Month: May 2013

This continues my series on “method” in faith and science.  This is Part II of a section on Roman Catholic perspectives.

The Catholic “dialogue” approach, at least on some readings of it, already assumes that all investigation of truth is theological.  The possibility of “natural reason” is given precisely because of prior theological claims about the gift of created human nature and its capacity to participate in the truth of God.  In his introductory discussion of the relation between theology and philosophy, in Fides et Ratio, for example, Pope John Paul II states that all knowledge, whether derived from philosophy or faith, depends first on God, who makes knowledge possible by grace.  “Underlying all the Church’s thinking,” John Paul II said, “is the awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself (cf. 2 Cor 4:1-2).” [1]   The Church did not receive this message through its own power or abilities, nor was the message communicated through abstract intellectual means.  Rather, John Paul II said, it stems from a personal encounter with God in Christ:

At the origin of our life of faith there is an encounter, unique in kind, which discloses a mystery hidden for long ages (cf. 1 Cor 2:7; Rom 16:25-26) but which is now revealed:   “In his goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will (cf. Eph 1:9), by which, through Christ, the Word made flesh, man has access to the Father in the Holy Spirit and comes to share in the divine nature”.[2] 

Further, God’s self-revelation in Christ was entirely a free act of grace:  “[t]is initiative is utterly gratuitous, moving from God to men and women in order to bring them to salvation.   As the source of love, God desires to make himself known; and the knowledge which the human being has of God perfects all that the human mind can know of the meaning of life.”[3]

Therefore there is no question of philosophy superseding faith.  There is no sharp division, in Fides et Ratio, between “nature” and “grace”:  all that pertains to “nature,” to God’s creative design, is also the gift of “grace,” of God’s ecstatic, self-giving love.  Nevertheless, for John Paul II, “nature” involves empirical realities that are susceptible to human knowledge through a form of reasoning appropriate to the object.  “Philosophy” therefore possesses an inherent integrity, structure, and grammar.  “The truth attained by philosophy and the truth of Revelation,” John Paul II said, “are neither identical nor mutually exclusive”:  

There exists a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object….  Based upon God’s testimony and enjoying the supernatural assistance of grace, faith is of an order other than philosophical knowledge which depends upon sense perception and experience and which advances by the light of the intellect alone.  Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32).[4]

John Paul II therefore sees a positive role for “philosophy” as a complement to “faith.”   Indeed, for John Paul II, “natural reason,” apart from revelation, is capable of showing that there is a God who created the universe.  Nevertheless, it is finally our faith in God’s creative goodness that establishes confidence in the capacities of “natural reason” to comprehend creation, and it is our faith in God’s transcendence that establishes the proper bounds of reason.   These themes of transcendence and participation as applied to the relation between theology and science are perhaps reflected more clearly in an introduction John Paul II wrote for a 2004 Pontifical Academy of Sciences report in the Academy’s four hundredth anniversary, where he stated

I am more and more convinced that scientific truth, which is itself a participation in divine Truth, can help philosophy and theology to understand ever more fully the human person and God’s Revelation about man, a Revelation that is completed and perfected in Jesus Christ. For this important mutual enrichment in the search for the truth and the benefit of mankind, I am, with the whole Church, profoundly grateful.[5]

The subtle difference between this Catholic vision as expressed by John Paul II and McGrath’s critical realism mirrors, in interesting ways, the dialogue between the two great Swiss theologians who continue to inform many of the differences between broadly Catholic and broadly Protestant approaches to natural theology:  Barth and Balthasar.[6]  The modified, qualified critically realist natural theology of Protestant thinkers such as T.F. Torrance and McGrath, who take their initial cues from Barth, is perhaps more cautious about the analogia entis , and therefore ends up with an integration of faith and reason only after a somewhat prolonged process of methodological separation.   A Catholic thinker such as John Paul II might more readily see analogical correspondences between God and nature. 

