Abstract
There have been persistent philosophical efforts to demarcate the province of science. Fewer attempts have been made to explore whether these demarcation strategies are consistent with the liberal promise of religious neutrality (LPRN). Within this framework, most liberal political theorists seem to agree that hypotheses suggesting supernatural agency should remain outside the purview of science by principle. In their view, this rule of methodological naturalism (MN) is neutral in the relevant sense, since it is silent towards ultimate questions. This paper examines whether this is so, especially when discussing the content of the science curriculum in public education. In this context, advocates of the status of Intelligent Design creationism as a scientific theory argue that MN arbitrarily dismisses a type of supernatural agency that is fundamental to several branches of theistic belief. Drawing on Thomas Nagel’s position, the paper contends that MN assumes a meta-scientific position to which either god does not exist, or god does not intervene in cosmic history. To that extend, MN cannot be reconciled with LPRN. However, this conclusion does not entail that hypotheses that suggest supernatural agency must be included in the science curriculum. Creationist theories may remain excluded to the extent that they fall short of the standards that are required for a proficient scientific account. But, crucially, it will not be their religious character what keeps them out of the classroom, but a series of pseudoscientific wrongs which are non-exclusive to supernaturalistic hypotheses. The paper thus suggests the exploration of an alternative demarcation strategy, one that is consistent with LPRN.
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Notes
See Harry Brighouse, ‘Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy’. Ethics 108.4 (1998) pp. 719–745; Tim Fowler, ‘Perfectionism for Children, Anti-Perfectionism for Adults’. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44.3–4 (2014) pp. 305–323.
See Matthew Clayton, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); M. S. Waldren, ‘Why Liberal Neutralists Should Accept Educational Neutrality’. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16.1 (2013) pp. 71–83.
See Alan Montefiore, Neutrality and Impartiality. The University and Political Commitment. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
Brighouse, Op. Cit.
The same view can be found in Tim Fowler, ‘The problems of liberal neutrality in upbringing’. Res Publica 16.4 (2010) pp. 367–381; See also Tim Fowler, ‘Public Reason, Science and Faith: The Case of Intelligent Design’. Law and Philosophy 38, (2019) pp. 29–52.
To the biochemist Michael Behe, ID theory is ‘theologically minimalist. It detects intelligence without speculating about the nature of the intelligence’. See Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 107.
This has been the tone of the exchange between the Catholic philosopher Francis J. Beckwith and the legal scholar Jay D. Wexler. While Beckwith dedicates most of his argument to show that ID is not religion but an isolated teaching – and therefore it merits to be considered for the science classroom–, Wexler aims to show that ID is religion and not an isolated teaching – and therefore it should be automatically expelled from public education. See Beckwith, Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The establishment clause and the challenge of intelligent design. (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003); Beckwith, ‘Rawls’s Dangerous Idea. Liberalism, Evolution and the Legal Requirement of Religious Neutrality in Public Schools’. Journal of Law and Religion 20.2 (2005) pp. 423–458; Wexler, ‘Intelligent Design and the First Amendment: A Response’. Washington University Law Review 84 (2006), pp. 63–98.
In this sense, they are echoing the words of the renowned biologist Richard Lewontin:
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
See Lewontin, ‘Billions and Billions of Demons’. The New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997.
Michael Ruse, ‘Methodological Naturalism Under Attack’. In: Robert Pennock, (ed.) Intelligent design creationism and its critics: Philosophical, theological, and scientific perspectives (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001) p. 365.
Robert Pennock, ‘Naturalism, Evidence and Creationism: The case of Phillip Johnson’. Biology and Philosophy 11.4 (1996) p. 549.
Ruse, Op. Cit. p. 365.
By ‘directly’ I refer to means of primary causation, which implies that God’s creative participation is actively needed, and purely naturalistic processes are insufficient. In opposition to the doctrine of primary or special causation, others believe that theists should abandon the argument that points to the insufficiency of naturalistic processes, since nature has already built-in all the necessary potentialities to come about. For instance, most Catholics follow Thomas Aquinas’s belief that God operates through secondary means. See, for instance, Howard J. Van Till, ‘When Faith and Reason Cooperate’. In: Pennock, Op Cit. (2001), pp. 147–163.
Martha Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience: In defense of America's tradition of religious equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 325.
Kent Greenawalt, Does God Belong in Public Schools? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 97.
Christopher Eisgruber & Lawrence Sager, Religious Freedom and the Constitution (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 190.
Robert Audi, ‘Religion and the Politics of Science: Can evolutionary biology be religiously neutral?’ Philosophy & Social Criticism 35.1–2 (2009), p. 29.
Ibid., p. 35.
Ibid., p. 43.
See Thomas Nagel, Mind and cosmos: why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false. (Oxford, Oxford University Press: 2012). In March 2013, The Weekly Standard magazine dedicated its main story to this philosophical divorce. On its cover, Nagel was being burned at the stake under the title ‘The Heretic’.
Thomas Nagel, ‘Public education and intelligent design’. Philosophy & Public Affairs 36.2 (2008), p. 201.
