Reflections on Science and Faith:
Four Theses by Kerry Magruder and Mike Keas

Introduction. A Christian worldview* in the arena of science (or any other academic discipline) bears no resemblance to a "Christian" nature poster that is superficially sanctified by the quotation of a Scripture verse in one corner. If integration were that easy, Christian bookstores could package it in a plastic wrapper, and no one would need to get it from OBU... (etc.). Rather, integration of faith and learning in a liberal arts context must take place on a worldview level. To defend this claim, we offer four theses. Come to class prepared to debate our theses. All opinions are welcomed in class!

*A worldview is a person's overarching framework for interpreting experience. Everyone has a worldview, regardless of whether or not it is systematically constructed or consciously identified. A person's worldview necessarily shapes the way they understand anything (e.g., ordinary everyday life, and academic disciplines of any kind, for example, theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences). A worldview includes ideas about such "aspects of the world" (or "levels of reality") as the following: ethical, aesthetic, economic, social, historical, logical, sensory, biological, chemical, and physical.

Thesis #1. No person engaging in science or any other kind of intellectual work can completely avoid the "imposition" of interpretative patterns. No one can think theoretically or act intentionally without a worldview.

The early modern astronomer Johannes Kepler is an illuminating example of the interplay between open self-criticism and worldview commitment ("bias"). Kepler's celestial laws, described in any modern physics textbook, were derived from a cosmological scheme based on a Christian Neoplatonism featuring the five regular solids of the Pythagoreans. For complex worldview reasons, Kepler believed that music and astronomy needed to be unified on a theoretical level, and that these geometrical solids would enable him to do so. The imposition upon the cosmos of that now-refuted cosmological scheme enabled Kepler to see farther than any observations could then justify by themselves--nor was that interpretative scheme abandoned by him as a result of Tycho's observations. Indeed, Kepler never abandoned it. J. V. Field explains:

"The 'perfected astronomy' derived from Tycho's observations led Kepler to modify the theory described in the Mysterium Cosmographicum. However, there was no need for any drastic modification of the theory, which Kepler clearly still regarded as intellectually satisfying, mathematically justified and in fairly good agreement with the observations. He believed that the differences between the theory and the observations were real and must be explained, but they did not seem to him to be so large as to cast doubt upon the essential correctness of the theory."

Kepler's geometrical solids are representative of the complex relations between theory and observation which are manifest generally throughout the history of science. Historically, major astronomical discoveries have not resulted from the simple accumulation of positive facts or undeniable evidence. Rather, theory and observation have proceeded in a dialectic of mutual adjustment and, in many cases, theory (the imposition of patterns) has led observation rather than vice-versa.

For another example, Copernicus' heliostatic system of astronomy was based on only 27 new "observations," none of which were crucial to any of his major propositions, and many of which were sub-horizon phenomena (events that happen below the horizon can't actually be observed--these manufactured "observations" were only intended to illustrate his theory). How would a positivist advocate of complete "openmindedness" explain the fact that the first direct observational evidence of the rotation of the Earth was discovered by Foucault in 1851, nearly three centuries after Copernicus?

Modern science has not developed as a simple accumulation of theory-independent observations. One does not have to be a postmodernist or a relativist to insist that un-interpreted data or evidence simply do not exist--or at the very least, cease to exist as soon as they are talked about. Rather, in the formulation and selection of problems to address, and in the specification of criteria by which evidence shall be interpreted, scientists as human beings actively shape the conclusions of all inquiry. Theory-making in any academic discipline, like any field of science, necessarily entails in advance the existence of perspectives on the kind of thing one is investigating--perspectives which precondition the very "data" that could possibly "appear" to the investigator's mind. It is a part of honest inquiry to acknowledge this.

It is the same with teaching. Instructors make innumerable "judgments" (as the OBU "Commitment to Excellence" statement put it) in course design that constrain and precondition "whatever data might appear" in the classroom. The professional and ethical response to this inevitability is to ensure that questioning and debate are welcomed. This requires that as many of the major viewpoints as possible are made available to students, so that students can hear of minority views that they may wish to pursue. But just as importantly, an instructor ought to identify and communicate to students his or her own principles of inquiry and his or her own theoretical perspectives on a given subject. This honesty and openness not only offers students a mature and informed scholarly example (one which they may choose to adopt or not), but immeasurably assists students in their critical evaluation of the bias inherent in the classroom. If done well, it provides a model of self-scrutiny in a personal dialectic that can further stimulate debate. On the other hand, if such open self-disclosure is not attempted at all, one falls back upon the pretense of an apparently unconditioned discovery-experience by means of "whatever data might appear." The appearance of un-interpreted evidence and unfiltered experience is only an illusion that amounts to covert indoctrination or subtle manipulation which, however benign, is the antithesis of the ideal of a liberal arts tradition as fostering a self-examined life. (We attempt this sort of self-disclosure in the present essay.)

