6
SPHERICAL COWS AND MARS HILL:A HEURISTIC APPROACH TO THE TWO TASKS
ROBERT KAITA
There is an old joke that goes like this.1Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to a local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter, the farmer received the write-up, and opened it to read the first line: “Consider a spherical cow. . . .”
Apologies are offered to those who do not immediately find this amusing. To understand the joke, you have to realize that the physical sciences have been very successful in explaining a wide variety of natural phenomena. Since they are based on mathematics, however, you have to first make simplifying assumptions to be able to do the calculations. For example, common sense would dictate that a complete description of the earth must include everything from the majesty of the Grand Canyon to the soaring peaks of the Himalayas. To physicists, in contrast, the earth is just a rather dull point mass if you want to calculate its orbit around the sun.
There is admittedly nothing that takes the fun out of a joke more than having to explain it. The truth reflected in the one above about academic research remains, nevertheless, because it carries to the absurd extreme a principle that is quite valuable in our work. It is based on what we call heuristic models. A dictionary defines a “heuristic” as something that serves to “guide, discover, or reveal.”2The definition further elaborates with the remark that a heuristic is specifically “valuable for empirical research but unproved or incapable of proof.”3It takes little more than a look outside your window to “prove” that the earth is not a point mass, and few would ask for “proof” that real cows are not spherical. As inaccurate as these descriptions might be, the simplifications they introduce, nonetheless, can show us how to approach the problems we really want to solve.
What does this have to do with The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar? Recall Malik’s description of the two tasks. The first task is based on the fact that “materially, politically, and morally, the Protestants of America command absolutely unprecedented resources, and spiritually they are in a state of creative ferment.”4 He claims that “Protestantism emphasizes four fundamental truths: the supreme importance of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as the Word of God; Jesus Christ of Nazareth as the Living Lord of lords and King of kings, with whom we must, and indeed we can, have a direct personal relationship; justification by faith and not by works, which is best expressed by Romans 4:5 (KJV), ‘But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness’; and individual, personal, responsible freedom as the very essence of the dignity of man.”5
The first task is for Protestants to fulfill their “appointed destiny” as bearers of these truths. Malik calls us to evangelize, and to be effective in this, he cites three requirements: “greater unity among themselves (some of whom are hardly on speaking terms with others); greater understanding and mutual toleration between the evangelicals among them (although all Christians, by definition, are evangelical) and the more established churches; and rediscovering and appropriating the infinite riches of the great traditions: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant.”6
Malik then goes on to say that “if evangelization is the most important task, the task that comes immediately after it—not in the tenth place, nor even the third place, but in the second place—is not politics, nor economics, nor the quest for comfort and security and ease, but to find out exactly what is happening to the mind and spirit in the schools and universities.”7His primary purpose is to raise the issue of the “crisis” in academia, as far as Christianity’s role in it is concerned, as the second of the two tasks. Although Malik speaks wistfully of a Christian university that has Ivy League stature, he readily admits that he has no easy formula for how that might be achieved. Rather than dealing with all facets of this seemingly unsolvable problem, however, there is merit in considering how certain aspects of it may still be addressed. While heuristic simplifications might seem naïve, they can help us get started.
The Heuristic Approach in Evangelism
We have an excellent example of how effective the heuristic approach can be in the book of Acts. There, we find that Paul uses this technique when he addresses his Athenian audience. His goal is clearly to evangelize, which is the first of the two tasks. However, Paul does not neglect the mind in two very important aspects. To begin with, he thinks about his listeners and tries to understand them. Instead of using theological jargon, for example, he is able to communicate effectively by respecting their worship of an “Unknown God.” Paul then skillfully crafts his argument, utilizing poets and writers familiar to his audience. In that way, he enables his listeners to understand who this God truly is, and recognize their need to repent before him.
To see how this comes about, let us begin by looking at Acts 17:16– 34. The basic story is very well-known, but let us read the passage from the perspective of those who are familiar with academia today. We may be surprised to find those of us in the twenty-first century have much more in common with our predecessors in the first century than we might suspect.
The setting is Athens, where Paul is waiting for his fellow travelers Silas and Timothy. Beginning in verses 16–17, we read the following:
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.
In a general sense, Christians today face the same challenges as Paul did from the “idols” worshiped by society at large. It is impressive how many of their images flash by during commercial television breaks, and their appearance on web sites has shown how technology ensures that they are inescapable. Paul confronted the problem wherever he could, whether in places of worship or in the marketplace. As members of the broader Christian community, we are called to do the same, whether it is to encourage fellow believers in church or to share the gospel where we live and work.
There is, however, another aspect of Paul’s witness that has to do specifically with where he was located. Although politically and economically, Greece had been eclipsed by Rome at the time of Paul, Athens continued to be emblematic of its “Golden Age.” The philosophical ideas from that era helped shape the Roman world, and indeed, influence us to this day. This makes it understandable why Paul is particularly disturbed by the presence of idols in that city. It still had a vibrant intellectual community, and for many, a literal belief in a multiplicity of gods was not an issue. However, Paul recognized that it was just as dubious, if not dangerous, to pursue ideas whose primary worth was their novelty.
Paul’s concern thus has particular relevance to modern academia, where unfortunately, the latest fashion can take precedence over time-honored content. We see how he addresses the issue on his own “campus” as we read further in the chapter (Acts 17:18–21):
A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
I taught a Sunday school lesson on this passage to a class of undergraduate and graduate students from local colleges. There were quite a few smirks of acknowledgment when we got to the last sentence. The serious point here is that we should take advantage of the natural tendencies of those with whom we associate. While being called a “babbler” is not flattering, you get the sense that Paul was not singled out for this title because he was a Christian. To this day, you often hear people muttering that they did not know what the speaker was “babbling about” as you leave a seminar. This does not prevent them from returning for more, however, and so it was for the apostle Paul.