Ibid., p. 200.
Although Daniel Dennett includes Nagel into the broad creationist family. According to Dennett, Nagel ‘can’t abide Darwin’s strange inversion’ of reasoning. What is this ‘strange inversion of reasoning’? That to make a beautifully complex and functional machine it is not requisite to know how to assemble it beforehand. In Dennett’s terms, Nagel is still looking for (supernatural) skyhooks instead of accepting that (natural) cranes do the work just fine. See Dennett, ‘Darwin’s strange inversion of reasoning’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106.1 (2009) p. 10062.
The Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has made a similar remark: the metaphysical starting point defines the way we see the world. As he frames it, ‘from a non-theistic perspective, the evolutionary hypothesis will be vastly more plausible than alternatives… [it is rather] the only game in town’, whereas ‘the Christian knows that creation is the Lord’s and she isn’t blinkered by a priori dogmas as to how the Lord must have accomplished it’. See Plantinga, ‘When faith and reason clash: Evolution and the Bible’. In: Pennock, Op. Cit. (2001) p. 136, 139.
Nagel, Op. Cit. 197.
Ibid., 195.
Here, Nagel is following Greenawalt, who argues that, ‘the comparatively modest claims on behalf of intelligent design are more plausible’ than those advanced by creation-science, ‘if they do no more than challenge the completeness of the dominant account of how complex life developed’. Hence, Greenawalt goes on to argue that ‘all one can say based on present science is that intelligent design is one conceivable component of a full theory of how complex life developed’. See Greenawalt, Op. Cit. 107–108, 117.
Although Nagel’s suggestion is allowing some room for the discussion of non-naturalistic possibilities such as ID, Aikin, Harbour and Talisse have argued that his reasoning is problematic since it ‘provides support for equal-time and possibly even more radical policies’. See Scott Aikin, Michael Harbour, and Robert Talisse, ‘Evolution, Intelligent Design and Public Education: A Comment on Thomas Nagel’. Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 3.1 (2009) p. 39. I am not convinced by this critique. While it is true that Nagel moves the controversy to a metaphysical stage in which naturalism and theism are symmetrical assumptions, this does not imply that good and bad scientific theories deserve the same attention, as we shall see.
Nagel, Op. Cit. (2008), p. 200, 2005.
In Forrest’s assessment, insofar as ‘only natural causal factors are methodologically and epistemologically legitimate as explanations, then only a naturalistic metaphysics is philosophically justifiable’. Barbara Forrest, ‘Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism’ Philo 3.2 (2000) pp. 12, 24.
See Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010 [1991]), p. 192.
Ibid, 195.
Accordingly, the Christian philosopher Robert Koons makes a powerful plea against the ‘strategic retreat’ to which theologians appear to have been forced into, ‘surrendering ever-greater swaths of territory to the materialistic as reductionist science brings more and more phenomena under its sway, rendering God more and more an extravagant hypothesis for which we have no need’. See Koons, ‘Science and Theism: Concord, Not Conflict’. In: Copan, P. and P. Moser (eds.) The Rationality of Theism (2003) p.77.
As Francis Beckwith has summed up, the creationist argument is not directed against evolutionary theory per se, but against the alleged governmental intention of using the scientific curriculum to inculcate children with ‘an exclusively materialist account of what counts as knowledge’. The implication, Beckwith observes, is a message to religious citizens in the sense that they ‘can never have epistemic warrant for the theological beliefs that may serve as defeaters to the deliverances of the materialistic science they are being taught at school’. See Beckwith, Op. Cit. (2005), p. 451.
Nagel, Op. Cit. (2008), p. 194.
See Evan Fales, ‘Naturalism and Physicalism’. In: Martin, M. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Plantinga, Op. Cit. p. 137.
Recently, Tim Fowler has joined in defending Nagel’s argument. In his view, ‘there is a deep tension between the idea of liberal neutrality and the policy of prohibiting the teaching of intelligent design’, insofar ID theory stems from a comprehensive belief in an activist God and such belief cannot be ruled out as unreasonable. Therefore, he argues, a truly neutral stance would not discriminate among competing views about how the world works and the nature of causation. But then, that would entail to accommodate creationist views in the curriculum. Fowler thus suggests that the only way to exclude manifestly wrong theories such as ID from the curriculum is abandoning the ideal of neutrality. I agree with most of Fowler’s argument but I disagree with his final suggestion. As I put it, liberal neutralists should aim for a demarcation theory that remain compatible with LPRN. See Fowler, Op. Cit. (2019), p. 23.
See, for instance, Philip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Mark Brown, Science in democracy: Expertise, institutions, and representation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).
Larry Laudan, ‘The Demise of the Demarcation Problem’, in: Cohen, R. S. and L. Laudan (eds.) Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum (Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Science Business Media, 1983).
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. (London: Verso Books, 1975)
See, for instance, Taner Edis, The Ghost in the Universe: God in light of modern science (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002); Yonatan I. Fishman, ‘Can Science Test Supernatural Worldviews?’ Science & Education, 18.6–7 (2007), pp. 813–837; Evan Fales, Op. Cit.
