Faith Is Not Wishing--part 7

The next section of Greg Koukl's book Faith Is Not Wishing deals with an issue we hear often, especially from the new atheists. It has to do with the idea that there is a conflict between faith and science. Critics of Christianity say science tells us what's real while religion tells us fairy stories that can be comforting but have nothing to do with the real world. Greg, instead, argues that the object and domain of science should be the natural, physical world, but the goal of science should not be to produce naturalistic explanations, but rather to follow the evidence wherever it leads to find truth. In other words, science should be about getting the right answers, not the right kind of answers (materialistic ones).

Even some Christians find comfort in the idea of science and religion as occupying two complementary but totally separate realms. Natural science studies the physical universe while the non-physical realm belongs to religion. Science cannot tell us of the ultimate origin of the universe nor discuss the governance of the universe.

Greg says that, at first glance, the two-realms of view is inviting, but he sees problems with it. Why should we accept the view that science reigns supreme in the area of the empirical?

For thousands of years science was viewed differently. The old tradition had one aim-- to identify ideas worth believing. But by the modern era there was a shift in science from a general methodology aimed at determining truth to one that was solely empirical. Science became the final measure of all truth.

Greg sees three errors in the view that religious theories should not intrude in science. First, it commits the either/or fallacy by asserting that a view is either scientific or religious. Some metaphysical issues might have empirical support. Think about near-death experience research or conclusions on the existence of a creator based on Big Bang cosmology or the fine-tuning of the universe.

Secondly, it commits the straw man fallacy by assuming that those who advance intelligent design make no use of scientific methods. This is simply not true. Those who promote intelligent design are quite happy to present an abundance of properly gathered scientific evidence for their viewpoint if they're allowed to. Instead, what they run up against are major scientific journals which summarily disqualify them.

Third, it assumes that the reigning scientific view (materialistic macro- evolution) does not have religious significance. But this is false. Any view about ultimate origins has metaphysical ramifications. In this case, if evolutionary naturalism is a true description of how life developed on earth, then the only room for God is in the imagination of the faithful.

Christianity is, by its very nature, wedded to the physical realm known by the senses. But modern man apart from religion lives in a two-story house where nature/science/reason occupy the bottom floor while meeting/value/freewill are in the second floor. Because modern individuals are told there should be no interaction between the upper story and the lower story, people try to live in the lower floor. But human dignity and purpose are crushed in the gears of nature's determinism. So people without religious beliefs must take a leap apart from reason into the upper story of meaning and significance. They pay a heavy price for this – schizophrenia and loss of rationality.

But Greg suggests an alternative – restore to the scientific process the classical emphasis on truth. Science and theology can still have their separate domains, but they need not be arbitrarily isolated from one another. After all, early scientists believed they were "thinking God's thoughts after him" and saw no problem merging the two. It may be the case that physical phenomenon might be caused by an agent rather than a prior physical event. Though science is restricted to examining physical effects, when causes are inferred, there should be no limitation to the physical world.

Those who believe in intelligent design claim that issues like origin and governance can be properly inferred using empirical methods. For example, take a look at forensic medicine. Medical examiners use scientific methods to determine if an individual died of natural causes or by foul play. It may have been a heart attack or an intelligent agent may have been involved. In the same way, scientific evidence could, in principle, indicate that creation was the result of an agent rather than chance physical factors. Think about the old movie Contact in which researchers use scientific methods to infer intelligent causes. I wonder what Carl Sagan would say if he knew his book and movie were used to justify respect for intelligent design.