Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (21 page)

that Jesus was known in both Galilee and Jerusalem, that he was a teacher, that he carried out cures of various illnesses, particularly demon-possession and that these were widely regarded as miraculous; that he was involved in controversy with fellow Jews over questions of the law of Moses: and that he was crucified in the governorship of Pontius Pilate.
⁵⁰

Another example: John Meier’s
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus
is absolutely monumental; it is magnificently thorough and thoroughly judicious, discussing and sifting an amazing range of evidence about the life of Jesus. But about all that emerges from Meier’s painstaking work is that Jesus was a prophet, proclaiming an eschatological message from God; he performed powerful deeds, signs and wonders that announce God’s kingdom, and also ratify his message. Here, as with Harvey, there are no miracles; there
is no resurrection, and certainly nothing to suggest that Jesus was the incarnate second person of the Trinity or even that he was son of God in any unique sense.

Obviously, then, there is conflict between Christian belief and some of the theories or “results” from HBC as well as from evolutionary psychology. And the next question is this: suppose you are a classical Christian, accepting, for example, the whole of the Apostle’s Creed. Suppose you are also, as I believe Christians should be, wholly enthusiastic about science; you believe that it is a magnificent display of the image of God in which humanity has been created. Still further, suppose you see both evolutionary psychology and HBC as proper science. How then should you think about the negative results coming from these scientific enterprises? In particular, do they provide or constitute
defeaters
for the beliefs with which they are in conflict? That is, do they give you a good reason to reject those beliefs, or at any rate hold them less firmly? In the next chapter we’ll address that question.

In the last chapter we saw that some scientific theories or claims—theories or claims taken from evolutionary psychology and historical Biblical criticism—do indeed conflict with Christian (and Muslim and Jewish) belief. Evolutionary psychologists have come up with a number of theories that are wholly incompatible with Christian beliefs: theories purporting to explain altruism in terms of unusual docility and limited rationality, morality as an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes, and religion itself as involving belief that is false, even if, according to some of these theories, adaptive. According to certain theories from historical Biblical criticism, furthermore, the Bible is just another ancient book; Jesus didn’t rise from the dead; miracles don’t and have not occurred. Of course questions can be raised about whether these disciplines are really science, or good science; but let’s set those questions aside for the moment, assuming, perhaps contrary to fact, that they are.
¹
There is also the following question: suppose there is just one theory—from evolutionary psychology, for example—that is inconsistent with Christian belief, and suppose just a few scientists accept or believe or propose it: does that by itself constitute a science/religion conflict? How widely accepted must such a theory be, in order to constitute a science/religion conflict? Again, we can set this question aside, in particular since evolutionary psychology contains many widely accepted theories and claims that (at least as they
stand) are in conflict with Christian belief. And let’s call scientific theories incompatible with Christian belief Simonian science, in honor of Herbert Simon and his theory of altruism (see
chapter 5
).

Our next question: suppose you are a classical Christian; you accept the main lines of the Christian story—incarnation, resurrection, atonement, the work of the Holy Spirit, and so on. Suppose (as is appropriate for Christians) you are also enthusiastic about science. You are profoundly impressed by the sheer intellectual power and marvelous intellectual energy and insight that has gone into modern physics, starting, say, with Newton; you are also impressed by the deep and revealing insights gained by microbiology over the last fifty years or so. You therefore take modern science to be a magnificent display of the image of God in us human beings. Then what should you think about scientific theories incompatible with Christian belief? Should the existence of these theories induce intellectual disquiet, cognitive dissonance? To put the matter less metaphorically, does the existence of such theories give you a
defeater
for those beliefs with which they are incompatible? For example, in the last chapter we saw that according to David Sloan Wilson’s theory, religious belief is produced in those who display it by cognitive processes not aimed at the production of true beliefs; assuming this is good science, should it give me a defeater for my belief that the processes that produce Christian belief are indeed aimed at the production of true belief? Similarly, some scripture scholars who aspire to be scientific produce theories according to which either Jesus did not arise from the dead, or at any rate it is vastly improbable that he did: does this give me a defeater for my belief that he did indeed so arise?

