- Nature is predictable
- Nature is ordered by certain laws
- These laws are intelligible to humans
A transcendent creator lie beyond nature and does not necessarily have to be predictable or knowable. Hence such notions are not testable of falsifiable by any stretch of the imagination. This led to the concept of NOMA (Non overlapping magesteria) developed by the late biologist Stephen J Gould. Where religion and science hold different non overlapping domains of discourse. Gould suggest that science, presumably natural sciences, covers the empirical realm; that facts about nature and the observable universe. While religion deals with the ultimate meaning of life and moral values. Therefore there is no real conflict between religious teaching and scientific knowledge since they operate in different exclusive domains of discourse.
Philosopher such as Russell Blackford and others find this rather disturbing. They find that capitulating the discourse of moral values and personal meaning to religion would be a gross mistake. Since modern day values often run counter to theologically inspired ethics. This would undermine the hundreds of years of ethical discourse and the activism that inspired it ever since the Enlightenment. Concepts such as the rights of man and the equality of the sexes are largely secular in origin. Although 19th century Christianity did play a role in the emancipation movement in America but that's for another blogpost.
Modern theologians such as Allister Mcgrath suggest that the very idea of all powerful law giver provides the foundation for the natural sciences. The idea of designer or watch maker as William Paley puts it makes nature more intelligible and therefore more amenable to the scientific method. This may be true but this sort of theology is quite modern. The medieval vision of God is that of an entity that had no constraint; a deity that could order nature however he wished. Nature was known to follow certain patterns but God could suspend these patterns to perform miracles as in the stories of the Old and New Testaments as well as the Quran. The medieval Theologians invoked the Aristotelian notion of teleos, an end or purpose for any object. For example Aristotle believed that heavy objects fell to the center of a crevice because it was "good" for it to do so. The theologians believed that God, like the Aristotelian Prime mover, moved all things for its "good". For a long time the motion of the planets were understood as the action of the Prime mover.
By the seventeenth/eighteenth century, a new view of nature took ground. People like the philosophes of the Enlightenment wanted to understand the world in term of Newtonian mechanism. Newtonian mechanics allowed the prediction of a particles or objects position , direction and speed by a prior state with astonishing accuracy. The philosophes along with later scientists employed Newtonian mechanics to explain everything about the natural world. Astronomy so was greatly enhances by this system that the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace concluded that la machine du monde (machine of the world) did not require the intervention of God. Since the world was now thought to operate as a machine, there was no need for teleos to explain the goals and purpose of objects. Nature was now thought to be completely deterministic. Later on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution explain how complex living organisms can come into being my adaptation and seemingly blind natural selection. Darwin along with Newton/Laplace greatly undermined teleology in nature.
It was in the 19th century that God was thought of as a designer that set the machine of the world into motion. Although Darwin's theory undermined this to some degree, this ideas continued to some extent later on. This mechanistic view of the world was undermined again in the 20th century with the development of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Quantum mechanics is the science of subatomic particles and their interactions. One of the cornerstone of Quantum theory, the Heisenberg principle, states the a particle's momentum and exact location cannot be known at the same time. This is even stranger when one considers the quantum vacuum, where particles particles are "created" and annihilated with no apparent cause while travelling forwards and backwards in time. This is at least the prevalent Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Chaos theory is the attempt to model indeterministic system such as Brownian motion of particles or the swing of a spherical pendulum in probabilistic terms. It appears that chaos and indeterminism is build into the universe. No amount of technological advances will allow us to go back to a purely deterministic mechanical view of the universe. Although for large structure Newtonian mechanics is still useful.
Nature now seems to be both mechanical and chaotic. This undermines both the purely mechanical reductive view of nature as well the new teleological view of God creating nature through a machine. Nature is no longer a automaton or clockwork object built by a deity; this impacts not only science but how science is done. The principles of methodological naturalism can now be understood not as the presupposition given to us through theology but the basic assumptions needed to make sense of the world. So modern religious beliefs is not required for the scientific method. Other the other hand, religious belief seems to have a complex relationship with science: where on one hand belief might of aided early scientists of the 16th/17th century but in the modern era such beliefs are reframed as a reaction to scientific developments. Developments in philosophy, the arts and even popular culture also played a role in the reframing of theology but that is outside the scope of this blogpost.
In the 21th century, religious views and scientific findings continue to clash. Science continues to be largely an academic discourse unconcerned with normative cultural values. Religious institutions continue to hold on to certain tenets, however reframed, largely because of it symbolic and normative importance. The cognitive function of religion tries to tie these tenets to overarching beliefs about the purpose and nature of the world. The scientific enterprise is less concerned about the purpose of the world and some scientists consider the question of purpose to be redundant. . Physicists and cosmologists are currently probing into the very origins of the universe but whatever the result, it is unlikely to resolve the notion of purpose. Likewise, moral values is unlikely to be understand using science or even reason alone.
