Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (22 page)

What is MN? First, MN is not to be confused with philosophical or ontological naturalism, according to which there is no such person as God or anything at all like God; there is no supernatural realm at all. The methodological naturalist doesn’t necessarily subscribe to ontological naturalism. MN is a proposed condition or constraint on proper science, or the proper practice of science, not a statement about the nature of the universe. (Of course if philosophical naturalism were known to be true, then MN would presumably be the sensible way to proceed in science.) Thus Eugenie Scott, executive
director of the National Center for Science Education: “Science neither denies or opposes the supernatural, but ignores the supernatural for methodological reasons.”
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And the thought is that any activity, in order to qualify as science, must be characterized by MN. Ernan McMullin put it like this:

But, of course, methodological naturalism does not restrict our study of nature; it just lays down which sort of study qualifies as
scientific
. If someone wants to pursue another approach to nature—and there are many others—the methodological naturalist has no reason to object. Scientists
have
to proceed in this way; the methodology of natural science gives no purchase on the claim that a particular event or type of event is to be explained by invoking God’s creative action directly.
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More generally, the idea is that in science we should proceed as if the supernatural is not given: in science, we can’t properly appeal to God’s creative activity, but we also can’t appeal to angels or demons. For example, if there were a sudden outbreak of irrational behavior in Washington, D.C., we couldn’t as scientists properly attribute it to an influx of demon possession there. MN also plays a crucial role in the controversy over intelligent design and the questions whether it should be taught or discussed in schools. In the famous Dover trial of 2005, Judge John Jones explains why intelligent design, as he sees it, doesn’t count as science:

We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They
are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
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You may think (2) and (3) are pretty flimsy grounds on the basis of which to declare something not science. If you did, you’d be right: obviously many scientific arguments have employed flawed arguments, and many scientific claims and theories have been refuted by the scientific community. A flawed argument might be bad science, and a refuted theory or claim would presumably be rejected by the scientific community; it certainly doesn’t follow that they aren’t science at all. It is criterion (1) of Jones’s decision that is presently relevant, however. He says “ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.” Here he is clearly embracing MN as a necessary condition of science; that centuries-old ground rule ID violates is the idea that science, proper science as opposed to pseudoscience of various sorts, can’t invoke the supernatural. A discourse that invokes the supernatural is thereby excluded from science. (Of course a scientific discourse can refer to
beliefs about
the supernatural, as with David Sloan Wilson’s theory of Calvinism discussed in
chapter 5
.)

Suppose we try to state MN a bit more exactly. First, following Bas van Fraassen, we note that for any scientific theory, there is its
data set
or
data model
; roughly speaking we can think of this as the data or phenomena that are to be explained by the theory in question.
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The data
must be presented or stated in terms of certain parameters or categories; it could include, for example, the results of certain experiments, but will not (ordinarily) include alleged information described as hearsay. According to MN, furthermore, the data model of a proper scientific theory will not invoke God or other supernatural agents, or employ what one knows or thinks one knows by way of revelation. Thus the data model of a proper theory could include the proposition that there has been a sudden outbreak of weird and irrational activity in Washington, D.C., but it couldn’t include the proposition that there has been an outbreak of demon possession there.

Secondly, there will also be constraints on the theory itself. Now the theory can properly employ categories or parameters not permitted by the data model. For example, the data might include a deep depression in a Siberian forest; the theory but not the data might posit a meteorite that struck there. (Of course in another context the meteorite and its effects might be part of the data.) But according to MN the parameters for a scientific theory are not to include reference to God or any other supernatural agents (although, again, they can refer to beliefs about the supernatural); and the theory, like the data set, also can’t employ what one knows or thinks one knows by way of revelation. Suppose your data set includes that recent outbreak of irrational behavior in Washington, D.C.: MN says you can’t try to account for that data by a theory according to which there has recently been increased demonic activity there.

Still further (and this is important for our present inquiry) MN also imposes a constraint on the evidence base of any scientific inquiry. This evidence base will include mathematics and logic, relevant current science, various common sense beliefs and propositions (for example, that there is an external world, and that the world has existed for a long time), and perhaps also maxims outlining proper scientific procedure. The evidence base, as we saw above, functions in various ways. For example, in any given context there are of course a vast
number of possible scientific theories, most of which don’t rate a second (or even a first) thought; others are a bit more sensible, but too implausible or improbable to take seriously. It is the evidence base that determines the initial plausibility or probability of a proposed scientific theory. Now I said above that the evidence base of a Christian theist will include (among much else) belief in God as well as belief in incarnation and atonement. According to MN, however, those propositions can’t be part of the evidence base of a scientific inquiry. The evidence base of a scientific inquiry will not contain propositions obviously entailing the existence of God (or other supernatural beings); nor will it include propositions one knows or thinks one knows by way of revelation. Hence rejecting, for example, Herbert Simon’s theory of altruism because it is massively improbable with respect to a Christian evidence base would presumably not be proper science—not, at least, if proper science involves methodological naturalism.

Now we began by asking whether Simonian science—science that comes to conclusions incompatible with Christian belief—gives the Christian a defeater for the beliefs it contradicts. The important point to see, with respect to that question, is this: the scientific evidence base, the evidence base from which current science is conducted, does
not
include the belief that there is such a person as God; it does not include incarnation, resurrection, atonement. And this means that the scientific evidence base is importantly different from a Christian evidence base. The Christian’s evidence base includes belief in God as well as belief in the main lines of the Christian faith; the former doesn’t include these things.