Just a few chapters earlier, we read in Acts 14:19 that those who disagreed with him “stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead.” This time, Paul’s new colleagues, whom he met at the “Athenian Conference of Epicureans and Stoics,” as it were, invited him to give a colloquium on his “new teaching” in the Department of Philosophy at “Aeropagus U.”
The apostle Paul accepts the invitation. He is an excellent speaker who knows his audience well. As such, it is worthwhile to read his presentation in its entirety (Acts 17:22–31):
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
The apostle Paul crafts his remarks to be consonant with a worldview familiar to his audience. As a good speaker, he piques the interest of his listeners with the irony of bringing their “Unknown God” to the fore. Paul asserts that this God is the one who created everything, including his listeners. This God distinguishes himself from all other gods in that he does not require us to serve him. Rather, all God has done causes us to seek him.
Therefore, Paul brilliantly argues, if his hearers are looking for the true God, the God Paul proclaims is the one whom they seek. Once you know who this God is, furthermore, you have no excuse for disobeying him. God demands that we repent, lest the Judge he appointed judges us. We know who this Judge is, Paul concludes, since God raised this Judge from the dead.
This is all well and good, but it is also informative to realize what Paul did not say. He mentions God “who made the world and everything in it,” but does not uniquely associate him with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead, he seems to allow that this God is part of the Greek pantheon, albeit not the least of its members as some may have thought. Furthermore, Paul speaks of our need for repentance, and tells us of the resurrected one who will judge us. However, he does not call Jesus Christ by name, nor does he explain how Christ’s death has covered the sins for which we should be repentant. To be fair, Paul is forthright about mentioning Christ earlier in the chapter, but not during his colloquium at Aeropagus U.
Was Paul, the greatest of Christian evangelists, a compromiser? Was he delinquent in failing to preach the gospel accurately? Not at all. From the time he spent in the marketplace each day, Paul became very familiar with how his audience thought. He was aware that he had a hard case to make, and he knew he would not be able to do it all at once. We have evidence for this at the end of the chapter, where we read the following (Acts 17:32–34):
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Paul recognized that if the audience did not accept the resurrection of the dead, he could never get to the atoning work of Christ. By his own later words in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” Some were contemptuous of the thought, but others wanted to learn more. Paul’s heuristic approach, while seemingly inaccurate at first glance, was thus vindicated. Note also that the passage tells of only a few becoming followers of Paul, lest we think that numbers are the only measure of our effectiveness.
What are the practical implications of this message? For the first of the two tasks, we see how we might achieve the unity Malik calls for among Christians. Serious doctrinal differences, of course, should not be taken lightly. However, the focus of both Malik and Paul is in vangelization. We might still be tempted, perhaps, to criticize those who evangelize with others who have differing views on the sacraments. This, however, would be just as misguided as castigating Paul for failing to mention Jesus Christ by name on Mars Hill. There are Christians of all traditions who share the four truths mentioned at the outset of this chapter, and have a burning desire to tell them to the world. They should be seen not as enemies, but as co-workers in the Great Commission.
The key point is that we must know our audience, as Paul did. To demonstrate how important this is, let me describe two different venues for presentations that I gave near my home institution. The first was at a college close to Princeton. The evening began with the presentation of an excellent video, based on the book The Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards.8Gonzalez is an astronomer at the Iowa State University, and Richards is a philosopher at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington.
The basic thesis of both the book and the video is that if you consider all that is needed for life to exist, the probability of finding a place that satisfies them is very small. Scientists used to think that there were relatively few requirements for a planet to support life, like being a solid body similar to the earth and having the right distance from some convenient star. Given the number of stars in our galaxy, this should mean that there were plenty of places where life could exist. Such an assumption was the stock-in-trade of popular television shows like Star Trek. As you followed the voyages of the starship “Enterprise” across our galaxy, we were not supposed to be surprised that there were so many planets with beautiful women who were charmed by its heroic captain, James T. Kirk.
Recent research, however, has shown that the list of requirements for life is not so short. Stars with planets having life on them have to be about the same mass and brightness as our sun. Bigger ones, for example, burn themselves out too quickly. We also cannot be too close to the center of our galaxy. Otherwise, there would be too much radiation there for life to be comfortable. Perhaps the most unexpected and remarkable requirement for life is the existence of our moon. It is so big compared to the earth that it has a stabilizing effect on its motion, and hence its climate. As an added bonus, it has just the right size and orbit so that intelligent observers on earth can learn about the sun during solar eclipses.
This list has not been compiled by fanatics with religious agendas, but by sober, mainstream scientists. It goes on and on, so that the probability of finding a planet that satisfies all of the requirements for life gets to be quite small. The earth is thus a very “privileged” planet, and it also appears to have special properties that help intelligent beings find out about the nature of the universe.
The video presented this case with clarity and excellent “production values,” and the showing was followed by a time where I addressed questions from the audience. There was a standing-room-only crowd of more than 140 people who were mostly students and faculty from the college. The technical questions about physics and astronomy were quite straightforward for me to answer. I just had to elaborate on the points I mentioned above, and given the chance, I would have gladly waxed poetical about fascinating concepts like black holes in the center of our galaxy.
