Religion and Science

Overview

Recall questions on scientific method, the conflict, independence and dialogue models, miracles and Hume's argument, the Big Bang and steady state theories, irreducible complexity and creationism, the cosmological constant, Darwin and Dawkins on evolution, and the Gaia hypothesis.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How does scientific method work, and how does it differ from religious ways of knowing?

   Model answer

   Broadly through observation, the framing of a hypothesis that could turn out wrong, controlled testing, and revision in the light of results, with findings published so that others may try to knock them down. Popper added that what marks a claim as scientific is that it forbids something, so it can be shown false. Religious traditions appeal to revelation, to scripture, to the authority of a community and to experience, and treat some claims as settled rather than provisional. The two are not simply opposites, since both reason to the best explanation and both rely heavily on trusting testimony.

2. 2

   What are the main ways of describing the relationship between religion and science?

   Model answer

   As conflict, where the two make incompatible claims and one must give way. As independence, where they answer different questions and cannot collide, which is Gould's proposal that each has its own proper domain, one concerned with what is the case and the other with meaning and value. As dialogue, where each raises questions the other can illuminate, such as why the universe is intelligible at all. And as integration, where scientific findings are built into a theology. Which model someone adopts usually decides the argument before it begins.

3. 3

   How is a miracle defined, and why is the definition contested?

   Model answer

   Hume defined it as a violation of a law of nature brought about by a particular act of God, which builds the improbability into the definition. Aquinas defined it more broadly as an event exceeding the productive power of nature, including things nature could produce but not in that order or at that speed. Holland proposed that an extraordinary coincidence can count as a miracle if it is received religiously, so a child saved because a train happened to stop may be one even though no law was broken. The definition matters because Hume's makes miracles maximally improbable before any evidence is examined.

4. 4

   Set out Hume's argument against believing in miracles.

   Model answer

   That a reasonable person proportions belief to evidence, and the evidence for a law of nature is the whole uniform experience of humankind, whereas the evidence for a miracle is a quantity of testimony. Testimony is credible only if its falsehood would be more surprising than the event reported, and it never is. He added practical arguments: no miracle has been attested by enough people of unquestionable judgement and reputation; human beings delight in the marvellous; such reports flourish where people are least equipped to investigate them; and rival religions produce competing miracles, so each set of reports undermines the others.

5. 5

   How is Hume answered on miracles?

   Model answer

   That he frames the argument so that no evidence could ever suffice, which is a decision rather than a discovery. That fixing the content of a law of nature by uniform experience means excluding the disputed cases in advance. That Swinburne is right to say the principles of credulity and testimony apply here as elsewhere, so multiple independent reports should carry weight. And that a person who already has reason to believe in God occupies a background against which such an event is far less improbable than Hume's calculation assumes.

6. 6

   What is the religious objection to miracles?

   Model answer

   That a God who intervenes occasionally raises a moral problem about all the occasions on which he does not. Wiles argued that isolated interventions - a healing here, a rescue there - while the great catastrophes of history run their course make God arbitrary and morally indefensible, and proposed instead that creation as a whole should be understood as God's single act. Others answer that the objection assumes we know what the alternatives were, and that the traditions treat such events as signs pointing beyond themselves rather than as a system for distributing relief.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.