A paper I wrote on Bishop Barnes is available here.

One on God, time and eternity is here.

Science and faith: boa constrictors and warthogs?

 

Steve Bishop

 

Themelios vol. 19 (1) October 1993 pp 4- 9

 

Introduction

The relationship between science and religion, and notably Christianity, is a perennial subject. It has been likened by Ted Peters (cited in Barbour 1990 p. 4) to a fight between a boa constrictor and a warthog: the victor swallows the loser. Many have claimed that science has swallowed Christianity:

 

Between science and religion there has been a prolonged conflict, in which, until the last few years, science has invariably proved victorious. (Russell 1935 p. 7)

 

The conflict metaphor, which had its origin in the writings of John Draper (1875), became more popular through Andrew Dickson White (1896). The main thesis of White’s and Draper’s work was based on misinformation and half-truths, and many scholars have exposed the naivety of the conflict category (e.g. Lindberg and Numbers 1986 and Russell 1989). Nevertheless, the conflict metaphor is still prevalent. It provides a pertinent example of how worldview colours perception of reality (Caudill 1985). The combatants in the conflicts that did exist were not science and

Christianity:

 

much of the conflict between science and religion turns out to have been between new science and the sanctified science of the previous generation. (Brooke 1991 p. 37)

 

Science and religion are not like boa constrictor and warthog. They are not in conflict  -  as a discussion of miracles will show. Neither are they totally in dependent. The fallacious view of science as objective and value-free, and faith as subjective and value-laden, has long been demolished by philosophers of science. Unfortunately, these views are still propounded by the popular media. Faith is integral to the scientific enterprise. If this is so, then a distinctively Christian view of science is possible.

 

 

A biblical perspective on science

If conflict is an inadequate way to describe the relationship between Christian science, what then is the relationship? In an attempt to answer this question, we shall begin with a brief biblical overview. To do so I will utilize the creation, fall and redemption motif.

 

 

Creation

God, through Christ, is the source and sustainer of all things.  Therefore, science has its roots in God The command to humanity as the image-bearers of God is to subdue and rule the creation. This is not to be seen in terms of domination, but rather as a shepherd may look after her sheep or a gardener her garden (e.g. Houston 1979). It is an injunction to develop and fill the creation, to continue the creative work of God. Hence it is here we find the biblical basis for science: it is part of our calling to care for and o p en up God’s good creation, to develop culture. Adam’s naming of the animals can perhaps be seen in this context as one of the first scientific tasks, that of observation and classification.

 

Science, then, is a God-given cultural activity, which is to be done in dependence on God and his Holy Spirit. It is not an autonomous activity; it is not a body of knowledge independent of God.

 

 

Fall

However, then came sin. This decisive event is well described by Walther Eichrodt:

 

This event has the character of a ‘Fall’, that is, of a falling out ofthe line of the development willed by God. (Eichrodt 1972 p.406)

 

No area of life is untainted by sin. Consequently all relationships are broken: humanity and God, humanity and the earth, humanity and humanity, male and female, humanity and the animals, animals and animals.... Aspects of God’s creation are given elevated roles they were not intended to have. This is exemplified in fallen 20th-century humanity’s approach to science, technology and economics. They have become the unholy trinity of scientism, technicism and economicism. They have become idols, the gods of our age.¹ They are worshipped in place of, or in some cases as well as, God.

 

Science claims to be omnicompetent. The only way to reliable knowledge is through science. This is the view of no less a person than Bertrand Russell:

 

Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be obtained by scienti­fic methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know. (Russell 1935 p. 243)

 

and, more recently, the biologist Richard Dawkins:

 

In the art of evaluating evidence, science comes into its own. The correct method for evaluating evidence is the scientific method.If a better one emerged, science would embrace it. (Dawkins 1992 p. 3)

 

Science subsumes every aspect of life: we have the science of beauty therapy, the science of catering, the science of food and cooking, the science of hairdressing,² etc.  Even ethical issues will be replaced by science; according to the biologist Edward Wilson in his book Sociobiology:

 

The time has come for ethics to be moved temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized. (cited in Midgley 1992 p. 261)

 

Wilson’s reply to God’s questions to Job (Job 38-39) are revealing:

 

Yes, we do know and we have told. Jehovah’s challenges have been met and scientists have pressed on to solve even greater puzzles. The physical basis of life is known; we understand approximately how and when it started on earth. New species have been created in the laboratory.

 

Salvation comes through science. Even Francis Bacon saw science as undoing the effects of the fall.

 

The other extreme is that science is the scapegoat for almost all the ills of the world. Lynn White, Jr (1967) places the blame for the ‘ecologic crisis’ on science and Christianity? Many examples illustrate the problems scientific advances confront us with: Hiroshima, Bhopal, Love Canal, Chernobyl. The fall has distorted the God-given role and function of science: consequently, it has become both deified and demonised by different parties.

 

 

Redemption

As sin has affected every area and aspect of life, so too does redemption. Redemption potentially ‘undoes’ the fall. Redemption means that science can be restored to its right place. It should neither be divinised nor denigrated. It has an important, albeit limited, role to play in developing the creation. Redeemed humanity can now transform the scientific enterprise and redirect it so that it can be used wisely and responsibly under God to open up and develop the creation. One step to restoring science to its God-given role is to expose the false claim that science is neutral.

 

 

The myth of neutrality

It is often assumed that science is an objective, value-free activity. This myth has been promulgated by the school of philosophy known as positivism; it has in part been responsible for the elevation of science above religion. Positivism, founded by Auguste Comte (1798—185 7), is the position that all knowledge is based on the senses, so we can only know through observation and experiment. More recent and more radical advocates of positivism were the Vienna Circle, and those named the logical positivists. The late Alfred Ayer (1910—89) was a logical positivist; his ‘bestseller’, Language, Truth and Logic, popularised this philosophy in the UK. Logical positivists maintain that experience is the source of knowledge. Mary Midgley makes this pertinent observation:

 

They [scientists] moved gradually from the traditional Comtian Positivism, which claimed to bring spiritual matters under the dominion of science, to logical-positivist positions which put such matters outside the province altogether. The resulting muddled metaphysic still underlies many of our problems today. (Midgley 1992 p. 45)

 

Science, however, is subjective and value-laden. It is not neutral. This point is poignantly made by an Alternative Nobel Prize winner:

 

There is now a growing realisation that science has embodied within it many of the ideological assumptions of the society which has given rise to it. (Cooley 1987 pp. 90—91)

 

To the scientists and technologists who view their work as neutral, he has this warning:

 

… they are dangerously mistaken in regarding their work as being neutral. Such a naive view was ruthlessly exploited in the Third Reich as Albert Speer pointed out in his book Inside the Third Reich: ‘Basically, I exploited the phenomenon of the technician’s often blind devotion to his task. Because of what appeared to be the moral neutrality of technology, these people were without any scruples about their activities.’ (Cooley 1987 p. 176)

 

Science has both an intrinsic and an extrinsic ‘non-neutrality’.

 

 

Extrinsic values

These are the sociological factors that negate any claim to neutrality. Science is not done in a social, economic, political or cultural vacuum. Leslie Stevenson makes a salient point:

 

[The scientist] will now have to recognize that the funds for his research will probably be given with a fairly close eye to possible applications, be they military, industrial, medical, or whatever. Such research cannot be said to be value-free. (1989 p. 216)

 

 

 

Intrinsic values

Philosophical factors also reveal neutrality to be a myth. The most obvious of these is the fact/ value dualism promulgated by the positivists. Much debate about science presupposes a distinction between facts and values. Facts are objective and public, values are subjective and personal. This distinction is a fallacy. Facts are value-laden and are often determined by culture: for Kepler, it was a fact that the earth goes round the sun, and yet for Tycho Brahe, it was a fact that the sun goes around the earth! Our observations are theory-dependent. We see what we want to see. Our worldview affects all that we do. Every human activity is bound to a worldview: science is no exception. Any claims to neutrality are hollow. This is also the testimony of more recent advances in the philosophy of science. It is to a brief and inevitably oversimplified overview of the philosophy of science that we now turn.

 

 

 

A brief philosophy of science

The major school of philosophy that has dominated the philos­ophy of science in the past is inductivism. Inductivism is the scientific method that moves from a series of observations to a hypothesis; from the specific (this block of ice melts at 0⁰C) to the general (all ice melts at 0⁰C). This view of science has long been discarded by philosophers of science, yet many school teachers of science still hold an inductivist view of science (Hodson 1986).

 

The death-blow to inductivism is the recognition that observation is not neutral. Observation is theory-dependent; it is therefore impossible to be a neutral observer. What we ‘see’ will depend on what we know and what we expect to see. Any number of optical illusions illustrates this point.