However, most of the questions had to do with “intelligent design,” or ID. They were primarily rhetorical, like “Isn’t ID an attempt by right-wing religious fundamentalists to get their faith into the classroom?” or “If the debate is really about science, why is tonight’s event just sponsored by Christian groups?” I answered them by sticking to the scientific methodology that was the basis for the video. It was telling that after I explained this several times, subsequent questioners said they understood this. However, they still wanted their “questions” answered in their own way, and several were getting quite testy.
As frustrating as it was, this did not bother me, as I felt that they were simply looking for affirmation of their preconceived notions, rather than trying to learn anything new. I consoled myself with the possibility that if a scientist like me did not affirm them, they might be challenged to change their thinking in the future. What I did find trying was the fact that the very repetitive questioning went on for a full three hours. The “evolution,” as it were, from an evening that I thought was going to focus on thought-provoking findings in physics and astronomy into a “battle” over ID was not surprising, considering how much it has been in the news. It was disappointing, on the other hand, because my expertise as a scientist was clearly of little relevance.
On several occasions, I was very tempted to say that if I were not a Christian, I would not be standing in front of them. Was the evening then a failure because I did not explicitly mention Christ? I do not think so. If I did make such an admission, it would have probably stopped the dialogue then and there. While sparing my voice, it would have been at the cost of affirming the preconceptions of a “religious agenda” that the most confrontational of the students had. By thus marginalizing me, the need to grapple with the evidence for a Creator so wonderfully articulated in The Privileged Planet would be lost.
I later found out that the Christians in the audience appreciated this. They were kind enough to tell me afterward that the way I handled loaded questions from the audience and avoided the “fight” that many expected but never materialized, was a witness that encouraged them. As a specific exciting development, I learned long after the meeting that there was an undergraduate physics student who began his spiritual journey that evening. He subsequently had Bible studies with several students, and he ultimately accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Such news should encourage us to be as generous as we can with our sowing, even if the soil does not look too promising at first.
A short while later, I was asked by an old friend of mine, a chaplain at my home institution to participate in a panel discussion. The dormitories there are divided into so-called residential colleges, each with its own dining hall and advisors called “fellows,” who have responsibilities including organizing special events for the students. The chaplain is one such person, and he invited me to join one of his college’s dinner and discussion programs. A professor of philosophy who was also a Christian joined me, and the topic for the evening was entitled the “Harmony of Science and Belief in God.” After introducing ourselves and giving brief testimonies to our faith, the floor was open to questions from the audience.
Like the event at the local college, the venue was also secular. It was clear from the start, however, that the atmosphere was far less confrontational. Several of the students were quite outspoken about their Christian beliefs, and the skeptics were polite in their questioning. During the course of the evening, the philosophy professor made some excellent points. He said he tells his students that they should not believe in anything that does not have a rational basis. He also pointed out that you had a lot more explaining to do if you claimed you were the Son of God than if you held that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.
These were perfect segues for introducing the rational basis for our belief in God and in Jesus Christ specifically as his only Son. I was able to speak comfortably about Christ’s resurrection as a singular historical event, as well as his death for our sins that preceded it. The need to argue for the existence of God never came up during the evening. In this context, to fail to progress beyond what was not at issue would have been a less than effective witness.
Note that in both instances, I did not actively seek the opportunity to speak. I freely confess that as a physicist at a major research institution, my first inclination is to think that I am much too busy for this. On the other hand, I am aware that Christ must be known as much in the twenty-first century as he was in the first. This is what motivates me as scientist and a Christian to take on the first of the two tasks, that of witnessing to the redemption we have through Jesus Christ.
The Heuristic Approach and the Mind and Spirit in Science
For both of the two tasks, there is no denying that the mind has to be engaged, first to appreciate those whom you are addressing and then to craft arguments that are appropriate for them. This is what Paul did, and we should clearly do likewise. Our responsibility as thinking Christians, however, does not end with an understanding of humanity’s timeless need for salvation through Christ. As Malik puts it bluntly, he has “no patience with piety alone.”9
Such a mindset may arguably be more of a problem in the sciences than the humanities. The conflict of worldviews is widely appreciated in the latter, and Malik goes to great lengths in describing its consequences in his Two Tasks. However, he has nothing but praise for the sciences. Taken at face value, then, it apparently does not matter what you believe as scientist, as long as you have mastered its methodology. Christians in the sciences are thus absolved of any concern about the second of the two tasks, as long as they are good scientists.
There are difficulties with this position, as explained elsewhere in this book.10Many, however, do not feel they have to address them to argue that a belief in God is relevant to the pursuit of science. They can simply attest, for example, to the way God has answered prayer with a solution to a thorny problem. While the capacity for God to do this is undeniable, however, this is not necessarily a persuasive argument for his existence for our unbelieving colleagues. Examples abound of how solutions suddenly appear after you “take your mind off” the original challenge. The phenomenon has been known since antiquity, and could be related to how our brains process information. Archimedes’ discovery, while bathing, of how different elements displace unequal amounts of water is part of the folklore of science.
While a long, hot bath is a luxury few of us moderns can indulge in regularly, “eureka” moments still do often occur to scientists while taking a shower. The great physicist Richard Feynman apparently had similar experiences when he frequented clubs featuring “exotic dancers.” His delightful informal autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, includes the following description of how he worked there. According to Feynman, he would “watch the girls dance, do a little physics, prepare a lecture, or draw a little bit. If I got a little tired, I’d watch the entertainment for awhile, and then do a little more work.”11
Obviously, my intention is not to equate “adult entertainment” with prayer in any strict sense. Rather, I use this extreme example to suggest that in the particular case of perceived divine intervention, it could be attributed to nothing more than a quirk of human brain physiology. Just as unbelievers can be pious, they can be “inspired” as well. Who would criticize prayer if it works for you, our colleagues might say, but it is functionally no different from the “distractions” that worked for one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century.
