Religion and Science Revisited

Well, it’s time for some fresh musings on this age-old issue. In fact, it’s more of a moldly issue but bear with me because some of this is new to me, and so it still captivates my interest like a freshly opened package of extra old premium cheddar.

I was introduced to the following proverb the other day: “The object you are inquiring about will tell something about how it is known.” In other words, if you are wanting to know how the bacterial flagellum of a protozoa works, don’t go looking in a math textbook or the bible. If you want to know what Brie Cheese tastes like, don’t ask your fingers. If you want to know the meaning of life, don’t expect a microscope to give you a zen moment.

Science is only equipped to answer certain kinds of questions, and it can only give us a certain kind of knowledge. Moreover, this kind of knowledge has certain qualities and attributes that are unique, and scientific knowledge also lacks other kinds of qualities. A simple example is taste: science can never tell us what something tastes like, or smells like. That’s a different kind of knowledge to which science cannot speak much on.

One of the qualities of scientific knowledge that has befuddled me for awhile is the nature of scientific certainty. When I read web pages of dogmatic evolutionists touting the radical certainty with which we know the theory of evolution to be true, I expect to find evidence that supports that.

I look at “evidence” through the lens of a theologian or philosopher. Though this is nothing new, it has dawned on me to what extent philosophic evidence has certain qualities that are never going to be found in scientific knowledge. Philosophy and science have different descriptions of “certainty”, and it seems to me that I have been looking for a philosophic-type of certainty as I evaluate the evidence of scientific arguments. I find myself an evolutionary skeptic -having looked at a lot of evidence but yet being unconvinced. In the scientific literature I have read, I have come across frustrated scientists who accuse those who do not accept their evidence as having no other argument other than “personal incredulity”. In other words, I am being dishonest with the evidence and remaining an evolutionary skeptic is not a fault of the evidence, but my own stubborness. I take such accusations seriously, as I have my own slough of “you’re not being honest with clear evidence” with other issues and people. For me not to take such claims of “personal incredulity” would by hypocritical on my part.

The primary difference of quality between scientific and philosophical certainty is that the kind of certainty I am used to is an absolute certainty. To prove something philosophically, I regard as absolutely certain propositions which are impossible to deny. The most obvious one is the law of non-contradiction: It is impossible for A and not-A to be true. A car cannot be both red and not-red.

Further truths I think fit under this umbrella of absolutely certain absolutes because they are impossible to deny. I would also put the existence of a sovereign God under this umbrella. The bible argues for many things, but it never once attempts to prove the existence of God. Why? I think part of the reason is because a sovereign God is a necessary presupposition for the process of asking metaphysical questions. That is, the very process of inquiry assumes a sovereign God, and even must assume a sovereign God.

This was illustrated to me very powerfully once when I heard Ravi Zacharias (one of my favorite apologists) answering questions from a roomful of university students. One student boldly stood up and insisted that life had no meaning. Ravi replied; “you don’t believe that.” The student insisted he did. Ravi insisted he didn’t. The student repeated that he did. Ravi once again denied it. This was all quite comical to watch, but Ravi was right, on this principle: a person who stands up and asserts the meaninglessness of life is asserting by his actions that he finds his statements meaningful. In fact, he finds them so meaningful he’s willing to publicly proclaim them and commend such a belief in the meaninglessness of life to his fellow human-beings. This is ridiculous -if a person truly, sincerely believed in the meaninglessness of life, why would he venture into the meaningless discussion about meaning?

To state that all of life is meaningless undermines the very inquiry into what life means. I think we can reason soundly that if we are going to ask such questions, we are automatically assuming that life is meaningful: that is why we ask! Take the meaningfulness of life out which we already intuitively know, and you undermine all metaphysical inquiry.

Meaningfulness requires a sovereign Deity, for the search for meaning is a search for an objective meaning, and God is the only objective candidate for a universal source of meaning. That is, we search for a meaning beyond the taste of good cheese. Not just meaning for me, but true, objective meaning we can see, feel, discuss, and reason about. Just as our tongues search for savory or sweet food to satisfy ourselves with, so our souls search for objective truth outside of ourselves. By definition, objective meaning doesn’t come from within. However, the hunger for meaning does come from within. The thing is, you can’t be hungry for something you already have. A hungry person is in need for something external: so it is with the soul.

