I mentioned Niall Shanks in my last post. There was another thing he mentioned in his book God, the Devil, and Darwin.[1] After reading about his BZ reaction, I wanted to get an idea of his philosophy of science. It is my observation that those who are antagonistic to creationism, or more broadly, to the idea of a designer, are that way because their philosophy of science prevents them from admitting the existence of the supernatural, or at least, admitting that the supernatural has any effect on nature. Quite often, their philosophy can be used against them. Such is the case with Shanks.
When discussing the history of science and the concept of the supernatural, Shanks says the following:
Contrary to Dembski’s gross and egregious mischaracterization of methodological naturalism, it is in fact a position that respects the gathering of good scientific evidence and the consequences of such evidence for our thinking, once gathered. Methodological naturalism, as it appears in science, is based on inductive generalization derived from 300 to 400 years of scientific experience. Time and time again, scientists have considered hypotheses about occult entities ranging from souls to spirits, to occult magical powers, to astrological influences, to psychic powers, ESP, and so on. Time and time again such hypotheses have been rejected, not because of philosophical bias, but because when examined carefully there was not a shred of good evidence to support them. Scientists are allowed, like anyone else, to learn from experience. Hard-won experience in the school of empirical hard knocks lead to methodological naturalism.[2]
Two paragraphs later, Shanks summarizes it this way:
With this in mind and by virtue of long scientific experience in which hypotheses about the supernatural, the magical, and the occult have failed to hold water, the methodological naturalist will view such hypotheses in the future with extreme caution (the same sort of caution we apply to alchemists who claim to be able to turn base metals into gold and to Realtors who claim to have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale at a reasonable price).[3]
There is a lot that can be unpacked in these statements. I am going to restrict myself to three observations, which I believe undercut Shanks’s argument.
First, to give a little context, the Dembski Shanks’s cites is William Dembski, author of The Design Inference[4] and one of the leaders of the Intelligent Design movement. The “gross and egregious mischaracterization” Dembski makes is to state that metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism are functionally equivalent. Metaphysical naturalism is the philosophical idea that nature is all that there is. It says, in essence, that the supernatural cannot exist. Methodological naturalism, however, takes the position that science will be treated as if nature is all that there is. This idea allows for the existence of the supernatural, but simply decides not to apply it to science. Dembski’s point was that if you treat science as the determiner of all truth, the methodological naturalism of science becomes metaphysical naturalism.[5]
I completely agree with Dembski on this point. Scientists can argue as much as they want that scientists must search for natural explanations and eschew the supernatural as a practical matter, but the moment science is used to decide what is true and factual, that “practical” naturalism becomes “philosophical” naturalism.
Shanks, however, clearly sees it differently. He sees methodological naturalism as a consequence of good scientific research. As he put it, scientists have studiously studied the occult, souls, spirits, and magic, and come up empty handed each time. Because of the consistent failure to find the occult, souls, spirits, and magic to be true, scientists treat any supernatural explanation with extreme caution.
Frankly, I think Shanks is being too generous when he says that scientists exhibit extreme caution when it comes to the supernatural. Quite often, their reactions seem to be vehement opposition. Putting that aside, here are three observations about Shanks’s statements that I believe undercut his argument.
The first is, Shanks mentions that science has tested occult entities, including souls, spirits, magical powers, astrology, psychic powers, and ESP. Do you notice something not on that list? Like a Creator God? I think Shanks moved the goal posts. Science has disqualified the occult, therefore any supernatural, especially a supernatural designer, is also discounted. In my mind, that is a bit like saying, “Yep, we proved the Sun is not carried by Apollo’s chariot. That must mean the God of the Bible also did not create the world.” Aren’t you being a little too broad with your generalization?
As a note, as creationists, it is not our job to defend the supernatural. Sure, we defend the existence of God, who is supernatural, but we are not interested in all supernatural things, only God and the things specifically mentioned in the Bible, like angels and demons. We have to be careful not to fall into the trap of defending things like the occult because someone claims that disproving the occult disproves the supernatural in general. If someone, like Shanks, believes that disproving the occult disproves all supernatural events and beings, it is his job to explain why that is the case. And in his book, he did not do that.
That leads to my second observation. Shanks specifically said that methodological naturalism is based on inductive generalizations. The problem here is that induction is illogical.[6] That may not seem to make sense. After all, isn’t induction one of the two main types of reasoning? As in, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning? Why would reasoning be illogical?
First, we need to understand that logic and reason are not the same thing. Reason explains how we think, logic describes a set of rules that allows us to know whether or not a statement is true. It is also important to note that “illogical” does not necessarily mean “wrong.” We can use illogical reasoning and come to a true statement. But we can also use illogical reasoning and come to a false statement. We simply do not know whether or not our conclusions are correct unless we use logic.
Now, why is induction illogical? Induction is the reasoning we use when we make observation about the world around us and reason upwards to a universal truth. To use a classic example, consider swans. Say all of the swans that you observe are white. Does that mean that all swans the world over are white? No, because your observations are limited. What if you included the observations of all of your friends and they all observed white swans? Would that mean that all swans the world over are white? No, it still would not. In fact, we cannot make enough observations about swans to prove that all swans are white, because if there is even one swan that has not been observed, it is possible that that last unobserved swan may be a color other than white. In short, inductive reasoning cannot prove swans are white unless every single swan is observed. The same goes for any other universal statement based on finite observations, and since the world is a very large place, it is always possible that there is something we have overlooked.
That is Shanks’s second problem. He admits that methodological naturalism is based on induction, which means that it is inherently illogical. Since it is illogical, we are in no way compelled to accept the conclusion of methodological naturalism.