Nevertheless, for a Catholic thinker such as John Paul II, even if, as Balthasaar argued, “[n]ature cannot include grace at one moment and then exclude it the next,” grace cannot be “necessarily derived” from nature, and the use of Aristotelian terminology to describe movement of the creature towards the goal of the beatific vision as a sort of “natural” movement is only analogical.[7]  Balthasaar went so far as to argue that Barth’s rejection of natural theology and the analogia entis, if properly understood, was consistent with the decrees of the First Vatican Council on natural knowledge of God, again if properly understood.[8]  And, similarly, the Protestant critical realist McGrath approvingly refers to Erich Przywara’s concept of the analogia entis as a model for the construction of natural theology.[9]  If there are differences between critical realist and specifically Catholic models for the interaction between theology and science, in many cases those differences may be passingly small.

This continues my series on “method” in theology in science.  The next two posts will discuss Catholic approaches.

The Roman Catholic approach, exemplified in the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, is also sometimes said to represent a “dialogue” approach.[1]  There is of course not only one “Roman Catholic approach” to the relation between theology and science, and many Catholics working in this field would identify themselves as critical realists or assume the posture of critical realism without identifying it.[2]  Indeed, Pope John Paul II famously stated that “[s]cience can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.  Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”[3] 

This oft-quoted statement of John Paul II was part of a longer letter to Jerry Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory, in preparation for a study week celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.[4]  The Pope stressed in that letter that the model he envisioned was one of dialogue rather than integration:

By encouraging openness between the Church and the scientific communities, we are not envisioning a disciplinary unity between theology and science like that which exists within a given scientific field or within theology proper. As dialogue and common searching continue, there will be grow towards mutual understanding and a gradual uncovering of common concerns which will provide the basis for further research and discussion. Exactly what form that will take must be left to the future. What is important, as we have already stressed, is that the dialogue should continue and grow in depth and scope. In the process we must overcome every regressive tendency to a unilateral reductionism, to fear, and to self-imposed isolation. What is critically important is that each discipline should continue to enrich, nourish and challenge the other to be more fully what it can be and to contribute to our vision of who we are and who we are becoming.[5]

Theologians, the Pope noted, can utilize the best science of their times to help them understand and articulate theological truths, but science cannot simply dictate terms to theology:

Now this is a point of delicate importance, and it has to be carefully qualified. Theology is not to incorporate indifferently each new philosophical or scientific theory. As these findings become part of the intellectual culture of the time, however, theologians must understand them and test their value in bringing out from Christian belief some of the possibilities which have not yet been realized. The hylomorphism of Aristotelian natural philosophy, for example, was adopted by the medieval theologians to help them explore the nature of the sacraments and the hypostatic union. This did not mean that the Church adjudicated the truth or falsity of the Aristotelian insight, since that is not her concern. It did mean that this was one of the rich insights offered by Greek culture, that it needed to be understood and taken seriously and tested for its value in illuminating various areas of theology. Theologians might well ask, with respect to contemporary science, philosophy and the other areas of human knowing, if they have accomplished this extraordinarily difficult process as well as did these medieval masters.[6]

Likewise, the Pope stated, the practice of natural science is neither to be equated with theology nor isolated from it:

For science develops best when its concepts and conclusions are integrated into the broader human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value. Scientists cannot, therefore, hold themselves entirely aloof from the sorts of issues dealt with by philosophers and theologians. By devoting to these issues something of the energy and care they give to their research in science, they can help others realize more fully the human potentialities of their discoveries. They can also come to appreciate for themselves that these discoveries cannot be a genuine substitute for knowledge of the truly ultimate.[7]

This continues my series on “method” in theology and science.  This is the second part of my discussion of critical realism.

Critical Realism, Part B

This emphasis on the event of revelation in Christ among many Christian critical realists is not surprising, as many of them (including, notably, Alister McGrath), are connected to Barth through the work of Thomas Torrance.[1]  Barth, consistent with his understanding of revelation and philosophy, resisted any systematic definition of God:

The equation of God’s Word and God’s Son makes it radically impossible to say anything doctrinaire in understanding the Word of God.  In this equation, and in it alone, a real and effective barrier is set up against what is made of proclamation according to the Roman Catholic view and of Holy Scripture according to the later form of older Protestantism, namely, a fixed sum of revealed propositions which can be systematized like the sections of a corpus of law.  The only system in Holy Scripture and proclamation is revelation, i.e., Jesus Christ.[2]

But Barth – who, after all, over the course of thirty-five years wrote a Church Dogmatics comprised of about six million words of dense text – did not mean we can say nothing truthful about God.  After resisting what he understood as the Catholic and Scholastic Reformation’s too-neat methods of systematization, Barth emphasized the importance of words and speech:

