In response to the evolution discussion board

I will be the first to defend the fact that natural selection could be a means by which God distinguished species from one another. I little sympathy for those who believe that the biblical account is a sufficient explanation and excludes any other explanation.

Scientists refuse (and possibly rightfully so) to allow the biblical account to be sufficient to them as an explanation – they want to know more details and understand more deeply the events and the reason behind the world around them. However, it is presumptuous for them to then claim that their discoveries must be a sufficient explanation of life. That is my primary complaint against the natural sciences – the belief that the universe can be sufficiently explained by matter governed by scientific law. If that is all we need to know about an event in order to explain it, then any divine or teleological explanation becomes unnecessary and redundant. Yes, evolution does not forbid us from believing in God – it just makes it unnecessary to do so. Evolutionists can make the same claim that Laplace did when he presented his treatise on Calculus to Napoleon. Napoleon asked Laplace why there was no mention of God in the entire treatise. Laplace replied, “Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.” That is, the mathematical account was sufficient, without divine intervention. God became the “God of the gaps” – a crutch to rely on whenever we don’t fully understand something.

That is a fine claim to make, as long as you don’t criticize biblical adherents for claiming that they do not need evolution because the biblical account is sufficient. It is interesting that people believe that while religion can never be considered sufficient, science can. I do not believe that religion and science are mutually exclusive. But at the same time, they cannot be mutually independent of each other either. I argue with the whole dichotomy of science v. religion in the first place, because I argue against the very philosophical foundations of modern science. I do not believe that an understanding of scientific laws is all we need to predict and understand the events in the world around us. They may be important, but not sufficient.

I find it particularly amusing that people cling to evolution because it provides an account that even non-religious people can believe in. It is almost as if they are subjecting scientific inquiry to a constitutional requirement that “no scientific theory will establish one moral or religious belief in preference to another.” Truth isn’t a civil rights issue – we aren’t required to only propose scientific claims that someone of any religious persuasion can believe in.

Science assumes that “there exists a physical world separate and distinct from our minds which is comprehensible through our senses and which is governed by certain generalities called the ‘laws of nature’ … [All] events in the universe have natural causes which always precede them in time and that can be explained rationally in terms of the laws of nature … [And these] laws of nature are the same everywhere in the universe … [and] have remained the same through time.” This I got from a physical science textbook published by BYU. These assumptions are very useful in the realms of physics and biology. I am not going to say that they are wrong, but that we shouldn’t claim them to be absolute or irrefutable.

The idea that all matter comports itself deterministically to mathematical laws excludes the idea of agency. Agency is the idea that there is something in us that can transcend a deterministic framework – that whatever we do, there exists the possibility that we could have done otherwise. Determinism is the idea that whatever happens, happens inevitably, resulting from the unchangeable natural laws. Thus, things happen of their “own accord, automatically,” regardless of any human or divine action. Thus, what we claim about the external world inevitably reflects and influences what believe about ourselves and God, since we exist in a physical setting and interact with the physical world on a daily basis.

Someone could say that they believe that matter follows inevitably certain mathematical principles, and that it doesn’t prevent them from believing that we are moral agents and act of our own accord in a physical environment. That is a very popular and fairly justified philosophical opinion akin to Cartesian dualism – that there are two different kinds of things in the universe, which have very different characteristics and operate under different sets of rules – matter which is governed by mathematical laws, and sentient, agentic beings that are governed by whatever moral or psychological laws that governs them. I actually have my own arguments against Cartesian dualism, including critiques of the mind-body problem, but I don’t want to dilate on the issue. I will say that if you make the claim that scientific principles are deterministic you are taking a philosophical stance.

And most important and relevant to your question Elizabeth, whatever claim we make about the natural world entails certain implications about ourselves and God, whether we are of an entirely different character than the material world, whether we have agency, whether God can actually interfere in the events of the natural world or is bound by certain mathematical certainties, etc. In fact, the issue extends into the moral realm as well, because if everything we do is the result of genetic or environmental factors, or if all our thoughts can be reduced to neurological and physiological phenomena, then how can we be held responsible for our actions? If our society is merely the result of an evolutionary history, then are laws and morals binding or merely social contracts and human inventions? Does the god we believe in really exist, or was it an evolutionary advantage to believe in a supreme being? These are just a few of the moral and religious questions related to science.

Ernest Mach believed Science could be stripped of all philosophical and theoretical baggage by making it a purely descriptive discipline. No theoretical or speculative claims, but a careful description of the world around us. This would limit science to a collection of factual occurrences. From this perspective, scientists could believe they have unencumbered themselves of philosophy. However, the moment they try to speculate about an underlying order behind their observations, or to predict future events based upon their observations, they enter the realm of philosophy.

Einstein himself disliked the idea of science being a purely descriptive discipline. He asked, “How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?” Einstein developed his theory of Relativity through a rational epistemology – it wasn’t until years later that his theory was confirmed through observation. His science was based upon a different philosophical groundwork, and he recognized that and capitalized on it. He would agree more than anyone that science is inextricably connected to philosophy, if it isn’t philosophy itself.

The most popular trend in science today is the philosophy of logical positivism – we observe the world in order to speculate and understand the rational order that governs it. It is a kind of blend of empiricism and rationalism. Modern science is logical positivism, are particular brand of philosophy. Karl Popper’s falsification theory of science hasn’t been accepted at large by the scientific community, and has problems of its own as well. Thomas Kuhn was a famous physicist who proposed a fascinating theory scientific advancement is the replacement of one philosophical tradition with another (this is a very much over-simplified version of his idea).

No philosophy professor or psychology professor would agree that science can be unencumbered of philosophy. The claim itself presumes that philosophy is purely speculative and somehow less reliable than the claims of scientific experience. Philosophy, however, isn’t that way. Any time we make a claim of truth, or an observation about the world around us, we are using some kind of philosophical assumption. That is a primary complaint that many professors in the psychology or philosophy departments have against the natural sciences: biologists and physicists dismiss any brand of thought outside their particular philosophical framework as “philosophical” and therefore “speculative”, while ignoring or forgetting their own philosophical groundings. I am a physics minor, and every day in physics class I hear claims of an entirely philosophical character, regarding the nature of scientific law, the characteristics of matter, the fundamental constituents of the universe, etc.