The answer, in a word, is no. To see why, we must descend (or maybe it’s ascend) into a bit of epistemology; in particular we must say
something about defeaters and defeat. Here’s a classic example of a defeater for a belief. I look into a pasture and see what looks like a sheep: I form the belief that I see a sheep. Then you come along; I know that you are the owner of the pasture and an honest man. You tell me that while there are no sheep in the pasture, you have a sheepdog that looks like a sheep from this distance. Now I have a defeater for my belief that I see a sheep in the pasture; if I am rational, I will no longer believe that I see a sheep there. Another example: I’ve always believed that there are no cacti in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. On a hike through the Porcupine Mountains I come across a fine specimen of prickly pear. This gives me a defeater for my belief that there are no cacti in the Upper Peninsula. In these two cases, I learn that the defeated belief is false; defeaters of this kind are called
rebutting
defeaters.

In other cases I don’t learn that the belief is false, but instead lose my reason for holding the belief:
undercutting
defeaters, as they are called. For example, I see someone emerge from the house across the street and form the belief that Paul is emerging from his house; you then tell me that Paul’s twin brother Peter arrived last night, is staying with Paul, and is indistinguishable from Paul by everyone except their wives. Then I should no longer believe that it is Paul who emerged from the house. Still, I won’t believe that it
isn’t
Paul either; instead I will withhold the belief that it’s Paul: I’ll be agnostic as to whether or not it is he. Another example: my guidebook says there are no cacti in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; but then I learn that this guidebook is notoriously unreliable. I lose my reason for holding the belief, and will no longer hold it. However I also won’t form the belief that there
are
cacti there; I’ll be agnostic on that question.

One more point about defeaters: whether a belief B is a defeater for another belief B* depends on what else I believe. I believe there is a sheep in the field; you tell me there aren’t any sheep there, although there is a sheepdog that looks like a sheep from this distance. If
I already believe that you are the owner of the field, an honest man, and would know if there are sheep there, I will have a defeater for my belief that I see a sheep. On the other hand, if I already believe that you are a contrarian and love to contradict people just for the fun of it, and that anyway you aren’t in any position to know whether there is a sheep in that field, I won’t acquire a defeater for the belief. (The same goes if I happen, oddly enough, to believe that I and I alone know that dogs are really sheep in disguise.) Another example: I believe that the surface of the moon contains no aircraft, but then I read in the
National Enquirer
that a complete World War II B17 bomber was found there. If I believe the
National Enquirer
is wholly reliable, I will now have a defeater for my original belief; if I believe that this magazine is a typical tabloid, so that its reporting an item as news doesn’t make it likely that the item is true, then I won’t have such a defeater.

Rationality defeaters must be distinguished from
warrant
defeaters (where warrant is the quality that distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief), circumstances that result in my belief’s failing to have warrant in a state of affairs where it would otherwise have it. Another classic example, this one to illustrate warrant defeat: I am driving through southern Wisconsin, see what looks like and in fact is a barn, and form the belief “now that’s a fine barn!” In an effort to mask their poverty, however, the natives have erected a large number of barn facades (four times the number of real barns), fake barns that look just like the real thing from the highway. As it happens, I am looking at a real barn. Nevertheless my belief that it
is
a barn, it seems, lacks warrant; it is only by virtue of the sheerest good luck that I form this belief with respect to a real barn. There is no failure of proper function here; nothing in the situation suggests that I am not carrying on in a perfectly rational fashion in forming that belief. But clearly enough the belief, though true, has little warrant for me; at any rate it doesn’t have enough to constitute knowledge.

