Scriptorium Daily
This defensive strategy has had another sad result. Too few Christians have given themselves the intellectual freedom to examine their own point of view critically. Often what passes for Christian thinking amongst believers is neither very thoughtful nor very Christian. This is true on both the right and the left of the Christian community. Liberal Christian scientists like Howard Van Till fall into a theistic naturalism. Science is restricted to matter and energy in mindless motion. Religion is excluded from making a difference in scientific theorizing. Such a view of science leaves little room for traditional Christian beliefs like the existence of the soul. On the right, apologists invent academic degrees and repeat long discredited arguments to demonstrate that their favorite view of Scripture is true. This can amount to lying for Jesus. Too often both camps are locked in the naïve view that “science” gives humans “truth” about the world unmediated by the philosophic bias of the investigator.
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The goal of a Christian philosophy of science is a “likely story” that takes into account everything known about the cosmos. Since religion provides knowledge, religious truths will have to be included. Since science gives knowledge as well, it will play a role in forming the proper Christian worldview. The Christian is free to consider any number of such stories. He is not constrained to look at only one sort. For example, God may have acted in a given moment of space and time or He may not have done so. The Christian is open to both. Traditional science is locked into an established Darwinian view that does not allow for such freedom of thought.
How could that be true? Isn’t the skeptical, non-religious scientist the free thinker? Sadly, this is far from the case. Most non-religious scientists have accepted the idea that naturalism is science. Naturalism is the philosophic notion that nature is all there is, was, or ever will be. This definition of science will not allow the secularist to examine the hypothesis that divine agency had a part in cosmic history even if the evidence points in that direction. This is the sad result of adopting a philosophy that is too cramped for valuable speculation.
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The goal of science and religion, after all, should be to come as close to the truth as possible. Many secular scientists act as if the goal of science were to exclude God on a priori grounds. Like some dictionary bully, they attempt to define science as limited to naturalism. But the secularist is simply posturing. One does not, in the end, care whether Darwinism or any other theory fits some predetermined definition of science. The important question to ask regarding any theory is: “Is it true?” Put more precisely, of course, the question is: “Is this theory most likely true given all the evidence humans have at the moment?”
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What does all of this talk of truth imply? In both science and theology it is easily possible that two logically incompatible theories can be developed that both explain the evidence. There is no “last word” on any theoretical subject. There are “brute facts” of the world and of divine revelation. That rock is really there. The text of the Bible is also real. Human certainty about that is so sure as to approach the absolute. Interpreting the world and the Word is trickier. It is then that contradictory theories can develop. The contradictions may be between two theories of science, or between two theories of religion, or between a theory of religion and a theory of science. The possibility of such theories existing has profound implications for the Christian.
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The real lover of truth could also seek a new scientific theory for the sheer joy of developing new theories. In personal relationships it is rational to break off an engagement without an alternative. No one would claim that their affianced should stay only because there are no better options at present. In the same manner, a person may find a scientific theory aesthetically or religiously unappealing and so go looking for another. So long as such a man deals fairly with the evidence and reasons logically, he should be free to pursue alternate theories. This is a freedom that the dominant secular scientific orthodoxy will not allow.
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Having shown that it is rational to look around, the Christian can begin to construct a sound and equally powerful theory about the cosmos. The lack of such a theory is the great weakness of any putative “creationist” worldview. There is one practical warning to the church that must be given at this point. Christian research must be free to develop as the evidence demands. (more)