 

If observation is theory dependent then it follows that observation will be governed by any pre-existing theory: sugar in a liquid dissolves; we no longer see it disappear (Hodson 1986 p. 218)! In a similar vein, N.R. Hanson asks, ‘Do Kepler and Tycho Brahe see the same thing in the east at dawn?’ (Hanson 1958 p. 5).

 

Deductivism is a close relative of inductivism. Instead of moving from the specific (events) to the general (laws, theories), deductivism starts with a law or theory and deduces another event. If the event deduced does not occur then the law or theory may require some modification.

 

 

 

Both inductivism and deductivism assume the neutrality and autonomy of science. They assume that there is a universal scientific method. Recent philosophical developments have undermined both these assumptions and have placed more emphasis on the social context of science. They have even gone as far as denying the e~cistence of any method that could be called scientific. These developments are associated with Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Polanyi, whose ideas we will examine briefly.

 

 

Sir Karl R. Popper (1902-94)

One of Popper’s concerns was to demarcate science from pseudoscience. He rejected the positivist idea that verification was decisive; for Popper, scientific theories could not be proved, they could only be falsified. Science could not represent a body of objective truths, it was merely statements, laws and theories that so far had not been disproved.

Rejecting an inductive view of science, Popper advocated hypothetico-deductivism. Deductions are made on the basis of an hypothesis. If the deductions can be shown to be false then the hypothesis must be rejected or at best modified. Imre Lakatos (1922-73) developed and modified this approach (Lakatos 1970).

 

 

Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-96)

Originally trained as a theoretical physicist, Kuhn wrote his major work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions after being exposed to a history of science course; he describes the book as ‘an attempt to explain to myself and friends how I happened to be drawn from science to its history in the first place’ (p. vii~. Kuhn rejects the popular view of science as ‘development-by-accumulation’ (p.2), a view popularised in standard histories of science. He introduced the concept of paradigm shifts to explain how he saw the development of science.

 

For Kuhn, three phases take place in the development of science: normal science, crisis and revolutionary science. Normal science is what the majority of scientists do. He calls it ‘puzzle solving’ (p. 30). It provides an ‘articulation’ of the dominant paradigm. Occasionally in the history of science we have been confronted by crises, where the dominant paradigm does not explain certain phenomena. At this point several competing theories vie for dominance: this is the revolutionary phase. Eventually, one of these competing theories will become more widely accepted than the others, and consequently it takes over as the dominant paradigm: revolutionary science becomes normal science and we have come full circle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kuhn places much emphasis on the role of paradigms, and rightly so. This emphasis serves once more to show that science is value-(or theory-) laden. Paradigms, or worldviews, shape all our thinking. These paradigms are social in nature, they are communally held and communally determined by the scientific community.

 

The weakness of Kuhn’s position is that science is condemned to a ‘perpetual revolution’ (Hacking 1983). This is because Kuhn is a relativist: ‘truth’ is determined by the dominant paradigm. Kuhn overemphasizes the social dimension of science and consequently distorts reality. Science is reduced to a social dimension.

 

Lakatos, criticising Kuhn’s view, claims that for Kuhn ‘scientific change is a kind of religious change’ (Lakatos 1970 p. 93). It could be said that the philosophy of science is at present undergoing a Kuhnian revolution; certainly, Kuhn’s work has caused a paradigm shift to occur in the philosophy of science.

 

The difference between Popper (and the positivists) and Kuhn can be seen by how they would respond to the following questions about science: 1. Is it an exemplar of rationality? 2. Is there a distinction between observation and theory? 3. Is it cumulative? 4. Does it have a tight deductive structure? 5. Are scientific concepts precise? 6. Is there a methodological unity of science? 7. Can the context of justification be separated from that of discovery? 8. Is science outside time and history? For Popper, the answer to all questions is ‘yes’; for Kuhn, ‘no’ to all questions except the first (Hacking 1983).

 

 

Paul Feyerabend (1924-94)

Feyerabend maintains that there is no such thing as the scientific method; rather, ‘anything goes’! His is an anarchistic view of the scientific method. One of the strengths of Feyerabend is that he debunks the superiority of science over other realms of knowledge. We cannot reject other types of knowledge because they do not conform to the ‘scientific method’, a method that for Feyerabend does not exist (Feyerabend 1975)?

 

 

Michael Polanyi (1891-1976)

The Hungarian-born scientist-turned-philosopher, Polanyi, claims that knowledge has what he calls a ‘tacit dimension’: it is personal in nature. ‘We can know more than we can tell’ (Polanyi 1966 p. 4) perhaps best describes his thesis.

 

Polanyi has made an important contribution to both the philosophy of science and epistemology, a contribution that has important insights for Christians. Unfortunately, his work is little known among Christians. This is not helped by the fact that Polanyi’s work is difficult, primarily because of his ‘breadth of knowledge’ and because he ‘is advocating a U-turn in accepted ways of thiinking’ (Scott 1989)? The work of Lesslie Newbigin’s ‘Gospel and culture’ programme may remedy this neglect of Polanyi. Polanyi has influenced much of Newbigin’s thought (see

e.g.   Newbigin 1986; 1990; Scott 1992).

 

Polanyi expounds what he describes as a ‘post-critical philosophy’, in the spirit of Augustine (Polanyi 1958 p. 266):

 

We must now recognize belief once more as the source of all knowledge. Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an idiom and of a cultural heritage, affiliation to a like-minded community: such are the impulses which shape our vision of the nature of things on which we rely for our mastery of things. No intelligence, however critical or original, can operate outside such a fiduciary network. (1958 p. 266)

 

Several factors are integral to knowledge for Polanyi; these include: a tacit dimension, passion, a network of beliefs, and commitment. All are interconnected. Commitment can be seen as a network of beliefs and this network has a tacit dimension. It is difficult to tie Polanyi down at times because he does not provide a systematic exposition, rather many illustrations and examples.

 

Passion. The positivists denied any personal, subjective aspect to science; Popper acknowledges it but marginalizes it; Polanyi makes it fundamental to knowledge. This is clearly seen in the role of passion in knowledge:

 

scientific passions are no mere psychological by-product, but have a logical function which contributes an indispensable element to science. (1958 p. 134)

 

The personal participation of the knower in the knowledge hebelieves himself to possess takes place within a flow of passion. We recognise intellectual beauty as a guide to discovery and as a mark of truth. (1958 p. 300)

 

The tacit dimension. Riding a bike, recognising a face in a crowd, swimming, the mastery of tools, are all complex skills. Yet we are not always able to articulate or analyse what we know: ‘we can know more than we can tell’. Knowledge of these skills, or indeed anything, involves two parts — one implicit, the other explicit; these, Polanyi called the subsidiary (or proximal) and the focal (or distal) aspects respectively. Both are mutually exclusive and irreducible (1958 p. 56). In the process of knowing, we attend from the subsidiary to the focal. The subsidiary is what we know, but we are not always aware that we know. It is this important aspect of knowing that makes all knowledge personal:

 

into every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known, … this coefficient is no mere imperfection but a vital component of his knowledge. (1958 p. viii)

 

This undermines the whole notion of objectivity and neutrality of science. It destroys the whole positivist programme.

 

A network of beliefs. Knowledge, as well as being personal, also functions within a network of beliefs. This network is not merely about bringing pattern and order to knowledge; it also acts as a vision of reality which filters the sense data before they become observations. This vision of reality provides a framework of ultimate beliefs for knowledge. These beliefs are accepted a-critically on the basis of commitment: they are irrefutable and unprovable.

 

The scientific enterprise relies upon this tacit framework of beliefs. Hence, Polanyi has shown that faith, not doubt (as Popper held) is a vital aspect of science:

 

The scientist’s conviction that science works is no better, so far, than the astronomer’s belief in horoscopes or the funda­mentalist’s belief in the letter of the Bible. A belief always works in the eyes of the believer (1946 p. 47).

 

Among these beliefs is: ‘the belief that there is something there to be understood’ (1946 p. 30). He goes on to say:

 

Thus to accord validity to science — or to any other of the great domains of the mind — is to express a faith which can be upheld only within a community. We realize here the connexion between Science, Faith and Society adumbrated in these essays (Polanyi 1946 p. 59).

 

Commitment is another important aspect. It has two poles: a personal and an external, universal pole. It is this latter pole that prevents Polanyi’s epistemology from slipping into subjectivism (1958 p. 65). Knowledge cannot be divorced from personal commitment:

 

Science is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. Such a system cannot be accounted for either from experience as seen within a different system, or by reason without any experience. Yet this does not signify that we are free to take it or leave it, but simply reflects the fact that it is a system of beliefs to which we are committed and which cannot be represented in non-committal terms. (1958 p. 171)

 

Along with Kuhn, he sees a vital role for the scientific community in the scientific enterprise. Science progresses through faith in the accepted views; it is these views that are determined by the scientific community.

