Art of Reasoning

If ever there was a misunderstood term among religionists, this is it. Phillip Johnson has done more than anybody to clear up this term, but confusions remain, and even Johnson doesn’t go far enough. So, here we will attempt to gain both depth and clarity.

“Naturalism” is most commonly defined in terms of what it is not: it is not super-naturalistic, it does not have any place for extra-natural entities or forces, and so on. But even getting clear about what an “extra-natural” or “supernatural” entity or force is demands that we know what a “natural” entity or force is. So, we are pushed to know what “natural” means in order to know what “naturalism” means.

At this juncture, I’ll spare you the book-length account that would be typical of a philosopher and just get right at it.

“Natural” means “knowable by empirical means” and “grounded in the physical” so that the phenomenon in question is detectable by and explainable in terms of the senses. So, “naturalism” is a theory of knowledge that is physicalist and empiricist.

“Supernatural” entities, forces, etc., then, are those things that are proposed to really exist but are in principle not explainable or knowable in strictly physical/empirical terms.

The traditional, Judeo/Christian God is “supernatural” exactly because He is purported to “really exist” (as He is in Himself) completely apart from the physical world; He is therefore not knowable in strictly empirical terms. The same can be said of angels, souls, etc.

For centuries, certainly since the Enlightenment, mainstream scientists have become increasingly committed to a purely naturalistic account of “all there is.” In short, mainstream scientists more and more see themselves as providing a naturalistic metaphysics.

Many Christians have asked what appears to them to be a simple and obvious question: “Why can’t scientists do empirically-based experiments but realize that there are, or could be, things that their experiments will never detect?”

The likes of Phillip Johnson have put that question to scientists with force: “Why can you not be committed to methodological naturalism, while at the same time not be committed to metaphysical naturalism?”

Johnson does cast the question in terms that seem to suggest he is opposing “the presumption of methodological naturalism.” But what he means by this is that he thinks scientists “presume” metaphysical naturalism, which is what motivates them to commit to methodological naturalism. The question really comes down to a commitment to metaphysical naturalism.

And in this vein, modern “intelligent design” theorists and “creation scientists” strongly advocate in favor of the “scientific methods” just as it is, but one in which supernaturalistic entities (such as God as “designer”) are admitted as possible (if not probable) metaphysical candidates. So, such proponents want to somehow separate “naturalism” from “physicalism” and “materialism,” as though a scientist can actually be a good “naturalist” while at the same time thinking that there “really can be” something “beyond nature” that has real and palpable effects on nature.

Thus, even while supposedly “granting” what “naturalism” supposedly “really means,” such advocates of “methodological” vs. “metaphysical” naturalism show that they remain fundamentally unclear about science’s genuine, sweeping, and necessary commitment to naturalism in a far more profound sense.

For supernaturalists, there are really only two choices here. The first is to take the tack they are presently taking, namely to try to make a distinction between “methodological” and “metaphysical” naturalism. The other is to demonstrate that science is utterly and entirely naturalistic, but that consequently science is not really doing metaphysics. I will now argue against the former, and you’ve already heard me repeat the latter (and it will become more and more clear as we progress).

Phillip Johnson is the most articulate of the people that have been arguing for the former perspective. He is quite famous now for the “methodological” vs. “metaphysical” naturalism distinction, and he urges science to abandon the “presumption of methodological naturalism.” However, both the courts and widespread public opinion have spoken, and both agree that science is a fundamentally naturalistic enterprise. What all have failed to grasp is the extent to which science is necessarily a naturalistic enterprise.

Scientists are not presuming metaphysical naturalism, thus, as Johnson says, harboring a commitment to a “philosophy of naturalism” in advance of any experiment. What Johnson calls “philosophical naturalism” is really neither here nor there in the minds of scientists. They are necessarily committed to “methodological naturalism,” and they might or might not be “philosophical naturalists” as a result of how they interpret the results of science. It is not that their “philosophical naturalism” drives them to (inappropriately) be “methodological naturalists.” It is that science can be nothing other than naturalistic in its methods!

Imagine an experiment in which a beaker of fluid is predicted to turn green. The experiment is run, and the fluid does turn exactly the predicted shade of green. Now, how can science interpret that result?

Naturalistic science says, “Theory x predicted that result, so that result was no falsification of x. Furthermore, we take this result as yet another evidence of the predictive power of x.”

