Science, as I noted earlier, is the search for natural causes for natural phenomena. That's it. As a way to understand the natural world, and improve the quality of our lives, it has been extraordinarily successful. It has also confirmed beyond all doubt both the great antiquity of the Earth, and the evolutionary origin of life. As special creationism has been comprehensively demolished as a coherent scientific explanation of origins, it is hardly surprising that YECs, desperate to salvage their dogma, have tried to deny the legitimacy of science by criticising it for excluding supernatural causes. That science a priori is simply incapable of commenting on the the supernatural means that such criticisms not only are ridiculous, but betray a complete and fundamental ignorance of the basics of scientific epistemology.
Christadelphian science denialist and young earth creationist Bernard Burt provides an example of how fundamentalists misinterpret both science and the Bible by asserting:
You say “Science by definition is the study of natural explanations of natural phenomena”. Of course it is! Science has ruled out Divine Creation and continuous Divine involvement with that creation, so it can ONLY seek a “natural” explanation for all things – but that is not the Bible view.
Burt makes two serious errors here. The first is his assertion that science has ruled out divine creation and continuous divine involvement with the natural world. Burt has misunderstood what the statement "science is the search for natural causes for natural phenomena" means. Science makes no comment on the supernatural as it cannot be quantified scientifically. There is simply no way to even being to speculate on the mechanism of any supernatural intervention, let alone measure it. As one of the commenters on a post made by evangelical Christian and physical anthropologist James Kidder put it:
When I do math and I don’t pray or think about God, it’s not atheistic math, it’s just math. When I drive and am not thinking about God, it’s not secular driving, it’s just driving. And when I go into the lab and I’m thinking about the lab experiment and not theological issues, its not agnostic science, it’s just science.
What Burt has done is conflate (by design or ignorance) methodological naturalism, that is, the search for natural causes for natural phenomena, with philosophical naturalism, the assumption that the supernatural does not exist and miracles a priori can never happen. Scientists do not invoke the supernatural, not because they all reject it (there are many believing scientists who accept the possibility that miracles happen), but they do not automatically postulate them to explain natural phenomena.
Burt's second error is effectively the inverse of his first, and that is to assume that references in the Bible to an interventional God rule out a priori methodological naturalism:
In Scripture, God is constantly intervening, controlling, as he works out his purpose with individuals and nations.
Embryogenesis: “…and God hearkend unto [Rachel] and opened her womb. And she conceived…” (Gen.30v22). “…and when [Boaz] went in unto [Ruth] the LORD gave her conception” (Ruth 4v13). “…and in thy book all my members were written, what days they should be fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” (Ps.139v16mg). And what about the virgin birth of Jesus?
Thunderstorm formation: “We…preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein…he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons” (Acts 14v15-17). “And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.” (Amos 4v7-8). Plus the 7 years plenty & 7 years famine in Egypt, the 3½ year drought in the time of Ahab and many more droughts / famines sent by God to teach his people that He is in control of the weather & uses it to bless & to punish. Plus the Flood: “whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Pet.3v6).
This argument is fractally wrong. There is of course the confused grasp of divine agency, in failing to differentiate between a divine command, and the secondary cause employed to effect the divine will. The phrase in Psa 148:8 "stormy wind fulfilling his word" neatly makes this point that God does make use of natural phenomena, rather than physically intervening in the natural world shepherding individual atoms to achieve a goal. The distinction between primary and secondary causes is one which not only has a long and respected tradition in Christian theology To quote physicist Howard Van Till, God has gifted the world with functional integrity. [1] In other words:
The creation was gifted from the outset with functional integrity — a wholeness of being that eliminated the need for gap-bridging interventions to compensate for formational capabilities that the Creator may have initially withheld from it" so it is "accurately described by the Robust Formational Economy Principle — an affirmation that the creation was fully equipped by God with all of the resources, potentialities, and formational capabilities that would be needed for the creaturely system to actualize every type of physical structure and every form of living organism that has appeared in the course of time. [2]This distinction between miracle and providence is one which also has a long history in our community. As Robert Roberts aptly put it in The Ways of Providence:
A first idea to be mastered in apprehending the ways of providence is the relation of the universe to God. All things are in Him, and He, though personally located in the highest heaven, is everywhere present by the Spirit, which is His substance in diffusion, so to speak. Nevertheless, God is different from His works. Creation, as organised by Him and in Him has a fixed nature, in virtue of which it has, by His appointment, an independent action, so to speak. Results ensue from certain conditions without His volition participating in the results. For example: you place a strip of paper in the candle flame: ignition follows. The ignition did not require the will of Almighty God to produce it. It resulted from conditions originally established by His will, but now having permitted independence of action. The same thing is illustrated in the million occurrences of everyday experience. It is essential to recognise it. It constitutes the platform of evidence. There could be no such conception as providence if every thing were due to direct Divine volition. (Emphasis mine)
Although Roberts did not use the terms, his argument clearly differentiates between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. The God Roberts worshipped was very much one who could intervene in the natural world, but who also created natural laws which allowed the universe to operate without constant divine meddling.
