Transcription
The belief that science, or natural science, is the only way to discover true knowledge is scientism. When, in 1935, Bertrand Russell wrote as follows: "Whatever knowledge is attainable must be obtained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover mankind cannot know." That explicit declaration of scientism was a ghastly mistake.
What I mean by science is natural science. The sorts of things that are discovered by physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and so on. That might seem obvious, but I want to avoid the confusion that arises because the unqualified word "science" now means something different from the Latin word *scientia* from which it is derived. Today, when questions of religion and science come up, natural science is the main topic, and I mean natural science by science.
There are certain characteristics and strategies which science adopts for obtaining its knowledge. They are the basis of its success, and I identify those strategies as a reliance upon reproducibility—that different people can get the same results from repeated experiments or observations—and an insistence upon descriptive clarity, so that the results of an experiment, even if not its interpretation, are expressed in unambiguous ways that all scientists can agree upon and understand.
Now, the belief that science, or natural science, is the only, or at least the preeminent, way to discover true knowledge is scientism. Its influence has led many disciplines that don't actually lend themselves to the methods of the natural sciences to try in vain to turn themselves into science. But science has specific methods by which it gains its knowledge, and those methods limit its applicability. And there are other ways to gain knowledge that don't possess the characteristics on which science insists.
So, when in 1935 Bertrand Russell wrote as follows: "Whatever knowledge is attainable must be obtained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover mankind cannot know," which was from his book *Science and Religion*. That explicit declaration of scientism was a ghastly mistake.
Usually, though, scientism is not explicit like that. It's implicit. Especially in the writings of many popular anti-theists of this century. For example, Richard Dawkins writes in his book, *The God Delusion*: "Did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? Did he himself come alive again 3 days after being crucified? There is an answer to every such question, whether or not we can discover it in practice, and it is strictly a scientific answer. The methods we should use to settle the matter would be purely and entirely scientific methods."
That scientist assertion ignores the actual ways that history, or historical events, are studied. Human history really isn't like natural science. And if you maintain that it is, as Dawkins is maintaining, you end up discounting history's knowledge. Historical evidence is predominantly documentary, personal, maybe eyewitness testimony, perhaps some archaeological evidence, all gathered together, taking advantage of our general understanding of what makes people tick, of the attitudes and thinking and the background society of the time in which the events occurred.
One reason why scientism is so important in the present discussion is that the critics of belief in God are fond of saying that religion is irrational because there's no evidence for God. They really mean that there's no scientific evidence. There's plenty of historical evidence for the claims of Christianity. I'll agree that history and the truth of Christianity can't be established by the methods of natural science. But my position is that science is plainly not the only route to knowledge. If you artificially elevate science, making it into a kind of monopoly of knowledge, then you undermine religion, but you also undermine lots of other non-scientific disciplines like history and philosophy and literature and the law and architecture and music and so on.
Okay. But is there perhaps, even though the scientism I have just repudiated, I think, is clearly false, is there not, is that perhaps just a straw man? Is there perhaps an empirical approach to knowledge that applies across all valid disciplines, but which some, like religion, maybe do not follow?
Well, I agree that a great deal of what we actually know comes from our experience. But there's also lots of valid knowledge that is not empirical. Mathematics, logic, language, history, moral sense, arguably almost anything you learned from a book. And even when our knowledge is based on experience, it very often lacks the kinds of warrant and definiteness that science gains from its insistence upon reproducibility and clarity. It's just not true that the methods of the natural sciences, or extensions or generalizations of those empirical methods, are the royal route to knowledge.
Now, the anti-theists of this century usually put empiricist arguments more simply. They say something like that you can either base your beliefs on evidence or you can base them on faith in some authority. And of course, their view is, naturally enough, that their secular opinions are rational and based on evidence, while religious people are just, well, irrational faith heads.
Um, I reject that simplistic difference, that dichotomy of evidence versus faith. I will stipulate that religious beliefs of many people are founded on an adoption of what they are taught by their religious authority. That's true. And yet, it's just as true that their scientific beliefs are an adoption of the teachings of their scientific authorities. So should they then therefore reject both religion and science? No.
This supposed dichotomy between evidence and authority is, in practice, false. The motto of the Royal Society is *nullius in verba*, which means "on nobody's word." This is the Royal Society of London I'm talking about. According to their website, the motto expresses "the determination of the fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment."
Now, *nullius in verba* is a fine motto for a scientific society, and the Royal Society, of course, is a preeminent historical scientific society, but it makes no sense as a general rule for the whole of life. It's simply impossible to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment. And to say that one will do so is hopeless scientism.
So, history, as an example, is not science, mostly because it deals with unique and unrepeatable events of the past which do not display the reproducibility on which science depends. But there are other very important things in the world and in our lives that defy scientific investigation because they lack the unambiguous clarity which is the other main characteristic of science. I'm thinking of such matters as the beauty of a sunset, or whether a legal verdict is just, or whether I love my wife. There's no scientific way to prove Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon. There's no scientific way to judge the justice of a verdict. There isn't even a scientific way to detect a true thought. And yet, these sorts of things are real cognitive questions about whose answers are important. And in many cases, the answers are indisputable. Questions about God, I think, are of mostly the same type. They're not scientific.
So, the most important antidote, I think, to scientism is to give due weight to descriptions from different perspectives, or one might say, descriptions at different levels. And this is actually commonplace in science, in the natural sciences, but it needs to be advocated at all the levels of description that go beyond.
So, an illustration might be the human person. You might say that I am an assembly of electrons and quarks. Yes, it's true. I'm a mixture of a wide variety of chemical elements. True. Um, yes, I'm a wonderful system of biochemical processes guided by genetic codes. Yes. Um, I'm a vast and astoundingly complex organization of cooperating cells. Yes. I'm a mammal with hair, a little bit left, and warm blood. Yes. I am a person, a husband, a lover, a father. Yes. I am an eternal spirit beloved by God. I am a sinner saved by grace. Not one of those descriptions, I maintain, is necessarily less true than any other. Not one of them rules out the others, once we set scientism aside. I don't mean to say that they are obviously true. I just say they don't rule out each other.
So here's what I say in closing. Here's what I say about my Christian faith. What it is and why it is reasonable. It's based upon an assessment of many different types of reasons. Most of them are not scientific, but they are nevertheless logical and rational. The most important types of reasons for me are actually a combination of historical evidence and personal religious experience. And I see my Christian faith as compatible with science, but not compatible with scientism, because basically scientism is a rival religion. My faith is based in part on experience, but not on the certainty of reproducible scientific experiment. Still, that's not a reason to discount it, because like everyone else, I make small and large decisions on minimal evidence beyond personal preference and maybe impulse, every moment of my waking life.
If history is any judge, it is people who act boldly with determination and commitment, even in the face of risk and in the absence of complete information, who are successful in this world. And such people are called men and women of action. They act in accordance with a view of the world that is plausible and supported by evidence, but not proven. That is, they act on faith. And I think my religious faith is quite simply the same principle applied to matters of God and the spirit.