Today's episode is an extension from the last, turning to the question of science and theology: is the tension natural? Or something else? The book referenced is Where the Conflict Really Lies by Alan Plantinga: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Conflict-Really-Lies-Naturalism/dp/0199812098/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Where+the+Conflict+Really+Lies+by+Alvin+Plantinga&qid=1616162078&sr=8-1
Jamie: Hey everybody, this is Jamie Dew.
Joe: And this is Joe Fondo.
Jamie: Welcome back again to the Towel & The Basin podcast.
Joe: That's right. Oh, wait before I get to my question, Jamie. I see you, for all of our listeners who don't know, we finally have this video where we can see each other face to face as we [crosstalk 00:00:22]
Jamie: Very nice.
Joe: Very nice. I also see a guitar behind you.
Jamie: Yep.
Joe: So I always kinda wondered what you did all day.
Jamie: Yeah, that's it. That's all I do.
Joe: That's it? That's all I [crosstalk 00:00:33]
Jamie: I just show up to things every now and then.
Joe: Anything else is outsourced [crosstalk 00:00:36]
Jamie: I actually do when I'm in my office. Yeah. I'm actually, I do that quite a lot.
Joe: What kind of guitar is that?
Jamie: That is a Martin Guitar and it's not a big fancy Martin Guitar. It's in their X series, which is more of their... I don't know how to explain that series, if you're not a guitar player. If you're a guitar player, you might know what I'm talking about.
Joe: Yeah.
Jamie: It's a good guitar. It's not my favorite guitar, but it's a good guitar. What kind of guitar you got?
Joe: I have an Ovation.
Jamie: Oh, okay.
Joe: Yeah. Which I would've never bought an Ovation, if it was just me. Matter of fact, so my uncle who is a large inspiration for me learning to play guitar, he had an Ovation, and so that's where that happened. But I see your guitar there. For anybody who's a guitar player out there, there's this special tuning called drop D tuning. It's a normal tuning except for your E string, just goes down to the D, which is just two frets. It's a short little thing. Well, very first time I tried to do drop D tuning, I went the wrong way. I did not fundamentally understand the drop.
Jamie: You went up.
Joe: I tuned all the way of that big old string all the way up. I would've never thought I could pop the big string on my guitar. And with force, it popped.
Jamie: You can.
Joe: It scared the mess out of me. You can, I did.
Jamie: Yeah, you can do that.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. And so...
Jamie: You didn't break your guitar though, that's good.
Joe: I didn't, it was not the ovation, it was a really cheap one at the time. And that probably is what saved it. It was just this really cheap hardcore guitar. Made for idiots.
Jamie: [inaudible 00:02:18] That's the moral, right?
Joe: That's right. It's a good thing you're playing that and not this one. So I have another question about things that people also sometimes get wrong. This is my sloppy segue into our topic today. Science and theology, right? Are they at odds with each other, or are they buddies, or is it something else?
Jamie: Yeah, so there's people that believe both. And this is, I guess, really a very specific version of the general thing we did in the last podcast, where we talked about faith and reason broadly. And so now one way that debate that we talked about in that last podcast comes to play is in the question of science and theology, specifically. You got religious ideas and theological ideas on the one hand, and then you got scientific theories. And probably as we say that what most people are going to be most familiar with, is the debate about say evolution and creationism, and stuff like that. And so that is not an area of my specialization or expertise or anything else like that. But I have done a tremendous amount of work in the relationship of science and theology more on a philosophical level, as opposed to a theory level. So maybe I can explain that a little bit more as we go on.
But essentially, yeah. The way you frame the question kind of gets at the major ideas. Some people have said that these two disciplines are by their very nature enemies with each other. There's natural hostility, this is referred to as the warfare thesis about this relationship. And on this view, and say man, science and theology are natural opposition to each other, and enemies with each other. They're always at odds, they're always hostile to each other. And they'll cite the cases of Galileo, they'll quote the cases of the Scopes Monkey Trials in 1925. Because look, in favor of this view, the reality of it is, is they're actually are lots of times and places throughout our history where there's been conflict between these two.
