NCSE SPECIAL:
Interview with Phillip E. Johnson
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NCSE SPECIAL:Interview with Phillip E. Johnson
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In 1993, Phillip E. Johnson, Professor of Law at the Boalt School of Law, University of Californi at Berkeley, and author of "Darwin on Trial," agreed to be interviewed by Yves Barbero for the newsletter of the California Committee of Correspondence. The interview below is followed by an unedited statement by Johnson which appeared in the same issue, and a reply by Prof. Frank J. Sonleitner of the Department of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma, printed in the following issue.
Y B: How would you like to see the debate conducted in the public school systems?
Johnson: Well, the first thing I say is that the public school system isn't really my venue, it isn't where I want it argued. It's in the universities and scientific community that I really start the argument. I don't think that the high school classroom is where you settle the grand issue. The high school educators are going to take their lead from the authority figures in the society and it's dealing with those authority figures that I'm interested in. I think that that will probably result in some kind of change at the lower levels but that's not where to start.
YB: If you had to design a curriculum for the high school level, which is, of course, the main interest of the National Center for Science Education, how would you change it from the way that California has it now?
PJ: Well, with regard to that reservation that this isn't where I'm starting (at the high school level). What I would do with respect to high school science education, is try to bring critical thinking to it rather than put the tremendous emphasis that they are putting on [the following]... "We want to get these kids to believe. We want them to believe in what we think of as the scientific outlook which is naturalistic philosophy. We don't want them to hear about the kinds of critical problems with Darwinian Theory that the skeptics would like to recognize." I'd like to encourage that skepticism and critical thinking; I think that would be good for science education. It would make it more interesting and it would be more honest. So, that's bringing critical thinking to that area that I would encourage.
YB: Without getting into heavy details, how would you get a high school student to do critical thinking? Let's assume that you have various science classes in high school, geology, biology and possibly others. Suppose we were to specify biology and the textbooks. I've seen a few of the textbooks and some of them do have information on creation as debate usually as a side bar somewhere.
PJ: Yeah, but it's highly loaded, I mean it's just one side saying why you shouldn't pay any attention to the other.
YB: Actually, that's not the case in the books that I saw. I thought they simply brought out the issues.
PJ: I suspect that that might seem that way to a confirmed philosophical naturalist, but I don't know what books you have in mind so I can't dispute that.
YB: That's fair enough. I did happen to see a book, a few years back, that was sent to the then Director of Research at the Academy of Science for evaluation, Dr. Daphne Fautin.
PJ: Well, if it was there, I'm sure it was banned.
YB: I don't know what the status of it is to be quite honest with you, I happened to see it there and I was intrigued on how it had changed since I was a kid. Evolution wasn't mentioned, as I recall, in the textbooks that I used, it wasn't mentioned at all. There is an accusation on the part of Stephen J. Gould and others that textbook publishers became more cautious after the Scopes trial for fear of offending conservative school boards.
PJ: There's been a lot of bad teaching for a lot of reasons and I'm in favor good teaching, if we want to teach these kids more about evolution I'm in favor of that, but what I think is really going on is indoctrination...indoctrination in a naturalistic, philosophical outlook.
YB: You see that limited in high school to just evolution?
PJ: Well, no it isn't limited to just evolution. I think that's the official philosophy of the educational elite and really of the government these days. There is a tremendous pressure on to sell naturalism to the public through every means available.
YB: Why?
PJ: Well, because the people who favor that philosophy think that it's true. They think that it's a good thing. They believe in it and in many cases they're not even aware it's a philosophy. In their heads it's just reason, it's just good thinking, and so people who don't buy into naturalistic philosophy are in some way ignorant and prejudiced and they have to be educated to the truth. So it's all done very sincerely for the best of motives but it's an indoctrination nonetheless.
YB: Would it be fair for me to define naturalistic philosophy as simply a philosophy of accidental creation? I can't call it creation I guess, but just accidental development of the universe without reason behind it, without any intelligence behind it.
PJ: Yes, that's correct. The way I put it in my own words is that nature is a permanently closed system of material causes and effects which has never been and cannot be influenced by something from outside like God, like a creator, and it follows from this that if intelligence exists today, and some people think it does, that it's only because it evolved from non-intelligence. There could not have been intelligence at the start.
