridge hand was, and it in fact represents a case of cheating on the part of the dealer. What justifies our suspicion?

First, neither hand had to happen. There are no laws of nature, logic, or mathematics necessitating that either hand had to come about in the history of the cosmos. In this sense, each hand—and, indeed, the very card game itself—is a contingent event that did not have to take place. Second, since hand A and the perfect bridge hand have the same number of cards, each is equally improbable. So while necessary, the small probability of an event is not sufficient to raise suspicions that the event came about by the intentional action of an agent.

The third criterion makes this clear. The perfect bridge hand can be specified as special independent of the fact that it happened to be the hand that came about, but this is not so for hand A. Hand A can be specified as “some random hand or other that someone happens to get.” Now that specification applies to all hands whatever and does not mark out as special any particular hand that comes about. So understood, A is no more special than any other random deal. But this is not so for the perfect bridge hand, especially one preannounced or occurring more than once. This hand can be characterized as a special sort of combination of cards by the rules of bridge quite independent of the fact that it is the hand that the dealer received. It is the combination of contingency (this hand did not have to be dealt), small probability (this particular arrangement of cards was quite unlikely to have occurred), and independent specifiability (this is a pretty special hand for the dealer to receive, and he has announced that he expected to receive such a hand, or he has received such a hand more than once) that justifies us in accusing the dealer of cheating.

Similarly, if a spouse happens to die at a young age in an unlikely manner even though that spouse is healthy, and if this happens just after the other spouse took out a large insurance policy on him or her a week after agreeing to marry someone else, or if the remaining spouse repeatedly “lost” a spouse in premature deaths, then the three factors that justify an intelligent design are present.

Dembski and other ID theorists argue that the fine-tuning of the universe, the biological information in living organisms, and other phenomena justify the scientific inference of an intelligent designer. Thus ID theorists accept theistic science and reject methodological naturalism. But should theology directly interact with and enter into the very fabric of science, or should science adopt methodological naturalism? Some thinkers have claimed the latter, and we now turn to an investigation of their claims.

4.3 Natural Science and Methodological Naturalism

Many Christian theists believe that in the natural sciences (defined ostensibly as the sciences of chemistry, physics, biology, geology, and other branches of science usually taken to be the “hard” or “natural” sciences) one ought to adopt methodological naturalism. In one form or another, this position has been advanced by Howard J. Van Till, Charles Hummel, and Paul de Vries. There are four main features of this view:

What should we make of methodological naturalism as a philosophy of science? The view has certain strengths and weaknesses. Let us start with the latter. The first problem with methodological naturalism is this: it relies on a line of demarcation between science and nonscience or pseudo-science that consists in stating a set of necessary and/or sufficient conditions for something to count as science. No one has ever been able to draw such a line of demarcation and such a thing does not exist. Since theistic science was regarded as science by scientists and philosophers of science throughout most of the history of science, and since theistic science can be clearly illustrated in various ways (see above), then the burden of proof is on the one who would deny that theistic science is a science (a second-order philosophical claim). This burden of proof has not been met.

Various criteria have been offered as a line of demarcation, a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as science: it must focus on the natural or physical world, be guided by natural law, explain by reference to natural law, be empirically testable, be held tentatively and not as the last word, be falsifiable, be measurable or quantifiable, involve predictions, and be repeatable. The problem is that no one or no set of these is necessary or sufficient for counting as science. There are examples of science that do not have the criterion in question (thus it is not necessary) and there are examples of nonscience that do have the criterion (thus it is not sufficient). For example, there are scientists who hold their views dogmatically and theologians who hold their views tentatively. Again, there are aspects of science that are not quantifiable (e.g., certain theories about viruses and how they work) and aspects of literary studies that are quantifiable (e.g., quantitative treatments of word frequency in determining how an author uses a word). And on it goes.

Focusing on methodological naturalism, advocates of this view need the four features of their theory to count as necessary conditions for science because that will allow them to conclude that theological concepts should not be part of science. For example, if it is a necessary condition for natural science that it explain things only in terms of natural objects, then explanations that use the notion of a primary causal act of God cannot be science. Let us look at the first two features of methodological naturalism—the goal of natural science and the description of methodological naturalism itself. Are these necessary features of science? To show they are not, we must simply give cases of natural science that do not exemplify the features deemed necessary in the descriptions listed above.

