Having decided, then, what one consequence of revelation trumping science is not (that is, trusting revelation over science does not mean science is useless or generally untrustworthy), it seems like a good idea to note one of the positive consequences.
This will probably please some and rankle others, but I think one of the positive consequences about special revelation (the Scripture) being more authoritative than natural revelation (science) is that the whole apologetic debate about the age of the earth is really pretty useless and a gigantic waste of time.
The message of this post to OECs is that scientific analysis doesn't trump God's revelation of How Things Work and what is True. (The methods are flawed, data collection evolves, the interface to the data is fallen, and so on and so forth.) The message to YECs is that it's time to stop making scientific analysis the Gospel Message of Genesis. (Because it isn't a gospel issue. Really: no one is going to hell because Genesis isn't a science book. And the same caveats to your interpretation apply: acting like there's only one way to read Genesis 1–3 is just as dumb as assuming that we can interpret scientific data objectively.)
Ironically, both groups act the same way a metaphysical naturalist does when they say that special revelation and natural revelation have to agree with each other. And the unfortunate emphasis on the non-existent scientific narrative of Genesis distracts from the actual gospel narrative of Genesis (the image of God, the fall of the first Adam, the coming of the second Adam, and so on).
Our apologetic, then, should more properly be concerned with the underlying theological and philosophical issues: imago dei for starters. Indeed, this is pretty significant: purely natural processes cannot account for the supernatural imprint of God's image on Adam and the rest of humanity—or at least I've never read anything convincing to that effect. People also often forget that the idea of the superman is an evolutionary one (not a fictional comic-book hero). The next step in human evolution drove (and still drives) the ethics of many racial superiority hypotheses.
For those concerned with the need to answer modern and post-modern science claims against the Bible, the first order of business is to look at the resurrection, not at Genesis. Creation is certainly a miracle, but it is not the primary miracle: the resurrection is. This is scientifically improbable (one would say it violates the second law of thermodynamics at least), but it is historically accessible and within that realm verifiable. People were around when it happened, testified to it, and suffered death and torture for refusing to deny it. If you can accept that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, lived among us, was crucified, buried, and rose again on the third day, it's not such a far stretch to consider that God could have created the world in six literal days. On the other hand, if you're convinced that the universe is old and can reconcile that with the clearly supernatural presuppositions of the narrative, well and good.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
On Science: Consequences One (Part Four)
So what are the implications of this thought experiment? If we admit that it's possible for revelation and analysis to contradict each other, how do we approach science and faith? This is a real tension, and not just for people whose primary reason for rejecting Christianity is faith. (The skeptic, after all, defines "faith" as an unreasonable belief.)
I suppose at the end of the last part, concluding that revelation can contradict analysis can leave us feeling a bit unhinged and perhaps a bit deceived. Does this lead directly to the so-called omphalos hypothesis? Could God really just be deceiving us? I've heard people argue in the past that the world really looks old, but it's not; some have gone so far to say that God made the world look old—perhaps a part of his "strong delusion" (2 The 2.11).
I think this is going a bit far, and it's one of the reasons I tried to take some time to mention that Christians can and should be methodological naturalists when they're practicing science. Science does work, and when properly applied it gives the best answers we can get in the areas in which it's authoritative. (Of course, the best answer is a moving target. Science evolves.)
But one may actually make a parallel argument on the other side of the fence: how is it fair to us that God didn't tell us more about the world we live in? Why should we have to do science at all? Why should we have to go through thousands of years of human history to find out how bacteria are transmitted, or even what they are? (Why didn't Jesus invent screen doors?) Why would God ever let someone sell radioactive products?
(Seriously, people used to drink this.)
Arguing that God should have made a world that looked new is a bit disingenuous, because we can just as easily say that he should've made a world that didn't require the scientific process at all. Why should we have to figure out that drinking thoriated water would make your jaw fall off?
All this aside, many people seem to forget that a lot of science, both in the past and present, was done by Christians. Isaac Newton, for example, wrote more about theology than he ever wrote about science. Christians have a reason for expecting science to work: God created, and revealed himself through creation. Creation presents an order that suggests that the scientific method may not be such a bad thing, after all.
In fact, we can argue that Christians have a better argument for the scientific method than do atheists. There is no reason to expect things to work tomorrow like they do today if you think that existence occurred purely by chance.