There have also against this view though, there have been some times and places where in fact, the same person was a scientist and a pastor, or a scientist and a monk or a priest or something like that. And people have argued, not completely wrong, I think. That natural science, the scientific revolution takes place in Europe, right on the heels of the reformation, and that's not coincidental. I mean, look, when you look at the Aztecs, when you look at Ancient China, you've had some people with some technology and some major insights into reality, and yet the scientific revolution didn't happen there, it happened in a distinctly Judaeo Christian environment.
A lot of worldview historians will say that's not coincidental, that's because the worldview of Christianity itself actually gives rise to this. And so truth be told, you got some people that say they're natural enemies, you got some people kind of citing what I just talked about, about the Protestant Reformation such, they'll say, "No, no, no, they're not enemies, they're best friends, they're buddies." If you want to know the truth, I think that the relationship is vastly more complicated than either of those two views really capture or get at.
There have been moments of both throughout history. There have been moments where science and Christianity specifically went well together and played nicely with each other. And there been times and places where it has not. So I think it's just much more complicated. The way I think about it is, and this again, ties back into and builds upon what we did in the last podcast when we talked about the dialogical relationship that potentially could be there. I think that in fact, despite all appearances and all the protests from people in religious circles and also in scientific circles, that these two are enemies with each other, and that they're totally the opposite of each other.
What my work has been focused on in the early part of my career, I wrote on Alister McGrath's scientific theology. And essentially what McGrath argues, I think he's right, is that man, for all the differences between these two, and there are differences between the two. Despite all those differences, however, when these two disciplines did their work correctly and did it right, they shared some basic philosophical assumptions about how we get knowledge about the world and things like that.
And so what I would point to is that despite whatever differences there might be, there's actually some pretty striking common ground between the two of them that most people just would never see. So let me hit those first and then maybe it's easier to kind of explain some of the differences with the caveats at the end. Maybe that's a better way to do it.
Joe: Yeah, that sounds good.
Jamie: So now look, if you're a listener, this may not be your cup of tea. This may bore you to tears. I'm really sorry. This just, man it's kind of stuff I'm interested in that I do. This is philosophical. I mean, look, the shared common ground between them, are found in the philosophical dispositions they have about reality and knowledge acquisition. So let me let point to three things that both of these disciplines, when they've done their work properly, both of them assume these three philosophical issues.
Number one, both science and theology are what we would call realist perspectives about the world and knowledge. So realism is a very common sense approach that frankly is actually denied a lot of times in the modern era. But realism basically says that there is a real world, hence realism, a real world outside of our minds. And that reality is mind independent. And here's what that means. It means that reality doesn't have to have my perceptions and it doesn't have to have your perceptions. What this is saying is that reality is first and foremost, something outside of our minds, not inside of our minds. And that's very different from postmodern perspectives.
Postmodern perspectives are going to insist that truth and knowledge are just mental constructs or social constructs, and that they're mind dependent and things like that. And both theology and science are basically saying, "No, there really is a world out there and you and I really can know it," right? So think about it. How do we put people on the moon? How do we drive cars? How do we interact with people? It's all on this assumption that there's a world outside of me and that I can know that world.
And that may sound very commonsensical to most of us. And I would say in response, "It should because it's right." I mean, that's just the way it is, right? But despite that, there's been quite a few movements in recent history that have given themselves wholeheartedly pushing back against this and rejecting this idea. And look, science and theology both stand shoulder to shoulder here, pushing back against these intellectual shenanigans, so to speak. At the end of the day, the world around me is really there. And it's independent of my mind, and your mind, and anybody else's mind. It's always been that way. And what science is trying to do, is it's trying to figure that world out and understand it. And what theology's trying to do is trying to figure that world out and understand it. So they both start off on that basic philosophical assumption. That's one big thing, okay?
