Science versus religion

First of all, I must say that the title of this post is at least slightly deceiving. It implies that science and religion are polar opposites, and must needs be at war with each other. That the opposite can and should be true is my real purpose in writing this. Perhaps I should begin by outlining a brief history of the interplay between these two that has, in part led us to this dichotomized mindset. (Note that I am by no means a historian, so I won't claim that all the details here are necessarily flawless, and being that brevity is here a concern, I beg the reader to exuse my profusion of sweeping generalizations.)

In medieval times, the church was, for the most part, the sole seat of learning in society, largely for the reason that the clergy were the only primary members of society who were given any significant education. The main focus of science was the metaphysical approach of the scholastics, who pursued knowledge within a religious context, largely according to the method set forth by Aristotle and other Greek thinkers. With the advent of the renaissance, this changed dramatically, in part due to Gutenberg printing press, which made books far more accessible to the common man. As learning become more secularist, thinkers such as Descartes held a strong interest in developing human knowledge apart from religion. Widespread learning gave birth to widespread questioning, and people developed an optimism that logical reasoning and empirical observations could provide an impeccable system of explanations for reality. This, of course, was the birth of the scientific method.

It was during this time that the dichotomy between science first really began to emerge. Part of the reason was the closed-minded dogmatism of the church, exemplified by their stauch refusal to admit a better-informed alternative to the Ptolemaic model of the cosmos. In a sense, the church sacrificed any legitimate value it had in the pursuit of truth essentially out of lust for power. This certainly would have been enough to embitter the honest learner against the institution of the church, and lead him into the newfound secular venues of knowledge.

However, the phenomenon of counter-reaction, which seems to be an almost universal pattern within human history, here became manifest in the attitude of the enlightenment period, in which secular learning to some extent came to be viewed as the only respectable source of knowledge. The dogmatism of the church was replaced with a new breed of intellectual exclusivity, in which strictly the empirical was recognized as epistemologically legitimate. Thus secular academia maintained a very deistic outlook by relegating anything spiritual to the realm of the church: such traditionalism clearly had no place in the actual workings of our world.

Meanwhile, the church, being thus alienated, was certainly not unwilling to return the gesture. In many cases, they were all to happy to proudly perch on their high horses, aloof to anything that science might have to say; such worldly endeavors were clearly beneath their lofty spirituality. Secularism made the intellect a god, and the Church made God the enemy of intellect.

Yet this deserves a qualification: the word intellect here came to mean more than human scientific observation and logical inferences. These are simply methods of study, but it was the object of study that emerged as the critical issue. In other words, the enlightenment extended their empirical method to the assumption that only empirically observable had any meaningful existence. Sadly, the church has often condemned both senses of the word, rather than critically evaluating whether indeed a naturalistic or deistic mindframe is indeed the inevitable conclusion of rationalism.

Indeed, it would appear as though the downfall of the enlightenment mentality was its almost emotional reaction against the church. It was not that the church really deserved any better; no, it was that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, and anything associated with the church, including a theistic worldview, became blackmarked as irrational on account of its irresponsible and apostate stewards. This mentality, which is very much with us today, included the assumption that supernatural activity in the events our existence is an inherently irrational idea. In this way, religious perspectives are often seen as irrational and unscientific, even though this charge is based upon the philosophical (not scientific) presupposition that anything that does not fall within the grasp of our physical knowlege cannot exist.

Please don't think that I am criticizing the fact that some people have this philosophical presupposition. Indeed, Christians have there own presuppositions of what they consider to be possible, as does everyone. These presuppositions themselves must be the matter of debate, for it falls beyond science, which deals strictly with the impirical, to dicuss the feasibility of that which is not by its very nature within the ken of strict impiricism. Science can tell us things about the universe we live in, and in doing so, fail to uncover any objective evidence of a God. (For honesty's sake, I will reveal my opinion that this statement is only hypothetical, and that such evidence really does exist). However, this lack of evidence produces no rational argument against the existence of a God. A religious frame-of-refrence can tell us many things about God, but it's presuppositions cannot prove His existence or nature any more than science can prove the absence thereof. It turns out that such fundamental metaphysical issues such as God existence-and this just one example-must belong to the philosophical underpinnings which are the proper foundation for all such beliefs.

