Furthermore, divine action channelled through matter would be
limited by the possibilities of matter. For instance, the
possibility of a creation ex nihilo, the virgin birth of Jesus, his
incarnation and resurrection from the dead would be excluded. Also
excluded would be communication with a non-material being. When
Christians communicate with God they would be communicating only
with themselves, taking comfort in an illusion that may have only
biological or psychological advantages.[24] What I have just
described are manifestations of a theology that destroys
Christianity. Of course, not all Christians fall into the trap
that causes this destruction. A dualism between nature and
supernature provides one escape. For instance, if the capacity for
religious belief emerged due to the internal workings of matter,
and if as a Christian one wants to avoid taking the existence of
God as an illusion, then minimally this capacity of having
religious belief needs to be filled with specific content from the
supernatural realm of God. Therefore, Christian methodological
materialists appear to have no choice, but to be dualists. That
is, to accommodate God on a second supernatural floor added to the
ground floor of material reality.
The division of reality into a natural and a supernatural realm
does not necessarily exclude interaction between these realms or
between the ways we come to know them, that is between faith and
science. In practice, however, a split view of reality is often
associated with a split view of knowledge of the two realms.
Partly because of the success of methodological materialism, many
theists believe the non-material is irrelevant for understanding
the material world, even though they also believe that God acts in
the material world. They believe that explanations in terms of
God's action in the world or in terms of created non-material
causes, such as mind, are not appropriate for understanding the
physical properties, physical behaviour and formative history of
the universe, to use Van Till's categories.[25]
As a result, there is no relation between science and religion.
This is problematic because many Christians also believe that their
faith ought to affect all the dimensions of their life and this
includes scholarship. For many this relation has become limited to
exemplifying Christ in how one deals with ethical issues such as
the environment, abortion, or euthanasia. Excluded from
consideration is how one deals with theory choice, let alone with
the influence religious beliefs may have on the content of
theories. However, religious beliefs have made a difference in
science.[26] Moreover, there are reasons to believe that religious
beliefs ought to make a difference in science.[27] If this is
correct, and I believe it is, then the preference of a majority of
christian scientists for a dualistic separation of religion and
science is a bad omen for christian scholarship. Thus the question
whether one can be both a Christian and a methodological
materialist is pressing.[28] I have argued that Christians are
among those in the best position to hold materialism
methodologically because they are least likely to be constrained by
beliefs that transform methodological materialism into a form of
metaphysical naturalism.
5. METHODOLOGICAL PLURALISM
I propose to cure the maladies of methodological materialism with
methodological pluralism. Recently, Plantinga (1995) suggested
that methodological materialism may be appropriate for some but not
all disciplines. I propose to develop this suggestion into a
methodological pluralism for two reasons. First, methodology ought
to be shaped by reality, and that reality is, I believe, multi-
dimensional.[29] Second, methodology ought to be guided by the
goals of science, and there is a diversity of them. Methodological
pluralism is, therefore, characterized by the pursuit of what I
call multi-dimensional explanation. This is explanation in terms of
efficient causes, but also final causes, non-material causes,
"language-oriented notions such as meaning, intentionality,
interpretation and understanding."[30] Thus, methodological
pluralism is associated with methodological forms of teleonomism,
mentism, theism and intentionalism and with a hermeneutical view of
science.
Methodological pluralism is intended to restore intelligibility to
its rightful place among the goals of scientists. Intelligibility
and control are equally valid objectives of science. However,
methodological materialism in conjunction with the beliefs
mentioned above is transformed from a limited and provisional
methodology to obtain control over material reality into an
imperialistic ideology in which intelligibility has been lost sight
of. There is a crisis of intelligibility when the fundamentals of
equilibrium and polymer chemistry are ignored in a research program
that attempts to reconstruct the course of molecular evolution[31]
or when the conjunction of evolutionary biology and ideological
materialism is self-referentially incoherent.[32] Science ought
not to pursue the domination of selected ideologies such as
materialism or physicalism. Intelligibility depends on a broad
context that includes observation, methodological, metaphysical and
religious beliefs. Methodological pluralism makes room for a
potential role in science of this entire context. For instance, a
theist evaluates intelligibility in light of beliefs about created
causes both material and non-material as well as a non-created
cause (God). Christians have reasons to refrain from references to
God's action in explanations aiming at the control of material
reality; God's action is an uncontrollable factor and the planning
that goes into it is unknown. When intelligibility is the goal,
however, Christians have every reason to include God's action in
their understanding of material reality both as part of
explanations and as background against which explanations are
evaluated.
An empirical argument for methodological pluralism is provided by
downward causation. For instance, a biological cause acting on a
physical phenomenon is required to explain why the production of
optically active amino acids in organisms results in the L-form
only while outside an organism the L- and D-form occur with equal
frequency.[33] This phenomenon is an entirely material one
explicable with efficient causation, but already there is a need
for a plurality of different causes.