Shanks’s final problem is probably the most notable. Simply put: philosophers of science do not agree with him. Philosophers of science that I have read do not demand that science reject the supernatural because the supernatural has been disproven by observation. Rather, they argue that science should reject the supernatural for philosophical reasons.
Consider an article titled “Science as Storytelling” by Barry Bickmore and David Grandy.[7] They present science as the art of storytelling but they also describe several rules that these stories of science must follow. One of these rules is naturalism. However, when they explain why science must follow naturalism, they do not claim that it is because science has 300 years of failing to observe the supernatural. Rather, they claim that it is necessary to follow the rule of naturalism for “practical reasons.”[8] The practical reasons they give are: the supernatural tends not to produce precise predictions, it is difficult to place limits on the behavior of the supernatural, and because there are a variety of faiths in supernatural beings (Christianity, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and so forth) and allowing supernatural explanations in science would mean fracturing science into Christian science, Muslim science, Hindu science, and so forth. Again, note that these are “practical” reasons and have nothing to do with observations, or the lack thereof, of the supernatural. To emphasize, Bickmore and Grandy claim that “scientists exclude God and other supernatural agents from their stories only because there are practical reasons to do so, and not because they necessarily must.”[9]
Bickmore and Grandy are not the only authors who claim that there are philosophical (or practical) reasons for rejecting the supernatural in science. Another author who made a similar claim is John Richard Schrock in “Pseudoscience of Animals and Plants: A Teachers Guide to Nonscientific Beliefs”[10] Now, I want to note that my copy of “Pseudoscience of Animals and Plants” is a 2004 reprint of a 1987 original. The reason I point this out is that Schrock wrote his paper before Shanks wrote his book and reprinted it the same year Shanks published his book. Thus, we have data about the thinking of science from before, at the same time, and after (Bickmore and Grandy’s paper was published in 2014) Shanks wrote his book. Thus, I am not cherry-picking contradictions to Shanks, but rather, I am trying to capture the thought of scientists over the last several decades.
Schrock lists twenty attitudes of scientists. The twelfth attitude is:
Aversion to superstition and an automatic preference for scientific explanations. No scientist can know all of the experimental evidence underlying current science concepts, and therefore must adopt some view without understanding their basis. A scientist rejects superstition and prefers science paradigms out of an appreciation for the power of reality-based knowledge.[11]
While that is all Schrock had to say on the topic, it is noteworthy that his reason for avoiding superstition is not because superstition failed to pass the scrutiny of science, but rather “out of an appreciation for the power of reality-based knowledge.”
If I wanted to cherry-pick quotes to disprove Shanks’s point, I would cite Karl Popper. He was an influential science philosopher, whose work is still discussed today. Popper went in depth into the logic of science. While he did not talk about the supernatural specifically, he did mention the metaphysical. As he used it, metaphysics was basically anything that exists beyond the empirical, so it could include the supernatural. Here is what he has to say about the relationship between metaphysics and science:
I do not even go so far as to assert that metaphysics has no value for empirical science. For it cannot be denied that along with metaphysical ideas which have obstructed the advance of science there have been others–such as speculative atomism–which have aided it. And looking at the matter from the psychological angle, I am inclined to think that scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas, which are of a purely speculative kind, and sometimes even quite hazy; a faith which is completely unwarranted from the point of view of science, and which, to that extent, is ‘metaphysical.’[12]
For a philosopher of science like Popper to admit that “unwarranted” faith in ideas can play a role in science is a terrific admission. It completely contradicts the idea of people like Shanks, Bickmore and Grandy, and Schrock who believe that science should be divorced from any supernatural ideas.
I agree with Popper that faith in unscientific ideas can lend itself to new ideas that can be tested and used in science. I disagree with Bickmore and Grandy and Shrock that there are practical reasons to reject the supernatural in science. Even so, Bickmore and Grandy and Schrock disagree with Shanks,since they claim that the reason to reject the supernatural is due to practicality and philosophy, not due to 300 years of observation. Thus, Shanks stands alone in his assertion that science has diligently tested the supernatural and found that it has no explanatory value.
Shanks’s attempt to reject supernatural explanations in science falls short on many counts. He conflates a supernatural creator with the occult. He admits that his version of methodological naturalism rests on induction, which turns out to be illogical reasoning. Despite his claim that the rejection of the supernatural is simply a matter of following good scientific observations, other authors flatly contradict him. We as creationists should not fear critics like Shanks. Not only does he fail to understand the implications of things like the BZ reaction, as we saw in the last post, he does not present a convincing account of the relationship between science and religion.
Thoughts from Steven
[1]Shanks, Niall (2004) God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory Oxford University Press, Oxford, England
[2]Ibid. pg. 141
[3]Ibid. pg. 142
[4]Dembski, William (1998) The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom
[5]I have not read the book from which Shanks quotes Dembski, but it is pretty clear from the portion cited by Shanks that this is what Dembski meant (the quote is found in Shanks, Niall (2004) God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory Oxford University Press, Oxford, England pg. 141).
[6]Popper, Karl (2002) The Logic of Scientific Discovery Routledge Classics, London, UK, pg. 3-7
[7]Bickmore, Barry and David Grandy (2014) “Science as Storytelling” BYU Studies Quarterly 53(4): Article 4
[8]Ibid.
[9]Ibid.
[10]“Pseudoscience of Animals and Plants: A Teachers Guide to Nonscientific Beliefs” The Kansas School Naturalist 35(4): 3-15
[11]Ibid.
[12]Popper, Karl (2002) The Logic of Scientific Discovery Routledge Classics, London, UK, pg. 16
Heart of America Science Resource Center 