It is no big secret that opposition to evolutionary theory is primarily religious in nature. The willingness of the general public to understand evolution is largely dependent on whether or not they can stomach the apparent conflict between evolutionary theory and their religious beliefs. I think there are effective arguments that can be made reconciling Christianity with evolution in particular (I’ll lay out my own at some point), but NOT between religion and science in general. Unfortunately, individuals and organizations attempting to reconcile evolution with religion often so by presenting what I think is a fairly misleading view of the purpose, scope, and methodology of science.
One common argument is that science cannot deal with the “supernatural,” as the latter is “outside” of the proper realm of science. In his 1999 book, “Finding Darwin’s God”, Kenneth Miller (p. 194) claims that “by definition, a god is a nonmaterial being who transcends nature…” Therefore science, which deals with the natural world, is incapable of commenting on Him/Her/It.
Whose definition is this exactly? If I am not mistaken, neither the Bible nor the Qur’an ever specifies that God operates outside the laws of nature. Why would they? The people who wrote them didn’t know anything about science, so why would it occur to them to specify whether or not God worked outside of natural laws? Personally, it would make more sense to me that if the universe operates on physical laws that the creator and ruler of the universe would operate on the same principles, so this seems like it ought to be the default assumption.
If the two most widely read (or at least, widely paid lip service to) holy books in the world do not specify that God operates beyond the realm of nature and science, where does this idea come from? Where does the idea that ANYTHING operates outside the laws of science and nature come from? Who exactly decided that "nature", rather than encompassing everything, has some arbitrarily chosen boundary somewhere and that there is stuff on the other side?
This is an important question. If, as a scientist, I am supposed to accept the claim that the “supernatural” exists outside the realm of science, than I need some way of determining whether or not something is supernatural or not so that I can be a good scientist and not ask questions about it.
The creationist response is that if a naturalistic explanation doesn’t yet exist, than we can assume that something (for example, the functional complexity of living organisms) is supernatural. This is why they mostly devote their energies to trying to disprove evolution rather than figuring out a way to prove the existence of God. If evolution fails, the “supernatural” wins by default. Of course, a quick look back over the history of science shows that this is not a safe approach to the unknown, given that, in Tim Minchin's words, "every mystery ever solved has turned out to be...not magic."
It seems clear that the only way of determining if something is supernatural, and therefore outside the purview of science, is if someone who doesn’t want science asking uncomfortable questions SAYS it is...and if they do, otherwise rational and clear-thinking folks just have to accept thier judgement and pretend they do not see the Emperor's tiny penis.
Holy shit, can you actually DO that?! Think of the possibilities…
I’ve always thought three plus three equals seven. The thought comforts me and provides hope against the icy embrace of death. People told me it was impossible, but now I understand; my equation does not fall within the realm of mathematics. It is supermathematical.
“Three plus three does not equal seven” says a mathematician to me.
“No no, you don’t understand.” I explain. “This is a supermathematical equation. It falls in the infinity plus one range.”
“There is no number greater than infinity.” Says the mathematician. “There is therefore no such thing as ‘infinity plus one.’”
“You’re just close-minded.” I say with a smirk. I sure showed him.
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It's no Christian invention, of course, but the idea of a dualistic world - as opposed to a monistic world - has at some point been canonized by the abrahamitic religions.
Meaning that there is this (physical) world/ nature and there is something beyond/ the netherworld with heaven and hell, with supernatural beings such as angels and demons fighting, and also the human souls.
And god, if he is choosing to intervene can influence people via their souls or also acting directly on this world, producing a miracle.
For the scientist this brings some problems, e.g. causality is not universal, and there is the question of how to recognize the influence of phenomena which are supernatural.
In fact he cannot: A miracle is for a scientist nothing he can prove or disprove or even recognize, it is per definition transcending his methods. For any bizarre phenomen, even if it is supernatural, he can only try to find an explanation from nature (for him every natural explanation, even farfetched, would be more likely than a supernatural one).
Perhaps that's why it can be distressing for a scientist to be religious: He has to hope that god has created the world perfectly enough, so he is not forced to intervene too often, otherwise he would possibly produce one (unprovably) wrong result after another. And, of course, the world view he could get from his science praxis would always stay ruefully incomplete.
This doesn't answer the most important question though. Ever if we accept that this "dualistic" world exists, how does a scientist DETERMINE wether a particular thing is supernatural or not? Who makes this determination? When someone says that something, whether God, or a purported miracle, is "supernatural" (i.e. operating outside known natural laws), how is this decided? Again, this seems to be an arbitrary decision made by a human being which scientists are supposed to just accept and allow to guide thier inquiries, and I see that as deeply problematic.