Many phenomena cannot be fully explained in terms of material
efficient causes. A reference to purpose, the will and the human
mind makes the movement of an arm intelligible.[34] Likewise, a
non-material cause acting on bodily phenomena is required to
explain the changes in heart rate, blood pressure, tone of voice
etc., that occur in association with multiple personality disorder
in humans. However, including non-material created causes in
science reduces predictability. Explaining an asthma attack in
terms of a person's psychological and mental state reduces
predictability depending on the complexity of the causal picture.
However, this reduction is also encountered in purely material
phenomena with a complex causal picture such as the weather.
Scientists may learn to manipulate the causes both material and
non-material in a controlled way. That is why non-material causes
belong in science.
No one will ever be able to manipulate God's action in the world.
Also, explaining an earthquake in terms of God's will does not make
it predictable because we do not know God's will in this
respect.[35] This is why "no hypothesis according to which God has
done this or that can qualify as a scientific hypothesis"[36] even
though this requirement is demanded only by the ideal of prediction
and not, for instance, by logic. However, reference to God's will
can make things intelligible for theists. Theists can explain why
there is something rather than nothing, why natural phenomena
display regularities, why humans can comprehend them[37] and why
naturalistic epistemology can produce reliable knowledge.[38]
Therefore, multi-dimensional explanation includes theological
explanation. I suggest that the givens of science need a
theological explanation of the kind that refers to God's
originating action in the world. To methodologically exclude any
reference to such action[39], is precisely what creates the
illusion of an unbroken chain of material causation from matter to
man, when there may be none. Methodological pluralism is intended
to protect methodological theism from facile references to God's
action.
Multi-dimensional explanation employs explanations of different
type simultaneously. Including the non-material in science is
needed because no one is immune from holding beliefs that block
revision of methodological materialism. For instance, metaphysical
naturalism and evolution as belief context for methodological
materialism render the latter false and irrational.[40] The
combination of methodological materialism and the universal
validity of science is self-contradictory. Methodological
pluralism is intended to protect methodological materialism from
degenerating into a self-destructive ideological agenda by
combining it with other methodological attitudes issuing from a
wider context of metaphysical and religious beliefs.
6. ROLE OF BELIEFS IN SCIENCE.
Intelligibility is normally evaluated in light of, among others,
observation as well as methodological, religious and metaphysical
beliefs. Since intelligibility is a legitimate goal of science so
is the role of these beliefs. My final recommendation is to
acknowledge the legitimacy of including such beliefs in evaluating
theories and interpretations of experience. This acknowledges the
failure of attempts to delimit science from non-science as well as
the underdetermination of scientific theories by observation and
logic. Once the role of beliefs in science is out in the open, it
will be easier to understand what an appropriate role for them
would be.
This position does not end up in relativism. According to
relativism, if you cannot get at truth by reason alone, then you
cannot get at truth at all. This attitude assumes that reason is
the only way to truth with rationalists and objectivists believing
it works and relativists it doesn't. The "third alternative" I
have presented denies their common assumption and holds that truth
can be known holistically. Together with observation and reason,
trust and creative imagination, belief plays a necessary role on
the way to truth. Explanations and theories in science are
relative in the sense that they are related to various beliefs,
observations, and theories. This does not make public agreement
impossible, only harder to achieve. For instance, in accounting
for the fine-tuning of cosmological constants or the presence of
information-carrying molecules, the smallest common denominator
scientists with different belief backgrounds can have is the
hypothesis that an intelligence is responsible. Agreement about
whether this intelligence is a non-material created intelligence or
God is possible, but the road that leads there requires far more
than rational argument.
Acknowledgements
My sincere appreciation goes to Alvin Plantinga and Tom Settle for
helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, but they bear
no responsibility for the end product.
Endnotes
[1] Methodological materialism entails methodological atheism
(Plantinga, 1991: 27).
[2] Plantinga, 1993: 194-237.
[3] Bunge, 1959: 52.
[4] Plantinga (1996) "Methodological Naturalism?" In: Facets of
Faith and Science. Volume I. J.M. van der Meer (Editor).
The Pascal Centre for Advanced Studies in Faith and Science /
The University Press of America. Lanham.
[5] The idea of fruitful error was introduced by Kant and
elaborated by Vaihinger. He develops the role of fiction as
a guide in the acquisition of knowledge. Vaihinger believes
that "The materialistic conception of the world is a necessary
and useful fiction, but it is false as soon as it is taken for
an hypothesis" (199). Natural science "proceeds as if the
external world did assuredly exist outside ourselves and as if
even without a subject , things were as they appear." (200).