 

Polanyi’s work thus provides us with important insights: science and faith are not two independent realms, but are both aspects of the same reality; faith informs and shapes science; and the personal is not divorced from science.

 

 

Realism versus relativism

One of the major debates in the philosophy of science over the last decade is the realist versus antirealist/relativist controversy. It was in essence this that characterized the difference in approach between Popper and Kuhn. Kuhn claimed that ‘Sir Karl’s view of science and my own are very nearly identical’ (Kuhn 1970 p. 1). Popper’s response is to reject Kuhn’s relativism. He sees relativism as being unable to stand up to criticism.

 

For the Christian, science is a God-given corporate human activity whereby we explore and investigate God’s good creation in an attempt to understand its order and structure. By its very nature as a human activity, its results and conclusions can only be tentative, fallible and provisional; hence a naive realist view of science is untenable. This is the ‘naive’ idea that scientific laws and theories provide an accurate literal description of an objective world. For the naive literalist there is a one-to-one correspondence between theory and reality. Likewise, a relativist position is flawed because we are dealing with a God-given reality which is not the product of social agreement (pace Kuhn).

 

The theoretical physicist Paul Davies has made this revealing statement:

 

Few scientists would be willing to suppose that the laws of physics are merely human inventions. To be sure they are formulated byhumans. but the physicist is motivated by the belief that the laws of physics reflect some aspects of reality.  Without this connection with reality, science is reduced to a meaningless charade. (Davies 1988 p. 59; my emphasis)

 

Relativism undermines the very basis of scientific investigation. It denies that there is an objective reality to investigate. I would therefore want to suggest that a critical realist view of science is more appropriate for a Christian: that is, that science provides us with a fallible description of the external world. This is the position advocated by many writers, including Arthur Peacocke (1979), Ian Barbour (1966), Stanley Jaki and John Polkinghorne. Jaki claims that the major lesson of the history of science is that scientists ‘cannot live without a realist notion of the universe as the totality of all interacting things’ (1978 p. 276). For Polkinghorne, ‘The realist view.., is the only one adequate to scientific experience, carefully considered’. But he goes on to say: ‘If realism is to prove defensible it has to be critical, rather than a naive, realism’ (1986 p. 22).

 

Our knowledge of the world is fallible and imperfect. This inevitably means that we have to propose tentative and provisional models and explanations that only represent what we know at present of reality. This does not deny that there is any ‘real world’ ‘out there’. If we have no access to the real world, then science becomes a farce. How can we collect data? There is nothing by which we can judge the truthfulness of our hypotheses, theories or laws. It denies any God-given order to creation; and ultimately it denies the God who is Faithful to his creation.

 

Not all Christians, however, advocate critical realism. Reformed philosopher Gordon H. Clark adopts an instrumentalist view (i.e., theories are useful tools, but not necessarily true). James Moreland advocates an ‘eclectic approach to science that adopts a realist/antirealist view on a case-by-case basis’ (1989 p. 203). I find his reasons for eclecticism could be fulfilled if one adopts a critical realist approach.

 

 

Science as a faith activity

During the Holy Week of 1992, instead of the usual ‘religious’ programmes the BBC showed a series of programmes called ‘Soul’ which dealt with the way science has paved the way for a more mystical approach to life. Perhaps in future Holy Weeks we will be given a regular diet of science programmes instead of the usual re-run of Jesus? Science has become the new religion, it seems.

 

Polanyi has shown that faith is integral to scientific investi­gation: science is an inherently religious activity. Professor Coulson has commented:

 

Science itself must be a religious activity: ‘a fit sublect for a Sabbath day’s study’, as John Ray put it in the seventeenth century. (Coulson 1971 p. 44)

 

We have already mentioned that science is a human activity and scientific work is inevitably shaped by the scientist’s worldview. A worldview, by definition, rests on certain ultimate questions, such as ‘What is reality?’ and ‘What does it mean to be human?’. The answers to these questions cannot be empirically tested: they are the product of faith. Hence, scientific activity is inherently religious.

 

We can express this line of argument as follows:

 

1. We all have a worldview.

2. A worldview is a product of faith, shaped by religious commitments.

3. All human activity is shaped by worldviews.

4. Science as a human activity is therefore religious.

 

The religious nature of science is shown in the beliefs that are necessary for the scientific enterprise. These include the following:

 

Belief in a material world. If the material world is a mere illusion then scientific activity is foolish.

 

Belief that the world is orderly. Thomas Torrance makes an insightful remark:

 

Belief in order, the conviction that, whatever may appear to the contrary in so-called random or chance events, reality is intrin­sically orderly, constitutes one of the ultimate controlling factors in all rational and scientific activity. (Torrance 1985 p. 16)

 

The question remains for the scientist, where does this order come from?

 

Belief that understanding the world is a valuable exercise. If it were not so, what would be the point of science?

Belief that the world and its order can be known. If it cannot be known then scientific activity would be impossible!

Belief in the trustworthiness of other scientific work. If the scientist did not have faith in colleagues’ results published in the scientific journals then most of his/her time would be spent confirming all the previous work, leaving no time for any fresh research that builds on previous work. This does not imply that all that is published is accurate!

 

The five beliefs above are necessary for the scientific enter­prise; they are also, with the exception of the last one, integral to a Christian worldview. It is therefore no accident that a Christian worldview was necessary for the birth and development of modern science.

 

 

The birth of science

The major contribution of the Hungarian-born theologian and Benedictine priest, Stanley Jaki, to the history and philosophy of science has been to show that it was, and could only have been, Christianity that provided the right atmosphere and conditions for science to flourish.

 

The birth of science came only when the seeds of science were planted in a soil which Christian faith in God made receptive to natural theology and to the epistemology implied in it. (Jaki 1978 p. 160)

 

It was the philosopher M. B. Foster (1934), in a seminal paper, who showed the debt that the origins and the nature of science owed to Christian theology. The historian R. Hooykaas (1972) likewise came to similar conclusions. Hooykaas sees science as ‘more a consequence than a cause of a certain religious [ie. Judaeo-Christian] view’, and that the ‘vitamins and hormones’ of science were biblical. Torrance has shown that natural science is based on ‘three masterful ideas’ (Torrance 1980 p. 52) developed by the early church:

(i)   The rational unity of the universe: the source of order is God.

(ii) The contingent, i.e. neither necessary nor eternal, rationality or intelligibility of the universe. This is a consequence of God’s creation ex nihilo, which included both space and time.

(iii) The freedom of the universe. A freedom which is contingent provides a release from the ‘tyranny of Determinism’. This freedom is not the product of randomness or chance but is the freedom ‘of the God of infinite love and truth upon which it rests and by which it is maintained’ (Torrance 1980 pp. 58-5 9). It is these Christian beliefs that made Christianity so influential in the development of science.

 

It was the rule rather than the exception, historically, that the ‘founding fathers’ of science had Christian commitments (e.g. Russell 1985, 1987). And today there has been no shortage of scientists who stand up and claim to be Christians (cf. Berry 1991, Mott 1991).

 

If Christian beliefs about the nature of reality were the pre­suppositions vital for the development of science, why is it that the Christian belief in miracles has often proved a stumbling block for those who try to integrate science and faith? How is belief in an orderly world to be reconciled with the claim that miracles happen?

 

 

Law, scientific law and miracles

Has science replaced the need to resort to supernatural explanations of miracles? Does God violate his own laws to produce a miraculous event?

 

In an attempt to unravel some of these knotty questions, we start by examining what is meant by law. ‘Law’ is one of those Humpty Dumpty words — it can mean whatever we want it to mean. It has a wide range of semantic meaning, dependent partly on what ‘language game’ is being played. We need to make a distinction between the way scientists and theologians use the term law.

 

Scientists and philosophers of science are not agreed on its meaning. One view is that laws are human constructs imposed on reality: they are inventions. At the other extreme is the view that laws are inherent in reality: hence, they are discovered. A middle view, which is the one I take, is that laws are human representations of a God-given reality; they are constantly in need of12modification to better represent reality, and at best they will asymptotically approach reality.

Likewise, there is no precision to the meaning of the word ‘law’ in Scripture.

 

Al Wolters makes some important observations:

 

[Law] is both compelling (laws of nature) and appealing (norms), and the range of its validity can be both sweeping(general) and individual (particular). (Wolters 1986 p. 17)

 

Scripture is unequivocal: God orders his creation, both human, and non-human, through his decrees and laws (Ps. 147:15-2 Scientific ‘laws’ are human constructions, although they are bou to the creation order. Their usefulness is dependent upon h close they come to the laws by which God orders his creation. Th are not, as Kant maintained, human constructions imposed reality.

