I recently started going to meetings of a science-faith integration club on my campus. A strange place for someone who doesn’t believe in god, I know, but one of my friends usually goes to them and thought I’d be interested in the discussions. He was right, because I really have enjoyed them. The few I’ve attended so far have been about Intelligent Design, so you can expect some entries in the future about certain articles from the ID “literature.” I’m going to limit myself to those scare quotes in regards to ID, because this week I’d like to discuss something else that has come up a number of times at these meetings.
One person in particular at the meetings is fond of talking about what scientists think. He has very strong opinions about what scientists like, dislike, assume, respect, do and don’t believe, and so forth. Full disclosure: he and I (and others) often clash at these meetings. I would classify him as rather anti-science, and many (if not most) of these statements he makes are simply strawmen. I don’t think he has a good idea of how actual scientists view the world, so he’s ultimately addressing a caricature of scientists that he’s created for himself. As an extreme example, he once declared that “scientists don’t like unresolved problems.” That must be why we all keep going into work to research said problems, huh?
That’s enough picking on our friend. This week’s statement is a point he often raises, and it’s a view that many of the other folks at these meeting share. They certainly have a point; the usual hypotheses tested in scientific experiments never invoke the supernatural. Any type of research involving such hypotheses is somehow qualified: alternative medicine, parapsychology, paranormal investigations, cryptozoology, faith healing, etc. Does that mean scientists have assumed that such things don’t exist? Why don’t scientists test out hypotheses involving god, if not because they’ve dismissed deities a priori?
Science Cheats!
Scientists largely ignore the supernatural simply because there is no tangible evidence for it. Now, you might think I’ve just callously dismissed and pissed off no less than five large groups of people (based on my above list). While I might have angered them, I haven’t actually said anything controversial. If there was abundant evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, then intelligent aliens coming to earth would be a natural phenomenon. If there was clear evidence for Bigfoot, then Bigfoot sightings would be natural phenomena. If psychics could unambiguously demonstrate their precognition powers, then seeing the future would be a natural phenomenon.
That’s how science gets to “cheat.” Once a phenomenon is established beyond reasonable doubt, it becomes part of the natural world. Up until that point, the concept in question is firmly supernatural. If unequivocal proof of ghosts is uncovered, then the conclusion would not be the supernatural is real! The conclusion would be ghosts are real!, and the Loch Ness monster would still be a floating log.
A quick tangential story demonstrates this “cheating” quite nicely. During a lecture about conservation of energy, one of my professors said that it is a law of nature and has never been violated. (It is a continuity equation, as I discussed in Entry 19.) But, he pointed out that someone once called him on that assertion. This person claimed that the conservation of energy has been violated many times, but physicists just make up new types of energy to keep the balance working. For instance, a chunk of uranium ore heating up would violate energy conservation until you invoked nuclear energy. Although this person was wrong (nuclear energy is a type of energy), I can see how s/he might have viewed this as science “cheating.”
Sorry … Science Finds Your Creation Myth Less Appealing Than Clay
The incident that directly prompted this entry was a discussion of abiogenesis. Our friend was particularly distressed that scientists aren’t exploring the possibility that god created life. They’re looking a self-replicating chemicals and layers of clay and lightning strikes and panspermia, but not god. Why are the first four hypotheses I mentioned valid to scientists, but not the last one about god?
The answer is simple: chemicals and clay and lightning and meteors are natural phenomena, while deities are supernatural phenomena. We have evidence that these natural things exist/occur, and so it is possible to build plausible hypotheses based on them. We do not have evidence for supernatural phenomenon, and so you cannot build a fruitful hypothesis based on the supernatural.
More important are the practical considerations. Aspects of the natural phenomena can be tested in a laboratory setting. What sorts of chemicals can catalyze their own replication? Can layers of clay act as crude vessels for life? Does lightning cause the formation of very complex chemicals? Can microbes survive long trips in deep space? On the other hand, the supernatural hypothesis defies testing. How could the idea that god created life from non-life be explored in a scientific manner?