But since we trust God to provide a world that can be properly investigated by the scientific method, why should we not then trust God to tell us about that world? If he changes water to wine, should we not trust the revelation of Scripture, even though it's possible that our scientific analysis may suggest something different than what is revealed?
I suppose at the end of the last part, concluding that revelation can contradict analysis can leave us feeling a bit unhinged and perhaps a bit deceived. Does this lead directly to the so-called omphalos hypothesis? Could God really just be deceiving us? I've heard people argue in the past that the world really looks old, but it's not; some have gone so far to say that God made the world look old—perhaps a part of his "strong delusion" (2 The 2.11).
I think this is going a bit far, and it's one of the reasons I tried to take some time to mention that Christians can and should be methodological naturalists when they're practicing science. Science does work, and when properly applied it gives the best answers we can get in the areas in which it's authoritative. (Of course, the best answer is a moving target. Science evolves.)
But one may actually make a parallel argument on the other side of the fence: how is it fair to us that God didn't tell us more about the world we live in? Why should we have to do science at all? Why should we have to go through thousands of years of human history to find out how bacteria are transmitted, or even what they are? (Why didn't Jesus invent screen doors?) Why would God ever let someone sell radioactive products?
(Seriously, people used to drink this.)
Arguing that God should have made a world that looked new is a bit disingenuous, because we can just as easily say that he should've made a world that didn't require the scientific process at all. Why should we have to figure out that drinking thoriated water would make your jaw fall off?
All this aside, many people seem to forget that a lot of science, both in the past and present, was done by Christians. Isaac Newton, for example, wrote more about theology than he ever wrote about science. Christians have a reason for expecting science to work: God created, and revealed himself through creation. Creation presents an order that suggests that the scientific method may not be such a bad thing, after all.
In fact, we can argue that Christians have a better argument for the scientific method than do atheists. There is no reason to expect things to work tomorrow like they do today if you think that existence occurred purely by chance.
But since we trust God to provide a world that can be properly investigated by the scientific method, why should we not then trust God to tell us about that world? If he changes water to wine, should we not trust the revelation of Scripture, even though it's possible that our scientific analysis may suggest something different than what is revealed?
Saturday, August 27, 2011
On Science: Revelation vs. Method (Part Three)
It's worthwhile to take a little side-trip down another trail in the first post, namely the question of the authority of science. For purposes of the discussion, I'll steal one of Rey's thought experiments, namely How old was the wine, and why?
Assuming we could scientifically analyze the water-turned-wine at Cana, we could imagine two possible conclusions: the wine would be properly aged (commensurate with the emcee's testimony of its quality), or that the wine would be comparatively young. For sake of the thought experiment, let's assume that the emcee's taste buds accorded with reality: the wine really was properly aged.
At issue, then, is the question: to what degree do we give science authority over revelation? The text says the wine was chronologically young; but in at least one of our possible scenarios, the analysis reveals an age of thirty days or more. Which authority do we believe? (And are these answers really contradictory at all?)
It is worth noting that there are some things you cannot know unless someone tells you. Plantinga illustrates this by talking about pie. (I appreciate this, because I know that pumpkin pie is suitable for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.) A scientist can determine a great deal about a pie from analysis, but it would be difficult (if not impossible) to determine who made the pie unless someone told him.
The question our thought experiment poses is whether analysis and revelation must always coincide. Moderns may argue that the answer to this question is yes, but I think this is actually quite a difficult statement to prove: it is a philosophical one, not scientific, just like the statement of metaphysical naturalism.
Science, after all, does not concern itself with revelation, only with observation. And if there is anything that we've learned in the past century, it is that observation is not neutral: Heisenburg (much to Einstein's dismay) demonstrated that measurement of one property changes another, and the famous double-slit experiment showed that observation actually influences experimental outcomes. We can even construct thought-experiments in which two observers experience radically different, apparently contradictory, phenomena. (Think gravitational time dilation at a black hole.) So it seems rather strong to argue that revelation must always accord with analysis when analysis itself isn't consistent.
This is not to say that scientific enterprise is doomed to err, and that is certainly not the point made here. Rather, science cannot answer all questions—and even those questions it can answer with some certainty may turn out to have wildly different explanations.
