This post is extracted from an email I wrote to my brothers who are on missions:
On my mission I talked to lots and lots of people that seemed to think that evolution proved the Bible wrong. Some people even claimed that science itself foreclosed the possibility of the existence of a God, for example, one guy that said to me, "Look at these cars driving, it's proof that science works! What are you guys doing here?" At the time I did my best to explain to them how I thought that religion and science really didn't clash, but I felt I couldn't offer a very good explanation or even an understanding of their side of the problem with the time and research sources (i.e. missionary library) available at the time. However, since getting back, I've wanted to investigate this much more deeply and so that's what I've been doing. So far my main source for research is a book entitled Evolution vs. Creationism that, although it is written by an agnostic scientist type, does a great job at defining the boundaries of what the respective fields of science and religion actually encompass.
In this and subsequent essays I thought I'd share some of the main things that I wish I would've known how to express better on my mission.
A. Methodological vs. Philosophical Naturalism, or, why lots of scientists find it convenient not to believe in God
"Methodological Naturalism" is a way to describe how science works, in that science is an attempt to use only natural (as opposed to supernatural) causes to explain natural phenomena. "Philosophical Naturalism" is the worldview that the universe consists exclusively of matter and energy and that there is nothing supernatural anywhere. Scientists at their jobs are required to be methodological naturalists, but they aren't necessarily required to accept philosophical naturalism and thereby reject the existence of a supreme being. Translation: scientists can't reasonably accept or talk about God in their scientific work but that doesn't mean they can't believe in him.
In other words, scientists just acting as normal people are completely allowed to believe in God. However, there are 3 main reasons that scientists, when acting as scientists, cannot possibly accept or admit the existence of God:
1. In ancient cultures, for example, in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, people talked about acts of God as a way to explain seemingly unexplainable events such as the tides, lightning striking, or a sudden severe drought. This is the main thing that people brought up to me on my mission: they'd say "there's no reason to think that God caused a thunderstorm. We know that clouds are formed by evaporation of water, then condensation in the sky, then air currents and ions and electrical charge building up, which causes a giant spark and a loud noise, blah blah blah."
It's true that if no one had ever questioned the notion that "God caused the thunderstorm, that's all!" then we'd have a much more primitive understanding of weather in general. Indeed, one of the greatest strengths of the scientific method is the chance to question and put to the test any and all previously held notions. Scientists are used to saying "I don't know yet" and then going and performing an experiment.
However, if Dad published a paper about a question involving physics and lasers and plasmas and stuff and his answer to the question was "because God wanted it that way," his paper would be rejected and mocked; this is not because Dad doesn't believe in God but because it is scientists' job to explain natural phenomena through natural causes.
However, even though Dad understands what causes rain to fall and clouds to ... encloud themselves, if the sky just happens to be overcast on the day he runs 40 miles for his 49th birthday, he is still allowed to believe that God worked through those natural laws to make it overcast as an answer to his prayers not to be miserable. Thus in his job he must be completely scientific (methodological naturalism) yet in his personal life he can still accept the existence of God (i.e. the opposite of philosophical naturalism).
2. Actually I think I explained #2 as part of #1. Not sure here. Maybe there was another one I forgot. Anyways this whole thing is already super long.
3. "You can't put God into a test tube." That's a quote from somebody who definitely is at least a little bit scientifically viable because they got quoted in this book I'm reading. Their point is that the methods of science require you to hold certain things constant and only let one thing vary; for instance, if you want to see if one washing machine cleans better than a different washing machine, in order for that to be a fair experiment, you would need to use the same type of shirts with the same stains on them for both washing machines, as well as the same temperature, same wash cycle, same detergent, same everything else conceivable that could reasonably affect the quality of wash the shirts get. That's the only way you could really empirically (i.e. based on the results of experiment) determine whether it really is the washing machine that made the shirts cleaner. However, since God is by definition omnipotent, you can't keep His acts constant. There's no way to tell if He decides that every time you use a certain washing machine, the shirts are cleaner (for lack of a better example) ... there's no way to reproduce acts of God and there's no way to make sure that none happen while you're performing your scientific experiment so therefore, science is not a way to know anything about God. Hopefully that kind makes sense.
Lots of scientists who are really deeply committed to their professions try to convince themselves that since only energy and matter are observable in the galaxy, that's all there is in the galaxy (i.e. no God or supernatural forces). They may even try to convince others of the same. That's a noble belief, but not the findings of a scientific experiment. (That's a paraphrase of a quote from another guy that is probably an anthropologist which really sounds scientific to me. Sorry I don't have the book with me right now.)
[Editor's note: turns out I was running out of time while writing this so I may revisit it sometime in the future and rewrite it so it's less confusing. But hopefully you get the idea.]
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