YB: What do you call the opposite of naturalism?
PJ: Well, Theism is the counterpart to naturalism, you know, the opposite position and that is that everything starts with intelligence there at the beginning, the Creator, someone has intelligence and purpose from the beginning, and what happens after that is directed by that Creator. Now Theism is not opposed to evolution if evolution just means gradual development because a creator can act gradually as well as suddenly. What it's opposed to is naturalism. Theism is opposed to evolution if evolution means naturalism, as, in fact, it does in science education today.
YB: We, of course, have this social problem of the separation of church and state in this country. It's not really a problem. It's considered a solution to a serious problem of the 18th Century which was that the state was using religion to suppress free conscience, at least as I understand from my reading of American History. How would you avoid teaching naturalism in a biology class without teaching Theism?
PJ: Well, to the extent that it was true in an earlier period, as you've said you know that evolution was not mentioned or was just mentioned very briefly and vaguely in the curriculum. I think the reason for that very largely was that the educators thought they ought to stay away from the issue of creation and not deal with the issue at all. Now what we're getting today is that they're dealing with the issue but only with one side of it. You see, they're saying that (just as your question implies) since there is a separation of church and state we should indoctrinate all the children in naturalism. Now that isn't separating the church and the state, that's making naturalism into essentially an official religion of the state and so I'll say they can either stay away from it or they can deal with the issue honestly. But to say that the Constitution requires that we tell a loaded story is just not, in my opinion, correct.
YB: Let's assume that there is a need to teach biology in the high school in that you have to give the teenagers a taste of the sciences so they can at least make a decision what they're going to study in college.
PJ: Oh, I'm in favor of teaching biology in the high school.
YB: But teaching modern biology can't be done without teaching modern scientific thinking on the evolution of the species.
PJ: Well, now this is why I feel that the essential argument has to be carried on at the higher level, at the university level, and it's interesting you see that the people that come from the NCSE side are always trying to say this is just an issue in the high schools. Let's talk about high schools.
YB: Well, that's their primary focus of course. Let's say that the problem is that we must teach some biology in the high school level for educational reasons. In other words, we want to present some sort of option for the kids and also give them background that they can use as adults. Let's say from your point of view the net effect, even if not intended, is that you teach what amounts to a naturalistic philosophy.
PJ: Oh, but it is intended. It's not, "not intended." It is intended, that's what the whole thing is about, is indoctrinating the kids in the philosophy.
YB: It's intended by whom?
PJ: By the educators, the rulers of science of education, the organizations that control it. They're very keen on that, they're very explicit about it. What we want is to teach them how to think -- they think of it as the scientific outlook, it means naturalistic philosophy.
YB: So what you're saying is that basically they're steering kids away from the theistic point of view in the public school system.
PJ: Oh, sure. Yes, that's a very definite effort.
YB: But it sounds like you're implying that its coordinated someplace.
PJ: Well as I said people believe in this philosophy, this is the reigning set of philosophical assumptions among the intellectual elite. Most of them don't even think of it as a philosophy as I've said. They just think of it as good thinking and that's why they don't have a bad conscience about this indoctrination. The problem is one of closed minds; the problem is that intellectuals are not the free-thinking individualists that they like to think of themselves as, they're very attracted to fads and very attracted to fashions and ideas and they're conformists as a rule and this is what the conformity is about -- naturalistic philosophy.
YB: Well there are various types of conformity, I'm sure they're not the only ones.
PJ: Well I'm sure that they're probably not, but they're the ones that have the governmental power to use tax resources to propagandize their views and they do so very enthusiastically.
YB: You're saying that it's kind of a gentlemen's agreement and not necessarily a case of everybody gathering around in a room and deciding how they're going to do so.
PJ: I wouldn't say gentlemen's agreement either. I would just say a common set of prejudices and assumptions.
YB: The problem is, of course, that we tend to make everything a dichotomy and that's probably not the case, except when you have a limited amount of time to debate a point -- say a half hour on Buckley or an hour or so with me -- we might tend to put our arguments in very strong terms. I know a few biology teachers, including someone who teaches in the Catholic school system. She doesn't seem to have a whole lot of trouble teaching evolution in her classes and she doesn't have any problems with her faith (she's a church goer by the way, and devoutly so). The way she expresses it is that God kind of threw a bowling ball and let the law of physics work from there.