Burt asserts that "[in] Scripture, God is constantly intervening, controlling, as he works out his purpose with individuals and nations." That of course is not in doubt, but Burt's assertion makes two simple errors:
- Generalising from the specific to the general
- Ignoring that God can effect his purpose through secondary causes
In Darwin's Black Box, ID apologist and biochemist Michael Behe attempted to allay fears that any attempt to admit the supernatural as a valid scientific explanation would erode the integrity of science:
The anxiety is that if the supernatural were allowed as an explanation, then there would be no stopping it. It would be invoked frequently to explain many things that in reality have natural explanations.
Is this a reasonable fear? No one can predict the behavior of human beings, but it seems to me that the fear of the supernatural popping up everywhere in science is vastly overblown. If my graduate student came into my office and said that the angel of death killed her bacterial culture, I would be disinclined to believe her. [3]
That anxiety is well-grounded, as Burt's attack on science for 'excluding' God demonstrates. Special creationism, as many scientists point out, is the ultimate science stopper. Why search for an explanation for embryogenesis or thunderstorm formation if the answer 'God did it' is all the science we need? The incredible wealth of knowledge science has generated has come from that simple principle of looking for natural explanations for natural phenomena. It is hardly unfair to say that quoting Gen 30:22, Ruth 4:13, or Psa 139:16 did not allow us to find some of the causes (and prophylactic measures to avoid) neural tube defects, understand the genetics behind cleft lip and cleft palate, or allow us to treat the complications of pre-eclampsia. Nor does Acts 14:15-17 provide any insight into atmospheric physics enough to begin to understand thunderstorm formation or appreciate the role mesocyclones play in tornadogenesis.
Burt's statement that "God is constantly intervening and controlling" paints a picture of a God far removed from the one described by Roberts whose creation "as organised by Him and in Him has a fixed nature, in virtue of which it has, by His appointment, an independent action, so to speak. Results ensue from certain conditions without His volition participating in the results."
While Burt's examples are greatly weakened by the fact that many of them hardly represent the daily beat of life, but specific examples that deviate from the normal:
- Rachel's infertility
- The virgin birth
- Drought as punishment
- Noah's flood
the bigger threats to his argument comes from his citation of general cases such as Ruth's conception (in which no obvious example of infertility can be inferred from the text), David's meditation on the developing foetus, or Paul's exposition on how God blessed the whole earth with rain and seasons.
There is of course Burt's thinking on Divine agency means that it is possible for God to effect his will via secondary means, whose working and actions are regular, predictable, and can be divined via science. Granted this, these examples are as Roberts points out are examples of a creation which by "His appointment [has] an independent action" or as Van Till says, functional integrity which does not require a meddling, interventionist deity acting at every point in creation. The examples Burt cites therefore collapse back into the specific examples which provide zero grounds for any attempt to undermine the methodological naturalism underpinning modern science.