Now the converse is also true, of course, namely that God’s Son is God’s Word.  Thus God does reveal Himself in statements, through the medium of speech, and indeed of human speech.  His word is always this or that word spoken by the prophets and apostles and proclaimed in the Church.  The personal character of God’s Word is not, then, to be played off against its verbal or spiritual character.  It is not at all true that this second aspect under which we must understand it implies its irrationality and thus cancels out the first aspect under which we must understand it.[3]

Barth’s concern throughout his discussion of the Word in Volume I of the Church Dogmatics was to preserve the freedom and integrity of theology against Enlightenment rationalism.  Barth was particularly concerned with the way rationalism gave rise to nineteenth century liberal demythologizing Protestant thought.  Barth also resisted how rationalism underwrote both Protestant fundamentalism and the Scholastic Thomism of much Catholic nineteenth century Catholic thought.  Torrance worked from these basic Barthian premises to modify Barth’s famous “nein” to natural theology with a qualified “yes.”

The critical realist approach to theology and science results in a paradigm in which the disciplines of theology and natural science remain distinct but can contribute to each other at higher levels.  McGrath summarizes his version of this program as follows:

1. The natural sciences and the religions are quite distinct in terms of their methodologies and subject matters.  It is quite improper to attempt to limit them, for example by suggesting that the sciences have to do with the physical world and the religions with a distinct spiritual world.  The distinction between ‘science’ and ‘religion’ concerns more than subject-matter.
2. At points, despite their clear differences, those working in the fields of science and religion find themselves facing similar issues, expecially in relation to issues of representation and conceptualization.  At point after point, those interested in science and religion find themselves facing very similar questions, and even adopting similar approaches in the answers which they offer.
3. At points of major importance, the methods and theories of the natural sciences are genuinely illuminating to those concerned with religious matters.  Equally, there are points where religious beliefs and approaches cast considerable light on issues of scientific method.  The investigation of these convergences is mutually enlightening and significant.[4]

Critical realism as a model for interaction between theology and science seems promising.  Unlike NOMA approaches, critical realism does not hermetically seal the boundary between “science” and “religion.”  Critical realism does not represent a Kantian move in which religious or moral feeling is cordoned off from “pure reason,” and this is a genuine advance over the Kantian bent of much of the modern scientific establishment – as evidenced, for example, in the National Academies of Science statement quoted previously.  Moreover, critical realism creates genuine space for theological reform and development when certain theological claims plainly clash with reality.  Without some space in which the observations of the natural sciences can influence theology, it is impossible to avoid the intellectual and moral disaster of fundamentalist systems such as young earth creationism.  Certainly, if we seek to be faithful to the spirit of the Church Fathers, we will want to do theology with a keen eye towards the creation as it is given to us.[5]

However, within critical realism, the interaction between the two disciplines of science and theology tends to be pictured as happening only at a higher level of integration.  In this way, a kind of modest foundationalism underpins the entire project, even though many critical realists, including McGrath, strongly eschew foundationalism.  This hidden modest foundationalism establishes the boundaries in which the theological and scientific disciplines do their own original work and in which any integrative or work happens.  But if the Christian confession truly is “realist,” then there can be no autonomous space for a “science” that is not already “theological” in what it presumes about the nature of the universe, and there can be no neutral rule of correspondence that would adjudicate “between” theology and science.

Indeed, McGrath’s own effort at constructing a natural theology is expressly non-foundationalist and presumes as a first principle “that the logos through which the world was created is embedded in the structures of the created order, above all the human person, and incarnated in Christ.”[6]  Natural theology, for McGrath, is not an effort to obtain neutrally rational “proofs” of God’s existence, but rather to demonstrate “that there is an accumulation of considerations which, though not constituting logical proof (how could experience prove anything in such a way?), is at the very least consistent with the existence of a creator God.”[7]  Nevertheless, two basic questions lingers:  (1) from the perspective of Christian theology itself, does critical realism envision a sufficiently theological account of “reason” that enables “natural science” in the first instance?; and (2) does critical realism propose an understanding of “nature” that resembles a kind of natura pura – a realm of pure nature that is not also already a realm of grace?