Can scientists, then, ask if there could be evidence for God that can be uncovered from their work? Many Christians are reluctant to do so, since they fear being labeled as believers in a “God of the gaps.” A typical argument against such a belief in the supernatural is as follows: In times past, many people thought that angels moved the planets along their orbits. Now, we know that gravity is responsible, so the realm of influence for such beings is diminished. Eventually, their need disappears altogether, and so would our belief in them. We should thus be wary of anything that suggests a “designer” behind natural phenomena, so the argument goes, since science will eventually come up with a “natural” explanation for them.
The position so described is actually one of faith, and it commonly goes by the name “naturalism.” Its tenet is that the supernatural does not exist, so scientific evidence for it is simply not possible. Christians who unconditionally seek to avoid the “God of the gaps” criticism are thus ultimately taking on the belief system of those who deny the reality of God, and this is a tremendous cost to pay. Writers like Stephen Jay Gould, for example, offer what at first seems like an attractive way to avoid this dilemma. He speaks of so-called “non-overlapping magisteria,” which has become commonly known by its acronym, NOMA.12In this picture, science holds sway in the physical world, while religion is master over the spiritual realm, and never the twain shall meet. The problem, however, is that it too easily allows us to equate the former with the objectively real, and the latter with subjective fantasy. It is like the imaginary axis in mathematics, which is so named because of its orthogonality to the “real” one.
For the position Christians should adopt instead, we can return to the approach taken by Paul. On the Aeropagus, he does not argue in some vague way about the value of believing in God, regardless of whether or not he “really” exists. Instead, Paul speaks about a God who is not a philosophical abstraction, but the one who will subject humanity to a very real final judgment. Under these circumstances, the repentance God demands is not the same as a vague intellectual assent to his reality, but a genuine change of heart. Even Gould might have belied a sense that the stakes are high in the dedication of his magnum opus, “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.” It reads as follows:
For Niles Eldridge and Elisabeth Vrba
May we always be the Three Musketeers
Prevailing with panache
From our manic and scrappy inception at Dijon
To our nonsatanic and happy reception at Doomsday
All for one and one for all13
Gould may have simply wanted to be poetic, but he does describe the final “reunion” with his colleagues in a very curious way. The strong linkage with reality that Paul makes suggests that Christians as scientists must not do everything they can to avoid the “God of the gaps” criticism, but confront it in a very fundamental way. I am not talking about the cavalier attribution of anything that we presently do not understand to divine action. Rather, we should use science to discover all that we can about the physical world, but then not question the results of our research if they challenge our a priori metaphysical assumptions.
This can cut both ways. On the one hand, the discovery of the law of gravity may bring into the question the medieval belief that angels were necessary for planetary motion. On the other hand, we have the more modern example of Einstein and his general theory of relativity. In it, he introduced something called the “cosmologic constant” to his equations of gravitation. This was to avoid the so-called “time variability of the metric distance of two mass points,” or in other words, to ensure a “steady state” universe.
Einstein’s motivation was philosophical, not technical. Its consequence was that he missed out in making one of the greatest scientific predictions of all time. If Einstein had just stuck to the scientific implications of his equations, he could have foreseen Edwin Hubble’s discovery that the universe was indeed expanding. He put it this way in the last edition of his book on relativity.
If Hubble’s expansion had been discovered at the time of the creation of the general theory of relativity, the cosmologic member [or constant] would never have been introduced. It seems now so much less justified to introduce such a member into the field equations, since its introduction loses its sole original justification,—that leading to a natural solution of the cosmologic problem.14
There is thus no guarantee that the conclusions we draw are scientifically correct when philosophical prejudice of any stripe comes into play.
As Christians who are scientists, then, we are expected to do the research to the best of our ability. We are to be as objective as we can in following where it leads us, and not assume, like Gould, that issues of faith fall outside of the “magisterium” of science. Consider, for example, the emphasis Paul puts on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Can we envision a scenario by which its reality can be challenged scientifically? Time travel is impossible, but the next best thing is the historical record. Imagine a new discovery in some long forgotten cave in Palestine. There, the desiccated remains of a man in his early thirties are found, and reliably dated to the first century AD. Enough is preserved, however, to show that he was tortured, including signs of puncture wounds around his head. He was apparently crucified from evidence of trauma to his hands and feet, and there are indications that his side was pierced by a weapon of some sort.
With the corpse is a document, written by someone who claimed to be the man’s twin. It describes a whole set of events that were apparently miraculous, but were actually very sophisticated magic tricks. Like explanations in the notes left by the great Harry Houdini, we find out how the illusions were performed. The subterfuge culminated when the writer took the place of his brother after his execution, and encouraged his followers to believe in him as their resurrected leader.
As unlikely as this might be, such a find is not impossible. The Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved for the better part of two millennia, and some gnostic traditions speak of the twin brother of Jesus.15If this happens, it would shake my faith, precisely because it challenges the actual resurrection of Christ. I believe in this as a historical reality, and as such, I can envision evidence that does or does not support it. My hypothetical discovery in the desert is an example of the latter. If future archaeologists make such a find, we would have to admit that Christ was not raised from the dead. In that case, I can only agree with Paul that we Christians are among those who should be “most pitied,” as he states in 1 Corinthians 15:19.
