Summary

Let us sum up our story so far.

There was a time when to question the existence of God in educated society was ludicrous. In particular, to see science as anything other than discovering the handiwork of God was not really even considered. Science was done for the glory of God, and to uncover the excellence of God’s craftsmanship. This was so obvious a statement that it was taken for granted.

Humans are perverse creatures, however, and as the intellectual history of the last few centuries shows, the more we discovered about the details of God’s excellence in creation, the more we failed to focus on the one who actually deserves the glory for these discoveries. The more impressed we become with the cleverness of “science” to uncover truth, the more we forget the cleverness of the person who actually provided the truth to uncover. William Perkins, that humble Puritan writing so many centuries ago, prophesied truly.

This did not happen as part of a simple process from theism to atheism in understanding the world. The public shift in this direction came partly from misunderstanding the Bible, and largely from the propaganda of determined atheists who capitalized on this misunderstanding and managed to sway public opinion successfully. The pragmatic decision, taken so long ago, to leave first causes out of science has seeped through to become an (unjustified) absolute.

Nonetheless, does this tell us anything other than a nice historical story? Regardless of how people came to dismiss God in favor on naturalism, maybe it was the right thing to do. Surely, these days, science has proved there is no need for God?

Science and Naturalism Today

Science today is thoroughly naturalistic. Any movements to the contrary are fervently and noisily resisted. The supernatural, we are told most firmly, has no place in science.

For practical reasons, it may make sense for scientists to talk about natural causes only, for natural causes are what they are interested in. What does not make sense is to turn this into an argument that claims that science therefore proves that natural causes are the only ones.

In fact it is almost tautological to say this. Science cannot incorporate supernatural phenomena, for whatever science can study and analyze is defined as natural. For instance, magnetism was once thought of as an occult force, but in becoming analyzable and quantifiable, in coming under the aegis of science, it came to be thought of as natural. In the nineteenth century it became very popular to try to verify the existence of spirits scientifically. People would set up scientific apparatus to try to detect changes in electricity or such things in an effort to find scientific evidence for these phenomena. If they had found such evidence, however, the thing would now be an object of scientific study. It would be part of the “real” world that science studies. It is no longer supernatural. It is just another, albeit bizarre, phenomenon of the world. If there is scientific evidence for something, then it is something in this world, and it is studied as natural.

Whatever is supernatural, if it is genuinely supernatural (i.e., beyond this world), then it is not able to be studied by the activity that studies this world. Science is unable to disprove the spiritual, for if the spiritual agency does something in this world, then the evidence for the spiritual agency is precisely the evidence for what is defined as a natural activity. Whatever science discovers is natural. This is not an argument. It is a matter of definition.

It is time, then, for us to consider what science is by definition and practice.

Part 2: What Is Science?³⁰

What constitutes a scientific explanation? What are the criteria by which we judge something to be scientific—indeed what, precisely, is science?

This becomes an important issue at these controversial points where some see science as having reached its limits. In 1997 the cosmologist Lee Smolin presented a theory of an infinite series of universes. He was criticized because his theory about the beginnings of the universe was not science but metaphysics because it was not testable. Smolin, on the other hand, insisted that it was “speculative science.”³¹

What makes a theory scientific? How do we tell?

The word “science” is not a simple one. It is used with many different meanings, and often we find meanings sliding between contexts, so a legitimate use in one context is taken illegitimately in another. For instance, “science” got us to the moon, so “science” works. “Science” gives the best answers to the deep questions of life—better than religion, which never got anyone to the moon. “Science” is what rational people should believe, not religion.

In what sense, however, did “science” get us to the moon? In this statement, the word “science” is referring to a number of things. A large group of highly-trained people who had been provided with an immense amount of money used mathematical calculations to predict where the moon would be relative to the earth at a certain time and how a spaceship should move in order to arrive there. They also used experimentally elicited information about metals (their stresses and capacities) and fuels (the propulsion they provide and the rate at which they burn) to engineer a spaceship that would survive the trip. In time, this project was successful, and the spaceship arrived at the moon as planned.

We can accept that this was a highly successful enterprise. It did what it set out to do, and we can agree that the problem was a very difficult one. The stated aim was achieved. If it was science that did this, then science worked very well.

Now what relevance does this have to accepting a scientific explanation of the universe over a religious one? When “science” is spoken of as explaining life, the universe, and everything, we are no longer talking about a particular technical triumph. By a “scientific” explanation of the universe, people mean one which does not use God as part of the explanation of how the universe, or we, came to be here. It means an explanation that is entirely naturalistic, with no sense of purpose or intelligent intention. This is a philosophical position—if you like, a metaphysical one. This meaning of “science” in “science explains the universe” is very different from the meaning of “science” in “science got us to the moon.” But we have experienced a clever slide of meaning here. The “science” that “got us to the moon” was very successful in its own terms, and this success is transferred over to the “science” that gives an explanation of the universe. But naturalistic philosophy has not displayed the kind of success that moon-going calculations did. It does not deserve the attribution of success that moon-goingness does. The kind of success that the moon project achieved is almost entirely irrelevant to a philosophy that aims to explain the universe naturalistically. It is an entirely different kind of project.

We need to be more careful about using and understanding these terms. We will try, then, to tease out some of the different ways in which “science” is understood. This has an even deeper level of complexity, for not only is the word used in different ways in common language, but ever since “science” began there has been an ongoing philosophical debate about what the definition of “science” should be. This debate has continued up to the present, as some of the traditionally accepted meanings of “science” have come under close scrutiny. We will try to interweave these two discussions by looking at the different ways in which the word “science” is understood and then at some of the debates over that particular aspect of science.