By far the bigger problem are the implications if God really is micromanaging creation down to the atomic level. as implies by Burt's assertion that "God is constantly intervening and controlling". Take embryogenesis. If "God is constantly intervening and controlling", then the following examples raise serious questions about the effectiveness and competence of that intervention:
Neural Tube Defects
Specific examples:
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| Meningocele |
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| Myelomeningocele |
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| Encephalocele |
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| Anencephaly |
Conclusion
Burt's attack on science betray a profound ignorance of basic scientific epistemology, as well as reflecting why mainstream science has every right to fear the intrusion of the worldview Burt espouses, which frankly is is the ultimate science-stopper. Behe's summary of those fears (to which his espousal of ID unhelpfully contributes) is spot-on:
Burt's attack on science betray a profound ignorance of basic scientific epistemology, as well as reflecting why mainstream science has every right to fear the intrusion of the worldview Burt espouses, which frankly is is the ultimate science-stopper. Behe's summary of those fears (to which his espousal of ID unhelpfully contributes) is spot-on:
The anxiety is that if the supernatural were allowed as an explanation, then there would be no stopping it. It would be invoked frequently to explain many things that in reality have natural explanations.
Mere proof-texting does not allow one to understand how the universe works. It does not allow us to understand why things go wrong. It also does not allow us the tools to help ameliorate these problems. It also ignores the fact that the interventionist view of God Burt advocates comes with considerable ethical and moral problems. It's not just the deviations from the norm as shown above which are the problems, but the quotidian aspects of life itself, such as parasitism and predation:
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."
Any micromanaging deity is also going to be responsible for creating such organisms, again with considerable implications for Christian theology. Postulating that this is the result of an 'Edenic curse' is a feeble cop-out, if only because parasitism [4] and predation [5] predate the earliest appearance of anatomically modern human beings. The only intellectually credible solution to the problem of evil, as respected evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala notes, is an evolutionary theodicy:
The human jaw is poorly designed, lions devour their prey, malaria parasites kill millions of humans every year and make 500 million sick. I do not attribute all this misery, cruelty, and destruction to the specific design of the Creator. About 20 percent of all human pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion during the first two months. That is 20 million natural abortions every year. I shudder in terror at the thought that some people of faith would implicitly attribute this calamity to the Creator’s faulty design. I rather see it as a consequence of the clumsy ways of the evolutionary process. The God of revelation and faith is a God of love and mercy, and of wisdom. [6]
The free-will defence has, as most philosophers accept, defeated the logical problem of evil, [7] though it fails to explain suffering in the natural world. An evolutionary theodicy extends the free-will defence analogically to the natural world by recognising that by granting creation functional integrity, it has the freedom to explore every possible niche. The same evolutionary process that leads to parasitism and suffering also resulted in the hominid line that led to us. By rejecting the fact of evolution, demonising science, and privileging a mindless literalism above sound exegesis, Burt has created a distorted view of YHWH which is readily demolished by the class of objections acutely raised by Attenborough.
While Genesis 1 is ancient cosmology and not modern science, its revelation that the natural world was not the haunt of warring deities, or divine in its own right but a created entity which declared the glory of its creator helped lay the intellectual foundations for modern science. If a rational deity created the universe, then it is not unreasonable to expect that it will reflect some of that rationality, and be amenable to systematic examination. Ironically, Burt's view of YHWH, one that has not gifted creation with functional integrity but constantly intervenes in nature bequeaths to us the same sort of capricious universe which the fierce demythologising polemic of Genesis 1 sought to purge.
References
1. Van Till HJ "Basil, Augustine, and the Doctrine of Creation's Functional Integrity" Science & Christian Belief (1996) 8: 21-38.
3. Behe M Darwin's Black Box (1996: Free Press) p 241
4. Poinar G "Plasmodium dominicana n. sp. (Plasmodiidae: Haemospororida) from Tertiary Dominican amber" Systematic Parasitology (2005) 61: 47–52
5. Zhang ZF et al "First record of repaired durophagous shell damages in Early Cambrian lingulate brachiopods with preserved pedicles" Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology (2011) 302:206-212
6. Ayala F Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion (2007: Joseph Henry Press) xi
7. Meister, Chad (2009). Introducing Philosophy of Religion. (2009: Routledge) p 134
5. Zhang ZF et al "First record of repaired durophagous shell damages in Early Cambrian lingulate brachiopods with preserved pedicles" Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology (2011) 302:206-212
6. Ayala F Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion (2007: Joseph Henry Press) xi
7. Meister, Chad (2009). Introducing Philosophy of Religion. (2009: Routledge) p 134
