Do We Need God To Do Science?
| February 10, 2010 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Creationism, Culture, Design inference, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Media, Philosophy, Podcasts, Religion, Science, theistic evolution |
Premier Radio, one of the UK’s leading Christian radio stations, has been featuring several interviews/debates in recent weeks on matters related to ID, some of which have been flagged here and here.
The most recent one bears the title of this post and was aired last weekend (6th Feb), in which I debated the question with the historian Thomas Dixon, who basically holds that while we may have needed God to do science, we don’t need the deity anymore. My own view is that if we mean by ‘science’ something more than simply the pursuit of instrumental knowledge, then that quest still doesn’t make much sense without the relevant (Abrahamic) theological backdrop. I continue this line of argument in a new book, due out this summer.
Here is the link to Dixon and me in action with Justin Brierley, the genial host. (Unlike some of the previous debates, which took place over the phone, Justin, Tom and I were all huddled in one room over a couple of mikes in London. Luckily we are all on friendly terms!)
44 Responses to Do We Need God To Do Science?
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Barb answers to me in 20 by stating
Given the mathematical impossibility of life beginning by chance, science would be impossible without God (or a designer).
In my opinion “Paleysian” argument for a designer is weaker than kalam’s cosmological argument, moral argument and many other arguments. If someone doesn’t believe in kalam’s cosmological argument or moral argument she won’t believe in any other argument you can present.
Sooner Emeritus,
This is perhaps way off topic, and I apologize in advance, but I had to respond to this:
“There is certainly nothing scientific in the teachings of Jesus. Furthermore, there is precious little in them that is rational.”
I’m not going to get into a discussion on religion except to point out the following:
What is irrational about “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s,”
or
“Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the Kingdom of God,”
or
“Many will come in my name and say ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many,”
or
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that whosoever believes in him will not parish but have eternal life,”
or…….. all of the parables, sermons, statements to the disciples and apostles, to the pharisees, and to other officials and acquintances, they are the sayings of a rational, yet extraordinary man. Precious little? I cannot disagree more.
The gospels are filled with the sayings of Jesus, which, while speaking of spiritual things, are highly rational. It doesn’t take a special initiation in a super spirituality to understand them, because they are rational. And this was one of the main disputes between the more orthodox believers of the 3rd Century and the Gnostics.
Furthermore, while Paul expounds on things which follow the gospel narratives, there is nothing in Paul’s writings indicating that he is in disagreement with Jesus’ teaching. Paul is in complete harmony with the teachings of Jesus.
To each his own, of course.
However, from some of the responses on this thread, it does sound very much like an unwitting returned to that which some may have sought to leave behind.
Common stock pompicity, in a new hat.
I wonder if the great apes have an issue with humility as well?
Correcttion to #34:
pompicity = pomposity.
In any case, the answer to the question “Do we need God to do science” is probably “no”.
If there is a Creator and we can believe the evidence before us, then it would seem that the Creator did not simply poof a universe into existence. We do not seem to be in a false membrane, one that does not reveal itself if we ask. It seems that there was a beginning, and an unfolding that follows. All of which, or much of which, we can know.
I am certainly no theologian, but it would seem to me that the God that I am most familiar with (living in the West) does not require us to believe in Him in order to accomplish metabolism – or whatever pursuits we might have while we enjoy it.
I believe “life” has been referred to as a gift given. Our pursuits are up to us. We would be born, live, and die all the same. We have, as I understand it, been given the responsibility of a choice in belief, not an edict.
If there is no prerequisite to believe, then it might follow that there is no prerequisite necessary to do science.
Actually, the question may not be the more practical iteration of “Do we need God to do science?”, but instead, a much more fundamental version: “What do humans seek?” or “Why do they seek it?”
Trying to cram that question into a material framework is futile. It would be saying that purely material processes can end in a phenomena that is something more than material because it requires something more than material – either a faith that God exist or a faith that He doesn’t.
Perhaps the flipside of our barter with creation is that we ultimately seek what science itself cannot answer.
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In any case, as Dr Fuller and I have discussed before, none of this has anything to do with the science of ID.
Sooner answers to me and others by basically pointing out how he think skepticism in it self is sign of maturity and belief in absolutes (i.e. Christianity) is a sign of immaturity. However I don’t know if he understands that skepticism
will necessarily and ultimately lead to abandonment of all induction and deduction and thus abandonment of all reason.
He also points out how God is a “security blanket” for believers. I can only speak for myself on this issue and I have no shame to say that it is.
It is a security blanket for:
1. Hope for a meaningful existence
2. Hope for rational reality
3. Hope that there is truth to be discovered
As far as I can see materialism or skepticism offers no hope for individuals or for the entire human race. In the end nobody would remember us and all of our invented hopes and meanings would end up into the abyss.
I think I have good inductive and deductive reasons to believe that the hope I have is not just wishful thinking but well grounded in reason.
My view is that it is spiritually pernicious to regard science as anything but pursuit of instrumental knowledge.
Sooner, you are absolutely right.
Innerbling (36):
If you were sure of yourself, you would not have to reword and misconstrue my comments. And if you were behaving rationally, you would not irrationally transform my description of how I have made my way through life and make it into a prescription for others. What I see in this is projection of the proselytizing personality onto me.
What I actually said was that reason and science do not provide knowledge of the absolute. I indicated that knowledge of the absolute is a-rational. In my personal experience, the “I can prove I’m right” approach to knowledge of God amounts was idolatry of science and reason. I believe that many of the ID-sympathetic are experiencing the same problems that I once did, and I hope that I can get at least one of them to understand, as the owner of this blog does, that science does not prove anything. (If Barry Arrington’s understanding of epistemology and its consequences for science were common in the ID movement, I would have little to say about ID.)