Dialogue and Critical Realism:  Part A

This continues my series on “method” in theology and science.  Here I begin to discuss “critical realism.”  It will take a few more posts, but I’ll suggest that while critical realism is a helpful framework, it also entails limitations as a result of separating science “and” theology.

Many proponents of “dialogue” models between science and religion identify themselves as “critical realists,” and this may be the dominant paradigm in the contemporary “religion and science” literature.[1]  A critical realist approach recognizes that all human knowing is mediated through human thought and language forms, including both scientific and theological knowing – and thus it is “critical.”[2]  Nevertheless, critical realists assert that there is a reality extrinsic to human thought and language that is capable of sustained investigation, and that human beings are capable of making progress towards fuller understanding of that extrinsic reality.[3]  The theological realities that theologians attempt to investigate and the natural realities that scientists attempt to investigate must each be approached with tools appropriate to their respective domains.[4]  As Alister McGrath argues, “[b]oth the scientific and religious communities can be thought of as attempting to wrestle with the ambiguities of experience, and offering what are accepted as the ‘best possible explanations’ for what is observed.”[5] 

McGrath develops his model of critical realism in science and theology in significant part from the philosophical contributions of Roy Bhaskar and Michael Polanyi.[6]  For critical realists in the tradition of Bhaskar, society is both a preexisting given and a product of human activity.^[7] Individuals do not create society, but they do continually reproduce and transform society.^[8] Society is neither a reified structure that exists apart from human activity nor an entirely voluntary creation of individuals.^[9] Bhaskar likens this “transformational model of social activity” to a sculptor who creates something out of the materials and tools available to her.^[10] The result is that society emerges from, but is not reducible to, the choices of individuals.^[11] Society is “a complex totality subject to change both in its components and their interrelations.”^[12]

Critical realists recognize that knowledge has both social and physical dimensions.^[13] There is a reality external to human perception, language, and cognition.^[14] Human perception, language, and cognition, however, limit our direct epistemic access to reality.^[15] Human perception of reality is a “transitive” dimension because it is subject to change based on human language, history, and culture.^[16] Reality itself, however, is “intransitive.”^[17] According to Roy Bhaskar, reality is stratified and can be conceived as three layered: empirical (observable by human), actual (existing in time and space), and real (“transfactual and enduring more than our perception of it”).^[18]

Bhaskar thus emphasized the social aspects of human knowing—of information—without reducing all of reality to a human construction. An important aspect of Bhaskar’s social theory of knowledge is his rejection of “methodological individualism”—the notion that societies are reducible to individuals.^[19] A “social atomism” in which the analysis of societies can be reduced to the preferences of individuals will never adequately explain social action.^[20] But neither is society merely the result of collective pressures on individuals, or a simple dialectic between these two poles.^[21] Rather, society has a dual character: social groups provide the ground through which individuals reproduce and sometimes transform society.^[22] A level of reality can emerge from a more basic level without being reducible to the more basic level.^[23]

Like Bhaskar, Michael Polanyi sought to mitigate the destructive tendencies of positivism without destroying the normativity of science. One of Polanyi’s primary concerns was the danger of authoritarian control over science extant in the then communist East. ^[24] Polanyi was keen to demonstrate that science is an inherently social enterprise just like any other human project, and that as a social enterprise science must be subject to democratic control.^[25] Also like Bhaskar, Polanyi recognized that reality is stratified.^[26] Each level of reality operates under the ‘marginal control’ of higher levels, but the higher levels are not reducible to the lower.^[27]

Polanyi recognized that positivism fails because it relies on some unverifiable foundations. As Polanyi noted, “It is indeed logically impossible for the human mind to divest itself of all uncritically acquired foundations. For our minds cannot unfold at all except by embracing a definite idiom of beliefs, which will determine the scope of our entire subsequent fiducial development.”^[28] The notion of positivism itself, then, depends on an idiomatic structure that is neither verifiable nor self-evident.

Polanyi also emphasized the communal nature of scientific practice and the “tacit” knowledge involved in such communal information transfers. As he noted, “[t]he transmission of beliefs in society is mostly not by precept, but by example . . . [t]he whole practice of research and verification is transmitted by example and its standards are upheld by a continuous interplay with criticism within the scientific community.”^[29] Thus, scientific knowledge is a set of socially constructed analogical models that are developed through practices acquired and implemented in unique social networks.