Indeed, the scientifice evidence base may include the
denials
of these beliefs. In
chapter 5
we noted that there are at least two varieties of historical Biblical criticism: one of them takes it as given, as part of the evidence base in question, that there aren’t any miracles, that God never acts specially in the world, and that it is not the case that the Bible is in some special way divine discourse, or a revelation from
God. Simonian science of this sort incorporates the denials of crucial elements of the Christian faith in its evidence base. But there is also another kind of HBC, one where neither the beliefs in question nor their denials are part of the evidence base. Thus there are at least two kinds of MN, corresponding to these two kinds of HBC—strong MN and weak MN. According to weak MN, a scientific evidence base will not include the proposition that there is such a person as God, or any other supernatural being; nor, of course, will it include the main lines of the Christian faith. Strong MN goes further; it adds the
denials
of at least some of these beliefs to the evidence base. Weak MN includes neither these beliefs nor their denials; strong MN includes their denials.

Contemporary science, science as it is currently practiced, is characterized by MN, either weak or strong. So of course Simonian science—science that produces theories incompatible with Christian belief—is characterized by MN of either the strong or the weak sort. Suppose it’s the strong sort. Then the relevant point is that the evidence base of the inquiry in question includes the denial of central Christian (and indeed) theistic beliefs. If so, however, the fact that this inquiry comes to conclusions incompatible with Christian belief would be neither surprising, nor—for Christians—an occasion for consternation or dismay. It would certainly not constitute a defeater for Christian belief. As an example, consider Troeltschian HBC (
chapter 5
): it takes as part of its evidence base that God never acts in special ways and that there aren’t any miracles. But then the mere fact that those who engage in this enterprise come to the conclusion that there aren’t any miracles—that, say, Jesus did not arise from the
dead—is certainly no surprise: how could they come to any other conclusion? And the fact that they come to this conclusion, furthermore, is obviously not a defeater for the Christian belief that Jesus did rise from the dead—that conclusion is a simple consequence of the evidence base they start with. Their coming to that conclusion from that starting point is surely no reason to give up or moderate belief in the resurrection of Jesus; it does not constitute a defeater for that belief.

Suppose, on the other hand, that what is involved in Simonian science is weak MN. Then the important thing to see is that the evidence base of Simonian science, as of science generally, is only a part, a subset, as they say, of the Christian believer’s evidence base. That latter includes the beliefs to be found in the evidence base of Simonian science, but it also includes more. It includes belief in God, and also belief in “the great things of the gospel.” And that means that Simonian science doesn’t as such provide the Christian theist with a defeater for those of her beliefs incompatible with Simonian science.
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For what the success of Simonian science really shows is something like this: that with respect to its evidence base, its conclusions are probable, or sensible, or approvable as science or as good science. What it shows with respect to the Christian’s evidence base, therefore, is that from the perspective of
part
of that evidence base—the part coinciding with the scientific evidence base—the Simonian conclusions are probable, or sensible, or approvable, or constitute good science. Therefore what it shows is that with respect to
part
of her evidence base, some of her beliefs are improbable or unlikely.

That need not give her a defeater for those beliefs. For it can easily happen that I come to see that one of my beliefs is unlikely with
respect to part of my evidence base, without thereby incurring a defeater for that belief. You tell me you saw me at the mall yesterday; I remember that I wasn’t there at all, but spent the entire afternoon in my office, thinking about evolutionary psychology. Then with respect to part of my evidence base—a part that includes your telling me that you saw me at the mall—it is unlikely that I was in my office all afternoon; but that fact doesn’t give me a defeater for my belief that that’s where I was. My knowledge of your telling me that you saw me at the mall doesn’t constitute a defeater for my belief that I wasn’t there.

Another example: imagine a group of whimsical physicists who try to see how much of physics would be left if we refused to employ, in the development of physics, anything we know by way of memory. Perhaps something could be done along these lines, but it would be a poor, paltry, truncated, trifling thing. Suppose further that general relativity turned out to be dubious and unlikely from this point of view. And now consider physicists who do physics from the usual scientific evidence base, and furthermore believe the results: would they get a defeater for General Relativity upon learning that it was unlikely from the perspective of truncated physics? Surely not. They would note, as a reasonably interesting fact, that there was indeed a conflict: the best way to think about the subject matter of physics from the standpoint of the
truncated
evidence base is incompatible with the best way to think about that subject matter from the perspective of the
whole
scientific evidence base. But of course they take the perspective of the whole scientific evidence base to be normative; it is the right perspective from which to view the matter. As a result, their knowledge of the way things look from that truncated base doesn’t give them a defeater for the beliefs appropriate with respect to the whole scientific base.

One final example: consider someone convicted of a crime he knows he didn’t commit. So suppose I am accused of a crime—slashing your tires again, for example. At the trial my department
chairman—a man of impeccable probity—claims to have seen me lurking around your car at the time the crime occurred; I am also known to resent you (in part because of your article in the department newsletter claiming that in church I slyly withdraw money from the collection plate under the guise of contributing). I had means, motive and opportunity; furthermore there have been other such sordid episodes in my past; the evidence against me convinces the jury. However,
I
recall very clearly spending the entire afternoon skiing in Love Creek County Park, twenty miles away, when the offense occurred; the fact is I
know
that I didn’t commit that crime. Now in a way I have no quarrel with the jury. Given what they know, they came to the right conclusion—or rather, they came to a conclusion that was right in one sense but wrong in another. They came to a conclusion that was very probable, perhaps beyond reasonable doubt, given what they knew. Unfortunately that conclusion was false. I have no quarrel with them; but does their coming to that conclusion—does my standing convicted of the crime—give me a defeater for my belief that I didn’t commit it? Should I give up the belief that I didn’t do it? I should think not.
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And the reason is that I have a source of knowledge or warranted belief they don’t: I
remember
that I didn’t commit that crime.