Both professors and students ought to have the freedom to develop and express informed opinions. To do so in a way that is in keeping with the tradition of the liberal arts is to lay all your cards on the table, to make explicit where you stand and the reasons for your stance, and to treat opposing stances as fairly as possible. It is futile, and therefore misleading, for a professor to try to hide his or her own perspective from students on matters central to the discipline. Students will be able to evaluate a professor's instruction more critically and thoroughly if the professor makes plain where he or she is coming from. To attempt to remain neutral on organizing perspectives is itself to take some kind of position. As Huxley wrote in 1937: "It is impossible to live without a metaphysic. The choice that is given is not between some kind of metaphysic and no metaphysic: it is always between good metaphysic and a bad metaphysic." (Ends and Means, p. 252.) Chesterton commented: "Men have always one of two things: either a complete and conscious philosophy or the unconscious acceptance of the broken bits of some incomplete and shattered and often discredited philosophy." (The Common Man, p. 173.)

A liberal arts education should not allow a teacher to foist one's opinions on students, but it does require that a teacher open up the foundations of one's opinions to examination, as well as the foundational notions that guide the interpretive strategies of the authors whose works are being read by the class. Professors also ought to encourage (but not coerce) students to critically evaluate their own perspectives on the subject matter of the course. A liberally arts educated person is not someone who is uncommitted to any particular views on a subject, but rather one who holds his or her views in a self-examined manner. To claim to know truth is not antithetical to liberal arts education if one is willing to defend one's claims in open dialogue.

Thesis # 2. Each participant in the liberal arts tradition of science legitimately seeks for integration between specialized disciplines (the quest for a unity of truth).

For a modern application of holding examined views in a quest for a unity of truth, consider Edward Wilson's revealing rhapsody on evolution: "Guided by no vision, bound to no distant purpose, evolution composes itself word by word to address the requirements of only one or two generations at a time." We would be disappointed if anyone were to suggest that Wilson offers an example of an unbiased researcher who has merely examined the evidence and thus come to whatever views he now holds. While Wilson is certainly able to avoid intellectual paralysis and to develop an ethic and a worldview, Wilson's interpretation of biology and evolution is driven by his sociobiology program that intends to reduce every aspect of human culture to our biological nature. We applaud Wilson's attempt to integrate his materialistic worldview and his science. However, those who deny his sociobiology may legitimately impose different worldview patterns on the evidence in order to pose heretofore overlooked questions and uncover heretofore unsuspected evidence to make a rational case against Wilson's integrated system of scientific beliefs. To attribute objectivity to scientific worldviews like Wilson's is contrary to the tradition of liberal arts endorsed here, where open criticism of one's foundational assumptions is fostered or encouraged, and never ruled out of order (even with respect to scientific authority).

There is much work to be done in science, and those (like Kepler or Wilson) who inform their work with deep perspectives (not superficially sanctifying cliches) are likely to push farther along because of those "imposed" perspectives.

Thesis # 3. Faith and reason (science or any discipline of knowldege) are dialectically related for all theorists at a deep presuppositional level. No one is without faith commitments.

All reasoning involves faith commitments embodied in one's first principles, and reciprocally, all faith involves reason. The two are not separable enough to merely talk about the need to integrate the two; more often the difficulty lies in identifying the hidden ways in which they are already dialectically related in one's discipline or one's thinking. All significant arguments (scientific and otherwise) involve monstrous presuppositions. Faith and reason are not two independent sources of knowledge, but alike spring from the heart, the essentially religious faculty referred to by scriptures as the seat of worldview commitments.

Faith is a heart-deep response to what a person takes to hold the status of divinity. By "divine" we mean "that which is able to exist on its own without depending on anything else" (this definition is consistent with traditional Western usage from Aristotle to Aquinas and thereafter). In this sense one's divinity could be Yahweh, matter/energy, Number, form, self, or almost anything else. Idolatry, then (in a non-pejorative sense), amounts to attributing the status of divinity to anything that someone else believes is not divine.

Consider, for instance, how a Christian theological perspective of mathematics might take shape. Although we can all laugh at the notion of there being a distinctively "Christian" proof for a mathematical theorem, we would fool ourselves if we were to write off all of mathematics as neutral with respect to the truth claims of Christianity. Foundational perspectives at the heart of mathematics--that is, at the presuppositional level in which faith-discipline integration must take place--deal with vital questions such as what it is that mathematical symbols represent, or whether mathematical expressions such as 1+1=2 are true (or necessary, which is a different question). Such issues remain hotly debated, and rightfully so.

Two examples will suffice. The Pythagoreans held to the divinity or self-existence of Number. To them, numerical entities were eternal and immutable. All objects in the universe depended, in their view, upon Number and the relations between numbers. A Pythagorean prayer to the number ten has been preserved: "Bless us, divine number, thou who generatest gods and men! O holy, holy tetraktys, thou that containest the root and source of eternally-flowing creation!" Before we all laugh because of the unexpected presence of religion in mathematics, let's jump to Stephen Hawking, who is searching on a quest as if for a holy grail to find a mathematical equation for the universe so compelling that, of itself, it could call the universe into existence. Hawking is not far from a Pythagorean-like perspective, and from a Christian worldview one would properly consider his (admittedly elegant) mathematical physics to be idolatrous, in that it implicitly attributes the status of divinity (self-existence) to Number.