Non-naturalistic “science” is now thrust into wide-open spaces: “Theory x predicted that result, but perhaps the result is a falsification anyway. After all, God (or Satan, or Zeus, or….) might have manipulated the results just to confuse us.” Etc., etc.!

Worse, even flagrant falsifications cannot be interpreted as such by non-naturalistic “science.” One can always appeal to “God” to “explain” any result or lack thereof. There need be no particular continuity to the universe. Indeed, non-naturalists flat-out claim that miracles just are the evidences of an active God in the universe! So, non-naturalists are quite content with sweeping discontinuities in the events/results of “reality,” but that very perspective makes mincemeat of any attempt at deriving anything from experimental results!

For science to admit any appeal to non-naturalism into its methods utterly and entirely breaks those methods, as the implication-relation between theory and evidence is thereby severed! The only and entire basis of the scientific method is that that implication-relation holds! Thus, yes, by definition science must be methodologically naturalistic. This is not a failing, oversight, or lack of intellectual honesty on the part of science. The very scientific method depends upon a predictable continuity that necessarily demands that no non-natural “forces” are dinking around with reality on an occasional or ongoing basis!

“Miracles,” then, are precluded by definition from science. And, thought of empirically (as they must be), miracles are not actually evidence of anything in particular! (I know that this is a hard thing for Christians to accept, so I encourage you to read my book on the subject: Miracles, Faith, and Unanswered Prayer.)

Science is being entirely true to itself, and intellectually honest, to be methodologically naturalistic. Thus, the utter adoption of the present evolutionary paradigm is entirely predictable and normal. This is “normal science” in precisely Kuhn’s terms!

But the problem that not even Johnson grasps is the science thinks it is doing metaphysics, when it really is not. Because Johnson thinks that science’s methodological naturalism results from its philosophical naturalism, he does not see the true connections. Philosophical naturalism does not drive science to methodological naturalism (as explained above). Thus, there is no “fixing” science by getting it to “own up” to its (largely non-existent) commitment to philosophical naturalism and thereby have it “broaden” its methods. No, the problem is that science looks inductively at its own history, sees nothing but an uninterrupted chain of successes resulting entirely from its wholly legitimate commitment to methodological naturalism, and concludes that metaphysical naturalism is the only “reasonable” way to think about reality, because the “God of the gaps” just keeps shrinking and shrinking!

Scientists think that they are doing metaphysics. So, of course they are going to project a naturalistic methodology onto a naturalistic metaphysics. If anything, the causal relation is the reverse of what Johnson says: methodological naturalism drives philosophical naturalism, and to an even greater extent than people realize! Johnson’s notion of “philosophical naturalism” is not as precise as what I am saying by “metaphysical naturalism.” Most scientists do not “presume” a naturalistic universe; instead scientists have come to believe in a naturalistic/materialistic universe precisely because the perceived success of the scientific method has increasingly rendered any and all other “explanations” as irrelevant!

As long as scientists are allowed/encouraged to believe that they are doing metaphysics, science will continue to occupy an unassailable pedestal. Non-naturalists cannot “win” in any sense by any present strategy: 1) attempt to put so-called “creation-science” or “intelligent design theory” up onto the same pedestal as science; 2) attempt to make science more “honest” about its “presumptions” of “philosophical naturalism;” or 3) attempt to gut the new-Darwinian paradigm.

1) cannot work because all forms of non-naturalism at core defy the scientific method.

2) cannot work because science is not “presuming” naturalism; it’s method is necessarily naturalistic.

3) cannot work because, as Kuhn neatly explained, science will not abandon one paradigm without a “better” alternative to flee to; and that alternative will also be, by definition, naturalistic.

The one an only approach to this grand war of ideas is to utterly grant science all that it is (with its many refinements since the Enlightenment), grant it its vast array of engineering successes, and then demonstrate how thoroughly those successes say absolutely nothing about metaphysics. Science’s “pedestal” emerges because the public believes that science is doing metaphysics; show that it is not, and that pedestal collapses. Then, instead of “creation science” and “intelligent design theory” trying to claw their way up onto science’s pedestal, they will find that that effort was futile and unnecessary, as science and a wide array of other metaphysical approaches occupy common ground.

Then, let science have its science classrooms and teach evolutionary theory to its heart’s content. But also let mandatory (just as science is mandatory education) classrooms teach metaphysics along with the wide array of non-naturalistic, non-empirical evidence to the effect that science is “revealing” only a subset of all that there is.