The Intersection of Philosphy, Science and Religion

The debate on the relationship between science and religion is a complex and delicate one. It is not as simple as some people want to portray here. The relationship is complex because it is a topic that cuts across many disciplines from which many people make judgments for which they are ill-equipped. The issues involved in the debate have intellectual and existential dimensions: of hearts and heads, as well as culture, the present and the future. Many atheists, agonistics, and naturalists believe with conviction that science or reason provides the only reliable path to knowledge. They see science as rational, objective, universal, and based on observable evidence. By contrast, these people view religion as subjective, emotional, and based on myths, traditions, rituals, and authorities, many of whom disagree with one another. But it is doubtful whether such a simplistic way of looking at the relationship between science and religion is entitled to the status of intellectual respectability. Such a simplistic and naïve way of looking at the relationship between science and religion lacks intellectual respect because such views should be based on philosophical assumptions. This means that any intellectual discussion of the relationship between science and religion should stem from three sources: science, theology, and philosophy. To deal with this issue, one must possess a great deal of knowledge of science, and have a penetrating grasp of the relevant theological and philosophical understanding. It is for this reason that it is not worthwhile for any Christian intellectual to engage those copying and pasting materials from evilbible.com and other atheist websites. First, the fact that these people are reproducing other people’s materials means that they themselves have probably not invested the time to school themselves in Biblical interpretation and theological scholarship. Second, the sweeping claims they make lead one to believe that they don’t possess the philosophical tools they need to conduct these debate: in one breath they claim God doesn’t exist and in another that God is a murderer. Third, the condescending, dishonest, simplistic and arrogant manner in which they have treated this issue and their attitudes towards the Christian community do not accord them any credibility to justify any debate on the issue.



It is important for these people copying and pasting Chad Docterman and other atheists’ writings from evilbible.com to stop and read the Bible for all it is worth. This will help them to acquire the theological and philosophical tools they need to engage in any healthy debate. It is irresponsible and unwise to read into any religious book something that its writers, adherents, or interpreters do not intend for it to say. While these people may have no qualm with the idea that we need people trained in the classics to help us understand the contents of ancient books like the Homeric epics (the Odyssey and Iliad), written down in 700 BC, the Oresteia by Aeschylus in 458 BC, Antigone by Sophocles in 441 BC and Medea by Euripides in 441 BC, they have problem according the same respect to religious books like the Hebrew Torah that was assembled between 1000 and 900 BC. First, let me state explicitly to both the theists and atheists that the Hebrew Torah, assembled between 1000 and 900 BC, was not meant to be a scientific book, explaining twentieth-century scientific discoveries and developments. There was no way God could have communicated to his people in antiquity using twentieth-century scientific terms or explanations. St. Augustine taught that when there appears to be a conflict between demonstrated scientific knowledge and a literal interpretation of the Bible, the Bible should be interpreted metaphorically. He argued elsewhere that Scripture is not concerned about the forms and the shape of the heavens. The primary aim of the Scripture was to point humankind to the way of salvation.



While the atheists have used the church’s condemnation of Galileo’s discovery as a case study to buttress their allegations of animosity between science and religion, Galileo himself never saw the relation between these two cultural forces in an antagonistic way. In fact, Galileo observed that God is revealed in both “the book of nature” and the “book of scriptures”; he argued that the two books couldn’t conflict because they both originated from God. The Galileo affair often presented as a simple conflict between religion and science, but it was more complex and involved intellectual, philosophical, political, social, and personal clashes. It must be noted that while Scripture is not a scientific book, it is not anti-science. Reason is a God-given power, granted to all humans, that allows us to gain knowledge about ourselves, God, our world, logic and mathematics, as well as right and wrong. Reason is the chief characteristic of nature or God’s image in us, and if we appreciate reason, then we should appreciate the contemporary science which is an impressive manifestation of reason (a gift from God).