At the very least, then, we ought to acknowledge that the idea that the scientific explanation is the preferred one, or even the right one (for some value of Right), is a philosophical position, and not a scientific one. The lines here should be properly maintained if for no other reason than we can better distinguish what is the product of our scientific method, and what is the product of our philosophy of science.
Assuming we could scientifically analyze the water-turned-wine at Cana, we could imagine two possible conclusions: the wine would be properly aged (commensurate with the emcee's testimony of its quality), or that the wine would be comparatively young. For sake of the thought experiment, let's assume that the emcee's taste buds accorded with reality: the wine really was properly aged.
At issue, then, is the question: to what degree do we give science authority over revelation? The text says the wine was chronologically young; but in at least one of our possible scenarios, the analysis reveals an age of thirty days or more. Which authority do we believe? (And are these answers really contradictory at all?)
It is worth noting that there are some things you cannot know unless someone tells you. Plantinga illustrates this by talking about pie. (I appreciate this, because I know that pumpkin pie is suitable for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.) A scientist can determine a great deal about a pie from analysis, but it would be difficult (if not impossible) to determine who made the pie unless someone told him.
The question our thought experiment poses is whether analysis and revelation must always coincide. Moderns may argue that the answer to this question is yes, but I think this is actually quite a difficult statement to prove: it is a philosophical one, not scientific, just like the statement of metaphysical naturalism.
Science, after all, does not concern itself with revelation, only with observation. And if there is anything that we've learned in the past century, it is that observation is not neutral: Heisenburg (much to Einstein's dismay) demonstrated that measurement of one property changes another, and the famous double-slit experiment showed that observation actually influences experimental outcomes. We can even construct thought-experiments in which two observers experience radically different, apparently contradictory, phenomena. (Think gravitational time dilation at a black hole.) So it seems rather strong to argue that revelation must always accord with analysis when analysis itself isn't consistent.
This is not to say that scientific enterprise is doomed to err, and that is certainly not the point made here. Rather, science cannot answer all questions—and even those questions it can answer with some certainty may turn out to have wildly different explanations.
At the very least, then, we ought to acknowledge that the idea that the scientific explanation is the preferred one, or even the right one (for some value of Right), is a philosophical position, and not a scientific one. The lines here should be properly maintained if for no other reason than we can better distinguish what is the product of our scientific method, and what is the product of our philosophy of science.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
On Science (Part Two)
In the last post, I spent some time distinguishing between metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism because I think often these two things are conflated.
This is especially an issue with atheistic science: because the scientific method assumes that natural phenomena occur because of natural processes, some make an unjustified (and unjustifiable) leap that only natural processes exist.
The basic assumption of science—methodological naturalism—cuts out any metaphysical speculation, including the assertion that supernatural causes don't exist (or do). When people say that God's existence cannot be scientifically proven, they are correct. But the reason is definitional in nature: science by definition cannot prove anything about the supernatural.
This is a far cry from saying that nothing about the supernatural can be proven; science is not a refuge for atheism (or even agnosticism, really). The metaphysical naturalist is acting as a philosopher, not as a scientist, when he says that the supernatural does not exist. Science does not and cannot prove this.
This is especially an issue with atheistic science: because the scientific method assumes that natural phenomena occur because of natural processes, some make an unjustified (and unjustifiable) leap that only natural processes exist.
The basic assumption of science—methodological naturalism—cuts out any metaphysical speculation, including the assertion that supernatural causes don't exist (or do). When people say that God's existence cannot be scientifically proven, they are correct. But the reason is definitional in nature: science by definition cannot prove anything about the supernatural.
This is a far cry from saying that nothing about the supernatural can be proven; science is not a refuge for atheism (or even agnosticism, really). The metaphysical naturalist is acting as a philosopher, not as a scientist, when he says that the supernatural does not exist. Science does not and cannot prove this.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
On Science (Part One)
I had originally intended this to go out a lot sooner. It's been in queue since 12 July. It's not an easy topic, and I've been traveling quite a bit lately. –mem
A glut of postings on Theologica some weeks ago, now, have been about science and faith and their intersection. I am readily piqued by these discussions (in many ways), and this post has been percolating in my head for awhile in some form or another.