Current cosmological and biological origins issues, among others, also illustrate the presuppositional interplay of faith and reason. A typical position taken by a "secular" or so-called "neutral" university professor is methodological or philosophical naturalism (more often than not, without explicit discussion of the problem). Methodological naturalism supposes that religious beliefs, such as the possibility of direct acts of God, should not be considered in scientific inquiry. Philosophical naturalism entails the stronger stance that there is no such thing as the supernatural at all. In either case, research into questions of cosmological or biological origins is placed within an intellectual straightjacket by assuming before investigation that the answers must not entail supernatural components. Our approach to the Unified Studies "Natural Science II: Biology" course is to pursue inquiry that is open-minded regarding the direct activity or inactivity of God in the origin of life and species. A consistently thinking Christian theist may conclude that God only set up and sustains natural laws that give rise to life and its diversity, or that he directly created the basic types of organisms of Earth, or any position between. We encourage our students to explore these and other Christian options and we do not coerce non-Christian students to adopt views unrelated to their own faith-commitments. We attempt to follow God's example of not forcing people to accept His grace in Christ in that we don't coerce students to accept either "mere Christianity," or our particular interpretation of the Christian perspective on the various areas of science and history that we deal with in class.

Thesis # 4: A liberal arts education in science is not contrary to Christian education.

We have always maintained that Christians should "search out the unity of truth under the Lordship of Christ." Is this inconsistent with a liberal arts education in science, because it violates honest free inquiry? On the contrary, we have shown above that no one can theorize without worldview precommitments; the Christian is not unique in this. Moreover, such precommitments are often productive, as with Kepler and Wilson. Flannery O'Connor, the twentieth-century writer, pointed out that someone with a perspectival vision can hold their ground and not fall prey to fashionable but ephemeral ideas: "What kept me a skeptic in college was precisely my Christian faith. It always said: wait, don't bite on this, get a wider picture, continue to read" (Habit of Being, p. 477). Nor does the presence of such precommitments close off inquiry by predetermining one's conclusions; as O'Connor insisted, "Dogma is the guardian of mystery" (Habit of Being, p. 365).

Yet cultural myths die hard. It is commonly believed that centuries of Christian rejection of scientific approaches are typified by belief in a flat Earth prior to Columbus, or by the priests' refusal to look through Galileo's telescope. We will explore the "flat-Earth myth" at length in Natural Science 311, but the mythic Galileo anecdote requires a specific response. How many people in our culture have heard of this story? In contrast, how many know that two of the first defenses of Galileo were written by priests, Foscarini and Campanella? Moreover, Galileo was in Rome just one year after his telescopic discoveries, expressly at the invitation of the Jesuit astronomers of the Collegio Romano. The latter unanimously confirmed his discoveries and reported to the Pope that his "telescope" was reliable. Most opposition to its use came not from astronomers or priests, but from Aristotelian natural philosophers in the universities. Aristotelian natural philosophers questioned the optical integrity of the instrument, in part because of the historical association of optics with magical illusions. Apparently modern perceptions of the history of science are not always fair or self-examined either. This is understandable, of course, given the arcane nature of the historical evidence and the prevalence of cultural myths about Galileo. What is more troubling than hasty simplifications such as "centuries of Christian rejection of scientific approaches" would be a modern "natural philosopher" refusing to acknowledge that we all look through perspectival, worldview telescopes. What matters most is whether one's precommitments are explicitly identified and openly acknowledged, or whether they are concealed and left unexposed to the light of critical probing and examination.

We are grateful to work for an institution that advertises itself as a distinctive Christian liberal arts university. We hope to live up to the expectations of those students who are attracted to OBU partly on the basis of this institutional identity. Our views are in keeping with OBU's "Commitment to Excellence," including both the "principle objective" of helping students "mature intellectually, think critically, objectively, and independently, and develop sound judgments" and the equally important and non-contradictory aim of being concerned with "issues of faith, particularly those which bear upon the process of liberal education and the subject matter of [one's] discipline."

George Marsden has recently completed his historical study of The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (Oxford, 1994). In it he analyzes Christian belief in the academy as part of the pluralistic situation we have described. According to Marsden, there was a "fatal weakness in conceiving of the [American] university as a broadly Christian institution." This weakness centered on two assumptions: "its commitments to scientific [positivistic] and professional ideals and to the demands for a unified public life." In this essay we have denied the positivistic assumption of an allegedly neutral professional investigator, as well as the expectation of a uniform academic life. Had we aspired to either of these two impossible ideals, we would have to concede that a Christian liberal arts education is obsolete, for the reasons Marsden explores. In closing, we recommend Marsden's book to anyone desiring a more clearly-articulated exploration of the implications of our identity as a Christian liberal arts educational institution at the close of the twentieth century.

©1998

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