It is irresponsible and dishonest for the atheists who come to this forum to set up a straw man and knock it down. I read with dismay and disgust the way the atheists have dishonestly been taking the Scriptures out of context in order to discredit the Bible. The Bible is made up of sixty-six books, each part of a unique genre, that need to be read and interpreted within the context of those genres. Yet the atheists, in their rush to discredit the Bible, have abandoned reason and allowed their prejudice to lead them. How would a normal person interpret the idiomatic expression “It is raining cats and dogs”? This does not mean that cats and dogs are falling out of the sky. No rational person would ask the speaker to show him or her the cats and dogs from the sky. A normal person would take the expression to mean it is raining heavily.



Or take the weatherman who uses the expressions sunrise and sunset. This is not a scientifically accurate statement, yet no one questions the meteorologist because we understand the context in which he speaks. Or take the phrase “the throne of God.” Does that mean that God, as a non-corporeal being, sits on a physical throne? No! Common sense tells us that non-corporeal entities do not use corporeal things. The expression “the throne of God” is a way of talking about the kingship or lordship of God. Yet the atheists like Chad Docterman, whose writings are being posted here daily, will not adopt this common-sense interpretation of the Scriptures, but will see statements like these and the non-physicality of God as contradictions. The naturalistic atheists make two assumptions when dealing with the theist. First, they assume that scientific investigation is the only reliable route to knowledge, and second, they assume that matter is the fundamental reality in the world. While the first assumption is an epistemological claim, the second one is an ontological or metaphysical one. These two claims or assumptions presuppose that the entities and causes that science deals with are the only real ones in the world. The corollary is that religious beliefs are untenable because they lack observable data. Some positivists assert that scientific discourse provides the norm for all meaningful language. But it must be pointed out that not many great scientists or philosophers of science believe in such claims; almost all accept the limitations of human reason or science. Even Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who deified reason, could not make such claims, but rather divided philosophical investigations into noumenal and phenomenal realms, one dealing with the physical ream and the other with the unseen realm.



Great scientists like Niels Bohr have shared Kant’s skepticism about the possibility of knowing the world in itself. Kant, whose philosophical ideas are considered a watershed in Western thought, based all human hope on reason alone. Yet Kant claimed that our reason is limited in its scope, and that we can explore our true humanity only when we consider certain fundamental metaphysical questions, even though we may not get the answers to these questions. If reason or science is our indispensable tool for human inquiry, but Kant claims that it will fail us, then how could knowledge of ultimate matters be possible? What could possibly serve as our human hope? By what means can claims about human extraordinariness be sustained and explained? These are philosophical questions that naturalism can’t help us to deal with.



Great scientists and philosophers have welcomed the greater epistemological caution and humility that physics encourages. There are certain implications of recent developments in physics that appear to be questionable: the involvement of the observer in both quantum physics and relativity has often been cited as evidence of the central role of the mind. The idea that there is nothing beyond the physical arose out of the Enlightenment. In the axial age, almost all philosophers agreed that there was something beyond the physical world. They believed that though we are in this world, we are not altogether of this world. Recent concepts such as natural kinds, bridge laws, Hume’s fork, the covering-law model, the hypothetico-dedutctive model, and inferences to the best explanation have allowed us to take apart scientific arguments and examine their inner workings. Now logical positivism is riddled with serious problems, because it is difficult to secure the logical foundations of science, a subject that seems unassailably logical. Karl Popper, W.V. Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Imre Lakatos, Carl Hempel, and Nelson Goodman have all provided solid intellectual perspectives on this issue.



In closing, let me say that the relationship between science and religion is one of those areas where fools rush in and angels fear to tread. We all need to be intellectually humble in our approach to such complex and delicate issues, for there are no neat philosophical answers to this dilemma. We need to deal with this question with gentleness and respect because none of us have all the answers to the human dilemma. I believe the religious people should also enjoy certain epistemic status based on rational arguments without resorting to observable public data. Why can’t cogent, rational argument be used based on perception, memory, intuition, testimony, and the like? How far does the scientific method go? Are there certain human domains that scientific methods are not competent to deal with? Or is science more competent to deal with some things than others? These and other questions are complex issues that need to be approached with wisdom and reflection.



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