Science may be thought of in two principle ways: the first is as a body of knowledge (whence we get things like political science or computer science) and the second is as a process to acquire that knowledge. It ought to be said that the first definition is the older one (science comes from the Latin scientia for "knowledge"), and what we today associate with science was once simply termed "natural philosophy."
The scientific process is iterative, with well-defined stages (your mileage may vary, but this rough outline is probably fine):
Essential to the process is the assumption of methodological naturalism, the idea that all events occur due to natural causes. While philosophical naturalism is metaphysical (asserting that only natural forces and causes exist), methodological naturalism is an assumption about physical phenomena, and provides a framework for studying them. The former excludes the existence of the supernatural, while the latter assumes that excludes the supernatural as an explanation (without making any claims about whether or not the supernatural exists).
When we argue about science and faith, this distinction is pretty critical. Christian scientists are methodologists: they assume that God orders and ordains the universe in such a way that we can apply the scientific method reliably.
I think this distinction is important to draw out, if for no other reason than that it helps articulate bits of the debate between young earthers and old earthers, or between atheists and Christians. It also helps explain why those who posit supernatural causes are not really doing science by definition. It clarifies the fact that science is a process, not a cathedral.
Atheists often conflate methodological and metaphysical naturalism: the latter assumes the point they wish to prove with the former, but all the former does is to stake out the boundaries of the scientific sandbox. I'd have more to say about this, but I think it'll wait for another post.
So we'll restrict ourselves for the next few paragraphs to the consequences of the Scientific Method, and really only the first point of it.
Science, as a body of knowledge, is constantly evolving. It evolves primarily because our instruments of observation are changing. What appears to work in one way (with all the suitable predictions and other things that accompany scientific theory) turns out to work in a much different way than expected when we can examine it more closely.
A classic example of this appears in the early 1900s with the advent of the Theory of Relativity. Einstein's thought experiments and subsequent formalizations paved the way for a dramatically different way of viewing the world when compared to Newtownian mechanics. Einstein's genius appeared in his thought experiment (and subsequent development over several years), but truthfully the confirmation of his theories has come from new and more refined observational techniques.
When Newton codified his laws of gravitation and inertia, they weren't without their problems: Mercury's orbit wasn't properly predicted by his laws of gravitation. (On the other hand, his law of gravitation was used to predict the existence of Neptune when Uranus didn't follow its expected path.) That the theory of relativity correctly predicts Mercury's orbit is one of the triumphs of that theory.
What this implies is that science evolves with our ability to observe. (But watch out for the pesky double-slit experiment; it turns out looking at things has consequences, too: observation is not experiment neutral.) This should be a "duh" moment for most of us, but I think it highlights one of the difficulties we face when trying to resolve whatever conflicts may exist between faith and science.
The consequence of this when we attempt to shoehorn a particular interpretation of the Scripture into a current scientific model is that we are constantly changing the path to arrive at the same point.
This happens on both sides of the interpretative divide. Young-earth creationists honor the Biblical claim of instantaneous creation and find scientific data to back their interpretation. (How can I interpret scientific data to match the Scripture?) Old-earth creationists have a problem with this (rightfully so), but believe the tension between science and the Biblical narrative needs to be resolved; as a result, their authority often rests in the scientific perspective rather than the biblical text itself. (How can I interpret the Bible to match science?)
What this means is that YECs are constantly changing the route to get to the desired end, while the OECs are constantly changing the end itself. Neither of these approaches to the Biblical text are particularly satisfying, and neither of them really deal squarely with the tension between science and faith.
Both YECs and OECs adopt the same position vis-a-vis science: it's an authoritative description of how things happened. Whether science is authoritative at all is a reasonable question (since our ability to resolve detail changes, so does the science; the body of knowledge therefore is constantly changing), and it's also reasonable to point out that science cannot authenticate itself. That we should accept the scientific description is a philosophical position, not a scientific one.
I think a great many of our problems with science and faith stem from misunderstanding the limits and uses of science. Ultimately if we're going to deal with science-faith tensions, we need to do so in a way that acknowledges the proper uses of science coupled with a robust epistemology. I'm not sure I can do that here, but I'll give it the good college try.
A glut of postings on Theologica some weeks ago, now, have been about science and faith and their intersection. I am readily piqued by these discussions (in many ways), and this post has been percolating in my head for awhile in some form or another.
