Must Science and Religion Conflict?<\/p>\n
Please be patient as I clarify the question. (I have learned the hard way, mostly through blogging, that terms mean different things to different people and I cannot assume a universal, let alone uniform, meaning of any word.) Must modern science and Christian theism be viewed as enemies?<\/em><\/p>\n Now, why the question? It\u2019s really a very old question and has been very much discussed at least since the days of Galileo. Perhaps one pinnacle of the debate about the question was Andrew D. White\u2019s two volume work A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom<\/em> (1896). White presented a narrative of never-ending conflict between especially the physical sciences and organized Christianity.<\/p>\n Many intelligent and educated modern Christians appeal to something like Galileo\u2019s solution to ending the conflict by appealing to his main points in his famous \u201cLetter to the Grand Duchess Christina\u201d (1615). There Galileo explained to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany that scientific observation and experimentation trumps doctrine and official church teaching in matters of cosmology\u2014the study of the physical universe and its workings. Ultimately, Galileo\u2019s point was that when conflict arises between them, and the results of scientific investigation are sound and settled, theologians and church officials must reinterpret the Bible and church teaching to fit with it. This was perhaps the first major assertion of the autonomy of modern science from \u201cChristendom\u201d (to use White\u2019s word).<\/p>\n This has become relatively settled opinion among intelligent, educated modern Christians on both sides\u2014the physical (and one might add the human) sciences (what the Germans call Wissenschaft) and theology. Jumping ahead many years from Galileo into the twentieth century, Swiss theologian Emil Brunner argued in Philosophy of Religion from the Standpoint of Protestant Theology<\/em> (1927) that there can be no real conflict between Christian theology and any proven scientific claim. Surely he had in mind the solution offered by Galileo.<\/p>\n *Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the \u201cNote to commenters\u201d at its end.*<\/em><\/p>\n In 1954 evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm, who had a degree in science, published his anti-fundamentalist polemic The Christian View of Science and Scripture<\/em> where he argued along the same lines as Galileo and Brunner\u2014that Christian theology and Bible interpretation must be adjusted to fit the \u201cmaterial facts\u201d of science\u2014but only when they are proven beyond a reasonable doubt. For him, modern science had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is millions of years old and was not created in six days of twenty-four hours each in 4004 B.C. as Irish bishop James Ussher asserted in the 17th<\/sup> century. Ramm argued against the typical fundamentalist model of conflict between modern science and Christianity while stopping short of embracing everything modern scientists claim to have proven.<\/p>\n Ramm\u2019s book, now widely forgotten but still very influential, marked a turning point in the separation between American fundamentalism and American evangelicalism. So-called \u201cmainline Protestants,\u201d and to a lesser degree the Roman Catholic Church, had already taken Ramm\u2019s route to ending the conflict. Ramm\u2019s polemic was significant in going against what he saw, anyway, as fundamentalism\u2019s obscurantism with regard to the settled \u201cmaterial facts\u201d of science. Ramm was following Galileo\u2019s strategy laid out in his Letter<\/em> centuries earlier. Ramm\u2019s view of the matter was largely embraced by the so-called \u201cneo-evangelicals\u201d who wanted to distinguish themselves from fundamentalism. (Around the same time Fuller Theological Seminary president E. J. Carnell called fundamentalism \u201corthodoxy gone cultic.\u201d)<\/p>\n Ramm argued that modern science has proven Ussher wrong about the age of creation, but he prudently stopped short of endorsing even theistic evolution. That would have been going too far for many neo-evangelicals in the 1950s. He embraced and proposed what came to be called \u201cProgressive Creationism\u201d as a settlement between modern evolutionary theories and conservative Christian theology. This became the standard (not universal) view in many, perhaps most, neo-evangelical colleges and universities in America for decades.<\/p>\n So what was happening outside of fundamentalism, which was generally speaking hostile to modern science, even omitting any study of it from their Bible colleges, and outside of neo-evangelicalism\u2014among so-called \u201cmainline Protestants\u201d in America? Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a tendency developed within mainline Protestantism in Europe and America to redefine Christianity<\/em>, the \u201cessence of Christianity,\u201d to make it impossible for it to conflict with modern science. Is that what Galileo intended? It\u2019s difficult to say. Perhaps.<\/p>\n How did this take place? Beginning especially with nineteenth century German liberal Protestant theologians Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl influenced modern mainline Protestantism to reduce Christianity either to spirituality without cosmology<\/em> or ethics without metaphysics<\/em>. (In the end, those \u201cwithouts\u201d end up being virtually the same.) To a very large extent, mainline American Protestantism still interprets Christianity and theology in such a way that there can in principle be no conflict between them and modern science. The two exist in water-tight compartments. Nothing the physical sciences can prove can conflict with theology because, as Galileo intimated theology is not at all about how the heavens go but only about how to go to heaven<\/em>. Of course, many mainline Protestant theologians don\u2019t take the part about \u201chow to go to heaven\u201d literally; what they mean by the maxim is that Christian theology is about how to live a good life here and now. For most of them, \u201cgoing to heaven\u201d is guaranteed for everyone (universalism).