Is Christianity Anti-Science?

An Excerpt from The Reconstruction Project: Recovering Truth and Rebuilding Faith by Dr. Melissa Cain Travis and Dr. Andrew I. Shepardson

This article is adapted from The Reconstruction Project: Recovering Truth and Rebuilding Faith, which releases February 1st and is available now for preorder! We hope you enjoy this excerpt from the book, written by our very own, Dr. Melissa Cain Travis.

“Science and religion are competitors in the business of finding out what is true about our universe. In this goal religion has failed miserably, for its tools for discerning ‘truth’ are useless. These areas are incompatible in precisely the same way, and in the same sense, that rationality is incompatible with irrationality.”

- Jerry Coyne, Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible -

“The contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.”

Sam Harris, “The Politics of Ignorance,” Huffington Post

When Christianity is rejected as “anti-science,” the complex historical interaction may be in view. In other cases, the accusation may simply reflect a naturalistic philosophy, which excludes anything outside the natural order and the laws that govern it. It could also mean that the detractor is skeptical, to one degree or another, of truth claims that are not drawn from scientific data—a view of knowledge called scientism. At the popular level, the anti-science objection is typically a response to certain interpretations of the Genesis creation narrative, but this involves an overgeneralization that ignores the fact that there are several different views on how to properly integrate biblical and scientific knowledge. The in-house debate over interpretive issues is far too complex for a brief treatment, but fortunately, it is sufficient for present purposes to examine scientific findings about the birth of the universe and the origin of humankind and ask whether there is genuine conflict with the relevant Christian doctrine. As we shall see, the truth is quite the opposite.

Christianity affirms the existence of immaterial agents that have the ability to interact with the physical world: God, angels, demons, and human souls. Naturalism, by contrast, regards belief in such things as anti-scientific. As naturalists see it, a properly scientific worldview has no room for anything besides the physical stuff of the universe, which is constrained by the laws of nature. This philosophy is a lens through which the world is viewed; and when it is applied to scientific investigation, it strictly limits the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn. The term for this approach to science is methodological naturalism; and its proponents insist that only naturalistic causes should ever be considered when a scientist hypothesizes explanations for events like the origin of the universe, life, and consciousness. There is an a priori rejection of the possibility that nature may bear signs of a transcendent mind or that human beings are more than material bodies.

Methodological naturalism has two main weaknesses. First, it attempts to draw a hard line of demarcation between what counts as science and what does not. On the surface, this may seem straightforward, but it is a notoriously difficult problem in the philosophy of science. As J. P. Moreland explains:

Methodological naturalists say that we can come up with certain conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for “science” to be practiced. Once those features are identified, we can draw a big bright red line down the middle of the page: everything that has those features is on one side and is labeled “science,” and everything that doesn’t match that combination of characteristics is “something other than science.” . . . There is just one problem with that proposal: no one has ever been able to draw such a line. It simply does not exist.¹

If there is no agreed-upon set of necessary and sufficient conditions for categorizing something as scientific, then to rule out design only where nature is concerned seems arbitrary. Why should we simply assume that we will never find any indication of design rather than remain open-minded? This sets a boundary that may very well prevent discovery. If there is a Creator behind the existence of all things whose intelligence is purposefully imprinted upon aspects of the natural world in discernable ways, the methodological naturalist will be blind to this fact; he or she has rejected this possibility in principle, not for scientific reasons. As philosopher of science Del Ratzsch puts it, “If part of reality lies beyond the natural realm, then science cannot get at the truth without abandoning the naturalism it presently follows as a methodological rule of thumb.”² The scientist genuinely concerned with the unconditional pursuit of truth should at least remain open to detecting signals of design in nature.

It should be noted that there are theists, including some Christians, who argue that methodological naturalism must be employed without exception in scientific practice. This position is typically motivated by a desire to avoid the dreaded God-of-the-gaps mistake—positing supernatural causation to account for a phenomenon merely because a naturalistic explanation has not yet been identified.³ This is akin to the “science-stopper” claim, which says that attributing a characteristic of nature to a transcendent Creator halts the search for naturalistic causes and thus prevents scientific progress. However, the person who is open to design is not arguing that we must resort to a supernatural explanation in any particular case for which a natural one has not been identified. Rather, he or she is pointing out that blind, undirected processes have well-known limitations in terms of what they can produce and that we sometimes observe attributes of nature that exceed those limits.