Thirty years ago, I often said that a thoroughgoing negation negates itself. That is not a defense of reason. I am faced with existence, and must make decisions without rational justification.
Hardly. I would appreciate it if you read more carefully. I said that the beliefs that adults programmed into me as a child were no more than a security blanket. I do believe in God the Creator, and I know that what grownups told me justified that belief was utterly inadequate. The difference between them and me was that I followed their way of reason courageously. When it took me into the abyss, I did not lapse into denial.
Why are you trying to tag me with philosophical materialism? Why do you care about being remembered?
I hope that you 1) mean, 2) reason when appropriate, and 3) explore the Kingdom of Heaven within you. Of course, unless you change and become like a little child, you will not enter into the Kingdom.
Upright BiPed:
Neither the seeming of reality nor the possibility that the seeming is illusion can be denied. In science, we make assumptions and follow through.
“Neither the seeming of reality nor the possibility that the seeming is illusion can be denied”.
Denial of possibilities is hardly an issue. If this comment says anything meaningful inside this universe, it’s surely more about torturing rational thought than rationale thought itself. Why bother to think anything at all?
“In science, we make assumptions and follow through”.
Thank you for that brilliant clarification.
I now wonder why in science we should place assumptions prior to evidence which are themselves based upon non-falsifiable non-scientific conclusions – particularily when we don’t have to.
My modest 30 years experience as a research director leads me to conclude that this is ass backwards in structure, and with little or no effort at all, it builds an echo chamber where one can quickly forget that the fondness for unneccesary assumptions is under full assault by the evidence.
“In my opinion “Paleysian” argument for a designer is weaker than kalam’s cosmological argument, moral argument and many other arguments. If someone doesn’t believe in kalam’s cosmological argument or moral argument she won’t believe in any other argument you present.”
If they don’t believe in the arguments, that’s fine by me. But then they have to explain why they don’t believe in them.
Behe correctly stated once that nobody had ever disproven Paley’s argument; they just ignored it in favor of undirected, mindless processes like evolution.
Response to sooner in 38 and further comments about Seversky’s earlier post.
First of all I am sorry for lumping you with the skeptics and materialists i.e. the people of “critical thinking” who criticize other peoples worldviews without providing any rational justification for their own.
For this “critical thinking crowd” it’s trendy to make blanket statements like this: “…clinging to a belief in their God with a grip that no force in the Universe can break in spite of there being no evidence for it at all” with a closer look if Seversky is speaking about truth value of God’s existence the sentence translates approximately to “there is no evidence for rationality why do these people still cling to it?”.
It seemed to me that you agreed with that statement but apparently I was wrong and you agreed with second meaning which is:
Truth value of someones idea of God.
I do as well agree with the second meaning in a sense that the idea of a god that we hold in in our minds is at best approximation of who God truly is.
Its indeed foolish to cling to an idea of a god because it usually as was/is in my case is something of abomination of God.
In our lifetime we can perhaps get closer approximations but they only remain as approximations.
If I would however stop believing or “clinging” in the truth value of God’s existence I would immediately end up in the bottom of abyss where no rationality is possible.
I have some problems with your concept of arational sentences, words or things and find the idea to be quite meaningless. Perhaps you could clarify the meaning of arational sentence?
Let me illustrate my problem with arational things. In my worldview the sentence “I love you” is rational wherein in materialism it is irrational.
That is because we can assign truth value to each word and see if they are consistent with each worldview. In materialistic worldview “I love you” should be something like “self-replicators chemical reaction caused by sensory perception” or perhaps a mathematical equation which shows how matter is moving in the brain. Meaning that the truth value of the word “love” in materialism is false i.e. love doesn’t exists. For each sentence and parable in the Bible I can assign a truth value which is dependent on my worldview so for me there is really no need to take arational stance.
But lovely valentine or chemical reactions.
Barb answers to me in 41:
If they don’t believe in the arguments, that’s fine by me. But then they have to explain why they don’t believe in them.
If I was a materialist I could always say that the reality is irrational and inherently incoherent which is basically what some atheist are saying when they are backed into a corner in a debate and have to say for example how things got started in a finite universe. More specifically statement “reality came from nothing caused by nothing.” is appeal to irrational reality.
Barb @ 41
If Behe did state something like that then he really should have known better.
The burden of proof requires that whovever makes a claim, if they want to persuade an audience that it is true, should provide the arguments and evidence to support it. In other words, in Paley’s case, it was his responsibility to provide evidence not for opponents to try and disprove it. This parallels the situation in the criminal courts where it is for the prosecution to prove their case. The defendant does not have to say or do anything if he or she so chooses since their innocence is the initial presumption.
In fact, as Richard Dawkins concedes in The Blind Watchmaker, the case argued by William Paley in his Natural Theology was so persuasive that it was almost the default position at that time. It was not until Darwin published his theory in 1859 that an even more persuasive and intellectually-satisfying alternative became available.
Darwin’s work and that of all the other scientists before and since have revealed a Universe of unimaginable size and complexity. So far, science has been able to construct coherent naturalistic explanations of at least some of what we observe without having to invoke the concept of a god. And the rationality of those explanations stands regardless of whether or not there is a theory of origins.
The fact is no one has a satisfactory theory of origins. There are no physical theories which describe what happened at the moment of the Big Bang or what initiated it. But simply saying “God did it” doesn’t tell us any more. We seemed to be faced with either accepting an infinite regress of the chain of cause and effect or with arbitrarily cutting it short by fiat, by saying that at this point there is the uncaused first cause or God. Neither answer is particularly satisfying although, as an atheistic materialist, I have to concede that there is no reason to expect that the Universe would be arranged for my personal convenience.