Science, evolution, and creationism

But P.Z. doesn't like this part of the report:

Mindful of school board battles and recent court decisions, Science, Evolution, and Creationism shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. For educators, students, teachers, community leaders, legislators, policy makers, and parents who seek to understand the basis of evolutionary science, this publication will be an essential resource. (from the description on the National Academy Press website).

Neither does Larry Moran.

P.Z. and Larry both complain about what Larry calls the fallacy of the “Doctrine of Joint Belief,” the claim that if you can find scientists, like Francisco Ayala, Ken Miller, or Francis Collins who are also religious believers, and if you can find religious leaders who accept evolution, like the late John Paul II, then religion and evolution must be compatible. Larry's right. That's not an argument for compatibility. If I happen simultaneously to believe that 2+2=4 and 3+3=5, that doesn't mean the two beliefs are compatible. One of them is clearly wrong. So to the extent that arguments for the compatibility of science and religion depend on the Doctrine of Joint Belief, they're wrong, and P.Z. and Larry are right.

Their second complaint is more fundamental. This is how Larry puts it:

The authors of Science, Evolution and Creationism repeat the silly argument that “supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science.” Why not? The only kind of supernatural beings that could never be investigated by science are those that exist entirely as figments of the imagination and have absolutely no effect on the real world as we know it. As soon as your God intervenes in the real world his actions become amenable to scientific investigation.

As I argued in an earlier post on epistemology, “ the scientific method has proven itself unequaled as a method of learning about the observable world.” I think P.Z., Larry, and I can agree on that. Where we disagree is on what follows from that.

Science works under the methodological assumption that observable phenomena have natural causes that can be revealed through observation and experiment. So to qualfy as science an hypothesis must invoke such natural causes and only such causes. That's why creationism in any of its forms isn't scientific. It's also why science can never determine whether or not a supernatural reality exists.

Suppose we drop a feather and a cannonball in a vacuum. We know from the laws of physics that they'll fall at the same rate. We learned in physics that this is because the rate of descent depends only on the force of gravitational attraction in the absence of friction But now suppose I told you that the flying spaghetti monster had made the world with precisely those empirical properties. You'd probably think I was crazy, but what kind of a scientific experiment could you do to disprove that assertion? What kind of scientific experiment could you possibly do to demonstrate that the flying spaghetti monster's continued care and intervention aren't needed for the laws of nature to continue operating the way they have in the past? After all, “He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease&rdquo (source).

My point? The question of whether science provides the only reliable knowledge about the world is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. Tied up with the answer to that question are the questions of whether all of reality is accessible to investigation by science or only some of it and whether there are methods of investigation available to explore aspects of reality that are inaccessible to science if they exist. Again philosophical questions, not scientific one.

There can't be a conflict between science and religion, because they answer different questions. At least this is true of those forms of religious belief that do not make empirical claims about observable reality. The conflict is between philosophical worldviews: a worldview in which science provides the only reliable knowledge about the world and in which all aspects of reality are accessible to its methods and a worldview in which science is only one way to gain reliable knowledge about the world and in which there are some aspects of reality that are not accessible to science and that may or may not be accessible by other means.

In short, “science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world.”

¹Short answer – No!

³Short answer – They don't. Natural selection isn't random.