<\/p>\n Now to introduce a bit of autobiography into these musings. When I was in high school many years ago (1960s) I too two classes in biology. One was taught by an agnostic (who happened to be Baptist) and the other one was taught by an evangelical Christian (who happened to be Reformed). The agnostic instructor tended to interpret religion and science as entirely separate\u2014they cannot conflict because they are about entirely different things. For him, the Bible has nothing at all, whatever, to do with cosmology or science; it is only about living a good life (ethics and perhaps spirituality). He became quite hostile towards me when I dared to ask him whether \u201cnatural selection\u201d adequately and completely explained the emergence of consciousness and conscience. He refused to discuss the implications of natural selection, which he taught as proven fact and the scientifically settled explanation for human existence, for Christianity. Outside of class I asked him about the Christian doctrine of the imago dei<\/em> and how he reconciled that with his belief in natural selection. He refused to discuss it. Basically, I detected, he took a \u201ctwo truths\u201d approach to these matters. In church he believed one thing while in class he taught something that contradicted that. I still am not sure he ever thought deeply about the conflict.<\/p>\n The other biology teacher taught us that nothing proven in modern biology contradicts basic Christian doctrines such as the imago dei<\/em> in humans. He very carefully taught us a version of theistic evolution\u2014that God guided and directed biological evolution so that human life emerged as a species especially and even supernaturally gifted with abilities other species do not have. When I pressed him a bit on the matter he admitted that, at some point in the evolutionary process, God intervened in a way beyond science\u2019s ability to explain without appealing to a creator being. So I concluded that he was attempting to reconcile \u201cprogressive creationism\u201d with \u201ctheistic evolution\u201d and stood somewhere between them. But at least he was not separating Christianity into a water-tight compartment without any metaphysics, ontology or cosmology.<\/p>\n Today, in the first decades of the twenty-first century, the conversation goes on\u2014mostly among relatively conservative Christian theologians, scientists and philosophers. To my way of thinking, anyway, the most important, ground-breaking turn in the conversation comes from Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga who strenuously argued in Where the Conflict Really Lies<\/em> (2011) that evolution itself, when fully understood, undermines (or even contradicts) naturalism<\/u>. <\/em>In other words, for Plantinga, generally considered an evangelical Christian, theistic evolution is true (a big adjustment to traditional Christian beliefs about the creation especially of human beings) but logically incompatible with naturalism<\/em> which is often smuggled into the teaching of evolution by secular (and even some religious) scientists. (I won\u2019t even attempt to summarize his argument here; it is somewhat subtle and complicated and I have explained it here before\u2014as best I can.)<\/p>\n Today the conversation, even debate, about modern science and religion within relatively conservative Protestant circles, tends to focus on the distinction<\/em> between science, as a method, and naturalism as a philosophy. Plantinga rightly argues, in my estimation, that the only real conflict between Christianity and modern science lies in modern scientists\u2019 tendency to adopt naturalism as a metaphysical philosophy about reality (viz., nature is all there is). The problem is that naturalism is not provable by scientific methods. And yet, in many public schools and even many religiously founded colleges and universities, the two\u2014\u201cscience\u201d and \u201cnaturalism\u201d\u2014are taught as inseparable. In other words, an unproveable philosophy is subtly smuggled into the teaching of science such that students are brainwashed to believe that being modernly scientific requires embrace of naturalism. It does not. In fact, I agree with Plantinga that there is a fundamental conflict between them. Naturalism, correctly understood and applied, undermines science itself.<\/p>\n A major problem from the \u201cother side\u201d\u2014conservative Protestantism\u2014is the rise of fundamentalism, especially in America, which tends almost always to be hostile to modern science. There is no reason to be except<\/em> when science is based on naturalism\u2014which it does not have to be. Yes, to be sure, \u201cmethodological naturalism\u201d is essential to modern science in the laboratory and in the fields of research<\/em>. However, metaphysical naturalism is not necessary to methodological naturalism.<\/p>\n The answer to the question that forms the title of this essay is \u201cno.\u201d Science and religion must only conflict when they transgress their boundaries\u2014which is not to say they must exist in water-tight, separate compartments with religion having nothing to say about cosmology and science having nothing to say about spirituality. Stripped of unnecessary, even alien, influences, science and religion, even conservative Christianity, can be harmonized and can even learn from each other. The term for this process might be \u201ccritical correlation.\u201d It is a constructive and integrative conversation between non-naturalistic scientists (or at least scientists who do not confuse naturalism [except methodological naturalism] with their scientific endeavors and conclusions) and Christian theists who are open to adjusting traditional Christian beliefs in the light of \u201cmaterial facts\u201d of science. A major problem is that this conversation is relatively rare today.<\/p>\n *Note to commenters:<\/em> This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment solely to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives\/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and \u201con topic.\u201d Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger\u2019s (or guest writers\u2019) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Must Science and Religion Conflict? Please be patient as I clarify the question. (I have learned the hard way, mostly through blogging, that terms mean different things to different people and I cannot assume a universal, let alone uniform, meaning of any word.) Must modern science and Christian theism be viewed as enemies? 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