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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