PJ: Well, that's naturalism -- that's deism. That's the deistic version of naturalism, [that God] started the ball rolling down hill but has nothing to do with the direction it takes thereafter.
YB: This is not a denial of God in her view.
PJ: Well, I don't really care what her view is in that sense. She's one person! There are lots of different views; but it's fundamentally a naturalistic outlook. Naturalism is not exactly the same thing as atheism; naturalism does not necessarily assert that God does not exist, it says that God never did anything that's important. At least the deistic version of naturalism is that God may have started the ball rolling in the very first instance. But the point is, He has nothing to do with anything that happened thereafter and so we can safely forget about the Creator. The naturalistic position is not so much that the Creator doesn't exist, as that the Creator doesn't matter.
YB: Would I be fair in saying that the theistic interpretation is that God interferes on a day-to-day level?
PJ: God directs what happens, yes; God is important in our lives in history and in the creation of biological organisms. Now you see, the science education of today is taking a very strong position about God. It's not leaving that issue alone. It's saying that we know as scientists from the study of our evidence that there was no purpose or direction to it, that these materialistic forces that are purposeless and blind were capable of doing all the work of biological creation and did do it. In my opinion this claim is false and it ought to be permissible to challenge it. As I say, the important place to challenge it is in the universities, not the high school classrooms. But to say that even if it's a false claim you can't challenge it because you would violate the Constitution or something is not some limitation I'm prepared to accept.
YB: If you were to direct a debate of this sort at the high school level, would you do it in the biology class? In the social science class? In history?
PJ: I notice that you won't let me get out of the high school.
YB: Well, I'm interested in the social policy...
PJ: Well, I really object to the idea that high school is where the action is. Now the important thing at the high school is that they ought to start teaching biology honestly and not as propaganda and I think that would be much better science. It would be much better in terms of interesting youngsters in the subject, and they've just taken a wrong turn because of this tremendous idea that the purpose of biology in education is [to] sell naturalism.
YB: How do you choose, for instance, a biology teacher? Look at the Vista School District and the controversy that's surrounding it. They've finally decided, at least from what I read in the newspapers, that they're going to switch over some of the studies to social science course rather than biology to stay within the State guidelines as they're presently written. How do you decide how you hire a biology teacher (presumably they're not screened for religious views, they're only screened for credentials of one sort or another)? Suppose a biology teacher has a credential from the Institute of Creation Research, and they hire her...
PJ: What you're doing is not getting to the practical level, you're getting to the trivial level. I'm not running for the job of high school superintendent. What I'm interested in doing is making the intellectual world aware that there is a difference between the inferable knowledge that biologists actually have as biologists and a philosophy that appeals to them. Science education has failed to note this difference. It's really taken on this tremendously aggressive philosophical cast, and there are valid reasons for objecting to that and for critiquing it, for saying, people are claiming to know a lot that they don't really know and they're using the educational system's public resources to propagandize a philosophical point of view. Now once you get people at the university level who understand that, and who understand what you're talking about when you raise that, then we can begin to discuss what to do about it consistent with having good education in biology. You can't solve this kind of a problem by asking questions about details of the administration of the high school curriculum today. That's not where I'm at. I'm talking about having conferences and discussions at the level of the leaders, the people who plan what good science education will be, and once we get the philosophical issue well understood -- once they understand that there are intelligent people here with a valid point to make, then we can begin to discuss how to solve this in a way that's educational. But until the problem's recognized nothing can be done.
YB: You're saying that certain scientists or groups of them refuse to acknowledge the problem as you see it?
PJ: Oh, that's right. I've had plenty of experience discussing this with people who have tremendous influence presenting science to the public as well as within science themselves; people like, for example, Steven Weinberg, Stephen J. Gould, Carl Sagan, and when I present the notion to them that there's a difference between naturalistic philosophy and scientific knowledge, at first they don't know what I'm talking about. It doesn't make any sense to them at all. They're the same thing. I remember Weinberg makes this very clear in his book where he discusses it, and that's really the issue that they have become so wedded to their own philosophy that they're not really aware of it -- they're unconscious of it. I'm trying to bring it to their conscious minds.