While design in nature cannot be proven with 100 percent certainty (very little of reality can), there are cases in which we are justified in having a good measure of confidence in such inferences. Here’s why: Scientific investigation involves positing causes that are known to have the effect in question. For example, intelligent agency is the only cause ever observed to have produced specified complexity—meaning-laden order like that found in human language, mathematical systems, and computer software coding. If a far more sophisticated instance of such complexity is discovered in nature, then hypothesizing an intelligent agent as the source is entirely rational. Note that those who oppose wholesale methodological naturalism by no means object to ongoing research in any case where intelligent design is suspected, yet scientific discovery has never weakened a proper design inference. Quite the contrary; in some cases, expanding knowledge has even strengthened the case for design, sometimes dramatically.⁴

Naturalism is what philosophers call a metaphysic—a belief about what exists. Questions such as “what constitutes knowledge and how do we obtain it?” are answered according to one’s epistemology, or theory of knowledge. Many naturalists ascribe to scientism, which says that the hard sciences, such as physics, biology, and chemistry, are the only (or at least the far superior) path to knowledge. In its strong form, scientism regards scientific methodology as the only completely valid way of pursuing truth, and thus a belief is only rationally justified when it has legitimate scientific support. In its weak form, scientism allows for some truths that are not gleaned from science, but still regards such truths as inferior and far less authoritative. This means that in any instance of conflict between a scientific and nonscientific truth claim, the former always trumps the latter.

Strong scientism is ultimately incoherent because it is self-refuting. It stands upon philosophical assertions that cannot be tested or supported by science, and this contradicts its own principles about the conditions required for rational justification of a belief. “The only objective truths are scientific truths” is not itself scientifically supported, so it cannot qualify as objective truth. Moreover, the necessary axioms of science, its methodological presuppositions, and ethical guidelines for scientists are not scientific knowledge, nor are they rationally justified by science, so how could they have any truth value, according to strong scientism? There cannot even be a scientific enterprise if strong scientism’s precepts are consistently applied. As philosopher of science Del Ratzsch puts it, “The price of holding out for science as the only legitimate basis for belief is the illegitimacy of science itself, and that seems too high a price.”⁵

Resorting to the weak form of scientism does not help matters. While it allows for some other types of knowledge, those are deemed less certain by nature and thus never carry the weight of scientific truth. The reason this is detrimental to the edifice of science, Moreland explains, is that “the conclusions of science (i.e., the structure) cannot be more certain than the presuppositions of science (i.e., its foundation).”⁶ Those who champion science are forced to accept its axioms and presuppositions as at least equal with scientific beliefs, which means that science cannot be the sole or superior source of truth. Ratzsch explains:

Not only can science not validate its own foundations (implying that there are areas outside the competence of science), but if we do accept science, including its foundations, there must be some other sort of grounds for accepting at least some beliefs. This implies that science cannot be the only legitimate basis for believing something. Those who claim that science is competent for dealing with all matters or that science is the only legitimate method for dealing with any matter are seriously confused.⁷

It seems that science is inescapably subject to philosophy, without which it could not exist. In other words, because the assumptions upon which science depends are philosophical rather than scientific, philosophy has the magisterial role. Thus, even weak scientism is fundamentally incompatible with science.

To read further, you may find The Reconstruction Project on major book retailer websites or order directly from the publisher, B&H Academic.

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—Dr. Melissa Cain Travis holds a PhD in Humanities (Philosophy) from Faulkner University's Great Books program and an MA in Science and Religion from Biola University. She serves as Assistant Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University and is a Fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. To learn about her publications and other work, visit melissacaintravis.com.

1. J. P. Moreland, Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology (Crossway, 2018), 163.

2. Del Ratzsch, Science and Its Limits: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective (IVP Academic, 2000), 105.

3. For an excellent discussion of the problem methodological naturalism poses for theistic evolution (which some Christian proponents of methodological naturalism are attempting to defend), see Stephen Dilley, “How to Lose a Battleship: Why Methodological Naturalism Sinks Theistic Evolution,” in Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, ed. J. P. Moreland et al. (Crossway, 2017), 593–631.

4. A fantastic example of this is the specified complexity of genetic coding, which is now understood to be far more intricate and multilayered than when the DNA design inference was first made.

5. Del Ratzsch, Science & Its Limits: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective, 2nd ed. (IVP Academic, 2000), 94.

6. Moreland, 56.

7. Ratzsch, 93.