Most of us believe there is a reason why things are the way they are. Things just don't appear and disappear, we must and do presuppose that the universe is a rational and ordered place. This is why we ask and inquire, and is so fundamental to us as human beings that we named ourselves after this quality: homo sapiens sapiens; "wise wise man". This belief in the rationality of the world extents to more than just physical nature. Emotions and morals are rational as well. (with the exception of evil of course, but that's a topic for a different post.) If meaning is there, it didn't just appear: it's there because someone put it there. Again, a sovereign creator-deity is the only real candidate as far as I can tell. The unfortunately popular naturalist alternative, that the universe popped into being for no reason at all rubs contrary to the belief in a rationally ordered universe. Nothingness, disorder, and meaninglessness gives birth to something, order, and meaning? Someone's living by faith here, and I don't think it's me for once. :)

Coming back to the topic of science; science does not attempt to go about forming its knowledge the philosophical way. It does not analyse presuppositions, it looks for patterns of behaviour that fit with a theory. As such, scientific knowledge never has the kind of certainty that philosophical and religious presuppositions do. Since this is what certainty usually means to me, (as these are the kinds of questions I usually study and think about), I find the piling up of scientific evidence to be exciting, but rarely satisfying. I don’t understand the pompous touting of certainty by scientists about the theory of evolution, because science never arrives at absolutes. Upon reflection, I realize it never can.

On the note of peacemaking between science and religion, I see this as a point of clarity. Religious believers may indeed be scientifically ignorant, but I don’t think the accusation of “personal incredulity” is entirely fair. I think believers come to the table of science looking for the kind of knowledge they are used to -religious knowledge, which has certain qualities of certainty, certain methods of acquiring knowledge that science cannot provide. In fact, it’s not supposed to, because it’s a different kind of knowledge.

How do scientists come up with scientific certainty? I must be honest that I am coming at this question as a theoretical thinker rather than one from personal experience as a scientist, so I trust what I am about to say is taken with a grain of salt -I’m not taking myself to be speaking any ground-shattering truth here.

A scientific theory like evolution can never arrive at absolute certainty. You can pile up all the evidence you like, you can never say the theory has been “proven” in a sense that will satisfy a philosophical criteria of certainty. This is because of a law of reason: finite creatures cannot arrive at general conclusions from particular inquiries. Unless one is omniscient, no amount of brown deer will ever infallibly prove the proposition “all deer are brown”. Certainty mounts as more brown deer are found and no exceptions are found, but it seems to me that it can never arrive at an absolute certainty, because that is just impossible to know.

Visiting again the problem of “personal incredulity”, scientific theories do increase in certainty but never cross the threshold: they are always open to modification and further evidence. To deny this would be to turn science into religion. (Which I think some scientists do at times) Religious beliefs don’t have that quality: once a presupposition is reached through clear reason, it sits there unmoveable. They’re not something we can prove: they are the beliefs that make the process of inquiry and proof possible, and so sit with a greater quality of certainty than any science can ever arrive at. It’s not because believers are cocky evidence-ignorers. It’s that our focus of knowledge, knowledge of God, has different qualities to it than scientific knowledge does, and we are used to thinking in such categories of knowledge. In other words, science expects us to think in a different way than we are used to thinking, and this expectation is often not clearly laid out. At least, this idea seems to make sense of a lot of the “religion vs science” mud-slinging that goes on: people think in different ways without understanding or respecting the other’s criteria for “evidence.”

A further question is raised, and here I think I do plead guilty to a form of “personal incredulity” as regards the theory of evolution. I am skeptic, but not without good reason, and that reason is as follows. I look at the history of science, and I see the impact Newton’s physics had on Christianity. While Newton reigned, a curious heresy followed the church at every step: Deism. Deism is the belief that God started the world and just let it run, but he is not personally involved anymore.

Nowadays, Deism is rare. One may wonder what circumstances would give rise to someone considering becoming a Deist. It simply isn’t on most people’s radar. Prior to Einstein’s revolution though, the world was seen as a closed, rigid law-driven system. Evidence was piling up and piling up to buttress Newton’s physics. The more laws we discovered, the less room there appeared to be for God to maneuver His unseen providence, other than as the Great Cosmic Instigator.

Newton’s physics, and the reaction of Deism from the quarters of philosophy, challenged the church for centuries until science itself overturned Newton’s physics. In retrospect, my “personal incredulity” is an informed gun-shyness. I look back at the many people who had their faith dashed on Newton’s principles. What kind of people were they? Some were quite intelligent, and doubtless felt obligated to affirm the latest scientific findings. It turns out their faith was shipwrecked on bad science. So how do we know what good science is that we might not follow in the folly of the Deists? The only way to know personally is by a lot of scientific study. But who has time for this? I don’t think such study is a waste of time by any means -the more scientifically educated people out there, the better the world would be. It does remain true though that many scientific theories are theories “under construction”, and evolution is one of those which has been modified numerous times in the past century. Is evidence in support of it mounting? I’m still in the process of verifying that, so I’ll refrain from touting my ignorance here. It does seem to remain true though that if an object of knowledge is “under construction” it is only by a stretch of reasoning that it is obligatory for us to live in unfinished buildings.