YB: Many of them see what you're proposing as simply a regurgitation of 19th Century sort of a romantic idea of science where you present the theory first and you look for the proof.
PJ: Well, that just shows how philosophically unsophisticated they are. They're the ones who are stuck in the 19th Century. They're stuck in this materialistic concept of things and they're stuck in this philosophy that they can't re-examine; but you know, as soon as I get people that have some philosophical sophistication to deal with it, they immediately see that I'm making a legitimate point. Now, that's what happened...
YB: Who?
PJ: Who for instance; like, for example, Michael Ruse in the very program that Eugenie Scott [executive director of the National Center for Science Education] put on, which was supposed to be a complete, Johnson-bashing day.
YB: Genie Scott is not conspiratorial, I can tell you that!
PJ: Well, it's not a question -- she's partisan and clearly the reason for that whole program was to have Michael Ruse's comment say this guy's [Johnson] awful. Don't pay any attention to him, and instead what he does is he gets up there and he says basically his point is right. There is a philosophical issue here and we've got to be aware of it even though we wouldn't admit it in a court of law, and that's what he said on that occasion. You know, Michael has been very severely criticized in philosophical ranks for acting as a mouthpiece for the science education establishment. And he's aware of that -- and he knows better -- and he's basically, in fact, a good guy in a lot of ways and he's coming out and honestly admitting the philosophical issue because he knows it's there and because it's not even very satisfying for somebody like that to act as a mouthpiece to give simplistic formulas to protect somebody's political position. As soon as the philosophers get the idea that it's okay to raise this issue, they're going to see the point that I'm making.
YB: I never understood that it wasn't okay to raise an issue.
PJ: There is a tendency, it seems to me, on the naturalistic side to lump everybody who believes in God as a creationist, (and I thought you were asking me about the critical reviews that have come from the Theistic Evolutionists at the Christian Colleges, [their] thinking is fundamentally naturalistic) but the other group, the Young Earth Creation Scientists -- that's the one you want to ask me about...
YB: Yes, how do you deal with them?
PJ: Well, I think that they're at a dead end and I think that that debate - Bible Science today is completely sterile and it's not something that I'm really interested in. They're trapped in a rigid position that has a following, I think, as not going further than that. I respect the courage in anybody who will dedicate their life to fighting an orthodoxy and for something that they deeply believe in, but I'm not interested in their range of issues. My outlook has been all along that I'm perfectly prepared to let empirical science investigate things like the age of the Earth and so on, and however it comes out is okay with me provided it's an unbiased and honest investigation; and I never even have attempted to study seriously the dating questions or whatever. I've been content to assume that you know that the official story is true for now. It might be changed in the future. I don't know. But I don't have any reason to get into that. What I felt all along is the really important question is the one of whether there was a Creator involved in bringing about our existence or not, not how long the creator took or whether Genesis is to be read literally or figuratively. And so I just put aside this whole range of questions as irrelevant to my...
YB: The fundamentalist view of Creation?
PJ: I'm not even interested in the issue. It's not that I'm obsessed with it and take a different position from somebody. I just put that debate aside because it isn't what I'm interested in. What I'm interested in is the extent to which biologists have been misled by their own philosophy. They proclaim this naturalistic system as fact, when it isn't anything of the kind. I think, myself, that once that issue gets properly recognized and people start thinking about the difference between naturalistic or materialistic philosophy on the one hand and what biologists really know as biologists on the other hand, that will have a profound effect on science. But I can't say what it will be. That isn't to say that I can predict what new answers might come out. But, I feel that for now the important thing is to open up that philosophical issue and so I'm just not involved in that old debate at all.
YB: Do you have any fears that this naturalistic philosophy, as you describe it, is somehow going to damage our society -- corrupt it?