A second big thing is that both of them affirm what we would call a correspondence theory of truth. And this too is a very historic, commonsensical understanding of what it means to know something or what it means for something to be true. And we actually talked about this in a podcast a couple weeks back when we talked about views of truth. Remember we talked about correspondence theory, pragmatic theory, and coherence theory. Correspondence theory basically says a statement is true if that statement corresponds to reality, right? Think about every scientific statement, right? Every scientific statement is built on this correspondence theory. X is true, x is true if it corresponds the way the world really is. Christian theology too. We believe this is true and well that's because we believe this corresponds to the way the world actually is.
So you can see here that realism and correspondence theory kind of go hand in hand. Now, Post moderns love to push back on correspondence theory and say that it flattens the concept of truth. And it strips from the concept of truth, all of its beauty, and flourish, and glory, and makes it a very sterilized thing, very one-dimensional. It's binary, it's on or off, it's true or false. And truth is just stripped down and reduced to this basic non appealing concept. And I would say back, "Look, truth may in fact be more than just correspondence, but it's not less than that," right? So it's at least this. If you want to add some other things about its coherence, and you want to add some other things about pragma, how it works for us in various ways, fine. But you can't get away from correspondence theory.
I think, as I said it back then in that podcast, look when the apostle Paul says things to us like, "This is the gospel. Jesus was crucified, he was dead, he was buried, he was raised the third day." What he's not saying is that, that's an idea that'll work for you. He's not just saying, that's an idea that fits into other things we believe. What he's saying is this is how it happened. This is a true fact about the world that we live in. It's true for you and me and him and her, back then, right now, forever more. Over here, over there, it is universally true everywhere. That's what he's saying. So realism and correspondence, both science and theology, hold to correspondence theory. You have some Christian theologians today that want to deny that. I think with all due respect, that [inaudible 00:12:24], because again, it may be more than that, but it is not less than that. And I'm hard pressed to see how you can ever strap Christianity to the chassis of anything other than correspondence theory.
Joe: Yeah. As you were saying that, I was kind of thinking a similar thing. It's very talking about Christian theologians who buy into this. It's very hard to consistently call yourself Christian. It's more just an arbitrary label at that point, I feel like, because it does seem so critical to Christianity.
Jamie: Right, right. And so look, if your views don't actually line up with what Christianity teaches, then it's not really a Christian view. Right? And boy, that's the day we live in. There's all sorts of things that are said in the name of Christianity, and all sorts of groups that want to call their view Christian, that actually deny everything about Christianity. And look, hold that view if you want to, but stop calling it Christian, that's just not what it is. So correspondence theory seems to be essential there.
Now this last one, the third major philosophical premise or presupposition that both of these disciplines have, is that both of them, and this is going to sound super nerdy, just hang with me for a minute, I'm going to explain it. Both disciplines are what we would call a posteriori disciplines. Here's what I mean by that. So there's two different terms, a priori and a posteriori. A priori means you now some things without experience. Like a stick with one end couldn't exist, I've never experienced that. But I just know from the concept it couldn't exist. A bachelor being married, I just know on reflection without experience that, that couldn't be, right? That's a priori.
A posteriori means, and hear the word post in that, it means I know some things after my experience, or from my experiences. So what that means is, is that theology by its very, and science by its very nature, have observed the world or something there in it, and have formulated theoretical responses out of it, right? In science, we actually call it theory, in Christianity we call it theology. Now here's what we mean by that. Here's what theology is. We got into this when we dealt with natural theology, right?
Revelation is what God does, he reveals himself. Theology is what you and I do in response to that revelation. So for example, he gave us this Bible verse, and that Bible verse, and that Bible verse. What do we do? What do we take from that? Well, one theologian like a John Calvin might say, "Ah, you're predestined before the foundations of the world to to be redeemed and God determined it." And Arminius might say, "No, no, no, God is going to give you free will and free choice," something like that. Look, they're both reading the same revelation, but they formulated a doctrinal response to that differently, right?
