Rapid Fire – Part 5

The culprit in this case is the word “science.” It actually has two distinct definitions in common parlance, which makes it vulnerable to the subtle linguistic sleight of hand present in this challenge. The first definition is the most well known. “Science” can refer to a precise methodology—observation, experimentation, testing, etc.—that helps us discover facts about the physical world. Any explanation of the natural order that is not the result of the proper methodology is considered unscientific. Consider the difference between astronomy and astrology. The charge that astrology is not science is based on the lack of methodological rigor required for it to be considered “scientific” in the same way that astronomy is. The second definition of science adds to the first definition a philosophic requirement—the philosophy of materialism. According to materialism—also referred to as naturalism and physicalism[1]—nothing exists but the physical world governed by natural law rigidly determining every event in the universe. In Carl Sagan’s words, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”[2] Based on the metaphysical assumption of materialism, matter, energy, and the laws of nature must ultimately be adequate to explain everything in the world. Any account of some feature of the natural realm that doesn’t conform to this naturalistic philosophy is summarily disqualified as unscientific and labeled irrational by this standard. Note an important distinction between the first definition and the second. The first dictates the method required for any enterprise to be considered scientific. The second dictates the kinds of explanations that will be allowed. Note American evolutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma: “Science insists on material, mechanistic causes that can be understood by physics and chemistry.”[3] Though these two definitions usually go hand in hand—most physical phenomena are best explained by an appeal to natural processes—they’re not always compatible. Unique events like the origin of the cosmos, the origin of life, the origin of consciousness, and the irreducible complexity of the biological world by their very nature resist a naturalistic accounting. Instead, they bear every evidence of intelligent design (ID). Here’s the problem. Even when the proper scientific methodology is meticulously adhered to, if the results suggest transcendent intelligent design, the second philosophic definition of science is invoked to declare ID unscientific. Here one encounters the cardinal rule in the game: No matter how compelling the physical evidence is, if conclusions consistent with sound scientific methodology (first definition) conflict with naturalistic, materialistic philosophy (second definition), the philosophy always trumps the methodology. Evolution is a case in point. At first blush it seems that Darwinism is about scientific facts keyed to a sound methodology, and intelligent design is not, relegating it to the same category as astrology. This is not the case, though. ID is summarily disqualified as “religion disguised as science” not because sound scientific methods weren’t in place (first definition), but because the philosophical implications are unacceptable (second definition). The equivocation occurs when the definition of science as methodology is subtly exchanged for the definition of science as philosophy to dismiss the legitimacy of ID, ergo the fallacy. This move is the illicit linguistic sleight of hand I mentioned earlier. Consider this analogy. When a dead body is discovered, an impartial investigation of the scene might indicate foul play and not accidental death. In the same way, evidence could, in principle, indicate that an agent was the one orchestrating biological development rather than chance. This is not faith vs. evidence, but evidence for intelligent agency vs. evidence for natural causes. It’s precisely the way forensic pathology is done. If we’re really interested in the truth, doesn’t it make sense to simply follow the evidence where it leads in an unbiased way, just like detectives do in criminal investigations? That does not make sense, apparently, to those who are committed to philosophical materialism. For them, any evidence for supernatural special creation—no matter how compelling on its face—is summarily tossed out of court. Further, no independent thought regarding the fact of evolution is permitted, either. Any denial of Darwinism simply cannot be countenanced as “science” since it is the ruling paradigm dictated not by facts, but by philosophy. The evolution/design controversy is not about proper scientific method. It’s about the power of an academic elite to enforce a philosophy. If it were not for philosophical strong-arming being done in the field of science, Darwinism would have become a historical curiosity long ago. “No good father would ever treat his children the way the God of the Bible treats his children.” This challenge has popped up frequently lately as a hybrid of the broader complaint concerning the problem of evil. Even if God does exist, the charge goes, if he’s anything like the God of the Bible, then he’s not good. This objection often surfaces regarding biblical sexual morality. Given the “You do you” sexual license that’s characteristic of the cultural moment, any infringement on one’s sexual freedom is unthinkable, a malevolent act by definition. The verdict extends to the acute human suffering happening all around us, to the severe judgments that the God of Scripture visits on entire cultures in Scripture, and to the eternal conscious torment of Hell awaiting nonbelievers. “How could any good father allow that to happen to his own children?” the lament goes. The simple answer to the charge that the biblical God seems a failure as a good dad is that, biblically speaking, it’s a mistake to think that God is a father to those he created in exactly the same way that we are fathers to our own children. There is a parallel here, to be sure, but the analogy is not precise. This point applies to virtually every metaphor the text uses to describe the way God relates to humankind. There are two reasons we need to be cautious of pressing this comparison too far. For one, God is so radically different from us that no “relationship with God” can ever be understood simply in terms of the relationships humans have with each other. The best we can do is to carefully identify biblically sound parallels between human relationships and one’s relationship with God and stop there. Second, according to Scripture, God stands in more than one kind of relationship to members of the human race. For example, God can be a father to his spiritual children, an image invoking a picture of compassionate care, but he is also a sovereign who reigns over his subjects—many of whom are in active rebellion towards him. This relationship is governed by an entirely different dynamic—not filial and benevolent, but governmental and judicial. God is also the maker who wields complete authority over whatever he has made. He is the potter; we are the clay: Who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay? (Rom. 9:20–21) Christians are also servants of the Lord their master. They are to faithfully carry out the tasks that have been entrusted to them until he returns. Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. (Luke 12:42–43) Keep in mind one final and critical point regarding this challenge. The father/child relationship is not one the Bible applies equally to every human being created by God. Nowhere in Scripture do we find the notion of a great “brotherhood of man” carefully being watched over by a doting divine father. A number of biblical references make this clear. John writes, “But as many as received Him [Jesus], to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12). Again John writes, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called the children of God; and such we are” (1 John 3:1). Yes, a good father probably wouldn’t allow his own children to be subject to many of the things God decrees for humankind. However, a good sovereign is different since he rules over subjects, not children. A good master manages servants differently than he does his family. And a skilled potter fashions his clay as his purpose dictates. “Evil proves that God doesn’t exist.” The irony with this challenge is that the problem of evil proves just the opposite. Agreed, the problem of evil has kept multitudes from believing in God and has shipwrecked the faith of countless others. Not only is everyone familiar with it, but at one time or another virtually everyone has raised the question of the compatibility of a good, powerful God with the mind-numbing evil and suffering we see in the world. Regardless of what one thinks of possible solutions to this difficulty, the problem itself is instructive to help us see what kinds of answers are even plausible. I want you to think for a moment about what must be true for such an objection even to be raised. When someone asks, “How can a good, powerful God exist when there is so much evil in the world?” the question is meaningful only if there actually is evil in the world, as it were. If there were no genuine evil, there could be no objection. Note that only objective evil will serve this complaint. Evil has to be real—“out there,” in some sense, as part of reality—for the protest against God’s existence to gain a footing. A relativistic “ice cream” morality won’t do because it reduces the problem of evil to the trivial “I cannot believe in a God who allows flavors I don’t personally like.” The problem of evil, though, is not trivial, but supremely weighty. Here’s the first problem for the atheist. The existence of genuine, objective evil—the only kind of evil that provides traction for the complaint—falsifies moral relativism. If morality is simply “up to us,” then evil disappears into the relativistic mist, and the objection against God based on evil vanishes with it. If, on the other hand, our indignation against evil is well-founded, then our objection against God is at least intelligible (though not necessarily sound), but moral relativism then becomes the casualty. One cannot have it both ways. Relativists cannot help themselves to the complaint about evil in the world, yet they frequently do. They cannot do otherwise because objective morality is undeniable. The universal awareness of the problem of evil makes this clear. But it gets worse for the atheist. Since the problem of evil is real—objective evil actually exists in the world—how does the atheist account for it? How does he explain the genuine morality that must be in place for the problem of evil to even be coherent in a world where all that exists is matter in motion? No appeal to Darwinism will help here since, at very best, all that evolution is able to account for is relativistic morality, not the kind of objective morality necessary to ground the problem of evil. Simply put, biology can’t make rape wrong.[4] It’s going to be hard for an atheist to make sense of objective, transcendent moral law without a transcendent moral lawgiver whose laws are broken, resulting in the problem of evil. Don’t miss the simple calculus of this line of thinking. If there is no God, there is no moral lawmaker. If there is no moral lawmaker, there are no moral laws. If there are no moral laws, there are no broken moral laws. If there are no broken moral laws, there’s no problem of evil. However, there is a problem of evil. Therefore, there are broken moral laws. Therefore, there are moral laws. Therefore, there is a moral lawmaker. Therefore, there is a God. The atheist has two options here, it seems to me. First, he can retain his relativism, but then he has to abandon his objection to God based on real evil in the world. However, denying real evil is going to be difficult for him because he knows that the world is overflowing with evil, ergo the complaint. Second, he can go with the facts and affirm the problem of evil, but then he must surrender his atheism since it can’t make sense of one of the most salient features of reality: genuine evil in the world. What the atheist can’t do is have it both ways if he’s intellectually honest. “It’s misleading to say that, for moral relativists, ‘anything goes.’ Even if morals are not absolute in some sense, people still must live by rules.” If no transcendent moral laws govern the universe and morality is simply based on individual preference, then it seems that relativism amounts to an “anything goes” approach to conduct. Some relativists, though, object to this characterization. Within certain frameworks, they say, there is a genuine distinction between right and wrong even when the system is relativistic. It’s simply not true that “anything goes,” they say. Every community has rules people must live by, even if they do not claim that what is right for them is right for every other group. A simple illustration is adequate to answer this charge. Let us pretend that you want to play the classic board game Monopoly. Like every other game, Monopoly has rules. There are standards, a framework of right or wrong of sorts. According to the rules of the game, for example, you cannot have houses and hotels on the same piece of property. That is not allowed. Parker Brothers, the inventors of the game, said so. Relativism is like Monopoly. In one sense, it’s not the case that “anything goes.” Rather, standards set by the community provide guidelines for behavior. These laws are “true,” though, in an entirely different way than, say, the laws of gravity are true. They are not true because of the way the world is structured, but because of the way human beings (subjects) have arranged the game. If you don’t like the rules, you can change them—variations that are sometimes called “house rules”—or play a different game, or play no game at all. It’s completely up to you. You can’t do that with gravity. If you don’t like the laws of physics, too bad. Adapt or die. Reality will punish you if you don’t take it seriously. Yes, even in relativistic systems you can get punished by the group if you break the rules and get caught. But I think you can see this is a contrived sort of “punishment” based not on transcendent standards, but on mere human conventions (“Go directly to Jail; do not pass Go; do not collect 200”). In the final analysis, if morality doesn’t have the same authority over our behaviors that gravity has over the physical world, then, as I said, anything goes. That’s always the case with relativism. If you are a moral realist, you think moral rules are real things, not individual whims or social conventions created by culture. They are like gravity, not Monopoly. If you are a relativist, then you are playing Monopoly with right and wrong. Of course, this would not make relativism false. It might be that, given the nature of reality, all we are left with when it comes to ethics are human conventions. But I do not think this is so. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” This guideline was popularized by the late astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan. A version of this view was also shared by empiricist philosopher David Hume. The dictum is repeated frequently by skeptics to summarily disqualify foundational claims of Christianity—specifically, belief in the God of the Bible and the miracles recorded in the text, especially Jesus’ miraculous resurrection. The chief flaw here is that no clarity is given to what “extraordinary” in either sense—claims or evidence—actually means. Sagan was a naturalist whose self-professed agnosticism bordered on functional atheism. For him, empirical science was the final measure of truth, and the question of God was the kind of question naturalistic methods couldn’t directly assess, ergo his intractable skepticism on the issue. I don’t mention Sagan’s de facto atheism to discredit his opinion, but rather to give you a piece of information that’s relevant to his challenge. What any given person considers an “extraordinary” claim is going to be dictated by background assumptions. Given Sagan’s naturalistic convictions, the idea that God exists and was responsible for the kind of miracles recorded in Scripture would have been extraordinary to him, requiring extraordinary evidence to justify belief. What, though, is extraordinary about belief in God or miracles performed at his hand? The answer depends entirely upon one’s starting point. Where one begins in his understanding of the nature of reality will determine what kinds of options are plausible and what kinds are outlandish on their face. Sagan starts with naturalism—the world governed by natural law moving physical things about in a particular fashion, all quantified by the science that measures such things. If one is a priori committed to natural causes to explain everything, then nothing other than natural explanations will suffice. Yet, theistic claims are only extraordinary in light of the unyielding assumptions skeptics characteristically bring to the discussion. Here is the irony. Scientific naturalists believe a host of things that are patently extraordinary to any fair-minded observer. What of the assertions that the universe popped into existence with no cause, for no reason, without any meaning? Or the claim that conscious minds emerged from unconscious matter? Or the presumption that dead stuff must have spontaneously given rise to living stuff? Yet naturalistic scientists cling to each of these ideas without blushing. Why? Because they comport perfectly with the philosophic assumptions of their metaphysical naturalism. Where is the extraordinary evidence justifying these claims? These assertions rise to no bar of verification at all—certainly not the bar of “extraordinary evidence.” They are simply dictated by the philosophy that scientists impose on the question. Curiously, their philosophic naturalism itself rises to no such standard of justification. The simple rejoinder to the so-called “Sagan standard” is that with any kind of claim, all that’s required for justification is evidence adequate to the claim. The “extraordinary” adjective is not helpful—for the reasons I mentioned above—and simply muddies the waters. If, for example, credible witnesses testify to a bodily resurrection and then put their lives on the line for the claim, that seems to be prima facie compelling evidence that the claim has merit. For Christianity, evidence like this abounds, including certain types of scientific evidence. Forensic pathology uses science to determine whether the cause of an individual’s death is a result of accident or intelligent agency (“foul play”). In the same way, scientific assessment using the principle of inference to the best explanation can determine if an intelligent agent better accounts for unique features of the universe—like those mentioned above—than a purely naturalistic explanation. Any attempt to dismiss such evidence as not “extraordinary” enough is simply self-serving. It’s also circular since the skeptic’s starting point has guaranteed his conclusion. [1] These words are not exact synonyms, strictly speaking, but I’m treating them as such for our purposes. [2] Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Steven Soter, “The Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” PBS, 1980. [3] Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc., 1983), 12. [4] For a thorough treatment of this concern, see “God, Evolution, and Morality,” parts 1 and 2 at str.org. See also “Good without God?” in Gregory Koukl, Street Smarts (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023).