 

‘Miracle’, like ‘law’, is a slippery concept.⁸The popular perception of a miracle is threefold: it is a violation of a natural law, it is a divine intervention and it is a supernatural event. All are inadequate.

 

Swinburne, Mackie and Hume all define miracle as a violation or transgression (Hume) of a law of nature. This notion is a left over from the 18th century when deism was at its peak. Eichrodt points out that it certainly would not

 

occur to the devout Old Testament believer to make a breach of the Laws of Nature a condicio sine qua non of the miraculous character of an event. (p. 163)⁹

 

God does not violate his own laws, but works with and through  them; he is faithful to the creation order, which had its origin in him. This is not to say that God is subject to his laws. Perhaps Augustine was near to the truth when he described a portent (miracle) as an event that ‘happens not contrary to nature, bi contrary to what we know as nature’ (De Civit ate Dei XII.8). Fuller objects to such a definition because it may mean, scientific advances permitting, that ‘we shall know so much about nature that there will be no place for miracle after all’ (1963 p. 8). The objection is ill-founded.

 

It is likewise a mistake to describe miracles as divine interventions. An intervention implies that the intervener is absent prior to the intervention. God is present in all of creation, it therefore illogical to describe his action in the creation as an intervention (Davies 1992).

 

Can we describe miracles as a supernatural phenomenon? The idea that miracles are supernatural events has its origin in rationalism, not in the scriptures. God is the God of the laws o. nature: he does not violate his own principles to work a miracle Miracles are natural events.¹⁰   Eichrodt, again, points out that ‘ever the course of Nature itself counts as a miracle’ (p. 162). Nature is not autonomous: all things are held together by Christ. He is both the source and sustainer of all things. Fallen nature is not normal, as rationalism assumes, and supernaturalism, with its nature/ supernature dualism, need not be invoked to explain that which rationalism cannot. As Diemer puts it:

 

The fundamental fault of supernaturalism is that it begins with a rationalistic and deistic theory of nature in which only a nature torn loose from its moorings and impoverished is reckoned with.... As long as rationalism exists, supernaturalism will not disappear. Supernaturalism fills the vacuum that rationalism creates. (Diemer nd p. 17)

 

How then are we to explain miracles? John Polkinghorne suggests that the fundamental problem of miracles is

 

how these strange events can be set within a consistent overall pattern of God’s reliable activity; how can we accept them without subscribing to a capricious interventionist God, who is a concept of paganism rather than Christianity. (Polkinghorne 1989 p. 51)

 

To this we might add: ‘and without subscribing to an unbiblical supernaturalism’.

 

Miracles are part of the created order. In performing miraculous events. Jesus was restoring the creation to its original order. They are glimpses of the consummated kingdom of God, signposts to the kingdom, or, as Polkinghorne has it, ‘transparent moments in which the Kingdom is found to be manifestly present’; they are restoring humans and the creation to their proper relationships.

 

Aspects of the fall are temporarily halted: sickness and death are robbed of their dominion. The ultimate example, of course, is of Jesus’ resurrection: he is the firstfruits of what it will be to have a transformed resurrection body; we like him will be raised to immortality.

 

This means that scientific descriptions of miracles are permissible but they are not the whole truth. They may be able to explain them in certain cases, but as has often been said, ‘explana­tion is not explaining away’. Hence, contra Fuller, scientific explanations will not mean that there will be no place for miracles.

 

Conclusion

I am all too aware that much ground has been covered in this far too cursory overview, and that far too many questions will have been raised rather than answered — but that is not such a bad thing. It would be presumptuous, therefore, to offer any conclusions. And any conclusions, like the scientific enterprise, can only be tentative, fallible, corrigible and value-laden. Suffice to say that science is a God-ordained corporate human activity, and like all truth can never be in conflict with him who is the Truth.

 

Neither are science and faith two separate, independent, distinct realms: both are engaged in a search for truth, both have their source and origin in God, and ultimately, science is rooted in faith commitments. Faith is integral to the scientific enterprise.

 

The prophet Isaiah paints a picture of the lion and the lamb lying down together in harmony on the new earth. Perhaps too we will see the boa constrictor and warthog coexisting in peace.

 

Footnotes

 

1.              An excellent analysis of contemporary idolatry is provided by the Christian economist Bob Goudzwaard 1984.

2.              These terms are the titles of books; all are published by Hodder and Stoughton!

3.           For a critique of White’s thesis see Bishop 1991 and references therein, especially footnote 2. Other recent critiques of White include Ian Bradley 1990 and Bauckham (forthcoming).

4.              Originally published in 1962 by the University of Chicago Press; an enlarged second edition appeared in 1970. The page numbers I cite are taken from a reprint of the second edition (New American Library, 1986).

5.               Useful discussions on Feyerabend are to be found in Newton Smith 1981 and Chalmers 1982.

6.              Scott’s book (1989) provides an excellent introduction to Polanyi’s main ideas.

7.               Presented by Anthony Clare and produced by Angela Tilby, the series was broadcast in the UK on 13. 15 and 16 April 1992.

8.              I am not concerned here with the historicity of miracles. On this see, for example, Wenham and Blomberg 1986.

9.               However. Eichrodt thinks that some events that do violate the laws are not unkv6wn: he cites Nu. 16:30; Jos. 10:lOff. and 2 Ki. 20:10 as examples.

10.            On this and the following discussion, see J. H. Diemer no date and 1977.

 

 

Bibliography

R.T.Allen 1978, The philosophy of Michael Polanyi and its significance for education’, Journal of Philosophical Education, Vol. 12, pp. 167-177.

Ian G. Barbour 1966, Issues in Science and Religion (London: SCM).

—1990,Religion in an Age of Science (Gifford Lectures 1989-1991) (London:SCM), Vol. 1.

R.J. Berry (ed.) 1991, Real Science, Real Faith (Leicester: IVP).

Steve Bishop 1991, ‘Green theology and deep ecology: New Age or new creation?’, Themelios Vol. 16. 3 (April/ May 1991), pp. 8-14.

Ian Bradley 1990, God is Green: Christianity and the Environment (London:DLT).

Richard Bauckham (forthcoming). ‘Attitudes to the non-human creation in the history of Christian thought’, in Stewarding Creation, ed. Steve Bishop (Bristol: Regius Press).

John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

David S. Caudill 1985, ‘Law and worldview: problems in the creation-science controversy’. Law and Religion Vol. 3 (1), pp. 1-46.

AF. Chalmers 1982 (2nd edn), What is This Thing Called Science? (Milton Keynes: Open University Press).

Mike Cooley, Architect or Bee? The Human Price of Technology (London: The Hogarth Press, 1987; original version, Langley Technical Services, 1980).

C.A. Coulson 1971, Science and Christian Belief (London: Fontana (2nd edn)). Originally published by Oxford University Press in 1955.

Brian Davies OP 1992, ‘Miracles’, New Blackfriars Vol. 73, No. 857 (February), pp. 102-120.

Paul Davies 1988. ‘Law and order in the universe’, New Scientist (15 October).

Richard Dawkins 1992, ‘The culture of science’, The Observer Schools Report (2 February).

J.H.Diemer no date. ‘Miracles happen: toward a biblical view of nature’(Toronto: ICS).

—1977, Nature and Miracle (Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation).

John Draper 1875, History of Conflict between Religion and Science (London:International Scientific Series).

Walther Eichrodt 1972, Theology of the Old Testament Vol. 2 (London: SCM).

MB. Foster 1934, ‘The Christian doctrine of creation and the rise of modern natural science’, Mind Vol.43, pp.446-468; also reprinted in CA. Russell (ed.), Science and Religious Belief: A Selection of RecentHistorical Studies (London: University of London Press/Open University Press, 1973).

Paul Feyerabend 1975. Against Method (London: New Left Books).

R.H. Fuller 1963. Interpreting the Miracles (London: SCM).

Bob Goudzwaard 1984, Idols of Our Time (Leicester: IVP).

Marjorie Grene (ed.) 1960, Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

Ian Hacking 1983, Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics’ in the Philosophy of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

N.R. Hanson 1958, Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

D. Hodson 1986, ‘Philosophy of science and science education’. Journal of Philosophy of Education Vol. 20. pp. 215-225.

R. Hooykaas 1972, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press).

Walter J. Houston 1979, “‘And let them have dominion…..’ Biblical views of man in relation to the environmental crisis”, Studia Biblica 1(1978) (Sheffield: JSOT Press), pp. 161-184.

Stanley Jaki 1978. The Road to Science and the Ways to God (The Gifford Lectures 1974-5 and 1975-6) (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press).

Thomas S. Kuhn 1986, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (New York: New American Library).

—1970, ‘Logic of discovery or psychology of research’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. lmre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Imre Lakatos 1970, ‘Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes’, in ibid.