It is here that we find the interface between science and religion, and it turns out that in their respective essences, they are hardly natural enemies. Religion (by which I mean the appropriate personal response to ultimate reality in terms of beliefs, thoughts and actions, rather than societal institutions) should never be based apon propositions vulnarable to scientific disproof. This was the flaw of the medieval church, which elevated their ptolomic understanding of the world to a status of major theological significance. Surly Christianity contains some views of the orgins of the world that science questions, but the Christian belief system does not rise and fall apon these issues; the specifics that are debated here are ultimately beside the point, theologically speaking. And such issues as the incarnation and resurrection are beyond what science can prove or disprove because 1.) they are cleary one-time events of very special circumstances that are not expected to be repeatable, and 2.) science can only speak with authority on what happens within natural events, and cannot purport to dictate what a divine figure, if He exists, might do. (And agian, it is beyond the epistemological sphere of science to rule that such a being does not exist.) For just as religion per se should not encroach upon those issues of physical reality that are not its concern, so science should not encroach upon the philosophical basis of religion, which likewise is not its concern.

This, however, is not to say that religion and science should not interact. To say this would be a sad mistake that would undermine the tremendous pontential that exists for both to enrich the other. As I am fond of repeating, all truth is God's truth (speaking within my own worldview, of course) and because of this, I should welcome truths about the physical world as instrumental in understanding the nature and character of the God who made it, just as I should welcome spiritual truths revealed through God's word and personal experience.

What is interesting , however, is that this perspective seems to make most sense within the religious context that I have just described. If one does not hold God to be the creator of our world (in whatever means He created), then I don't see where science can have any legitamate description of His nature, because religion has been reduced to something so distant and abstract-(unless outright false) that it is purely metaphysical, and science cannot so much as touch it. In this way, a theological understanding of the world can greatly enrich science by giving it a whole new level of meaning, wherin the world is God's clockwork that is a profound reflection of who He is. This, of course enrichs both deeply. Science versus religion? I think not.

Ironically, this philosphy wherin the world is studied because it is God's good creation, and is in fact part of how we know the goodness of God, was the attitude that in part began man's scientific endevor. If this perspective could be reborn within the full practice of intellectual virtue and the scientific method, coupled with the phenomenal leaps and bounds of modern science and technology, I am convinced that it would be a wonderful blessing to human society.

On the Lewis argument, continued

When reviewing what I wrote here, I began to think some more about the implications of naturalism, and I think that what I originally said here should recieve some qualifications. When I refered to the actual theory of naturalism, in which I believe epistomological accuracy is likely, I was really refering to the evolutionary model, not naturalism per se. I was arguing from what I believe naturalists might really say. The question that came to mind, however, is whether a naturalist would really have the right to say this, or if evolutionary theory is, ironically, incompatible with a completely naturalistic worldview. Can the plant I used in my example really grow towards the light if there is nothing existing beyond the material?
It is here that we are forced to decide on how naturalism is to be defined. If it really means that only matter exists, then there can be no governing principle or law that says that order or life or continuity are good. They simply are. Existence, such as we experience it, is an absurd mistake, for which we can perceive no rational explenation. In this sense, nothing is compatible with a completely naturalistic worldview, least of all meaningfull human language.
Naturalism thus defined, however, is not the real issue. If a naturalist would aspire to transcend the nihilism that is the inevitable implication of his system of thought, he will admit that evolution is not a random principle. If he is wise, he will see that it is not possible to replace God with a vacuum; such an emptiness will prove to be a proverbial black hole into which all else will colapse. No, he will find something that fills the role of God, but does not make the same demands. He will perceive some other seat of omnipotence; some great, eternal force that somehow makes life and cosmic order good.
But to speak too much of this force is dangerous. It is all to likely that it will fall beyond the range scientific understanding. There is even the chance that we might start call the it a He. This, I believe, is the real issue that naturalism must deal with: what is the true nature of the natural law whereby the events of the universe have transpired? Is the real implication of such a law the existence of a personal deity? Or is it just another law, more akin to gravity, or herdity, or relativity, perhaps existing on a slightly larger scale?
In any case, I believe that such considerations will ultimately find naturalists running from the implication that the directional operation that they find within the evolutionary processes which, they claim, have relplaced God, has in the end proved a foil that re-introduces the very kind of transcendent power that made them uncomfortable in the first place. Of course, I will not say that I have thus proved God such as I believe Him to be. Yet I keep returning to the same impliction when I think it over: existence- meaningful, beautiful, moral existence, in which there are so many shades of value and goals which justify it- this is more than mindless matter and vague cosmic laws. This is the work of God.