PJ: Well, I think that naturalistic philosophy has already had its effect in terms of promoting an ethical relativism, but let me stop right now at this point, because I think the premise of the question is indicated by what you said about keeping information away from people, or whatever. If naturalistic philosophy is true, now if that's the way things really are, then it's true regardless of whether it has bad consequences or not. My position isn't that we should ignore the truth because it has bad consequences. I absolutely reject that notion and I don't want any misunderstanding about it to develop. If naturalistic philosophy is true, then we have to put up with it regardless of whether it has bad consequences or not. My issue is a different one. It's that, in fact, there's no good reason to think that it is true, that biology has been enlisted in a propaganda campaign for naturalism and if we critique that campaign we'll see that false claims have been made. So I'm dealing with the "truth" question primarily, not the "consequences" question. And, it's one that I want to debate at the university level with people who are sophisticated in these matters because so much simplistic philosophy comes across in science education without the people who are promoting it even knowing what it is that they're saying. So, these are really genuine and difficult questions. But, I recognize that you're a metaphysical naturalist and that the people who run the NCSE all are, the problem is that they think that because that's what they believe in that everybody else has to believe in it too.
YB: Well, I'm glad somebody finally told me what it was because I was never that sure. You know I have to be open, of course, to whatever's possible but I do rely on observation as the primary test and if that makes me a naturalist, I guess that's what I am. At some point we all accept authority on some things. On what basis do you do it?
PJ: I have looked into this subject on my own and you know all of the lead voices of evolutionary biology from Darwin and Huxley at the beginning [Johnson cites many other authorities -ed.] ...and so on [to] today. All of these authority figures have written books for the general public and in none of those books have they ever said this is so esoteric we can't judge it for ourselves -- you have to rely on our authority. No, they have said we can show you why it's true so that you will believe unless you are hopelessly ignorant, or whatever. Now as the reader of all of those books, as the kind of reader for whom all of those are written, I think it's perfectly legitimate for me to talk back to the authors and tell them why I don't believe it; why I'm not convinced by what they say. When they are trying to promote their philosophy in public education, for example, through the educational resources of the government and it's sponsorship of things like television programs and all, then I think I can join with other citizens in saying that we are skeptical about this propaganda campaign; and when we are told by persons like yourself that we simply must obey authority, it's authority that's the way it is; that's just what you finished telling me.
YB: I don't think you'd have any problems expressing your view...
PJ: Well, all I can say is that we've tested this again and again with organizations like the NCSE and what we discover is that, in fact, they react just as strongly to any challenge to the naturalistic system. That's what happened with the American Scientific Affiliation and its Teaching Science booklet, there was essentially a lynch mob sent out to defame and attack it. No reply was allowed in the science teachers' journal. It isn't just the Biblical Fundamentalists that get this treatment, it's anybody who questions naturalists.
YB: I have trouble translating what you're promoting in any form of cohesive social policy.
PJ: All you think about is administering a high school curriculum and I'm dealing with a separate set of issues, that's the problem you're having.
YB: Is your program to introduce your thinking on the matter at the University level succeeding?
PJ: I'm very satisfied with the progress that's been made in a little over two years since the book came out.
YB: You don't have an organization?
PJ: No, I have a lot of friends but no organization. But the great thing about the world of the mind is that in the end it isn't numbers that win, it's the better idea that wins.
YB: That's not always the case.
PJ: And the fact that there is a solid orthodoxy in place does not mean that that orthodoxy is always going to continue to rule, particularly when it's based on contradictory elements, when it's based on denying the existence of a philosophical agenda, and a controversial philosophical agenda that's obviously there. Once that orthodoxy has to really deal with the issues, it's going to split because there are blatant contradictions within the scientific naturalist camp that can, and I think, will be brought out. As I say, this is something that has to happen at the university level and one cannot discuss it in terms of these details of administering the high school curriculum that you think are what it's all about.
YB: Well, of course, everybody puts the emphasis on what they're interested in. I'm no different than anybody else that way. But anything that happens on the university level will eventually get to the high school level and, of course, the main interest of the NCSE is to see that the high schools don't get taken over by cranks.
PJ: I think there are two sets of fundamentalists here and one set is in control and you're -- the objective of your organization is to see that they stay in control.
YB: If a scientist is a naturalist, as you claim Steve Gould and others are, does that affect their scientific work in any negative way?