Finally, Polanyi realized that the social networks through which scientific practices are transferred, like all social networks, incorporate elements of social control. One of the principal means of control over scientific information networks is peer review. Polanyi observed that scientific journal referees “are the chief Influentials, the unofficial governors of the scientific community. By their advice they can either delay or accelerate the growth of a new line of research.”^[30]  Nevertheless, within this social matrix, science can make genuine progress in understanding.

Similarly, theology, critical realists argue, seeks to interpret experienced reality within the context of a traditioned community.[31]  In this respect, many critical realists are sympathetic to Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the role of community and tradition in the shaping of philosophical inquiry.[32]  For Christians, of course, the central experienced reality that requires theological interpretation is the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, and the interpretive community is the Church.[33]  Christian theology and doctrine develop as the Christian community reflects on this central experience.  Just as in the natural sciences, massive paradigm shifts in the understanding of theology and doctrine should be rare, but some degree of revision must always remain a possibility because the reality that lies behind the experience is only ever partially understood.

A continuing series on method in religion and science.

Integration and Dialogue:  Process Theology

Strong Integrationist models tend towards a willingness to reconfigure religious categories in ways that seem required by the natural sciences.  Process theology, which tends to identify Godself as part of the developing and emerging cosmos, is a prime example of this sort of move.[2]  For process theology, reality is fundamentally a dynamic process.[3]  Rather than envisioning God as the transcendent source of the universe, for process theology, “God is not the exception to the dynamic nature of the universe, but rather the dynamic God-world relationship is the primary example of creaturely experience in its many expressions.”[4]  In this view, “[i]n our dynamic and ever-changing world, God is the most dynamic and ever-changing reality; God’s becoming embraces the eternal, temporal, and everlasting in an ever-creative, self-surpassing dialogue with the universe.”[5]

Because God is a dynamic and evolving reality, process theology eschews the classical notion of God’s perfections.[6]  Process theologians view the claim that God is omniscient and omnipotent as remnants of Greek thought best left behind.[7]  They argue that a God who is omniscient and omnipotent must be responsible for evil and that both scripture and Christian experience disclose God in relational terms.[8]  They further argue that God’s classical perfections would destroy the possibility of human creativity and creaturely freedom.[9]

A thread that ties these claims together within process theology is the integration of theology and science.[10]  Indeed, “[p]rocess theology is firmly rooted in an evolutionary understanding of the universe.”[11]  Many process theologians argue that evolutionary theory destroys the classical understanding of God’s perfections:

While some Christians believe that God has directed the course of the universe from the very beginning, determining every detail without creaturely input, and is guiding the universe toward a pre-determined goal, process theology imagines an open-ended universe, in which God’s vision is also open-ended and subject to change in relationship to creaturely decision-making and accidental occurrences.[12]

Thus process theology also eschews the concept of creation ex nihilo, arguing that, instead, “[e]ven before the big bang, God was interacting with the primordial elements of this universe or another universe from which this universe may have emerged, as some cosmologists suggest.  God has never been without a world, which provides opportunities for, and limitations of, the embodiment of God’s creative vision.”[13]

This vision of emerging reality also affects process theology’s anthropology.  Human beings are not metaphysically special but rather are “fully embedded in the evolutionary process.”[14]  Human beings are not impacted by any sort of “original” sin but rather have always partaken in a bilateral relationship of call-and-response with God.[15]  In fact, “[t]o the surprise of many more traditional theologians, process theologians recognize that deviation from God’s moment by moment vision is not always bad:  it may inject new possibilities into the creative process.”[16]  Moreover, process thought tends to identify the human “soul” not with particular individuals, but rather with human society extended over time.[17]  The “soul” is “in every sense a part of nature, subject to the same conditions as all other natural entities.”[18]  Further, “the body, and specifically the brain, is the immediate environment of the soul.”[19]  Because of the embededness of the human person and specifically the human brain in the flux of evolutionary history, the human soul is intimately connected with the entire universe:

The soul is, then, in immediate contact with some occasions of experience in the brain and with the mental poles of experiences of other souls….  Indirectly, but intimately, the soul also prehends the whole society that constitutes its body and still more indirectly, but still very importantly, the wider environment that is the whole world.  At the same time, the soul contributes itself as an object for feeling by other souls, the contiguous occasions in the brain, and indirectly by the whole future world.[20]

The strong integrationist program represented by process theology is in some ways appealing.  It does take seriously the claims of the natural sciences.  It also takes very seriously the problem of evil and the problem of creaturely freedom.  The price it pays to cash out its claims, however, is far too high.  The “God” of process theology, as well as its vision of the human “soul,” tend to devolve into a kind of pantheistic spiritualism that ultimately vindicates neither contemporary science nor natural theology. 