To conclude, it is true that the scientific tradition and religious teaching have largely separate domains of discourse but there are significant overlaps. Darwin's theory of evolution and some contemporary views of cosmology do clash with certain religious views, at least for the Abrahamic religions. But theologians throughout the ages have the tendency to reframe religious tenets in the light of developments in science. Certain beliefs may have inspired early scientists but they seem to be largely irrelevant today. Since methodological naturalism, which underpins the scientific method does not need the idea of a transcendent deity. Thus there is no definitive clear cut relation between science and religion but clashes and attempts to reconcile the two will continue.
Philosopher such as Russell Blackford and others find this rather disturbing. They find that capitulating the discourse of moral values and personal meaning to religion would be a gross mistake. Since modern day values often run counter to theologically inspired ethics. This would undermine the hundreds of years of ethical discourse and the activism that inspired it ever since the Enlightenment. Concepts such as the rights of man and the equality of the sexes are largely secular in origin. Although 19th century Christianity did play a role in the emancipation movement in America but that's for another blogpost.
Modern theologians such as Allister Mcgrath suggest that the very idea of all powerful law giver provides the foundation for the natural sciences. The idea of designer or watch maker as William Paley puts it makes nature more intelligible and therefore more amenable to the scientific method. This may be true but this sort of theology is quite modern. The medieval vision of God is that of an entity that had no constraint; a deity that could order nature however he wished. Nature was known to follow certain patterns but God could suspend these patterns to perform miracles as in the stories of the Old and New Testaments as well as the Quran. The medieval Theologians invoked the Aristotelian notion of teleos, an end or purpose for any object. For example Aristotle believed that heavy objects fell to the center of a crevice because it was "good" for it to do so. The theologians believed that God, like the Aristotelian Prime mover, moved all things for its "good". For a long time the motion of the planets were understood as the action of the Prime mover.
By the seventeenth/eighteenth century, a new view of nature took ground. People like the philosophes of the Enlightenment wanted to understand the world in term of Newtonian mechanism. Newtonian mechanics allowed the prediction of a particles or objects position , direction and speed by a prior state with astonishing accuracy. The philosophes along with later scientists employed Newtonian mechanics to explain everything about the natural world. Astronomy so was greatly enhances by this system that the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace concluded that la machine du monde (machine of the world) did not require the intervention of God. Since the world was now thought to operate as a machine, there was no need for teleos to explain the goals and purpose of objects. Nature was now thought to be completely deterministic. Later on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution explain how complex living organisms can come into being my adaptation and seemingly blind natural selection. Darwin along with Newton/Laplace greatly undermined teleology in nature.
It was in the 19th century that God was thought of as a designer that set the machine of the world into motion. Although Darwin's theory undermined this to some degree, this ideas continued to some extent later on. This mechanistic view of the world was undermined again in the 20th century with the development of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Quantum mechanics is the science of subatomic particles and their interactions. One of the cornerstone of Quantum theory, the Heisenberg principle, states the a particle's momentum and exact location cannot be known at the same time. This is even stranger when one considers the quantum vacuum, where particles particles are "created" and annihilated with no apparent cause while travelling forwards and backwards in time. This is at least the prevalent Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Chaos theory is the attempt to model indeterministic system such as Brownian motion of particles or the swing of a spherical pendulum in probabilistic terms. It appears that chaos and indeterminism is build into the universe. No amount of technological advances will allow us to go back to a purely deterministic mechanical view of the universe. Although for large structure Newtonian mechanics is still useful.
Nature now seems to be both mechanical and chaotic. This undermines both the purely mechanical reductive view of nature as well the new teleological view of God creating nature through a machine. Nature is no longer a automaton or clockwork object built by a deity; this impacts not only science but how science is done. The principles of methodological naturalism can now be understood not as the presupposition given to us through theology but the basic assumptions needed to make sense of the world. So modern religious beliefs is not required for the scientific method. Other the other hand, religious belief seems to have a complex relationship with science: where on one hand belief might of aided early scientists of the 16th/17th century but in the modern era such beliefs are reframed as a reaction to scientific developments. Developments in philosophy, the arts and even popular culture also played a role in the reframing of theology but that is outside the scope of this blogpost.
In the 21th century, religious views and scientific findings continue to clash. Science continues to be largely an academic discourse unconcerned with normative cultural values. Religious institutions continue to hold on to certain tenets, however reframed, largely because of it symbolic and normative importance. The cognitive function of religion tries to tie these tenets to overarching beliefs about the purpose and nature of the world. The scientific enterprise is less concerned about the purpose of the world and some scientists consider the question of purpose to be redundant. . Physicists and cosmologists are currently probing into the very origins of the universe but whatever the result, it is unlikely to resolve the notion of purpose. Likewise, moral values is unlikely to be understand using science or even reason alone.
To conclude, it is true that the scientific tradition and religious teaching have largely separate domains of discourse but there are significant overlaps. Darwin's theory of evolution and some contemporary views of cosmology do clash with certain religious views, at least for the Abrahamic religions. But theologians throughout the ages have the tendency to reframe religious tenets in the light of developments in science. Certain beliefs may have inspired early scientists but they seem to be largely irrelevant today. Since methodological naturalism, which underpins the scientific method does not need the idea of a transcendent deity. Thus there is no definitive clear cut relation between science and religion but clashes and attempts to reconcile the two will continue.
