Science is not an alternative to faith in God. In fact, our knowledge and experience cannot be adequately explained without God.
I was seven years old when I asked. My parents and I were sitting in the living room, and I asked them whether Santa Claus was actually real. At that point I really already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it for certain. After a long moment, my parents told me the truth: Our Christmas presents each year were from them, not Santa. Santa was a story, just like Frosty the Snowman and the Easter Bunny, told to children to make Christmas a special experience.Every child loses belief in Santa Claus at some point. Many people think losing belief in God is very similar. We hear stories growing up about forbidden fruits, giant arks, parting seas, and dead people rising. We hear that God watches over us, hears us when we pray, and wants us to do good and believe in him. But — many will tell you — when we grow up, we realize that stuff doesn’t really happen, that there’s no one really up there listening, and no one who directs the affairs of this world. Everything from human origins to death to love can be explained in the impersonal, empirical terms of what science has discovered about the material world.
That’s the story many like to tell: Just look at what science has done! We’ve extended the human lifespan, made it possible to communicate instantly worldwide, to travel the world in a day, to predict the weather, and to post this blog. Thousands of years of religion never did any of those things. Science — looking for empirical facts about the material universe — did. Clearly it’s a better source of knowledge than ancient books about the supernatural.
It’s a clever way to frame it. It’s a popular modern-day “deconversion” story. But if anyone ever tells this kind of story to explain their unbelief in God, they’re not really talking about science. They’re talking about a worldview.
The secular worldview masquerading as “science”
When most scientists study their field, they employ a principle called “methodological naturalism.” As they study rocks, atoms, diseases, or human behavior, they observe the physical, material behavior of those objects or people. They don’t take into account any forces outside the material spacetime universe. If they can’t find a natural cause for something, they keep looking in the natural world. They don’t just throw up their hands and say, “I guess God did it and we’ll never know how!”
This is a useful and usually necessary principle for doing science, because science is, by definition, the study of the material world by material means. But many people take that principle of methodological naturalism and base their worldview on it.
This worldview says two things: First, not only is science a reliable source of knowledge, but it is the only reliable source of objective knowledge — or at least vastly superior to any others. This is called scientism, and many people hold to this view without knowing it by name.
And second, this worldview says that all that exists is what can be discovered, measured, described, and evaluated by scientific instruments, either now or in the future. Everything can be explained in impersonal, purely material terms — the movement and interaction of atoms in space. Whether or not God exists, he is irrelevant to our lives in this worldview.
This way of looking at the world sounds scientific, because it’s based on a principle (methodological naturalism) people employ when studying the natural sciences. But when you take an aspect of scientific methodology and start applying it to questions of ultimate existence, purpose, and other such things, you’ve left the field of natural science and ventured into the field of philosophy. You’ve entered a field that the principles of psychology and geology and cosmology are not equipped to analyze.
This is why anyone familiar with the scientific method should know that the two worldview statements above are very unscientific! These are statements that cannot be investigated scientifically. Using science to deny the existence of the supernatural is scientifically irresponsible.
Different methods, different goals
Science and faith are not alternatives to one another. They’re not opposites. They’re not foils to each other. They don’t have the same methods, nor do they have the same goals. Science is the use of material instruments, observation, and the scientific method to gain knowledge about the material world. Faith is an exercise of trust in a Person so you can connect personally with him.
This doesn’t mean science and faith don’t interact. Christianity, especially, does make some claims about the material world that science can help evaluate. Science can actually be a great help to faith, as it has been for me. Studying the world God made can tell us something about God. Certain scientific findings may even point to the existence of God or imply things about his character. But science is not capable of directly evaluating or discovering anything outside of its domain, and God is outside that domain.
The fatal flaw in scientism
So there is a major fatal flaw in this secular worldview that masquerades as “science”: People will use it to justify their lack of belief in God or religion, but no one actually believes it or lives by it. Indeed, it is unlivable.
This is easy to demonstrate. If someone says the only way to know something for sure is if it can be discovered, analyzed, or evaluated by the scientific method, ask them how they can prove that minds other than their own exist. Everyone else could really just be an advanced computer program made to look like identical in every way to a human being. Or, ask how they can prove the universe wasn’t created last Thursday with the appearance of age and false memories implanted in all of our minds. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s the point. These are basic, obvious things we all know, but they can’t be proven scientifically. We just know them, without any need for scientific proof. It’s impossible to live a coherent life without knowing these things.
Beyond the reach of science
So too, there are other things we know that cannot be measured or observed by any field of science, known and believed by theists and non-theists alike. We know there is such a thing as objective moral good and objective moral evil, and that we have an objective duty to do good and refrain from doing evil. We know all humans are inherently valuable. We know there is such a thing as beauty and purpose and meaning. If the world is only material, none of this could be true. And an adherent to scientism must indeed deny that any of these things are true (and many do). But we know they are true, even though the physical sciences cannot detect, measure, or evaluate them.
Even most non-theists acknowledge they are true. But the non-theist who believes these things has nothing to base that belief on, and no way to explain it.
The best explanation
Many people want to see incontrovertible proof that God exists and is active in the world before they will believe, or act on that belief. But such a demand is also unscientific. No scientist requires incontrovertible proof of a theory before believing it. What any scientist searches for is the best explanation: the one that is more plausible than competing explanations, and that explains the most. This is one principle we can carry over to our beliefs about the spiritual. You cannot disprove the secular worldview, nor prove the theistic worldview, but you can weigh the competing explanations and find the superior one. When we consider the whole of human experience — not just the material world around us, but these nonmaterial things we are aware of — the best explanation emerges pretty clearly.
The best, most plausible, and most powerful explanation for all these aspects of our existence is God and his involvement in our lives. And over my next several posts, I want to investigate some of these parts of our knowledge and experience, and show how they point to God’s existence and involvement in our lives.
None of them will be incontrovertible proofs. There are plenty of people who have raised arguments against each of them and proposed alternative explanations. If you go on to read these next posts, even if you’re a theist you may not even be convinced all of them. But no argument for the existence or activity of God claims to be the only possible explanation for our observation and experience. The claim is that the best explanation, and the most justified and reasonable belief, is a God who is sovereign over the universe and is active in our lives — and we should know how to respond.
Questions for readers
I don’t want these posts to be about just me expressing my opinion. Sharing my opinion doesn’t accomplish much if it doesn’t invite us all to consider these big questions together. So here are a couple questions I think it would benefit us all to consider. Feel free to share your answers in the comments below or on social media if you’d like to interact!
– Do you tend to see empirical science and faith are inherent opposites? How would you define those two terms (“science” and “faith”)?
– If you’re a theist, what are some of the strongest reasons you believe? What phenomena or events (in your life or others’) would you say are best explained by God?
As always, I invite, welcome, and appreciate any feedback any of you are willing to offer! If you have a comment, additional insight, or disagreement, feel free to comment here, on the Facebook or Twitter share, or contact me directly. If you liked this post, feel free to share it as well!