David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers 1986, ‘Beyond War and peace: a reappraisal of the encounter between Christianity and science’, Church History Vol. 55, pp. 338-354.

J.P. Moreland 1989, Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation (Grand Rapids: Baker).

Mary Midglcy 1992, ‘The idea of salvation through science’. New Blackfriars Vol. 73, pp. 25 7-265.

— 1992, ‘Strange contest: science versus religion’, in The Gospel and Contemporary Culture, ed. Hugh Montefiore (London: Cassell).

Sir Nevill Mott (ed.) 1991, Can Scientists Believe? Some Examples of the Attitudes of Scientists to Religion (James & James).

Lesslie Newbigin 1986, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (London: SPCK).

— 1989, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (London: SPCK).

W.H. Newton-Smith 1981, The Rationality of Science (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

Michael Polanyi 1946. Science, Faith and Society (Riddell Memorial Lectures) (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

— 1958, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

— 1966. The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

John Polkingh6rne 1986. One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology (London: SPCK).

— 1989, Science and Providence: God’s Interaction with the World (London: SPCK).

Bertrand Russell 1935. Religion and Science (The Home University Library of Modern Knowledge) (London: Thornton Butterworth).

Colin A. Russell 1987, ‘Some founding fathers of physics’, Physics Education Vol. 27 (1), pp. 27-33.

— 1990, ‘The conflict metaphor and its social origin’, Science and Christian Belief Vol. 1. pp. 3-23.

Drusilla Scott 1989. Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi (Lewes: The Book Guild).

—1992. ‘Can religion ever retake its place from science as holder of public truth?’, The Church of England Newspaper, 3 July, p. 9.

Barbara S. Spector 1993, ‘Order out of chaos: restructuring schooling to reflect society’s paradigm shift’, School Science and Mathematics Vol. 93 (1), pp. 9ff.

Leslie Stephenson 1989, ‘Is scientific research value-neutral?’, Inquiry Vol. 32, p. 216.

T.F. Torrance 1980,. The Ground and Grammar of Theology (The Richard Lectures for 1978-79) (Virginia: University Press of Virginia).

— 1985, Christian Frame of Mind (Edinburgh: Handsell Press).

Del Ratzsch 1986, Philosophy of Science: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective (Leicester: IVP).

Andrew Dickson White 1896, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (London: MacMillan).

Lynn White. Jr 1967, ‘The historical roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science Vol. 155 (3767) (March), pp. 1203-1207.

David Wenham and Craig Blomberg 1986. Gospel Perspectives Vol. 6: The Miracles of Jesus (Sheffield: JSOT Press).

Albert Wolters 1986. Creation Regained: A Transforming View of the World (Leicester: IVP).

---

---

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Recent years have seen the proliferation of books and articles on the relationship of science and religion.  Science, it seems, is making God fashionable once more![i]  The relationship between science and religion is highly complex.  The limited purpose of this paper is to mark out some of the terrain of the subject[ii] and, at the risk of oversimplifying, I have identified several ways in which this relationship can be construed.  Though before I do, some words of caution are in order.

                It has been said that people can be placed into one of two categories: lumpers and splitters.  The approach taken here is that of a lumper.  I am aware that in lumping people under different positions I sometimes fail to do justice to the nuances of their positions.  Occasionally those who write on science and religion employ a range of models depending upon the audience; nevertheless, there is (usually) enough consistency within their overall position to lump them into one category.  Splitters such as John Hedley Brooke rightly point out that the relationship between science and religion is more complex than lumpers often make out.  And yet there is value in a lumping approach: it provides a framework within which to examine those subtle nuances.

 

Defining science

 

However, before I begin lumping, it will be necessary to provide a working definition of what I mean by science and religion.  What is science?  This question has thwarted and puzzled philosophers of science for decades if not centuries.  What is it that makes science science?  Contemporary developments in the philosophy of science have shown that there is no such thing as the scientific method.  The distinction between science and non-science is not so marked as is often thought.[iii]  It can perhaps be viewed as a spectrum.  As Wolterstorff puts it: 'science [is] different only in degree from ordinary life'.[iv]  We only have to consider the processes one goes through in crossing the road: hypothesising that it is safe to cross the road based on observations and inferences of car speeds, based on background information and patterns.[v]

                For the Christian, science is a God-given activity by which we are to unfold and develop God's good creation.[vi]  A biblical perspective on science can be seen through the spectacles of creation, fall and redemption.

                Creation. God, through Christ, is the source and sustainer of all things.  Therefore, science has its roots in God.  The command to humanity as the image-bearers of God is to subdue and rule the creation.  This is not to be seen in terms of domination, but rather as a shepherd tends her sheep.  It is an injunction to develop and fill the creation, to continue the creative work of God.  Science then is part of our calling to care for and open up God's good creation, to develop culture.  Adam's naming of the animals can perhaps be seen in this context as one of the first scientific tasks, that of observation and classification.

                Fall.  Then came sin.  No area of life is untainted with sin; it is all pervasive.  This is the case with science.  In many cases it has become an idol.  Science has become divinised.  It makes claims to omnicompetence: the only way to reliable knowledge is through science.   It subsumes every aspect of life: we have the science of beauty therapy, the science of catering, the science of food and cooking, the science of hairdressing,... . Science has become salvific:[vii] it has become scientism.

 

                The other extreme is that science has become demonised.  Lynn White Jr placed the blame for the 'ecologic crisis' on science and Christianity.  Many examples illustrate the problems scientific 'advances' bring: Hiroshima, Bhopal, Love Canal, Chernobyl.  The fall has distorted the God-given role and function of science.

                Redemption. As sin has affected every area of life, so too does redemption.  Redemption potentially 'undoes' the fall.  Redemption means that science can be restored to its right place.  However, science should neither be divinized nor denigrated.  A Christian position avoids both extremes.  Science has an important, albeit limited, role to play in developing the creation.  Redeemed humanity can now transform the scientific enterprise and redirect it so that it can be used wisely and responsibly under God to open up the potentiality within creation.

 

Defining religion

 

The relationship of religion to belief and faith is notoriously slippy and many writers on the science-religion axis often use the terms as synonyms.  To arrive at a satisfactory definition of all three would require a full size monograph.  Given a few hours time J. Milton Yinger said that he could gather a hundred different definitions of religion.  However, despite that we can broadly delineate three definitions of religion: civil religion; folk religion; and natural, implicit or invisible religion. 

                Many scientists are adherents of a form of civil religion, be it Parson Thwakum's type of religion or a more non-conformist form.  This is not the type of religion I have in view in this study.  The religion in view in this study is the third category: an implicit form of religion.  I shall take as my working definition that of Christian philosopher Roy Clouser. 

 

A religious belief is any belief in something or other as divine...

'Divine' means having the status of not depending on anything else.[viii]

 

                Hence, a religion is a worldview or ideology that attributes the status or nature of divinity to something or someone; it does not necessarily have a cultic dimension.

 

A model for the relationship of science and religion

 

                Historically there have been many ways in which scientists and theologians have construed the relationship between science and religion.  The most common approach is to describe them as: conflict, independence, harmony and dialogue.[ix] 

                A more fruitful approach, which has the advantage of simplicity, is illustrated graphically below.

 

 

 

 

Science replaces religion

 

This idea that science conflicts with religion and thus makes religion redundant has its historical roots, at least in a popular form, are in the writings of John Draper and subsequently by Andrew Dickson White's (1832-1918) two volume book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1897).[x]  The words of a former editor of Nature epitomise this attitude:

 

My grandfather preached the gospel of Christ,

My father preached the gospel of Socialism,

I preach the gospel of Science.

               

                The biologist and historian of science, William Provine puts it like this:

 

Show me a person who says that science and religion are compatible, and I will show you a person who (1) is an effective atheist, or (2) believes things demonstrably unscientific, or (3) asserts the existence of entities or processes for which no shred of evidence exists.[xi]

 

The warfare, or conflict approach seems to be supported by history:  Galileo v. Church (1616); Huxley v. Wilberforce (1860); Catastrophism v. Uniformatism; Creation v. Evolution, as exemplified in the 'Scope's monkey trial' (1925).  However, the main thesis of White's and Draper's work has been shown to be based on 'misinformation and half-baked history'.[xii]  Lindberg and Numbers in a long overdue appraisal of White's work conclude:

 

This brief excursion to some of White's old battlefields has demonstrated that the historical relationship between science and Christianity - or, more properly, scientists and theologians - cannot be reduced simply to conflict or warfare.[xiii]

 

                The resilience of this conflict metaphor is seen in an issue of the Institute of Physics' journal Physics Education.  Edgar Pearlstein, Professor of Physics at the University of Nebrasksa, in response to an editorial that sought to expose the myth of the conflict thesis,[xiv] ironically accused the editor of repeating 'the comfortable myth that there is no essential conflict between science and religion'[xv] and cited White's work in support of his argument![xvi]

                The prevalence of this myth provides an excellent illustration of how worldviews colour one's perceptions of reality.  The combatants in the conflicts that did exist were not science and Christianity.  Much of the conflict was between the 'new science' and the 'sanctified science of the previous generation'.[xvii]  Draper's and White's views have no basis in history.[xviii]

                Contemporary advocates of this view include Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins.[xix]  Again, this perspective is more a product of their worldview than any historical or scientific data.