Onthe Lewis argument

Various forms of Lewis’ primary argument against naturalism are, by my observation, very popular among Christians now. I cannot help but find this slightly disturbing, because I believe that the argument has some serious shortcomings.

The gist of the argument thus follows: If I take the implications of naturalism seriously, it follows that my ability to think is merely the result of evolutionary process. Therefore, my reason cannot be trusted, including the very reason which led me to the idea of naturalism itself.
That sounds convincing. But should it be? First of all, suppose that naturalistic processes are indeed most likely to produce minds whose reasoning cannot be trusted. If so, how does a theistic worldview really improve the picture? Granted, evolution isn’t necessarily required to make us think accurately, but by the same token, neither is God. An atheist might as well invert Lewis’ argument to look something like this: if I take the implications of theism seriously, it follows that my thinking is the result of the way God made me. And why should I assume that it necessarily suited God’s purposes to endow me with epistemological accuracy?

I would argue that it would indeed have suited God’s purpose to make my mind according to His own image and make me capable of knowing and recognizing truths about Him and His world. But this is just the point. When I evaluate naturalism with full honesty, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that there is no good reason not to suppose that our mental apparatus was constructed for the attainment actual knowledge of our environment. Our thinking, according to naturalism, must have developed according to things that have actually happened to us. In this case, is it not perfectly rational to suppose that our awareness, having developed in response to actual things, would be oriented around the experience, and therefore knowing, of the actual? For an example, we can look at other life forms. Plants require light to live and grow. Therefore, according to the evolutionary model, they have developed photosensitivity, whereby they "know" (in the most primitive sense of the word) where light is, and therefore in what direction they should grow. If our knowledge is ultimately the same type of phenomenon as this, only vastly more developed, it seems that we can assume that our knowledge exists as a perception of actual realities that have bearing on us.

Having said this, I think it is important to recognize some of the excellent points that I believe are contingent to (if not a part of) the Lewis argument against naturalism. One is the fundamentally circular reasoning that is necessarily involved. One might point this out by proposing this scenario: Suppose that you ask a naturalist how he arrived at his set of ideas. There are two honest answers that he might use. He might answer the functional "how" and say that he arrived at his views by the working of naturalistic processes. This, however honest, must come from the complete presupposition of his own worldview, and is an entirely proper answer if he is reasoning from this position. However, the actual "how" by which he himself personally arrived at this worldview must be answered another way, and if he his honest, I believe he must say that his philosophy of naturalism was the result of empirical observations with metaphysical inferences taken therefrom. (Whether these inferences are appropriate is another matter altogether, which the apologist would be well-advised to consider.) But by studying in this exclusively empirical manner, he has presupposed the absence of any existent thing that would not fall under such a category. Therefore, his reasoning must run as follows: "I know that naturalism is true because empirical science proves it, and I know that empirical science is a reliable test for truth, because all existent things fall under this category (which is simply to say that naturalism is true.)

Another argument, which Lewis did articulate, and, I believe, is really the intended substance of his main argument, regardless of how successfully he articulated it, is in the ultimate difficulty of supposing that reason can emerge from non-reason, or consciousness from non-consciousness. Naturalistic psychology explains consciousness away as nothing more than an advanced kind of perception of stimuli. Yet many things have the ability to perceive: animals, and even plants, can respond to various stimuli. Yet the phenomena by which we are aware of our perceptions, and by which we can actually have experience, and ultimately reason, seems to be beyond what nature could generate on her own. Regardless of the exact nature of consciousness, it is on an entirely different level of existence from other kinds of perception, and we are forced to contemplate how a universe ultimately devoid of this type of existence can, at some point in its history, create it ex nihilo. I believe that these angles on the argument against naturalism can bear more weight than the claim that naturalistic forces themselves are not likely to give us a capacity for accurate reason. It is rather the claim that they can give us a capacity for any thought or reason at all that should compel us.

sonnet

O crooked, winding wooded lane,
So mean a portal to another sphere!
Would that I by walking gain
That world which to be near does feign,
But by my seeing slips away,
Retreating to a place more pure.
Art thou what appearance would try
To render thee, my eyesight its device?
Art thou, in truth, a road so high,
Or is this portal but mine eye,
This sphere but within me lay,
And psychology suffice?
O nature, whom wouldst thou befriend?
Which sphere will have thee, in the end?
© micah carpenter