Consider first the goal of natural science. Advocates of methodological naturalism assume scientific realism in characterizing the goal of science. Now scientific realism may, in fact, be true. But if the goal of natural science is stated in realist terms, and if this goal is presented as a necessary condition for natural science, then antirealist statements of the goal of natural science (e.g., merely to save the phenomena) become impossible relative to this necessary condition. But this is a very strong claim and incorrect. Anti­realist treatments of the goals of natural science are philosophies of science and they may be true. By employing realist notions in stating the necessary conditions for science, advocates of methodological naturalism do not allow for this possibility. Moreover, it is implausible to claim that there is only one goal or even a most important goal for science. In chapter eighteen we saw that several goals are consistent with the practice of science (e.g., gain simple theories, obtain empirically accurate theories) and these goals of science are capable of realist or antirealist interpretations.

Second, consider the characterization of methodological naturalism itself in contrast to philosophical naturalism. It is at least possible, and surely consistent with science, that a phenomenalistic understanding of science, in the spirit of Berkeley, Mach, and certain logical positivists, is true (see chap. 18). But some of these approaches to science deny the existence of a material universe and reduce physical object statements (e.g., “There is an electron moving through the wire”) to statements about actual or possible sense data that turn out to be private mental entities. If such views are even possible philosophies of science, then one cannot make the existence or study of matter a necessary condition for natural science. Furthermore, if certain antirealist views are true (e.g., those of Larry Laudan or Bas van Fraassen), then there most likely is no world of atoms; they are useful fictions. And even if we grant the existence of atoms, surely metaphysical views that take events or field-like entities to be real and atoms or other thing-like entities to be fictions are consistent with natural science. Thus we cannot make the existence of matter or atoms to be a necessary condition for the practice of science.

These difficulties with methodological naturalism illustrate the problem of drawing a line of demarcation between science and nonscience or pseudo-science in order to rule out something that is on the wrong side of the divide. As mentioned earlier, theistic science (also called creationism when applied to the theory of evolution, though this term is also frequently reserved for young earth creationism), which makes use of theological propositions in various ways, has been regarded as science for most of the history of science. Philip Kitcher, no friend of creationism, admits this:

Moreover, variants of Creationism were supported by a number of eminent nineteenth-century scientists. . . . These Creationists trusted that their theories would accord with the Bible, interpreted in what they saw as a correct way. However, that fact does not affect the scientific status of those theories. Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobservable particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended. The great scientific Creationists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered problem-solving strategies for many of the questions addressed by evolutionary theory.

Even if creationist theories are false, that does not mean they are not scientific; there is a difference between being a true or false scientific theory on the one hand and not being a scientific theory at all on the other. Advocates of methodological naturalism make the latter claim, but they have not met the burden of proof necessary to sustain this charge.

What about the other two aspects of methodological naturalism: the picture of scientific explanation and the complementary view of divine and human agency? Regarding scientific explanation, advocates of methodological naturalism seem to rely too heavily on a covering-law model of scientific explanation and to focus too much attention on empirical as opposed to historical science. However, we have already seen that scientists do not simply answer “how” questions by subsuming things under natural laws. Scientists also explain by citing causal entities, processes, events, and actions. For example, cosmologists explain certain aspects of the universe (the present location and motion of the stars) not only by citing natural laws (e.g., laws of motion) but also by citing the big bang as a single causal event.

Now some branches of science—for example, SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), archaeology, forensic science, psychology, and sociology—use personal agency and various internal states of agents (desires, willings, intentions, beliefs) as part of their description of the causal entities cited in their explanations of the things they try to explain. This is especially true in the historical sciences as opposed to the empirical sciences. Thus there is nothing nonscientific about appealing to divine agency in creationist explanations of certain phenomena such as the origin of the universe, first life, and human beings. At the very least, such an appeal cannot be faulted as nonscientific on the grounds that it involves an agent causal explanation and not an explanation in terms of subsumption under natural law. Moreover, such an appeal to divine agency may be especially (but not solely) appropriate where there are theological reasons to believe God acted through primary and not secondary causes.

It may be objected that such appeals are permissible in the human sciences but not in the so-called natural sciences like biology or paleontology. But this response is clearly question-begging in that it is an attempt to define and classify examples of “natural science” by smuggling methodological naturalism into the definition, rather than by using neutral ostensive definitions of natural science. It also distorts the history of at least some of the natural sciences. Scientists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have clearly seen that theological ideas can have scientifically testable implications, a fact that is not accounted for on the methodological naturalist view of scientific explanation.