                An Oxford theology don has described Dawkins as the 'most evangelical atheist I've ever met'.[xx]   In a letter to the Independent,[xxi] following Susan Howatch's endowment of the Starbridge lectureship to study science and religion, Dawkins asserts:

 

What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody?  When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? ... The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't achieve anything, don't even mean anything.  What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

 

                Dawkins' sees religion(s) and God as 'competing explanations for facts about the universe and life'.[xxii]  Science, for Dawkins becomes the basis by which to judge all things:

 

Either admit that God is a scientific hypothesis and let him submit to the same judgement as any other scientific hypothesis.  Or admit that his status is no higher than that of fairies and river sprites.[xxiii]

 

Here Dawkins exposes his scientism: science can explain anything and is the only legitimate way of knowing.  Science is the legitimising principle for all knowledge, he gets dangerously close to divinising science and thus making science into a religion.  For Dawkins religion is the result of a 'pattern of heredity'.  However, the argument is two-edged: Dawkins’ allegiance to atheism could also be a matter of heredity![xxiv] 

 

 

Religion replaces science

 

An equal but opposite error to the above is the 'religion replaces science' position.  This is the position of the extreme creationists.[xxv]  Creationists reject any scientific theories or observations that appear to conflict with a literal six-day creation interpretation of Genesis.[xxvi]  They reject such science as naturalistic, self-contained, non-purposive, directional, irreversible, universal and continuing.  This contrasts with creation science which is: supernaturalistic, externally directed, purposive and completed.[xxvii] 

                Evolutionary science is thus replaced by creation science.  This creation science often presupposes a narrow one-dimensional (mis)reading of Genesis 1.  Hence, it is religious presuppositions that shape the creation science that replaces traditional science.

 

Science and religion are independent

 

A recent book, Cosmos, Bios, Theos,[xxviii] contains the responses of sixty leading scientists to six questions about how science and religion interact.  One of the questions was 'What do you think should be the relationship between religion and science?'.  The scientists interviewed were 'known to be theistic or at least sympathetic to a religious view of reality'.  It is significant that the majority accepted that science and faith were distinct independent non-interacting realms.  It is this view that has enabled the 'ueasy truce' between science and religion to hold.

 

                Within the independence position we can classify two main approaches: strong and weak independence.  

 

Strong independence

 

This approach sees science and religion as two very distinct categories.  The barrier between the two realms is non-permeable.

                A resolution from the US National Academy of the Sciences, made in the aftermath of the Californian 'equal time' debate (October 1972), exemplifies this position:

 

... religion and science are ... separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief.[xxix]

 

                The Catholic physicist and historian of science Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) is an advocate of this category.  When his approach was described as being 'that of a believer’, he responded:

 

I have constantly aimed to prove that physics proceeds by an autonomous method absolutely independent of any metaphysical opinion.[xxx]

 

He rejects the possibility of any conflict between science and metaphysics, faith, because they have no common term.  Religion is based on 'judgments touching on objective reality', whereas science 'is neither true nor false; it merely gives a more or less satisfactory picture of the laws it intends to represent'.[xxxi]  Here Duhem advocates an instrumentalist view of science; although he does not deny that there is a reality independent of the knower.  His instrumentalism is an attempt to 'save the phenomenon'; it was a ploy offered to Galileo to save him coming into conflict with the Pope.  Duhem is mistaken in separating metaphysics/ religion and science.  There are metaphysical/ religious presuppositions in all scientific activity.  These will be discussed subsequently.  Suffice to mention at this point that metaphysical presuppositions include: belief in an orderly universe, whose order is both knowable and contingent, i.e. it has to be discovered by investigation and experimentation rather than deduced; and that investigation is desirable, possible and profitable.

Other advocates of this position are: G. D. Yarnold,[xxxii] David L. Dye[xxxiii] and Russell Hindmarsh.[xxxiv]  David Dye sees science as describing the physical universe, and faith dealing with:

 

A different kind of reality, which we call 'spiritual reality', not amenable to direct controlled observation nor scientific description.

 

Science deals with observations and explanations while faith or religion deals with ultimate goals or understandings.  At a popular level it is presented in terms of science asks 'How?', religion 'Why?'.  The problem is that reality is not so simple.  Explanations of this sort, while perhaps suitable for Sunday School, do not bear much close scrutiny.  It presupposes that religion cannot ask 'How?' questions and science 'Why?' questions.  A comparison of the questions about time posed by, say, Moltmann and physicist Stephen Hawking, soon lay that fallacy to rest.

                The late Russell Hindmarsh, a nuclear physicist and Vice-president in the Methodist Church, makes a sharp distinction between objective and subjective knowledge:

 

We are contending here that there are at least two modes of knowing.  One is the scientific, objective mode; the other is the mode of faith, not objective in the scientific conclusions concerning the structure and dynamics of the natural world; the other grasps the truth of God.[xxxv]

 

However, recent philosophy and sociology of science has exposed the myth of objectivity in science.  The objectivity of science is a positivist fallacy.  Facts are not neutral, they are theory-laden.  Brute facts are mythological beasts that have more in common with unicorns than reality.

                As Polanyi has made clear, science is based on personal commitments.[xxxvi]  Science is a human activity, and as with any human activity it is value-laden.  It is laden with the cultural, political, economic ... values of the scientist.

 

Weak independence: complementarity

 

Within evangelical circles the dominant paradigm is termed complementarity.  A recent questionnaire of Christian Biology teachers at Christian academic institutions in the States has identified it as the most common model used for relating science and scripture.[xxxvii] 

                Complementarity to some degree holds that 'science and religion are independent', but allows for some interaction.  Hence the barrier is semi-permeable.

 

Complementarity   The term complementary to describe the relationship between science and religion is usually associated with Donald MacKay (1922 -1987).  MacKay has been described by R. J. Berry as one 'who has probably contributed more than anyone this century to the Christian understanding of science '.[xxxviii]  One of the first uses of the term complementarity in this context was in a symposium on 'Mentality in machines', sponsored by the Mind Association and the Aristoltelian Society (1952).[xxxix]

                MacKay later offered a more nuanced description of complementarity:

 

I call two or more statements complementary when (a) they purport to have a common reference, (b) they make different allegations, yet (c) all are justifiable in the sense that each expresses something about the common references which could not (for one reason or another) be expresses in the terms of the others - the commonest reason being ... that the terms belong to different logical categories.[xl]

 

                Though the most common position held by evangelicals,[xli] it is not a uniquely evangelical or even Christian position.  Brian Josephson[xlii], Plutarch (c. AD 45-120), a Baha'i, Khursheed,[xliii] also belong to this category.   An empirical study by Helmut Reich[xliv] identified complementarity as the main approach to the interplay between science and faith by adolescents.

                The complementarity position is often described as being analogous to different views of the same mountain, an architect's plan and elevation drawing, binocular vision, the wave-particle duality of electrons and light, and the hardware and software on computers.  In the same way as electrons and light can be described by both waves and particles, so too can reality be explained by both religion and science without contradiction.  Science and religion cannot be reduced to each other.  They offer different, supplementary levels of explanation, which are true provided they are not contradictory, so the complementaritists argue 

                Complementarity despite its popularity is not without its problems.  Polkinghorne notes that it is not an instantly explanatory concept.[xlv]  Ian Barbour is unsympathetic towards complementarity.[xlvi]  He is dubious about extending the use of the term to explain science and religion.  He is so for several reasons.[xlvii]  It provides 'no justification for an uncritical acceptance of dichotomies'; it cannot be evoked to deal with inconsistencies.  Models should be called complementary only if they 'refer to the same entity and are of the same logical type'; such as describing God as a Father and a Shepherd; or electrons as waves and particles, but not to two differing entities such as science and religion.[xlviii]

                By describing two apparently contradictory events as complementary does not help in ascertaining the truth or validity of either of those events.  In such a case complementarity is unhelpful.  Can two incompatible events be described as complementary?  For example, the Big Bang theory of origins and Genesis 1 may be viewed as complementary; but they could also be contradictory.  Complementarity does not help in determining whether they are contradictory or not.