There is, however, another position. You can say that the situation I describe is an issue solely because I am resorting to a “God of the gaps.” Up until the time the telltale corpse is found, I attribute the resurrection of Christ to God because I have no other explanation. I find the discovery disturbing because I see him only as the one who fills any gaps in my knowledge. Recall that earlier in the chapter, I mentioned that some Christians want to avoid “God of the gaps” arguments at all costs. Because of this, they have a solution to my problem. Namely, I should not worry about the evidence I describe, since after all, archaeologists were bound to make such a discovery sooner or later. Our faith is questioned by this find, so these Christians might argue, only by our failure to anticipate it. It is our lack of imagination that keeps us from understanding that everything we observe can ultimately have a “naturalistic” explanation. Once I realize this, the “tomb that is not empty” challenges only the “God of the gaps,” not the one true God in whom we should believe.
Following this line of reasoning, we would have to conclude that our beliefs should be based, instead, on non-empirical arguments that purport to show, for example, the logical necessity of a Supreme Being. I am not denying the utility of such arguments, and since they can be cast in the form of “proofs,” their potential for “irrefutability” is very appealing. However, wholly restricting ourselves to such an approach does come with a price. For one thing, this only gets us to “mere theism”—the God of the philosophers. Yet it does remove an awkwardness Christians face in the scientific academy—no need to posit a supernatural explanation for a physical effect, for natural explanations for all that we presently consider supernatural will be eventually uncovered.
But, now this is beginning to sound like Gould’s NOMA, and therein lies the crux of the issue. We might rightly object to the insinuation that our faith is subjective fantasy, as the realm of our “magisterium” might suggest. However, if it is simply based on philosophy, which is equally distinct from scientific “reality,” the veracity of our concrete belief in the Gospels becomes irrelevant. It no longer matters if God raised Christ from the dead, as their writers believed, or was replaced by his twin, since the quality of our logic is more important that the strength of the evidence for our beliefs.
It is clear that such a faith would not be the kind of Christianity to which Paul and those who followed him bore witness. This is why it is so important that the preponderance of historical evidence to date supports the reality of the events on which Christians base their hope for salvation. The details are beyond the scope of the present discussion, but to quote the historian F. F. Bruce, “The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar.”16If anything, the ability to formulate a scenario that could refute such a claim, and see no evidence to date for it, adds to the persuasiveness of the argument that Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be as the Son of God.
Christians should thus not be afraid of the charge of engaging in “God of the gaps” thinking. Instead, we should see it as a means of challenging “methodological naturalism,” i. e., that only natural explanations for what we observe in the physical world constitute science, and by implication, the supernatural does not exist (which is “metaphysical naturalism”). The incarnation itself demonstrates once and for all that God has bridged the separation between the supernatural and natural world. We appreciate how extraordinary this is, because we have both a “scientific” knowledge of standard human reproduction and the consequences of crucifixion, and the historical record of the singular birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. Consequently, Christians should not be so quick to deny the possibility that other “gaps” are not voids in our knowledge. I am clearly not advocating, especially as a scientist, the idea of ascribing anything we do not easily understand to a supernatural agent. However, the gaps we perceive could be indicators of profound truths about God, as manifest in the physical world that he created. While methodological naturalism is a good starting assumption for scientific research, adhering to it at all costs may very well blind us to those truths.
How does all of this inform on redeeming the mind as it involves the practice and teaching of science? In the physical sciences, the claim that our universe appears to reflect the work of a “designer” is not immediately dismissed as beyond the pale. As described earlier, the arguments made by Gonzales and Richardson in The Privileged Planet are rooted in mainstream research. Indeed, an article entitled “Anthropic Reasoning” appeared in Science magazine in 2005 by two prominent astronomers, Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Martin J. Rees of the University of Cambridge. Like Gonzales and Richardson, they consider as “generic” certain requirements for any form of life to exist: “galaxies, stars, and (probably) planets had to form; nucleosynthesis in stars had to give rise to atoms such as carbon, oxygen, and iron; and these atoms had to be in a stable environment where they could combine to form the molecules of life.”17They are clearly a necessity for intelligent life on earth, hence the name “anthropic.”
Livio and Rees comment on various reasons why some physicists are hostile to this approach. They put it as follows.
[A]nthropic reasoning seems to point to a fundamental limitation of physics—even the “end of physics.#8221; But this objection is, in our opinion, a purely psychological one. Physicists would like, above all else, to discover a uniquely self-consistent set of equations that determines all microphysical constants, and the recipe for the big bang. They therefore hope that future theories will reveal that all physical parameters are uniquely determined. But there is no reason why physical reality should be structured according to their preferences. It is good that many physicists are motivated to seek a theory that uniquely derives all fundamental numbers and constants, but they may be doomed to failure.18
Livio and Rees thus point out the very real possibility that a theory that uniquely determines all physical parameters may never be found. They do not mince words in claiming that to think otherwise may very well be an act of faith. Following this line of reasoning, the assertion that science will fill all present “gaps” in our knowledge, and thus leave no “room” for God, takes on the trappings of a religious creed. Under these circumstances, it is not unreasonable for a physicist to believe in a “designer” behind the universe, and yet be “true” to science.
When it comes to the biological sciences, however, there appears to be a reluctance to consider the idea of a “designer” at their roots. It may very well be that this reflects, in part, the different origins of the biological and physical sciences. In exploring this idea, it is helpful to recall the example of Paul at the Aeropagus. There, he took great pains to use terminology that would not be foreign to his listeners to ensure proper communication with them. Similarly, we should allow the possibility that the different perspectives held in the physical and biological sciences could be aggravated by seemingly identical terms, but with dissimilar meanings because they did not develop in the same way. We may think that this sort of communication problem is more common to the humanities, but it can arise in the sciences as well.