For example, one often finds Darwin and other evolutionists making claims to the effect that if God were an optimal, efficient designer who was also free to use variety in his designing activities, then certain biological structures (e.g., homologous structures like the forelimbs of birds, porpoises, and humans that have a similar structure but serve different purposes) would not be present because they are not very efficient nor do they show much creativity. The point here is not to evaluate the strength of such arguments or to examine the appropriateness of the model of God as designer they utilize. Rather, the point is to show that the history of biology and paleontology illustrates arguments of this sort time and again. And such arguments are not merely rhetorical devices but substantive claims that show how theological ideas, adequate or inadequate, can have implications for scientific explanation, evaluation, and testing.

What about the complementarity view of human and divine agency? We have already examined this view in previous chapters, so we will offer only a brief critique here. When God acts via secondary causes, when regularly recurring phenomena generated in part by natural mechanisms are in view (such as the production of water from hydrogen or oxygen), then theology may legitimately be seen as complementary to science. But such a picture of integration only allows for event-event (or state-state) causation where one state of affairs serves as a cause for another state of affairs (the moving of one ball causes the moving of a second ball). However, when God acts as a primary cause, God acts as an agent (and even when God acts through secondary causes, he somewhere or another must act in a primary causal way or else a vicious infinite regress of secondary causes will be required). You will recall that the important thing about agent causation is this: the cause of an action (e.g., raising my arm, voting for an election, directly creating first life) is a substance—the agent himself—and not a state of affairs in the agent. There is no sufficient set of prior conditions inside or outside the agent that guarantee the effect. The agent must exercise his or her causal powers as a substance and simply act.

This means that when it comes to states of affairs directly produced by agent causes (the hand being raised, life being created), there will be a gap between the state of affairs that existed prior to the effect and the state of affairs that is (or is correlated with) that effect. When a woman raises her arm, the state of affairs in her at the physical level just prior to her raising her arm, say, in her brain or central nervous system, and the physical state of affairs correlated with her arm being raised will not be smoothly continuous with that prior state of affairs. The former is not sufficient to account for the latter, and there is a causal gap in the production of the effect filled by the agent herself. A similar observation could be made for cases of God’s primary causal agency and the resulting gaps (e.g., between inorganic materials and first life) that could, at least in principle, be scientifically detectable, contrary to what advocates of the complementarity view claim.

In spite of these weaknesses, advocates of methodological naturalism have been correct to remind us of two things. First, God is constantly active in sustaining and directing the world, and it is theologically inappropriate to limit God’s activity to primary causation. Second, we should be cautious in making appeals to God’s primary causal activity, and such invocations should be done only where there are good theological, philosophical, and scientific reasons for doing so. In general, methodological naturalism is most helpful in describing empirical or operational science where God acts through secondary causes and where our main purpose is to describe the natural mechanisms God uses to accomplish his activities.

4.4 Two Final Objections to Theistic Science

Finally, we should consider two further objections that are often raised against theistic science.

Objection 1: The theistic science model utilizes an epistemically inappropriate “god-of-the-gaps” strategy in which God only acts when there are gaps in nature, one appeals to God merely to fill up gaps in our scientific knowledge of naturalistic mechanisms, these gaps are used in apologetic, natural theology arguments to support Christian theism, scientific progress is making these gaps increasingly rare, and thus this strategy is not a good one.

Reply: First, the model does not limit God’s causal activity to gaps. God is constantly active in sustaining and governing the universe. Nature is not autonomous. Moreover, theistic science need not have any apologetical aim at all. A Christian theist may simply believe that he or she should consult all we know or have reason to believe is true—including theological beliefs—in forming, evaluating, and testing scientific theories and in explaining scientific phenomena. And even if someone uses theistic science with apologetical intentions, creationists need not limit their apologetical case to gaps. The model merely recognizes a distinction between primary and secondary causes and goes on to assert that at least the former could have scientifically testable implications irrespective of the apologetic intentions of such a recognition.

Second, the model does not attempt to explain in light of God and his activities to cover our ignorance, but only when good theological or philosophical reasons are present, for instance, when certain theological or philosophical reasons cause us to expect a discontinuity in nature where God acted via primary causation or in cases where some doctrine like original sin sheds light on some psychological theory regarding human behavior.