On the scientific side, this problem is represented by concepts of the “soul” that ultimately envision the universe itself as a conscious entity, perhaps as the conscious entity.  Nothing could be further from the claims and methods of contemporary natural science.  On the theological side, process theology’s representation of the classical view of God’s perfections in relation to creation ex nihilo and creaturely freedom tends towards parody and straw man claims. 

It is unclear, for example, who comprises the Christians referenced by Epperly who “believe that God has directed the course of the universe from the very beginning, determining every detail without creaturely input.”[21]  In his Guide for the Perplexed on process theology, Epperly uses popular evangelical preacher Rick Warren’s reference to God’s providence in Warren’s popular book A Purpose Driven Life as representative of the classical view.[22] To suggest that Warren lacks the sophistication of Nyssa, Augustine, Aquinas or Barth on these problems is more than an understatement, and Warren himself would not argue otherwise. 

Among more significant representatives of the Christian tradition, perhaps some versions of Calvinism or Jansenism would frame this sort of statement, but orthodox Christian theology has always recognized creaturely freedom, and particularly human moral freedom, within the ambit of God’s providence and in response to God’s grace.  Classical Christian orthodoxy is not deterministic fatalism.  Indeed the Second Council of Orange, though it condemned semi-Pelagianism, nevertheless held that human beings can participate or not participate in God’s grace:   “We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema.”[23]  Similarly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church today states that “[f]reedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.”[24]  The Catechism further states that

The grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart. On the contrary, as Christian experience attests especially in prayer, the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world….[25]

The Catechism therefore concludes that “[t]he right to the exercise of freedom, especially in religious and moral matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of man.”[26]    It seems, then, that process theology is overstating a case against a mythical opponent.

Part 2 of a series on “method” in religion and science.

2.  Independence

In contrast – or apparent contrast – to these conflict models, many opt for an “independence” model in which “science” and “religion” occupy entirely separate, non-overlapping domains.[1]  The late biologist Stephen Jay Gould introduced the concept of “nonoverlapping magesteria” (NOMA) that purported to separate scientific claims from moral truth.[2]  This perspective is reflected, to a certain extent, in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences statement on the compatibility of science and religion:

Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.[3]

“Independence” models, however, seem inevitably to devolve into “conflict,” in which “faith and evidence” and “natural and supernatural” are put at odds, as the NAS statement above reflects.  Upon reflection, NOMA seems to represent little more than a Kantian separation between objective truth and subjective values, mediated by a kind of empiricism and positivism that is no longer taken seriously in the philosophy of science.

This begins a series of posts, drawn from parts of my doctoral dissertation, on methodology in the field of religion and science.

1:  Convergence to Conflict

The field of “science and religion” has become an important sub-discipline of modern theology.[1]  This development parallels the rapid ascendancy of “science” as the paradigm of trustworthy authority in modernity and the related development of the “conflict” or “warfare” narrative of the relation between science and religion.[2]  The rise of secularism is intimately related to the social and intellectual authority commanded by “science” in modernity.[3] 

Theology in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions historically interacted fruitfully with the “science” of the day, at least prior to the Seventeenth Century.  The Hebrew creation narratives in the Biblical book of Genesis both absorb and distinguish the ancient near eastern cosmologies of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt.[4]  The Church Fathers adapted and transformed Platonic philosophy and cosmology, and medieval Muslim, Christian, and Jewish theologians adapted the insights of Aristotle after the rediscovery of the Aristotelian corpus by Islamic scholars.[5] 

In 1616, however, the Copernican view of heliocentrism, confirmed and popularized by Galileo, was condemned by the Catholic Church.[6]  Galileo himself was condemned and his works were banned by Papal decree in 1633.[7]  The Papal Decree of Condemnation asserted that

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

….