As an example, the recent controversy over ID has brought to the fore the question of what is meant by words like “theory” and even “science” itself. To provide a context for discussing this, I begin with an assertion made by the great British playwright George Bernard Shaw. He is reputed to have once said that America and England are two countries separated by a common language. There are many cases that support his claim. Among the more serious ones, consider an incident that occurred during the end of World War II. The last major German offensive happened in December of 1944, and it became known as the “Battle of the Bulge.” To cause confusion behind American lines, some English-speaking German soldiers dressed as GIs infiltrated them. They were easily caught, however, when they did such things as ask where to get “petrol.” The German infiltrators did indeed know English, but of the “wrong” kind.
A personal motivation for thinking that there might be a similar problem in the sciences was an experience I had not too long ago. I was giving an introductory talk on nuclear fusion, the area of my expertise, to some students in my institution. In an attempt to show my erudition in the history of science as well as science itself, I made the following statement. “The term ‘fission’ was originally coined by biologists to describe what happened to cells when they divide. It was then adapted by scientists to name the process by which heavy nuclei break up.” I realized what I said as soon as the words left my lips. It was too late, however, judging from the smirks that quickly appeared on the faces of the listeners. All I could do was admit that I was not even going to try to get myself out of that one, and simply went on with my lecture.
The issue is not to debate whether or not biology is “real” science, my exceedingly embarrassing slip notwithstanding. Rather, it is that the same word is associated with phenomena that appear to be superficially similar, but with very different implications concerning its functional definition. I am not suggesting that the ongoing difficulties over issues like ID are just a matter of semantics. However, I do firmly believe that any resolution depends critically on establishing a terminology that is the same in both form and function.
An understanding of “fission” in biology, for example, is generally cast in terms of providing the most accurate description possible of the process. From the first time cells were identified by van Leeuwenhoek, biologists have amassed a tremendous amount of information about them. We now know exactly what is required for cells to fission. Mitosis first requires the duplication of chromosomes and the synthesis of the proteins that form the so-called “mitotic spindle.” The chromosomes thicken and coil, and the nuclear membrane disintegrates. The chromatid pairs that constitute the chromosomes are pulled to opposite ends of the cell by the spindle fibers. The fission occurs after the nuclear membranes re-form around the separated chromosomes, and the cytoplasm of the original cell divides to create two new cells.19
In contrast, an understanding of “fission” in physics is not reflected in the details of its description alone. Rather, it is based on the ability to calculate under what conditions fission will occur. To quote Bohr and Mottelson from their classic text on nuclear structure, “fissionability depends on the ratio of the Coulomb energy (proportional to the square of the total charge Z divided by the cube root of the mass number A) to the surface energy (proportional to the mass number to the 2/3 power).”20
Increasing biological knowledge is generally construed in terms of adding more details concerning a particular object of study. Understanding fission means that you can put the steps prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, and interphase in the right sequence and describe what happens in each of these phases. In physics, on the other hand, comprehension is gauged by the simplifications uncovered by research, and the basic knowledge that discovering them implies. In this context, typical is the conclusion, also from Bohr and Mottelson, that “the lifetime of spontaneous fission depends on the parameter Z2/A.”21
The semantic dissimilarity between biological and physical sciences could be a reflection of a fundamental difference in the way the disciplines developed historically. The great physicist Richard Feynman once described the challenge faced by those of us in the physical sciences: “Suppose that physics, or rather nature, is considered analogous to a great game of chess with millions of pieces in it, and we are trying to discover the laws by which the pieces move.”22 Physicists have been remarkably successful in discovering these laws and making the equally amazing discovery that there are a relatively small number of them. The few “laws of nature” can describe a whole panoply of phenomena, from the behavior of subatomic particles to the motions of galaxies. This purportedly led Albert Einstein to claim that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Mathematics is the key to this “comprehensibility” for physicists, and from such a realization, concluding that there is an “intelligence” that causes this to be is not too hard for many of them.
Contrast this to what is often cited as foundational to biology as a modern science, which is described in great detail in Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. This massive book is a treasure trove of very illuminating history, and thus serves as a window into the differences between the biological and physical sciences. Modern biology began, to use Gould’s words, when Charles Darwin “rejected the traditional claims of quantitative physical science to represent the apotheosis of sophistication, and awarded high honor to his own discipline of natural history and evolutionary biology, as embodied in the gnarly and meandering icon of the luxuriantly, but contingently, branching tree of life.”23
It should be noted that contemporary science has become so cross-disciplinary that the distinction between the physical and life sciences is often very blurred. Many universities no longer have single biology departments, but divide them according to subfields like biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, and bioengineering, as if they were separate disciplines. In these examples, the experimental and theoretical approaches often differ little from those in physics and chemistry. For the present discussion, biology is used in the sense of evolutionary biology, that is, the subject having the basic characteristics first articulated by Darwin.
Here we have perhaps the most fundamental problem with “science” as a term that appears to have two distinct meanings. Gould suggests that the true revolution of Darwin was to include the narrative approach as a perfectly appropriate, and even superior way of doing science. In a section of his book entitled “Darwin’s Geological Need and Kelvin’s Odious Spectre,” Gould describes what he calls “one of the most arrogant documents in the history of science—a one-paragraph paper (with appended calculation) boldly entitled “The ‘Doctrine of Uniformity’ in Geology Briefly Refuted.”24
Briefly, the paper was the attempt by William Thomson, the future Lord Kelvin, to show that we can calculate an upper bound on the age of the earth by how long it would take our planet to cool from an initially molten state. He ultimately came up with an age of ten to thirty million years, at least for the duration of a solid upper crust. Kelvin used this as a demonstration that there simply was not enough time for small effects to accumulate in sufficient quantity for the gradual, uniform change required by Darwin’s theory of evolution.