Third, even if the gaps in naturalistic scientific explanations are getting smaller, this does not prove that there are no gaps at all. It begs the question to argue that just because most alleged gaps turn out to be explainable in naturalistic terms without gaps at that level of explanation, then all alleged gaps will turn out this way. After all, what else would one expect of gaps but that there would be few of them? Gaps due to primary divine agency are miracles, which are in the minority for two reasons. First, we have already seen that God’s usual way of operating is through secondary causes, and primary causal gaps are God’s extraordinary, unusual way of operating; by definition, these will be few and far between. Second, the evidential or sign value of a miraculous gap arises most naturally against a backdrop where the gaps are rare, unexpected, and have a religious context (e.g., there are positive theological reasons to expect their presence).

Fourth, the distinction between empirical and historical science is helpful for answering the god-of-the-gaps problem. Recall that empirical science is a nonhistorical, empirical approach to the world that focuses on repeatable, regularly recurring events or patterns in nature (e.g., the relationship between pressure, temperature, and volume in a gas). By contrast, historical science is historical in nature and focuses on past singularities that are not repeatable (e.g., the origin of the universe, first life, various kinds of life). Advocates of this distinction claim that appealing to God’s primary causal activity is legitimate in historical science even if not in empirical science because the former deals with cases where, theologically speaking, God’s primary causal activity is to be found, while the latter deals with God’s secondary causal activity. Now, it could be argued that most cases in which God is appealed to as a cover for our ignorance about a gap are cases of issues involved in empirical science, not historical science. Thus, when those gaps are filled by naturalistic mechanisms, the conclusion to draw is not that God should never be appealed to as an explanatory notion of some scientifically discoverable phenomenon, but rather the notion of a primary causal act of God should be limited to cases in historical science precisely because of the differences between primary and secondary causation that are captured in the distinction between historical and empirical science.

Finally, as we noted above, advocates of ID theory practice theistic science without being committed one way or another to gaps in the history of the cosmos. According to ID advocates, one can use science to discover the products of intelligent design without having any idea how those products came about. Critics who raise a “god-of-the-gaps” objection against theistic science fail take into account ID theory.

Objection 2: The idea that some phenomenon is to be explained by a direct, primary causal activity of God is not a fruitful notion in guiding new research and yielding new empirically testable constructs in other areas of investigation. Thus the idea violates the epistemic virtue, “a scientific theory ought to be fruitful in guiding new research.” Because of this, the practice of explaining something by an appeal to God’s direct causation is not a scientific practice and should be excluded from natural science. As Richard Dickerson put it, “The most insidious evil of supernatural creationism is that it stifles curiosity and therefore blunts the intellect.”

Reply: First, something can be true without being fruitful. An appeal to God’s primary causal activity could explain some scientific phenomenon (the origin of the universe) truly without suggesting new lines of research. It is true that such an appeal will stop investigation for further, more basic natural mechanisms used by God as secondary causes to perform such actions since appeals of this sort are made precisely because no such secondary causes are believed to exist. But the conclusion to draw from this is not that such appeals ought never to be made, but only that we should have good theological, philosophical, and/or scientific reasons for making them.

Second, even if we grant that, say, theistic scientists’ utilizations of theological concepts have not fruitfully suggested new lines of research (and this need not be granted), all that follows from this is that theistic scientists, where appropriate, need to do more work developing the infrastructure of their models, not that their models are not part of natural science. For example, in cases where a creationist wishes to explain geological phenomena by an appeal to the flood of Noah, it is important to develop detailed models of just how such a flood will do the job.

Third, an appeal to fruitfulness in cases of God’s primary causal activity can be question-begging and may represent a naive understanding of the intricacies of fruitfulness as a criterion for assessing the relative merits of rival hypotheses.

Two rivals may solve a problem differently depending on the way each theory depicts the phenomenon to be solved. Ptolemy solved the problem of planetary motion by a complicated set of orbitals with smaller orbitals (epicycles) contained within larger ones and by placing the earth in the center of the solar system. Copernicus solved the motion of the planets by removing the earth from the center of the universe and by employing epicycles as well. Though they shared certain features in common, each solution was different in important ways (and not necessarily of equal effectiveness).