All rationality defeaters are warrant defeaters; the converse, of course, doesn’t hold. A rationality defeater, furthermore, will be a belief (or an experience); a warrant defeater need not be, but will ordinarily be just some feature of the environment, as in the barn case above. One need not be aware of
warrant defeaters, and in the typical case of warrant defeaters that are not also rationality defeaters, one is not aware of them; a rationality defeater, however, is ordinarily a belief of which one is in fact aware. Finally, if you come to know about a situation that constitutes a warrant defeater for a belief you hold, then (typically) you also have a rationality defeater for that belief.
²

The second notion we need is that of an
evidence base
. My evidence base is the set of beliefs I use, or to which I appeal, in conducting an inquiry. Suppose I am a detective investigating a murder. Someone floats the hypothesis that the butler did it. I happen to know, however, that the butler was in Cleveland, three hundred miles away at the time of the murder; this belief is part of my evidence base. I will then reject the hypothesis that the butler did it. Alternatively, I may know that the butler is seventy years old and was a mile from the scene of the crime six minutes before the time of the crime, with no automobile, bicycle, horse, or other means of transportation in addition to his own two feet. I also know that only a very small proportion of seventy-year-old men can run a mile in six minutes. Then I won’t simply rule out the hypothesis that the butler did it, but I will assign it (initially, at any rate) a low probability. My car won’t start; among the hypotheses that might present themselves is the thought that it is inhabited by an evil spirit who is out to cause me inconvenience and frustration. But if I believe or think it very likely that evil spirits never inhabit automobiles, then I will assign that hypothesis a very low probability and will not pursue it further as a live option. A Brazilian tribesman, on the other hand, might think it
much more likely that evil spirits should do such things, and might therefore assign this hypothesis much greater probability.

One of the main functions of one’s evidence base, therefore, is that of evaluating possible hypotheses, evaluating them as plausible and probable or implausible and improbable. Some hypotheses, like the one that an evil spirit is inhabiting my automobile, will (given my background knowledge or evidence base) be very unlikely, perhaps so unlikely as not to be worth thinking about at all. Another hypothesis that might suggest itself is that my car has been hit by an errant but powerful cosmic ray, which somehow disabled it. Again, not at all likely. Other hypotheses will be assigned a much higher initial probability—that the car is out of gas, for example, or that the spark plugs are dirty, or that the fuel pump has failed. It is important to see in this connection that the evidence base of a Christian theist will include theism, belief in God and also the main lines of the Christian faith; therefore it will assign a high probability to hypotheses probable with respect to the Christian faith.
³

Our aim, as you recall, is to address the following question. Suppose you are a serious Christian and you come to recognize that Simonian science endorses conclusions incompatible with certain Christian beliefs; and suppose you also hold science in high regard. Do you, as a result, acquire a defeater for those beliefs? To address this question properly, we need one more notion:
methodological naturalism
.

As we noted in the last chapter, many evolutionary psychologists and many scripture scholars come up with hypotheses and theories
incompatible with Christian belief and with theism more generally. Now why do they do so? Why do evolutionary psychologists come up with theories according to which morality is an illusion foisted on us by our genes, or the goods Christians seek are nonexistent, or the beliefs they hold are fictitious or…? Why do they come up with theories according to which religious belief is not produced by truth-aimed cognitive processes? Have they discovered, somehow, that Christian belief is in fact false? Why do some practitioners of historical Biblical criticism propose theories according to which Jesus did no miracles and did not rise from the dead? Well, one answer is that at least some of those who propose these theories are themselves naturalists; they therefore think religious belief in general and Christian belief in particular is false, and theorize accordingly. But a wholly different kind of reason may also be in play. Consider the fact that many who practice historical Biblical criticism themselves personally accept the whole range of Christian belief, but separate their personal beliefs (as they might put it) from their scripture scholarship; in working at scripture scholarship, they prescind from their theological beliefs; they bracket them, set them aside. Why would they do that? Because they believe an effort to be scientific requires this separation or dissociation. Their thought is that scientific investigation requires thus setting aside theological belief. They accept the
methodological naturalism
(MN) that is widely thought to characterize science.