Science versus religion is a phony issue

By Charles Marsh

The problem is that science, well suited to look at repeatable events, is at a loss about singular ones. 


Some people suppose that science trumps religion, that a modern understanding of the world through science renders religious understandings obsolete. Some others suppose that religious understanding can be used to refute science. Both views are wrong.

Science is rooted in philosophical naturalism. That is the stance that says we will explain what we see without reference to supernatural agencies. Science describes what happens without recourse to explanations involving angels, demons, gods, fairy godmothers, humors, vapors or ghosts.

Acting on this basis, science has done a great deal of good. It has gotten rid of superstitions about what causes disease, where insects come from and a good many other misunderstandings.

Notice that science is morally neutral. The same disciplines that give us vaccines and disease prevention can as aptly be turned to germ warfare. Even when well intentioned, science has its unfortunate side effects, such as the rise of drug resistant bacteria. Atomic science, which offers us a chance at abundant cheap electricity, can also express itself in the flash of a nuclear bomb. Modern transportation is a marvel, allowing people and goods to be taken anywhere on short notice. It also kills a good many of us each year. But, despite its drawbacks, science gives us new ways to understand the material world, and manipulate it, often to the general good of mankind.

Science depends on repeatability of results. If you do X, then Y should always happen, and this can be confirmed by anyone, anywhere, who is able to arrange the appropriate experiments. Thus it is an open system subject to public verification. Flawed theories are sooner or later sorted out in this way. The flaws revealed in experimental outcomes are the spur to new and better theories to interpret how things really work; that is how science moves forward continually.

Notice, though, that there is a built in assumption. Whatever science talks about, it talks about as something consistent in its causation, and a natural occurrence, a matter of fixed natural laws.

Religion, by contrast, deals with the miraculous. A miracle, by definition, is not fixed and repeatable, but an intervention of the supernatural in the natural world. A miracle is a one of a kind event. You can stand where Ezekiel stood and not see what he saw, for the show is now over. You can stand before the Red Sea, as Moses did, raise your staff, and not part the waters. Further, while science is morally neutral, religion emphatically is not. Religion is deeply intertwined with the question of what we ought and ought not do, and why. It offers guidance where science leaves us on our own.

If science tries to discuss the miraculous it exceeds its warrant in logic. In religion one meets with the exceptional events, the ones that do not fit into the pattern of ordinary experience. The problem is that science, well suited to look at repeatable events, is at a loss about singular ones. Theory-making depends on the assumption of no exceptions to natural causality, and no causality beyond what can be seen or measured. Those ideas cannot be used to explain, or even to discuss, divine intervention happening on an occasional basis.

Neither science nor religion is a game, but let us think of them as if they were, and speak of them as games with different rulebooks. That will explain my point more easily and clearly than any other analogy. The rules of the science game say that supernatural causality is not to be considered. Playing by its own rules, then, science cannot critique religion on religion's own terms; it cannot say anything about it good or ill. I mean this rather in the sense of Wittgenstein's conclusion, "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence." By ruling out the supernatural, science loses its ability to comment upon supernatural claims. It can merely say that such discussions are extrinsic to itself. Supernatural things happen (if at all) outside the limits science has set for itself. The central events that religion talks about fall outside the rulebook that tells scientists how to look at things and explain them.

When scientists say that religion does not describe what is real because it relies on supernatural thinking, they are merely reiterating their assumption of no supernatural causes as a conclusion, not a premise. To treat your premise as your conclusion is not good reasoning at all.

Putting it another way: The scientific tendency is to dismiss supernatural events out of hand. Is that well reasoned? If something indeed happened and you dismiss it or explain it away, it seems to me that you have created a gap in your knowledge. To be certain the miracle did not happen, you would need to be certain that your premise belief, nothing is supernatural, fully describes what is real. Does that not contain a bit of circularity?

Reason is not, in itself, opposed to religion. It has no problem accommodating religious thought; we see that in numerous well reasoned and logically consistent theologies. Reason has at times been improved by religious thinkers; for example, every scientist knows Occam's razor principle. Friar William of Occam advanced it as a way to trim shaggy religious arguments down to size. It is the particular rule set of modern science that is inconsistent with religious thought. The religion rulebook, or the Christian version of it, says that there is a God who at times reveals himself miraculously. In each case the time and the manner are of his own choosing. That is outside anything the science rulebook knows or discusses.

All this does not mean that scientists may not criticize religion, only that they are being illogical when they do. In a formal sense they are speaking nonsense. They are discussing things they have excluded from discussion. They have not kept the two rulebooks straight. In exactly the like manner, the religious person who supposes that his Bible tells him that science has it all wrong has broken the rules of the science game. He needs to do the experiments, or dig into the strata, or measure creation's timeline, in ways scientists will acknowledge as complying with their rules. Otherwise they will pay no attention to him, and rightly so.

I've made a bit of an oversimplification here, for the sake of producing a clear explanation. I will correct that now. There are many fine scientists who are also deeply religious. They can be both because they have two rulebooks, both of them useful in understanding the world, but useful in understanding the world in different aspects.





Note: 
The relevance of the above to my broader subject of church unity is, I hope, easily seen. We ought not allow anti-science or pro-science debates to disturb our fellowship, because they have little to do with our really important business. They are sideshows and distractions. For an additional slant on the matter, please see my older post, "Enough with the dinosaurs, already!"