Furthermore, the standards for what counts as a “good” solution, as well as the ranking of the relative merits of various epistemic virtues (e.g., preferring simplicity to empirical accuracy) may largely be determined differently by the competing paradigms. Thus often (though not always) the standards for adequacy in problem solving are set by the paradigm itself, and not by its rival.

Creationists and evolutionists do not need to attempt to solve a problem, say a gap in the fossil record, in precisely the same way, nor do they need to employ the same types of solutions or the same ranking of epistemic virtues in their solutions. Creationists may elevate the virtue “Solve theological or philosophical internal and external conceptual problems” above the virtue “Offer solutions yielding fruitful lines of new research.” There is nothing unscientific about such a prioritization at all, and it is question-begging to claim that a criterion like “fruitfulness” set by one theory (say, the search for evolutionary mechanisms and transition forms to fill fossil gaps) should be most important for a rival theory and, if not, the rival is not even science.

Furthermore, sometimes one rival will consider a phenomenon basic and not in need of a solution. It may, therefore, disallow questions about how or why that phenomenon occurs and thus can hardly be faulted for not being fruitful in suggesting lines of research for mechanisms whose existence is not postulated by the theory. As Nicholas Rescher has pointed out:

One way in which a body of knowledge S can deal with a question is, of course, by answering it. Yet another, importantly different, way in which S can deal with a question is by disallowing it. S disallows [Q] when there is some presupposition of Q that S does not countenance: given S, we are simply not in a position to raise Q.

For example, motion was not natural in Aristotle’s picture of the universe, and thus examples of motion posed problems in need of explanation. But in Newton’s picture of the universe, uniform, linear motion is natural and only changes in motion pose problems in need of solution. Thus, suppose a Newtonian and an Aristotelian are trying to solve the observational problem of how and why a particular body is moving in uniform linear motion. The Aristotelian must tell how or why the body is moving to solve the problem. But the Newtonian can disallow the need for a solution by labeling the phenomenon as a basic given for which no solution in terms of a “how” question utilizing a more basic mechanism is possible.

Similarly, certain phenomena, like the origin of life or gaps in the fossil record, are not problems in need of solution for creationism beyond an appeal to the primary causal agency of God. But they are problems for evolutionary theory, so fruitful lines of research for new mechanisms must be sought. However, it is naive and question-begging to fault creationists for not developing fruitful, problem-solving strategies for such gaps compared to their evolutionary rivals because such strategies are simply disallowed given that these phenomena are basic for creationists. In this case, it is enough for creationists to use theological notions to guide them in the research for scientific tests to establish the phenomena predicted by the theological constructs. Once the “what” question is answered, there is no further material or mechanistic “how” question that arises.

Finally, when they deem it appropriate in light of their models, advocates of theistic science do, in fact, develop conditions for the falsification of their theories. While more work needs to be done in this area, currently proponents of theistic science are suggesting experiments that would falsify their models and which would corroborate those models in light of positive experimental evidence.

Chapter Summary

The chapter began its study of the integration of science and theology by examining and rejecting strong and weak versions of scientism. The former claims that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge there is, the latter that it is the best, ideal form of knowledge. However, strong scientism is self-refuting, and both forms do not adequately allow for the task of stating and criticizing the presuppositions of science nor do they account for the existence and strength of rationally justified beliefs outside science.

Next, six models of science-theology integration were offered, the last of which allows for direct interaction between science and theology in epistemologically positive and negative ways. This position was given the name theistic science. Five different aspects of theistic science were offered, and the creation-evolution controversy was used to discuss and illustrate this model of integration. Many Christians reject theistic science in favor of a view called methodological naturalism. Four features of this position were stated and criticized, and two positive aspects were mentioned. The chapter concluded with an examination of two final charges often leveled against theistic science: it represents an inappropriate “god-of-the-gaps” strategy, and it is not a fruitful research tradition for guiding new research and yielding new empirically testable constructs in other areas of investigation.

Checklist of Basic Terms and Concepts

agent causation

complementarity view

creationism

event-event (or state-state) causation

evolution (three senses)

intelligent design (ID) movement

line of demarcation

methodological naturalism

natural science

philosophical naturalism

primary cause

problem of induction

progressive creationism

scientism

secondary cause

strong scientism

theistic evolution

theistic science

uniformity of nature

weak scientism

young earth creationism

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