Kitcher, Op. Cit. p. 8.
Ibid, p. 11.
Fishman, Op. Cit. p. 813.
Keith Parsons, ‘Defending the Radical Center’, in: Koertge, N. (ed.) Scientific Values and Civic Virtues (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 165.
Ibid., p. 166.
Ibid.
Nagel, Op. Cit. (2008), p. 196.
Maarten Boudry, Stefaan Blancke, and Johan Braeckman. ‘Grist to the mill of anti-evolutionism: The failed strategy of ruling the supernatural out of science by philosophical fiat’. Science & Education 21.8 (2012), p. 1152.
Evan Fales, ‘Is a Science of the Supernatural Possible?’ In: Pigliucci, M. and M. Boudry (eds.) Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 251.
Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science shows that God does not Exist (Amherst, NY, Prometheus Books, 2007), p. 16.
Fales, Op. Cit. (2013), p. 251.
Theodore Schick, Jr. ‘Methodological Naturalism vs. Methodological Realism’. Philo 3.2 (2000). P. 37.
Ibid.
Boudry, Blancke & Braeckman, Op. Cit., p. 1159.
Fales, Op. Cit. (2013), p. 259.
Maarten Boudry, ‘Loki’s Wager and Laudan’s Error. On Genuine and Territorial Demarcation’, in: Pigliucci, M. and M. Boudry (eds) Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 81.
In Gould’s understanding, science deals with ‘the factual character of the natural world’ whereas religion operates ‘in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values’. Apologizing for the cliché, Gould adds that scientists get ‘the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven’. See Stephen Jay Gould, Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York, Ballantine Books, 1999), p. 4–6.
Boudry, Op. Cit. (2013), p. 84.
In the case of the ID supporters, however, a distinction should be introduced. Some of them primarily aim for supernatural hypotheses to be considered in the scientific quest for the best explanation, and therefore should be willing to concede defeat if those hypotheses are found wanting. See, for instance, Johnson, Op. Cit. Others think that theistic believers should be free to opt-out from mainstream science in cases in which individual scientific conclusions clash with their overall belief system. See, for instance, Plantinga, Op. Cit. Accordingly, Parsons names the former integrationists and the latter separationists. See Parsons, Op. Cit. Integrationists do not pose a real problem. Separationists remain problematic as they want to have it both ways, exhibiting what Philip Kitcher has called a chimeric epistemology. See Kitcher, Science in a Democratic Society (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2011).
To this respect, among others, see Will Kymlicka, ‘Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality’, Ethics, 99.4 (1989) pp. 883–905; Peter Jones, ‘The Ideal of a Neutral State’. In: Goodin, R. and A. Reeve (eds.) Liberal Neutrality (Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 1989); John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993); Brian Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001); Jonatan Quong, Liberalism without Perfection (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011); Alan Patten, ‘Liberal Neutrality: A Reinterpretation and Defense’. Journal of Political Philosophy 20.3 (2012) pp. 249–272.
Boudry, Op. Cit. (2013), p. 94.
As Boudry further depicts it,
ID-creationists steadfastly refuse to reveal anything about the mechanisms and procedures used by the alleged designer, insisting that his motives are inscrutable and that the whole affair is beyond human comprehension. Note that this stalemate does not derive from the supernatural character of the hypothesis, as there is nothing that prevents ID-creationists from fleshing out their design hypothesis in such a way that it actually yields specific predictions… it is the resort to such ad hoc manoeuvres and the refusal to flesh out one’s hypothesis that makes a theory like ID creationism pseudoscientific, not the appeal to a supernatural cause per se.
Ibid. pp. 89–90.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
Karl Popper, ‘Darwinism as a Metaphysical Research Programme’. In: Ruse, M. (ed.) Philosophy after Darwin: Classic and contemporary readings (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
I have made this point elsewhere. See Cristóbal Bellolio, ‘Science as Public Reason. A Restatement’ Res Publica 24.4 (2018) pp. 415–432; Cristóbal Bellolio, ‘The Quinean Assumption. The Case for Science as Public Reason’ Social Epistemology 33.3 (2019) pp. 205–217.
This is consistent with the recently influential ‘Disaggregation Approach’ advanced by Cecile Laborde: in the same way that secular and religious arguments can be epistemically inaccessible, natural and supernatural theories can be pseudoscientific. See Laborde, Liberalism’s Religion (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2017). The problem with ID is that it is very weak as a scientific theory. Liberal institutions rule it out because of its lack of explanatory proficiency and not because it invokes supernatural causation.
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PhD Political Philosophy, University College London; MA in Legal & Political Theory, University College London; Bachelor in Law, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Bachelor in Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Currently at School of Government, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile.
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Bellolio, C. Liberal Religious Neutrality and the Demarcation of Science: The Problem with Methodological Naturalism. Law and Philos 39, 239–261 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-019-09370-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-019-09370-6