PJ: Oh sure, it may, in the sense that if you have a philosophical basis that you're unaware of, you see that you don't realize is the subjective or arbitrary elements in it, then you tend to read the evidence in the light of that philosophy and you're not aware of what you're doing; and any sophisticated philosopher of science knows that there are these subjective factors operating in the scientific community. Sometimes they're even innocently proclaimed. Both Gould and Richard Lewontin, his pal at Harvard, have claimed Marxist inspiration for a scientific views that they've held. Actually that's not so bad because it's conscious, you see, that they recognize it. It's the unconscious philosophical bias that really distorts science and I think that there's been a very distorting effect on biology that has come from the fact that some intellectual philosophical orthodoxy among biologists has been so strongly materialistic.
YB: If it's unobservable, how can a question be asked by science?
PJ: The idea that contemporary science doesn't deal in unobservables is just completely false. Nobody with any sophistication in philosophy of science believes that. They're invoking unobservables all the time to explain the observable. And they have to do that. But the idea that materialism is just the way that science has to be is the point that I want to challenge, and I don't have any doubt at all that the sophisticated intellectual audience is going to agree in the end that it isn't the only way to do science.
The central issue of my writing on evolution is the status of metaphysical naturalism. Naturalism is the doctrine that nature is a permanently closed system of material causes and effects, which can never be influenced by anything outside the system -- such as a supernatural creator. Scientific naturalists assume that biological and prebiological creation occurred through purposeless material processes -- chiefly including the laws of physics and chemistry, chance events such as random mutations, and natural selection. When science educators say that "evolution is a fact," they mean naturalistic evolution -- evolution in which God played no part. They are also claiming that scientific investigation has established the validity of a naturalistic worldview by discovering the actual mechanism of creation -- the "blind watchmaker" of Darwinian evolution.
My thesis is that this claim is based upon circular reasoning. If one is at all inclined to be skeptical, the evidence that fundamental innovation occurs by the accumulation of random micromutations through natural selection is woefully inadequate. The dominant evolutionary paradigm is protected by two critical rules of reasoning: First, science assumes that life actually did evolve to its present state by naturalistic (i.e., purposeless) material processes -- God had nothing to do with it. Second, the best naturalistic theory of biological evolution currently available retains the status of scientific knowledge until it is replaced by a better naturalistic theory. The possibility that science does not know -- at least in principle -- how complex biological organisms can evolvefrom simple beginnings is not on the table for consideration.
With these rules in place, the claim that science has established the validity of a naturalistic understanding of the history of life is true by definition. If that claim were important only to professional scientists, outsiders would have no great reason to object to the circular reasoning. In fact, however, naturalistic evolution is the officially endorsed creation myth of contemporary culture. Government agencies spend immense sums to get people to believe it, through public education and the media. The message is always the same: we were not created by God, even through a God-directed evolutionary process. We are the products of chance and impersonal natural laws, and hence we are free to choose or invent our own values and ethical standards to suit ourselves.
My effort to expose the philosophical roots of the Darwinian paradigm presents its defenders with a dilemma. Should they admit the metaphysical assumptions, as Michael Ruse did at the AAAS? If they do they endanger their monopoly of the public forum, because biologists have no authority -- intellectual, legal, or moral -- to require citizens of a free country to accept naturalistic philosophical premises. Hence the paradigm defenders typically adopt a naive view of science as value-free fact and protect this position with ridicule and doubletalk.
What I offer instead is a genuine intellectual debate, with everybody's philosophical cards on the table. Eventually the scientific establishment will agree to that debate, because there is nothing else it can do that is consistent with its own commitment to intellectual freedom and honesty.
California Committees of Corrrespondence Newsletter, Third Quarter, 1993. Reprinted by permission.
Phillip E. Johnson, in his recent book, "Darwin on Trial," in various book reviews (that are eagerly reprinted by the Creation Research Society Quarterly) and most recently in the latest issue of the newsletter of the California Committees of Correspondence, claims that evolution, if not all of science, is based on the philosophy, `philosophical naturalism' which is a doctrine "that nature is a permanently closed system of material causes and effects, which can never be influenced by anything outside the system -- such as a supernatural creator," He further claims that this is the official philosophy of the educational elite and of the government and that they are trying to indoctrinate the public with this view.