To put it another way, I've never questioned God, because I've never heard God make any claims about his existence. As with any question about reality, we are evaluating the opinion of a fallible human being who BELIEVES in God, or something else "supernatural"...I am questioning THEM.
So, to return the important question, what is the fallible human being purporting that some particular thing is operating outside the laws iof physics, thermodynamics, or whatever, basing this claim? And why are scientists supposed to pay lip service to it?
LNJ
The problem is that to (many) human beings it is not sufficient to know, that the functioning of the world is well explained, if it lacks meaning. A standard reaction to this kind of metaphysical desire is the construction of a netherworld and the idea of supernatural beings.
On the other hand in (serious) science there is an a priori decision not to consider supernaturalistic explanations or else claims that are not provable - but why should scientific knowledge be regarded as true outside the discourse of science / from a non-scientist point of view, if the findings of science cannot answer my most pressing questions (sense, meaning of the world).
There is not much the scientist can do but announce the failure of sharing a common world view. There are constructions:
God could be somewhere beyond time and space (but has no influence on the world).
Phenomena not yet explained by science could be god-made (until they can be explained by science; god as a god of gaps).
Everytime god is intervening he camouflages it so that causality appears to be untouched.
All this either undermines the self-concept of science or else is not sufficient for someone searching for a deeper meaning.
I thought I'd give you my take on things, as both a Geologist, with a VP background, and a devout Mormon.
As for supernatural... I believe that to know God, and his intentions, you have to have Faith. Faith is knowing something, without being able to see it, hear it, touch it, smell it, or taste it. That can make a scientific inquiry, and experimentation a little difficult.
As far as any conflict between science, and religion, there isn't any. When I was growing up (as a Mormon) I had people at church telling me that evolution didn't happen, and that the Earth was only 6000 years old. Only when I was older, did I find out that many scientist, including a geologist, had made it very high up into the leadership of our church. They had something very different to say, from what I had heard before.
Basically they said that God, is a God of Science. He absolutely follows the laws of science and nature. All truth comes from God, whether it comes from scripture or from science. So, as a result I have made the following conclusion, which works for me. If any one sees a conflict between religion and science, they either do not understand the science, or they do not understand God.
JJB
As the laws of nature are only derived from the dealing with/ study of nature, nothing can be said about their validity in supernature. If god follows the laws of nature this implicitely means he is part of nature (and this would lower his divinity/ question that really he is god), otherwise the claim would be either wrong or meaningless.
Science is merely a program in order to explore nature. It works, so far, without considering god (but with religion aas concept in social science).
The question was whether people doing science seriously and thinking thoroughly about the consequences of their doing are disposed to believe in god.
I was arguing no, because there is no place to keep god without having him as a source of pushing scientific explanations to the point of absurdity.
If my experiment shows that parameter x depends on parameter y this may not have a natural cause - believing that there can be such I must always fear supernatural intervention, making my experiment pointless. Supernaturalism leads to a dead end in scientific thinking.
Michael: I would agree with your comment that "supernaturalism is a dead end in science," since I think the term "supernatural" is nothing but an ad hoc term applied towards something we either don't understand, or that someone doesn't want science asking questions about. However, I would disagree with your statement that if God operated within nature this would "lower his divinity/question that he really is God." Again, this is only true if one's particular view of God requires that it be "supernatural," something not supported by the Bible.
Jeremiah: When you say that someone who sees a conflict between science and religion either "doesn't understand science, or doesn't understand God," whose concept of God are you basing this statement on? Just yours? If faith is, as you say, a matter of knowing something without any sensory input, how do you know that your understanding of God is more correct that a creationist or a suicide bomber? Creationists and bombers are also believers, and they are also basing thier concept of God on a feeling not supported by any compelling evidence. Is thier feeling less strong than yours? I doubt it, especially for someone willing to die for thier particular idea of what God wants. So how do you know that you understand God better than they do? What answer could you give that they could not give with just as much justification?
As far as science is concerned, the entire scientific enterprise works on the precept that people are not consistently good at feeling thier way to the truth. The reason why hypotheses have to be tested, and why we need peer review, is because a feeling about what is true has to be backed up by evidence and indepedent review. There are certainly plenty of scientists out there who have strong feelings about thier ideas, but who have been dismissed by the scientific community base don thier inability to support thier ideas with evidence or compelling reasoning. I think that if we accept that science works, than we have to face that faith is an unreliable way to find the truth.
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