This was in 1866, however, before the discovery of radioactivity. This was a new source of heat, unknown to Kelvin, which meant that you could not deduce the age of the earth by present measurements of its interior heat. Kelvin’s arrogance was thus groundless, and this has been often cited as justifying the angry feelings Gould claims Darwin to have had about the pretensions of mathematical physics and celestial mechanics to superior status over natural history among the sciences.
There are a couple of ironies here. First, even tens of millions of years was considered a very long time for many supporters of gradualism in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the idea of gradualism itself has been called into question by many modern admirers of Darwin, including Gould himself. The key point is that Darwin’s main contribution, to continue quoting Gould, is to contrast “the dull repetitiveness of planetary cycling (despite the elegance and simplicity of its quantitative expression) with the gutsy glory of rich diversity on life’s ever rising and expanding tree.”25
I might not necessarily appreciate Gould’s characterization of physics. I cannot argue with his basic sentiments, however, as they do echo what I wrote at the beginning of this chapter. Concerning what he says about biology, this may be able to explain a particular conundrum in that field. On the one hand, you have writers like Gould and others who provide such critiques of Darwin’s original work that only a vague outline remains in the alternatives they propose. Gould, for example, challenges Darwin’s gradualism with his aphorism that “stasis is data” according to the fossil record.26He is very forthright when he states that Darwinists know, “in their heart of hearts,” what a “leap of faith into the enabling power of geological time” they are taking, rather than recognizing it as a “bankrupt argument” for macroevolution, based on the “small inputs [of] microevolutionary adaptation.”27
The key point is not the accuracy of Gould’s claims. Rather, it is the fact that he can use such strong and colorful language in his critique, and yet assert his emphatic support for evolutionary theory as established by Darwin. To do otherwise would seem to be a challenge to science itself, as much of the recent rhetoric over teaching alternatives to Darwinism might suggest. This is in spite of the fact that authors like Gould point out its flaws and decry the poor quality of the treatment of evolution in widely-used textbooks.28
To help understand this, let us consider another word, “theory,” that seems to have two very different connotations. Theories are treated in the physical and biological sciences in very different ways. For the physical scientist, a theory is the best means that we have at the present time to explain a particular set of phenomena. Its validity is based on the predictive power of the calculations we perform. The very fact that the physical sciences are quantitative disciplines also gives us an inherent sense of the limitations of our theories. This is why physics is rife with wisecracks like “the terms that are too hard to calculate are assumed not to contribute.”
As an example, consider a bumper sticker that was inspired by the recent ID controversy. It reads, “What’s next, gravity?” While the intent behind such a slogan is clear, the irony is that in fact, we do not have a complete theory of gravitation. We can calculate the “dull repetitiveness of planetary cycling,” to use Gould’s unkind words, but how to reconcile Einstein’s classical theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics is still very much an open question. Since the big shakeup in physics that relativity and quantum mechanics caused in the last century, challenges to theories are not as much a concern to physical scientists as one might think. In that sense, the bumper sticker should not be shocking to them. What is next on the agenda is indeed gravity, as it has been for quite a while.
“Theory” seems to have a very different meaning in the biological sciences. There, it appears to connote more of a conceptual framework for the field. In that sense, there is indeed an overarching “theory of biology” that traces its origins to Darwin. As mentioned earlier, he sought to establish his narrative approach to natural history and evolutionary biology as being every bit as scientific as the quantitative physical sciences. This is why questioning evolutionary theory, as so used, is equated with questioning science.
For the physical scientist, it would be equivalent to questioning the validity of mathematics. We do not have an equivalent “theory of physics,” but we do believe that without mathematics, we would not have a scientific discipline. If this conceptual framework is what we mean by “theory,” we can appreciate the concerns of biologists. If this is the case, however, it points out the very different implications the term has in the physical and biological sciences. This must be appreciated if there is to be a common language for communicating between the disciplines, at least as far as what is meant by their respective “theoretical” bases.
Given the differences in what the term implies, this might be another case where a heuristic approach might be helpful. Perhaps we can introduce a new term, like “principle” into the discussion of evolution in biology. If used instead of “theory,” it might sidestep all of the difficulties this term’s connotations engender. In the physical sciences, “principles” have something of the flavor of conceptual frameworks. The “Uncertainty Principle” in physics tells us that we cannot know the position and momentum of an object with arbitrary accuracy. It is not a theory as such, but reflects a deep, and so far apparently immutable, characteristic of nature.
Instead of ID as a theoretical alternative to evolution, in that case, perhaps we can substitute it with the “Design Principle.” Its basis would be the assertion that what looks poorly designed at first glance is not really so after deeper scrutiny. It could be used to challenge, for example, the old “chestnut” that the human eye is “wired backwards.” In fact, recently analyses have shown this is not necessarily the case for an organ that has to process a time sequence of images.29We can contrast this with the “Evolution Principle.” The idea here is that what we see in biological systems is not well-designed, but “kluged together” as you would expect from the “blind” operation of natural selection. “The Panda’s Thumb” is not just the name of a famous essay by Gould,30but has become almost iconic for this point of view.