As a scientist myself, I was quite surprised to learn that I am supposed to believe this philosophy: I suspect that most other scientific researchers and science educators might feel the same way. My own graduate training (at the University of Chicago) and my subsequent experiences at four other major universities would indicate that scientists receive little or no formal training in the `scientific method' and certainly no indoctrination into any specific `philosophy of science.' They learn how to do science as apprentices in the labs of their major professors in the course of their graduate training. Medawar (1969, pp. v, 8, 11) and Wolpert (1993, p. 108) corroborate my experience. In fact, Wolpert says, "...it has been remarked that the physicist who is a quantum mechanic has no more knowledge of philosophy than the average car mechanic."
Approaching the question from a different direction, Margenau and Varghese (1992) report the views of 60 prominent scientists (including over 20 Nobel Prize winners), almost all of whom accept the findings of modern science concerning the Big Bang, evolution, etc. and yet hold theistic views and think that science and religion are complementary ways of looking at reality.
If the great majority of scientists have had no formal philosophical training and are ignorant of philosophies such as Johnson's `philosophical naturalism,' what does guide their research efforts and why do they reject the supernatural? The long term goal of science is to explain and understand as much as possible about the universe in which we live. Thus science is interested in usable and meaningful knowledge. Scientists pursue their goal by formulating and testing hypotheses about general laws and theories. A necessary requirement for a scientific hypothesis is that it be testable, because this is the only way we know of to gain confidence that an hypothesis really corresponds to the way the universe works and is not just based on someone's wishful thinking.
Scientists reject supernatural hypotheses, not because they worship the doctrine of `philosophical naturalism' but because supernatural hypotheses do not contribute anything to the overall goal of science. In fact they hinder progress towards that goal -- of understanding the universe.
Why this should be so results from the nature of the supernatural. Whatever religious and/or magical connotations the supernatural may imply. Its `basic operational nature' is that it is beyond human understanding (Bassinger and Bassinger, 1978). Thus the term "supernatural explanation" is the ultimate oxymoron. To say that something is supernatural is to say that it cannot be explained or understood! It does not provide understanding; it only establishes an absolute mystery. The logically consistent term would be "supernatural mystery."
For a scientist to incorporate a supernatural element into an hypothesis is to give up the goal of science and the challenge of attaining it, and instead proclaim that a particular phenomenon is beyond human understanding. To invoke a supernatural mechanism is to try to forever establish one's ignorance.
Philosophers have always attempted to heap metaphysical burdens upon scientists. But science is basically a pragmatic endeavor: contrary to the views of philosophers such as Ruse, scientists are guided by general assumptions that are held not on faith, but because they work. The basic aim of science, stated above, is probably rooted in the innate curiosity of humans, and attempts to find explanations are a challenge to the human intellect. The assumptions that nature operates in a regular fashion governed by principles understandable to humans are themselves testable hypotheses! (Wolpert, 1993, pp. 107, 148).
That there is a uniformity in the universe that can be expressed in terms of general laws was apparent to the ancients and even to neolithic man in the regularities of astronomical phenomena. Astronomy served as a model for the other sciences. When Newton proposed the universal law of gravity, he demonstrated that the lawful nature of the skies extended to earthly phenomena. The idea that the laws of nature could be explained in terms of general theories gained acceptance in the nineteenth century with the successful theories of physics and chemistry. Science is a positive effort: it has to deliver the goods: its hypotheses must be tested and shown to work. As long as they meet those criteria, they are accepted as (provisionally) true.
Finally, Johnson complains that science doesn't give the creator anything important to do. But setting off a Big Bang filled with matter having the appropriate properties so that after 15 billion years it develops into a marvelous and complex universe in which we live is no mean feat! It makes the flashy Old Testament miracles (the burning bush, pillar of fire, etc.) look puny by comparison. If science seems to leave God with nothing to do, this is because of a `metaphysical principle held by Johnson and the creationists': God always works in supernatural ways. Thus, whatever phenomena science can explain are those which God plays no role.
Bessinger, D and R Bessinger. 1978. "Science and the concept of miracle."
Journal of the American Science Affiliate. 30(4): 164-168.
Margenau, H. and R. A. Varghese. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, Theos ...Scientists Reflect
on Science, God and the Origins of the Universe, Life and Homo sapiens.
Open Court, La Salle, Illinois. xiv + 285 pp.
Medawar, P. B. 1969. Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought.
American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia xi + 62 pp.
Wolpert, L. 1993. The Unnatural Nature of Science.
Harvard University Press. xii + 191 pp.
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