                Complementarity also serves to divorce science from religion.  Bube denies this charge.  He notes (citing James Moreland[xlix]) that 'complementarity is compartmentalism' is a very common misinterpretation.[l]  And yet, the interaction that Bube insists that there is is very minimal: 'Complementarity recognizes that valid insights from science and theology both deal with the same reality and must be integrated',[li] writes Bube, and yet he gives no indication of how it might be achieved in practice.  This is why complementarity is placed within a soft independence position in my categorisation.  Complementarists tend to deny independence in theory but acts as if religion and science were largely independent in practice.  Professing complementarists, but practising independentists?  One means of support for a complementarist position, proposed by Van Till,[lii] is to say that there is a 'functional integrity' within creation.  Van Till draws upon Augustine and Basil and yet he is guilty of eisegesis in that he reads them in the light of his complementarist perspective - and of a very selective reading of Augustine, in particular.[liii]

                Adherents of complementarity tend to use the Baconian metaphor of the two books: the book of scripture and the book of nature.[liv]  This metaphor was probably first used by Francis Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning and the New Atlantis (1605; sections 1.1.3, 1.6,16)  It was adopted by

 

...those who inclined towards developing the idea of neutrality, or separateness, or autonomy, of science took a position that became epitomized in the metaphor of the two books, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature, both created by God as manifestations of His omnipotence and omniscience, but books different in character that had to be kept apart.[lv]

 

                Complementarity largely accepts that science is neutral in regard to religious belief.  This is certainly the position of MacKay in practice if not in theory:

 

The discipline of science is autonomous in the sense that we need not have any explicit theological convictions in order to practise it.  It has developed and been moulded under pressure of the data themselves - data to whose implications Christian and non-Christian alike find they must be obedient if their scientific enterprise is to succeed.[lvi]

 

If the scientist is also a Christian, there is no implication that he should necessarily do better in science, still less that his scientific findings should differ from those of his non-Christian colleagues.[lvii]

 

Here is a denial that Christianity has anything to do with science, and an endorsement of methodological naturalism.  For MacKay science is divorced from any religious or cultural presuppositions; this is dangerously close to a positivist view of science: a science that must bow down to bare value-free facts.  Science, for MacKay, is neutral with respect to religion and faith commitments.

 

The scientist's reasons for keeping his private emotions [and presumably religious commitments] out of the official picture is that, despite his enthusiasm for the subject, he would like to be able to be able to describe the world as it is  - as it would be without him.[lviii]

 

                He also writes of 'the neutral character of scientific chance'[lix] and of a 'theologically neutral, scientific notion'.[lx]  It appears that faith is the 'icing on the cake'; an additional extra, rather than an important essential to science:

 

As a scientist, I have the job of helping to build scientific language - at the scientific level - as a complete a description of the pattern of physical events as I can, regarding no accessible events as exempt from examination.  As a Christian, I find that the very same pattern of events can bear an additional and vital significance as part of the activity of God himself.[lxi]

 

                This position is, I believe, unsound, no matter how attractive the complementary position is.  We do well to recall the advice given to Archbishop William Temple by his tutor: a phrase is not a solution.  It implies that religion has nothing to do with science: Do Christian commitments count for nothing when one does science?  Complementarity enables MacKay to adopt a mechanistic approach to his science:

 

... my own research department at Keele is concerned with the mechanisms of the brain, and that our working hypothesis is that the brain is capable of being studied as a mechanistic system.[lxii]

 

Viewing humans as mechanisms may be complementary to a Christian perspective, but is it a biblical option?  Are complementarists content to leave their religious beliefs at the laboratory door?  Complementarists thus endorse methodological naturalism.[lxiii]

                To be fair to MacKay he recognizes that complementarity 'is not a universal panacea ... A good deal of consecrated hard work is needed on the part of Christians to develop a more coherent and more biblical picture between the two'.[lxiv]

                At worst complementarity is a convenient label under which one can avoid compromising religious beliefs by accepting the secularisation of science.  The term complementarity is best left to describe wave-particle duality or even mind-matter and free will-determinism, but not science and religion.  Religious beliefs are much more integral to science than complementarity suggests.

 

 

 

The problem for the adherents of the weak independence position is how should science modify religious beliefs and how should religious beliefs modify science?  The solution is non-trivial.  Which science should be taken into account?  It can open the door to accusations of subjectivism.

                The problem with the independence approach is that it largely accepts that science is neutral with regard to religious beliefs.  Recent philosophers of science have all but reached a consensus on this point:  the epistemological objectivity of science is a myth.[lxv]

                Science is a human cultural activity.  Consequently, it is tainted, as is all human activity, with the cultural-religious presuppositions of the scientist (i.e. her worldview).  Hanson has shown that observation, a foundation of science, is theory-dependent.[lxvi]  Theories are also worldview-dependent.  Scientist cannot escape their culture; science is not done in a vacuum.  We cannot divorce science from worldview.  Worldviews in turn are inherently religious; they are based on ultimate commitments that cannot be empirically or even rationally verified (or for that matter falsified); they are religious.  Science and religious beliefs are then intimately related.  We can summarize this argument thus:[lxvii]

 

1. We all have a worldview

2. A worldview is shaped by religious commitments

3. All human activity is shaped by worldviews

4. Science is a human activity

 

Therefore,

 

5. Science and religious commitments are related; and

6. Science is not neutral

 

This conclusion, if valid, undermines the independence approach to science and religion.  It is to another approach, that of science shaping religion, that we now turn.

 

 

Science shapes religion

 

Here science provides a philosophical foundation for religion.  A good example of this is process theology, which has developed out of the insights of A. N. Whitehead (1861-1947). Whitehead's ideas exemplified in his Process and Reality[lxviii] were developed into a theological scheme by Charles Hartshorne and became known as process theology.  Ian Barbour's writings are influenced by process theology.[lxix]

                The emphasis in Whitehead and the process theologians is on change and constant process.  Whitehead goes as far as attributing a low level of sentinence ('prehensions')  to inanimate objects such as rocks.  The distinction between God, humans and the rest of creation is thus blurred.

                A typical exponent of this approach is the biologist Charles Birch.[lxx]  Another example of this approach is the work of Father Thomas Berry.[lxxi]  Berry draws upon recent cosmology and Teilhard de Chardin to develop a new creation story.  One of the problems with this approach is that it can mean that Christian phraseology is baptized into science, and as a result becomes devoid of any Christian content.

                A contemporary proponent of the view that 'science shapes religion' is Paul Davies.  Davies has written two books that deal with science and religion and over 100 research papers, dealing with gravitation, black holes, cosmology and other areas of theoretical physics, as well as over 20 semi-popular science books.  The latter Mind of God (MoG) is more nuanced than the former God and the New Physics (GNP).

                Davies rejects the view that God is a 'cosmic magician' who performs 'supernatural conjuring tricks'.[lxxii]  Science shapes religion and ultimately transcends it, 'In many cases the old religious ideas are not so much disproved as transcended by modern science' (GNP, 3), religion has become 'largely irrelevant'.  For Davies human reason reflects the rationality of the world.[lxxiii]  The laws of physics and the success of science also provide evidence of nature's rationality.[lxxiv]  The world, for Davies, would be meaningless if these laws existed without reason. 

                Davies thus attributes divine attributes to these laws of nature: they are universal, absolute, eternal, omnipotent.[lxxv]  They are responsible for the universe originating from nothing and also permit it to self-organize.  He also goes on to state that: 'these laws must also have an independent existence'.  He however describes the laws as 'God-given'.[lxxvi]  This means they are 'fundamental, eternal, and absolute'.[lxxvii]  Elsewhere he summarizes the 'remarkable nature of the laws of physics', they:

 

(1) Permit the Universe to come into being from nothing;

(2) Encourage it to self-organize;

(3) Fix its evolution in outline (e.g. from simple to complex) but not in detail;

(4) Bestow upon the Universe the appearance of design.[lxxviii]

 

These laws are however reliant in some sense upon mathematics.  His view is that mathematics points beyond itself to a world of platonic forms. 

                Rationality compels him to see God as 'the ultimate explanation of the world'.[lxxix]  He is 'loath to use' the word God but:

 

When I do, it is in the sense of the rational ground that underpins physical reality.  Used in this way, God is not a person, but a timeless abstract principle that implies something like meaning or purpose behind physical existence.[lxxx]

 

For Davies it is a a god who is a 'directing, controlling, universal mind pervading the cosmos and operating the laws of nature to achieve some specific purpose'.[lxxxi]

                In many ways Davies is a typical rationalist.  He has tried to trace scientific rationality to its logical conclusions.[lxxxii]  Davies looks to reason and rationality to explain the universe and provide us with a rational, natural God.[lxxxiii]  Science as the ultimate expression of rationality should thus be able to provide 'a surer path than religion in the search for God'.[lxxxiv]  He closes MoG by saying 'We are truly meant to be here'.[lxxxv]  And yet he can offer no convincing explanation for this other than the inherent rationality of the universe.  Elsewhere he concludes:

 

I have no idea what the universe is about, but that it is about something I have no doubt.[lxxxvi]

 

Science it seems is unable to provide any ultimately satisfying answers!  Which is hardly surprising given the existence of a non-natural, transcendent God who, as Creator, is other than his creation.  For Davies part of creation -the laws of physics - become as God.  The Creator and creation are thus conflated.