For instance, the existence of God is a useful fiction because
it helps us to think of the world as ordered which stimulated
the discovery of this order (xlvii).
[6] Vaihinger, 1924: xlii.
[7] Vaihinger, 1924: 110.
[8] I am holding the cognitive view of metaphor as developed by
Hesse (1988), Nersessian (1988, 1992) and Soskice (1985).
[9] Hesse (1985:108) observes that "Those (like philosophers)
whose business is logic and argument are too prone to neglect
the fact that there can be very important tendencies and
plausibilities among ideas which are less than strict
entailment, but which are highly influential upon thought, and
are not simply exorcized by pointing out that they are not
logically conclusive. We should look very carefully at such
tendencies to see how far we ought to be pushed for good
reasons to accept them, and how far we ought to resist them."
[10] The arguments have been summarized by Brown, 1977: Ch. 5. See
also Laudan (1988).
[11] For reviews see: Funkenstein (1986), Lindberg and Numbers
(1986), Brooke (1991) and Van der Meer (1996).
[12] Very briefly, I believe such relations can exist between
religion and science and can be explained by holding that
theories are composite artefacts composed of categorically
different entities which allow for connections other than
logical ones. I call this the composite theory of theory.
For the capacity of semantic relations to connect religion and
science, see van der Meer (1995).
[13] Polanyi, 1962: 297.
[14] Fodor (1980) and Miller (1987) use the term in the
prescriptive sense.
[15] This is Polanyi's agnostic doubt (1962: 272-279).
[16] Interactionists may include theists and atheists. Atheists
were prominent among Victorian intelligentsia who opposed
materialism on the ground that it could not express all valid
human experiences and ideals (Turner, 1974: 1-2, 22-23).
[17] Such as presented by Vollmert, 1983 and Thaxton et al., 1984.
[18] Plantinga, 1993: 211-215.
[19] Toulmin and Goodfield, 1961: 257; Dampier, 1971: 131.
[20] Strijbos (1988) provides an extensive and insightful analysis
of the dehumanizing effects of a technological approach to
health care.
[21] Plantinga, 1993: 211-215, shows that metaphysical naturalism
forces anti-realism towards the idea of proper function.
[22] Tipler, 1995:3.
[23] Plantinga (1996) "Methodological Naturalism?" In: Facets of
Faith and Science. Volume I. J.M. van der Meer (Editor).
The Pascal Centre for Advanced Studies in Faith and Science /
The University Press of America. Lanham.
[24] Berger, 1969: 100, 179-185. His diagnosis of the effect of
methodological atheism in the sociology of religion is
telling: "Put simply, methodologically, in terms of theology
as a disembodied universe of discourse, sociology may be
looked on as quite 'harmless' - existentially, in terms of the
theologian as a living person with a social location and a
social biography, sociology can be a very dangerous business
indeed." (182)
[25] Van Till, 1986: 97-108; Van Till et al., 1988: Ch. 1., 1990:
126-136.
[26] For reviews see: Funkenstein (1986), Lindberg and Numbers
(1986), Brooke (1991) and Van der Meer (1996).
[27] Van der Meer (1995).
[28] Professor George Marsden (1987) has argued that what is known
as the Kuyperian approach to the relation between Christianity
and culture is the most promising candidate for christian
scholarship because of its conviction that religious beliefs
make a difference in science.
[29] Methodological pluralism is associated with a multi-level
(hierarchical) view of reality which is required to account
for complex phenomena. A systematic presentation of this
ontology is beyond the scope of this paper. See Van der Meer
(1989) for a semi-popular rendition.
[30] Von Wright, 1971: 30.
[31] Vollmert, 1983; Thaxton et al., 1984.
[32] Plantinga, 1993: 216-237.
[33] For a detailed discussion of this example, see van der Meer
(1996a).
[34] I focus on effects of mind on body because I consider effects
of mind on matter too speculative.
[35] Such explanations also do not explain anything, because they
can explain everything, but this is not unique to God's
activity.
[36] Plantinga 1991: 27.
[37] Theists can also interpret the intelligent causes employed by
some physicists in explanations of the fine-tuning of physical
constants and by some biologists in explanations of D.N.A.
encoded information and of effects of mind on body. Such
phenomena are of course open to non-theistic interpretations
such as in terms of a non-material superintelligence.
[38] Plantinga, 1993: 211.
[39] As professor Stek recommends (Stek, 1990: 261).
[40] Plantinga, 1993: 194-237.
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Dr. Jitse M. van der Meer jmvdm@redeemer.on.ca
Professor of Biology (905)648-2131
Director Pascal Centre fax: (905)648-2134
Redeemer College
777 Hwy 53 East
Ancaster, ON. Canada L9K 1J4
_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 40546
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Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt