Recently I have been reading books, articles and blogs that deal with the relationship of science, New Atheism and Christianity. Through my reading several themes emerged that I found interesting and that I want to reflect on in this post.
I. Some Thoughts on a Naturalistic Scientific Worldview & Morality
In a recent post I wrote about Dr. Peter Boghossian who is part of the New Atheism movement. Boghossian argues that faith-based belief processes are unreliable and do not lead one to truth. In fact he maintains that the faith based belief process leads people into being delusional. He argues that different reasoning processes lead to different conclusions which are not equally truthful / accurate (or delusional).
In order to make this point he uses an illustration to demonstrate that not all processes lead to equally reliable results. He talks about a bathroom door in his home that needs to be replaced because of a large hole. In order to replace the door, the door needs to be measured. He then argues that there are different processes one could use to measure the door some which lead to reliable results and others which lead to unreliable results. For example using your elbow
to measure the door most likely does not lead to a reliable measurement that allows you to successfully replace the door. However, using a tape measure (a more reliable process for determining the size of the door) leads to a more reliable result.[1]
It is clear from his presentation that the inaccurate way of arriving at truth is the faith-based belief processes and the accurate way of arriving at truth is the naturalist-belief processes. However, the problem is that New Atheists, including Boghossian constantly move into making moral claims that their naturalistic worldview and their naturalist-belief processes do not allow for. Alister McGrath in his book, “The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine” addresses the issue of the limits on the truth that science can provide. He writes, “Scientific theories cannot be said to ‘explain the world’ – only to explain the phenomena which are observed within the world. Furthermore … scientific theories do not, and are not intended to, describe and explain ‘everything about the world’ – such as its purpose.” (16) He goes on to argue that “there are many questions that, by their very nature, must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate scope of the scientific method, as this is normally understood. For example: is there purpose within nature?” (17) The question of purpose and what is moral or immoral lie beyond the bounds of science.
In an interview with the Portland Mercury Boghossian was asked a question in regards to Christian faith-based ethical claims and whether or not they pose a larger problem. Boghossian responds to that question by talking about Christian ethical claims how they affect society in a negative way and refers to the civil rights issue regarding gay marriage. This is where Boghossian gets into ethical / moral territory for which his naturalistic worldview does not provide any grounds for. His method of arriving at truth does not give him any guidance in regards to establishing what is morally right or wrong.
In a recent post, “A Few Thought about Science and Theology,” Dr. Roger E. Olson addresses a similar issue. Discussing a woman’s claim that “modern science has made the Bible’s view of homosexuality invalid” or put differently “if science proves (as some allege has happened) that sexual orientation is biological/genetic, then we have to believe that same sex sexual behavior is morally right.” In response to this claim Olson states that
Science providing that homosexual desire is biological / genetic wouldn’t affect that belief [homosexual act as morally wrong] any more than science proving that men are naturally inclined toward sexual promiscuity would force Christians to alter their belief about sexual promiscuity. (One could go on and talk about alcoholism and numerous other conditions that may very well be biological / genetic but not therefore morally good to act on.
Olson delineates his rationale behind this claim when he writes:
The larger issue, of course, is whether you can ever derive an “ought” (moral imperative positive or negative) from an “is.” Science deals ONLY with “is.” Ethics deals with “ought.” The latter cannot be based on the former in a causal relationship. Certainly what is the case may have some bearing on decisions about what ought to be the case, but what is the case can never determine what ought to be the case. By definition “ought” goes beyond “is.”
For our purposes Olson’s next observation is crucial. He writes that “oughtness requires something transcendent to nature. Attempting to derive ought from is is called the “naturalistic fallacy.” Whether a certain sexual behavior is right or wrong cannot be determined by observing nature-even by observing what people do that they cannot help.”
All this to say is that Boghossian naturalistic belief-processes does not provide ground for making any statements regarding “oughtness.” His naturalistic worldview does not allow for this. Thus the naturalistic worldview is not able to address moral issues and questions of purpose in any meaningful way.
II. Are Science and Religion Necessarly in Conflict
Many people belief that science and Christianity are in conflict. I have heard statements such as: “I don’t believe in God because of science.” This type of perspective implies that either you believe in science or you believe in God, but you can’t believe in both. New Atheists are proponents of this perspective – science and religion are in conflict. Either you choose reason or blind trust and delusion. Moreover, they “seem to think naturalism or atheism is part of the ‘scientific worldview.’” According to McGrath, Richard Dawkins holds the view that “Science has … wrecked faith in God, relegating God to the margins of culture, where he is embraced by deluded fanatics.”(20)
Must science and religion stand in deep seated conflict? In his book, “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, Alvin Plantinga (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame) argues that: “there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism.” (IX) I don’t have the space nor the time to repeat all of Plantinga’s arguments to back up his thesis, however, I wanted to highlight one point that I found insightful and that I have never heard before.
The conflict that is perceived between science and theism usually centers on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The conflict is perceived by both Christians and Atheists. According to Plantinga, “many have claimed, therefore, that there is deep incompatibility between evolution and Christian belief and hence between religion and science.” (8) According to Plantinga there are two reasons for the perceived conflict. Firstly, many Christians belief in a literal interpretation of the creation account narrated in the first two chapters of Genesis. For a lot of Christians, this also entails a belief in a young earth, which seems to stand in conflict with sciences belief of an old earth (for “Old Earth Creationist” the old age of the earth is not a problem).
Secondly, and according to Plantinga a more important source of conflict, has to do with the notion that God created human beings in his image. He writes, “This requires that God intended to create creatures of a certain kind – rational creatures with a moral sense and the capacity to know and love him – and then acted in such a way as to accomplish this intention.” (11) He argues that the above stated claim is compatible with evolution and refers to conservative Princeton Theologian Charles Hodge who said, “If God made them, it makes no difference how He made them, as far as the question of design is concerned, whether at once or by a process of evolution.” (11)
Now we are getting to the part that was new for me. Generally speaking, being made in the image of God and the evolutionary notion of random genetic mutations, seem to stand in conflict. How can humans be created with purpose and value if they come about through a process of random genetic mutations? Plantinga explains that the word “random” does not mean “random.” He explains that “when it is said that mutation or variation is random, the statement simply means that there is no correlation between the production of new genotypes and the adaptational needs of an organism in a given environment.” (11) He goes on to explain that “‘there is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur.’ But their being random in that sense is clearly compatible with their being caused by God.” (12) However, “what is not consistent with Christian belief … is the claim that this process of evolution is unguided – that no personal agent, not even God, has guided, directed, orchestrated, or shaped it.” (12) Thus according to Plantinga the evolutionary concept of random genetic mutation is not in conflict with the Christian notion of humans being created in the image of God. Addressing this issue does not settle the question of which perspective a Christian should hold regarding creation and evolution.
Christians need to work out their own understanding of the relationship between science and religion and particularly between creation and evolution. I would be interested to hear some of your questions regarding this topic, regardless of how ridicules your question may seem.