 

 

Christianity is not tied to any one scientific theory.  Theories are fallible and religiously controlled.  If Christianity, to paraphrase Dean Inge, is wed to a current scientific theory then it is doomed to widowhood in the next generation.  This should not be taken to imply that science and religion are independent, or that science is religiously neutral. 

                Davies accepts controversial scientific theories from which he draws theological conclusions.[lxxxvii]  But Davies' choice of theory could be seen to come from a commitment that is at heart 'religious'.

                Davies' position that science shapes, and ultimately provides a better way than, religion is untenable.  His attribution of divine attributes to the laws of physics is a religious faith commitment.  Science cannot transcend or replace religion because it is based for Davies on this religious commitment.  Likewise, the philosophy of maths that he espouses is shaped by religious commitments.[lxxxviii]  Platonism contends that there is a realm of eternal, invisible mathematical entities upon which the world depends.  The attribution of divine attributes to these mathematical entities, i.e. that they are self-existent, demonstrates the religious nature of this position.

                Religious beliefs are thus integral to the scientific enterprise.  Science, far from disproving or alleviating the need for religion, reveals that religious beliefs control the scientific enterprise.  This is further evidenced in the fact that Christianity provided the historical matrix for the birth of the scientific enterprise.[lxxxix]

               

 

The examinations of proponents of 'science destroys religion' (A), 'science and religion are independent' (E) and 'science shapes religion' (C) have show that each are untenable.  Each to an extent rests on religious beliefs; hence each could be said to be unstable positions that break down to 'religion shapes science' (D).  We will now turn to a closer examination of the dialogue position of science and religion (F). 

 

Science and religion in dialogue

 

This is perhaps the most common contemporary approach among the 'scientists as theologians'.  Though not all who adhere to this position have common theological viewpoints.  Included in this position are classical theists - including Calvinists and Arminians - panentheists, process theologians and the so-called New Agers.

                Within this category lies Fritjof Capra.[xc]  Capra draws parallels between physics and Eastern mysticism and claims that 'modern science ... leads us to a world view which is very much in agreement with the ancient Eastern traditions'.[xci]  However, Capra makes selective use of disputable scientific ideas and parallels them with equally selective Eastern views.[xcii]

                Christian advocates include Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Robert John Russell and Chris Wiltsher.[xciii]  Peacocke believes we should reinterpret the images and metaphors of the Christian faith in the light of science.  The ones he singles out include God and human nature.[xciv]  Chris Wiltsher attempts a similar exercise for 'everyday life'.  His approach attempts to bring together 'Christian beliefs and the knowledge derived from science about the cosmos in which we live'.[xcv]  He sees science and theology are 'mutually instructive'.[xcvi]

                Russell commenting on Hawking's quantum cosmology sees that it has implications for the theological enterprise:

 

...Hawking's work, even if it does not last within science  per se, can be enormously helpful to Christian theology by helping us to recognize an assumption we needn't make about creation.  It is precisely this sort of interaction between theologians and scientists which signals the promise of a new, highly creative relationship between theology and science.[xcvii]

 

Here the implication is that theology must change in the light of science, but not necessarily vice versa.  The science and religion in dialogue position soon breaks down into a science shapes religion position. 

                If the problem for the weak independence position is the question how should science modify religious beliefs?, this is compounded for the science and religion in dialogue adherents.  They also have to face the question how does religion modify science?  the reality is that this question is seldom addressed.  It is all too often one-way traffic; a monologue rather than dialogue.

                Polkinghorne uses many symbols and metaphors to describe the relationship between science and theology: fraternal relationship, complementary, consonance, comradeship, fruitful interaction, kinship, intellectual cousins under the skin and friendship are among them.  For Polkinghorne theology provides the answers to meta-questions that arise from science; whereas science tells theology what the world is like.[xcviii]  However, Polkinghorne acknowledges that this dialogue between science and religion is not symmetrical.  Science it seems has much more to say to theology than theology does to science.  The dialogue almost becomes a monologue. 

                Polkinghorne's commitment to rationality leads him to see a rational God.  This rational God, the source of all creation, has given to his creation the gifts of openness and flexibility within the creation which makes it (almost?) autonomous of God.  God is not to be perceived as a deistic God, however, as he interacts - but does not intervene - with creation.  This interaction is possible because of the openness of creation.  Natural theology is thus possible because God is rational and we can get a glimpse of that rationality within his creation using rational means.

                Polkinghorne never justifies his commitment to rationality, it is taken to be self-evident: a faith commitment.  Hence, for Polkinghorne it is this religious commitment that shapes his science which in turn shapes his view of reality and theology.  Polkinghorne's position is thus a 'religion shapes science' relationship.

 

 

Conclusion: religion shapes science

 

Our brief, broad overview has shown that none of the previous categories are consistent.  They all eventually collapse to a 'religion shapes science' position.  This is inevitable as religious convictions are basic to humanity, we cannot transcend them.  Roy Clouser in his Myth of Religious Neutrality  has shown that all theories rest on one or other conviction that is religious, in that it all theories attribute the status of divinity to one entity or another.  This is also true in science - whether it be matter (Dawkins, Atkins), laws of physics (Davies) or rationality (Polkinghorne).  Ultimate (religious ) beliefs are integral to science and maths, and so religious beliefs shape science.  This can be the only conclusion if the argument (1) -(6) on page     is valid.

 

 

 

APPENDIX: GENESIS AND SCIENCE

 

There are a number of ways that Christians have used to reconcile science and the Bible.  (i) Extreme creationists reject the scientific evidence and hold onto a literal six-day creation, e.g Morris (1974); (ii) Progressive creationists adopt some sort of age day or revelatory day view of Genesis 1 and thus accept an old earth but reject a common ancestor, e.g. Pun  (1982); (iii) theistic evolutionists would accept that while God created matter and natural laws, life evolved, e.g Berry (1988).

 

The nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a number of ways of relating the early chapters of Genesis with science. 

POSITION	ADVOCATES	WORK	DATE
Flood geology/ creation science	E.G. White George McReady Price Byron Nelson A.M. Rehwinkel H.W. Clark Henry M. Morris &    John C. Whitcomb	Spiritual gifts The New Geology The Deluge Story in Stone The Flood in the Light of the Bible The New Diluvianism The Genesis Flood	1864 1923 1931 1951 1946 1961
Local creation	John Pye Smith	On the Relation Between the Holy Scriptures and certain parts of Geological Science	1840
Ideal time view	Philip Henry Grosse	Omphalos	1857
Gap theory	Buckland Sedgwick John H. Pratt J.H. Kurtz G.H. Pember C.I. Scofield Harry Rimmer	Bridgewater Treatises VI Discourses on the Studies of the University of Cambridge Scripture and Science not at variance Bible and astronomy Earth’s Earliest Ages Scofield Bible Modern Science and the Genesis Record	1837   1857 1876 1909 1937
Age-day	James Dana J.W. Dawson Edwin K. Gedeney	Manual of Geology Origin of the World According to revelation and Science in Modern Science and Christian faith	1863 1877 1948
Pictorial day	J.H. Kurtz Hugh Miller A.H. Strong Canon Dorlodot L.F. Gruber J. Pohle P.J. Wiseman	Bible and Astronomy Testimony of the Rocks Systematic Theology Darwinism & Catholic Thought The Six Creative Days God: The Author of Nature and the Supernatural Creation Revealed in Six Days	1857 1849 1907 1923   1942 1948

 

 

 

Flood geology or creationism, subsumes science with a literal six-day creation reading of scripture.

Local creation.  The special act of creation by God was limited to a small area of the ancient near East.

Ideal time view. How old was Adam when God created him?  He was apparently created with the appearance of age.  The earth could likewise be created with the appearance of age, so this view purports.

Gap theory.  In order to reconcile the geologists’ old earth view with the prima facie young earth view of Genesis a gap was inserted in Gen 1:2.  God created in Genesis 1:1, this was followed by a catastrophe in Gen 1:2, and was followed by a re-creation in 1:3; 1:2 could provide the geologists with as much time as they required!

Age day.  This view holds that the days of creation were periods of time representing the development of the earth.

Pictorial day.  The days of creation in Genesis 1 are the days of revelation by God to 'Moses' of the successive acts of creation.

 

 

Footnotes

 

---