An advantage of introducing such new terms is to “give ID a rest,” as one might say colloquially. Given all the emotions surrounding it, this should not be underrated. Furthermore, it would allow everybody to use the same methodologies to do their research. In the past, ID has been criticized for its encouragement of a “God did it, look no further” attitude. Interestingly, the “Evolutionary Principle” can also stop science in a similar way. It is admittedly a very unlikely scenario, but one could conceive of a biologist deciding that a “kluge is a kluge.” In other words, if a structure obviously looks like it was thrown together for a particular function, there is no deeper reason for its apparently “poor” design. The “Design Principle” advocate, however, might very well argue that further investigation is warranted to see if some less obvious functionality is being missed. Seeing how such arguments can go either way, these possibilities should warn us not to prejudge the behavior of scientists based on their philosophical inclinations. Rather, we should see what they actually do in the laboratory and the field.
It might help us appreciate why the philosophy behind the science is important, if we return to the difference in mindset between many biological and physical scientists. One way to summarize this is to comment on a recent book on evolution by two biologists, Kirschner and Gerhart, entitled The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma.31It was reviewed in a recent issue of American Scientist by a fellow biologist who criticized the title, but not for the reason you might expect.32 The reviewer began as follows: “Is life plausible? Well, it’s more than plausible, it has actually happened!” This is the kind of thinking that explains why the authors did not call their book “The Probability of Life,” and it suggests that the view of science many biologists have that began with Darwin persists to this day.
Physicists can tell you where a planet will be with high probability after the elapse of a specific amount of time. This is “dull” to biologists, Gould seems to suggest, because once a plausible argument for planetary motion is described, such calculations are not necessary to make it more believable. To the biologists having this viewpoint, probability arguments, as physicists might craft them, are not persuasive. Rather, the original plausibility argument is more convincing, because only such a narrative form can capture such things as “the gnarly and meandering icon of the luxuriantly, but contingently, branching tree of life,” to quote Gould once more.
This is not to argue, by any means, that physics is science and biology is not, or vice-versa. Rather, we must first be sensitive to differences between the disciplines in their understanding of what science is. As we have seen, they have their origins in the different ways biology and physics developed historically. These dissimilarities continue to manifest themselves in the semantics of their terminology and the way each is practiced.
Suppose there is broader recognition among physicists and biologists that such issues indeed exist. Coming to terms with them can then serve as a paradigm for addressing more visibly contentious topics like ID. As in the case with biology and physics, an appreciation of the nuances in what constitutes science could then be the basis of a constructive dialog.
A Common Solution
What are the implications of trying to achieve a common understanding of science for redeeming the mind? It could be argued that this might be all “academic,” since a discussion of the meaning of science has little to do with the success of academia in the practical part of its educational mission. According to Malik, “The sciences are flourishing as never before, and may they keep on flourishing and exploding and discovering!”33
At one level, Malik is right. You can quite competently design the next generation of laser scanners for supermarket checkout counters based on the formalisms of quantum mechanics, even if you do not appreciate all of its metaphysical difficulties. Similarly, you can develop a new vaccine for the next flu season, appreciating full well the tendency of the influenza virus to mutate, without accepting all of the philosophical implications of evolutionary theory. As James Gould, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, has put it, “If you think about it, does it really matter whether you think intelligent design or evolution is what accounts for the diversity of life on earth if you’re going to be a banker, or a lawyer, or a doctor?”34
For the Christian, such issues do matter, in that the way we think about them informs on how we consider the deeper questions of meaning and purpose for our lives. It is here that the two tasks converge. At first glance, the work of redeeming the soul and redeeming the mind may seem to require very different approaches. In both, however, there is a common need to communicate, whether it concerns the truth of the book of nature or the Book that tells us of how our souls can be saved. Both come from the same God, and both reveal him in a unique way. To meet this challenge, we can learn much from the heuristic tactics of Paul. As he was sensitive to the mindset of those he wished to reach, so should we be where God, in his wisdom, has placed each of us.
Discussion Questions
1. How are heuristic examples useful?
2. What are limitations of the heuristic approach?
3. How might the heuristic approach look within your own discipline?
4. In what ways is first-century Athens similar to twenty-first-century America? In what ways are they different?
5. How does the example of Paul at the Areopagus inform on the two tasks?
6. Why is a “common language” important in the two tasks?
7. What human tendencies complicate communication in any discipline?
8. What may limit the acceptance of concepts like a “designer” in the sciences?
1. Recounted by John Harte in his book, Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving (Sausalito, CA: University Science Books, 1988).
2.Webster’s Seventh New College Dictionary, (Springfield, MA: G. and C. Merriam Company, 1972).
3. Ibid.
4. See page 56 in chapter 2.
5. See pages 56–57 in chapter 2.
6. See page 57 in chapter 2.
7. See page 59 in chapter 2.
8.Guillermo Gonzales and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004).
9. See page 60 in chapter 2.
10. See chapter 4.
11. Richard P. Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985).
12. Stephen J. Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (1997): 16.
13. Dedication to Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
14. Albert Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956).
15. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979).
16. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
17. Mario Livio and Martin J. Rees, “Anthropic Reasoning,” Science 309 (2005): 1022.
18. Ibid.
19. The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. “Mitosis.”
20. Aage Bohr and Ben R. Mottelson, Nuclear Structure, Volume I (New York: W. A Benjamin, 1969), 205.
21. Ibid.
22. Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967).
23. Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 1334.
24. Ibid., 493.
25. Ibid., 1334.
26. Ibid., 790.
27. Ibid., 1294.
28. Ibid., 577.
29. George Ayoub, “On the Design of the Vertebrate Retina,” Origins and Design 17 (1996): 19.
30. Stephen J. Gould, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980).
31. Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
32. Massimo Pigliucci, “Have We Solved Darwin’s Dilemma?,” American Scientist 94 (2006): 272.
33. See page 60 in chapter 2.
34. Quoted by Brett Thomlinson in “Where Science Meets Religion,” Princeton Alumni Weekly 106 (2006): 20.