The proposition that the Earth is not the center of the world and immovable but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith. [8]

There is considerable scholarly debate about the circumstances of Galileo’s condemnation.  As Charles Hummel describes it, “Galileo’s trial of 1633 was not the simple conflict between science and religion so commonly pictured.  It was a complex power struggle of personal and professional pride, envy, and ambition, affected by pressures of bureaucratic politics.”[9]  Galileo’s own acerbic personality, as well as the crisis of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the Thirty Years’ War, are also often cited by defenders of the Church as contextual factors around Galileo’s condemnation.[10]  Even after Galileo’s condemnation, heliocentrism continued to be taught as a mathematical concept, and by 1835, the heliocentric texts of Copernicus and Galileo were removed from the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books.[11]  In 2000, Pope John Paul II formally apologized for the Church’s treatment of Galileo, along with apologies for historic mistreatment of Jews, the Crusades, and other matters.[12] 

Notwithstanding these qualifications, the Galileo affair represents a touchstone event for the relationship between theology and science.  The heliocentric cosmos challenged not only the interpretation of a few Biblical passages, but also the broader Aristotelian cosmology that informed the medieval synthesis of “science” and theology.[13]  When Newtonianism subsequently questioned Aristotelian causation and the sense of a great chain of being more broadly, Lyellian geology questioned the antiquity of the Earth and the “days” of creation recorded in Genesis 1, and Darwinism questioned anthropocentric biology, theology faced an even more significant challenge.[14]  At the same time, scientific methods of textual analysis, archeology and historiography were being applied to the Biblical texts in ways that questioned the fundamental integrity of the Bible.[15]

Nineteenth Century Christian thinkers reacted to the Newtonian, Lyellian and Darwinian challenges inconsistently.  During the ascendency of Newtonianism, many opted for a kind of mechanistic Deism that was at odds with the Christian view of a God who is intimately providentially involved with creation.[16]  In Christian theology’s first encounters with Darwinism, notwithstanding the perhaps exaggerated accounts of the clash between Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley, the majority responded with cautious appraisal and appropriation of both Lyell and Darwin, while working with notions of providence that attempted to accommodate both the Biblical picture and Newton.[17]  Their efforts sometimes led to theological aberrations such as William Paley’s “watchmaker” natural theology, but they nevertheless worked from a framework that assumed the “book of scripture” and the “book of nature” spoke complementary truths.[18]

The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy that erupted among American Protestants in the early Twentieth Century, however, ignited a tinderbox of conflict, highlighted in the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925 in Dayton, Tennesee.[19]  Fundamentalists rejected Darwinian science in toto, and further rejected in toto the historical-critical inquiry of the Biblical sources.[20]  The rise of Protestant Fundamentalism supported the development of “creation science,” which asserts that the Bible can be read as an innerant scientific text and that God literally created the universe in six days around 6,500 years ago.[21]  The enormous cultural influence of “creation science,” particularly in North America but increasingly world-wide, is evidenced by the multi-million dollar “Creation Museum” in Kentucky.[22]  In the view of “creation science,” there is a clear conflict between theology and modern evolutionary science. 

A somewhat more sophisticated version of this sort of creationism, is the “Intelligent Design” movement, which attempts to disprove the theory of evolution by through scientific evidences for “design” in creation through statistical gaps and probabilities and information theory.[23]  Although many ID proponents do not identify with scientific creationism’s insistence on reading the book of Genesis literally, they likewise presume that the Biblical revelation must somehow conform to and be confirmed by “science.”[24]  And because of this presumption, ID advocates generally argue that the findings of evolutionary biology fundamentally conflict with Christian theology.[25]

The extraordinary cultural influence of “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins represents another extreme node of this warfare thesis.[26]  Darwinism is here elevated to an all-encompassing worldview.  For example, David Sloan Wilson, Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University, argues that Darwinian evolution fully explains everything, including every aspect of human nature.[27]  Anyone who thinks otherwise, even “intellectuals” who are not religious, is a kind of fundamentalist, an “’academic creationist.’”[28]  Religion, for these ultra-Darwinists, is like a pernicious virus that must be eradicated by science.[29]