Now look, whether you're into Calvinist or an Armenian is not my concern here. Notice what both of them do. They respond to something, in this case the word of God, and they formulate explanation of it, right? They exegete and they formulate, right? They're responding to a particular thing. Science is doing the same thing, only their subject matter's different. They're not looking at Bible versus, they're looking at dirt, and rocks, and stars, and planet, and blood and all sorts of things. And they're seeing what's there and they try to formulate theories from it.
Notice how in short, what it means to be a posteriori is, both of them have their subject matter that they study and then respond to it with theoretical formations, so to speak. And that's essentially what the doctrinal hermeneutical process is. So all that to say, while they may have wild differences from each other, ultimately when they've done their work properly throughout history, they both operated on the same set of basic assumptions, philosophical assumptions, about the world and how we should gain knowledge from it. So that's one reason I would say, ah, they're at least not natural enemies with each other. They're not natural enemies with each other.
There are some differences though. What I don't want to say is, or what I am saying is, they may have some shared philosophical assumptions, but they also have some real differences with each other, right? So for example, the methodologies in theology, theological method and theology, those are very different methodologies than the methodologies and biology or chemistry or sociology, right? And for that matter, in the sciences, all of those individual disciplines from physics and chemistry and biology, they all have different methods, right? Different things we study, some nuance and methods, but shared philosophical assumptions about the way we know as human beings and what's really there. Right?
This approach allows the scientist to be the scientist, and allows the theologian to be the theologian. But it recognizes that as human knowers, we're both responding to things and formulating our statements out of that. And so they're at least not enemies with each other. I'm not prepared to say they're natural buddies, but they're at least not enemies from each other. And I think we can actually learn a lot from each other.
Joe: Yeah. That's helpful.
Jamie: One other thing real quick before we leave, if anybody's interested in this, maybe I'll just recommend one book. If you're not a philosopher, anything you read by a guy by the name of Alvin Plantinga would probably blow you out of the water. He'd be like, "Holy moly, what in the world?" His last name is spelled like plant-I-N-G-A. Plantinga, Alvin Plantinga. And he's written a lot of things that, unless you're a philosopher, you might not be able to follow along with what he's done. But he's written one book that I think any one of you could follow along on, it's a book called Where the Conflict Really Lies.
And what he argues is, is that essentially, despite what a lot of people think, the natural partner for modern science is not naturalism, the view that there's no God. So in other words, the natural way to do science on his view is, it not atheism. The natural way to do science is on theism. And since his argument is this, he said while science and naturalism have a superficial concord, concord means agreement. And their superficial concord is, oh look, atheists say evolution and science says evolution. Okay? So on the surface they look like they are buddies, they go together.
He says despite that superficial concord, there is a deep discord, which means conflict, and here it is. Naturalism and atheism says there's no purpose, there's no meaning, there is no explanation for anything for rationality. And science says, this world is built stem to stern in a very rational constructed way. That's a big problem for naturalism and science. By contrast, Christian theology and modern science, there's a superficial discord. Scientists say evolution, a lot of Christians say, no, not evolution. So on the surface of it, they butt heads.
Despite that superficial discord, there is a deep, deep, deep concord, which means agreement. And it's this, the sciences look at nature and they operate on the assumption of organization, structure and such. And yet it can't explain that. Christian theology comes along and says in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And by him, all things that were made, were made. So in other words, despite whatever superficial disagreement these two may have, underneath it, they're both operating on the premise that this world is organized and structured in such a way that you and I can know it. And therefore, maybe these two things have a lot in common together. And therefore, planning to argue is the natural dialogue partner, or the natural worldview for science to operate on is actually Christian theism, not naturalism.
Joe: Fascinating. That's very interesting. For anybody listening, I'll just drop the link to that book in the show notes. So if you're driving, you don't have to try to remember that.
Jamie: Yeah. And I don't necessarily endorse everything in the book. I'm just telling you, this is a very interesting read that puts a much different perspective on it than most people have.
Joe: Awesome. Well, this has been super helpful, thanks Jamie.
Jamie: Hey everybody. This is Jamie and Joe again. If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts, that helps other people find it. And if you have any questions we'd love to hear about them just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way. And we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.