Abiogenesis is a very open question at this time. The only currently appropriate answer to the question “How did life start?” is “I don’t know!” Somebody’s god may well have done it, but there is no reason to think so and no way to coherently explore that possibility.
Let’s switch gears for a moment, and imagine that an astrologer is arguing that he can explain abiogenesis:
Many people believe in astrology, and use it successfully in their day-to-day life. In the past, many scientists have been astrologers, particularly astronomers. We believe astrology works via the action-at-a-distance principle, which is established physics. Thus, the alignment of the stars also might have injected life force into formerly-inanimate chemicals. Scientists ought to consider this hypothesis.
How would you respond to this (assuming you’re not an astrologer)? You would say that astrology has no evidence, its popularity and history is irrelevant, its supposed mechanism is technobabble pseudoscience, and, most importantly, its abiogenesis hypothesis is untestable, unfalsifiable, and unscientific.
Replace all the astrology with theism, and you have the appropriate skeptical response to this week’s statement.
Without Evidence, It’s All Gremlins
If I were arguing against my own article, I would assert that scientists are being very closed-minded when they snub supernatural hypotheses. The most obvious issue here is that the supernatural might turn out to be fully natural, and so scientists might be taking good ideas off the table when they ignore the supernatural. Something wacky like quantum tunneling or time dilation would’ve been considered magical in the nineteenth century, and scientists who rejected such a concept would have been dismissing natural physics.
The issue here is that these scientists would have been correct in dismissing these hypotheses at that time, because there was no data to support them. Experiments at the time lacked the sensitivity (and/or ability) to detect quantum and relativistic phenomena, so these ideas were simply not testable. Once you allow untestable hypotheses into the mix, you’re lost in a sea of nonsense. You have absolutely no way to discriminate between competing ideas. If you’re going to believe that the electrons you cannot detect are tunneling through walls, you might as well say that gremlins are doing the digging.
“Woah, Woah, Woah! What About [Dead White Guy]?!”
Again imagining myself in my targets’ shoes, I’d start arguing along philosophical or theological lines at this point. People have been discussing the supernatural for millennia, and the prominent thinkers of the past few were kind enough to write these ideas down and earn themselves Wikipedia entries. These discussions would of course provide fodder for countless entries, but we can succinctly slam this door shut for the purposes of this discussion.
Science trucks in the real world. It is a systematic method for understanding the environment around us. Evidence is paramount in science. Scientists need evidence to test hypotheses, and they cannot scientifically deal with things for which there is no evidence. This is why this entirely entry has been lousy with qualifier words: tangible evidence, testable hypotheses, unambiguous demonstrations, plausible hypotheses, etc, etc, etc.
In a handy-dandy two-word term, science requires methodological naturalism. Someone can philosophize until the atmosphere runs out of oxygen about the supernatural, but it wouldn’t affect the scientific method in the slightest. So long as the supernatural doesn’t lose the meta- in metaphysics and become physics, the scientific method simply doesn’t (and actually can’t) care.
Imagine that someone, right now, is publishing proof that a deist-type god exists. Their logic is impeccable, their premises valid, their reasoning sound, and their argument impregnable. Tomorrow, the entire world will have definitive proof that a deity exists. This fact would have no effect whatsoever on what I do in my lab the next day. If this deity (let’s call it J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, just for kicks) doesn’t interact with the natural world, then science has no bearing on it and it has no bearing on science.
Hypothesize or Abscond (That Is, Put Up or Shut Up)
The claims of my new friend notwithstanding, scientists do not assume the Christian god doesn’t exist. As a supernatural entity, a deity simply cannot be investigated scientifically. Scientific inquiry requires evidence, reproducibility, consistency, and clarity. If a concept or phenomenon possesses all these traits, then I assure you that it is not supernatural.
If a person ever makes this claim to you, I would reply with a simple request. Ask them to explain an experiment that would demonstrate that their god did or did not do something. I suspect the hangup will be falsifiability, so don’t let them off the (sky)hook in that regard.