Science may be thought of in two principle ways: the first is as a body of knowledge (whence we get things like political science or computer science) and the second is as a process to acquire that knowledge. It ought to be said that the first definition is the older one (science comes from the Latin scientia for "knowledge"), and what we today associate with science was once simply termed "natural philosophy."
The scientific process is iterative, with well-defined stages (your mileage may vary, but this rough outline is probably fine):
- Observe
- Hypothesize
- Experiment
- Conclude
- Repeat
Essential to the process is the assumption of methodological naturalism, the idea that all events occur due to natural causes. While philosophical naturalism is metaphysical (asserting that only natural forces and causes exist), methodological naturalism is an assumption about physical phenomena, and provides a framework for studying them. The former excludes the existence of the supernatural, while the latter assumes that excludes the supernatural as an explanation (without making any claims about whether or not the supernatural exists).
When we argue about science and faith, this distinction is pretty critical. Christian scientists are methodologists: they assume that God orders and ordains the universe in such a way that we can apply the scientific method reliably.
I think this distinction is important to draw out, if for no other reason than that it helps articulate bits of the debate between young earthers and old earthers, or between atheists and Christians. It also helps explain why those who posit supernatural causes are not really doing science by definition. It clarifies the fact that science is a process, not a cathedral.
Atheists often conflate methodological and metaphysical naturalism: the latter assumes the point they wish to prove with the former, but all the former does is to stake out the boundaries of the scientific sandbox. I'd have more to say about this, but I think it'll wait for another post.
So we'll restrict ourselves for the next few paragraphs to the consequences of the Scientific Method, and really only the first point of it.
Science, as a body of knowledge, is constantly evolving. It evolves primarily because our instruments of observation are changing. What appears to work in one way (with all the suitable predictions and other things that accompany scientific theory) turns out to work in a much different way than expected when we can examine it more closely.
A classic example of this appears in the early 1900s with the advent of the Theory of Relativity. Einstein's thought experiments and subsequent formalizations paved the way for a dramatically different way of viewing the world when compared to Newtownian mechanics. Einstein's genius appeared in his thought experiment (and subsequent development over several years), but truthfully the confirmation of his theories has come from new and more refined observational techniques.
When Newton codified his laws of gravitation and inertia, they weren't without their problems: Mercury's orbit wasn't properly predicted by his laws of gravitation. (On the other hand, his law of gravitation was used to predict the existence of Neptune when Uranus didn't follow its expected path.) That the theory of relativity correctly predicts Mercury's orbit is one of the triumphs of that theory.
What this implies is that science evolves with our ability to observe. (But watch out for the pesky double-slit experiment; it turns out looking at things has consequences, too: observation is not experiment neutral.) This should be a "duh" moment for most of us, but I think it highlights one of the difficulties we face when trying to resolve whatever conflicts may exist between faith and science.
The consequence of this when we attempt to shoehorn a particular interpretation of the Scripture into a current scientific model is that we are constantly changing the path to arrive at the same point.
This happens on both sides of the interpretative divide. Young-earth creationists honor the Biblical claim of instantaneous creation and find scientific data to back their interpretation. (How can I interpret scientific data to match the Scripture?) Old-earth creationists have a problem with this (rightfully so), but believe the tension between science and the Biblical narrative needs to be resolved; as a result, their authority often rests in the scientific perspective rather than the biblical text itself. (How can I interpret the Bible to match science?)
What this means is that YECs are constantly changing the route to get to the desired end, while the OECs are constantly changing the end itself. Neither of these approaches to the Biblical text are particularly satisfying, and neither of them really deal squarely with the tension between science and faith.
Both YECs and OECs adopt the same position vis-a-vis science: it's an authoritative description of how things happened. Whether science is authoritative at all is a reasonable question (since our ability to resolve detail changes, so does the science; the body of knowledge therefore is constantly changing), and it's also reasonable to point out that science cannot authenticate itself. That we should accept the scientific description is a philosophical position, not a scientific one.
I think a great many of our problems with science and faith stem from misunderstanding the limits and uses of science. Ultimately if we're going to deal with science-faith tensions, we need to do so in a way that acknowledges the proper uses of science coupled with a robust epistemology. I'm not sure I can do that here, but I'll give it the good college try.
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