The first phase of my talk is called “Shock and Awe.”

Most people assume science and Christianity are compatible. However, this takes some significant theological laundering. I call those who bend and twist Christian teachings to conform with science the premise keepers.

Biblical disagreements:
Christian beliefs are based on the Bible. The web site of the Institute for Creation Research proclaims that

• The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths.

Genesis says that Earth was created before the sun, moon, and stars. The stars form a firmament. Earth is fixed and immovable at center of universe. As inferred from the Bible, the universe is only about 6000 years old. Species are immutable and humans are a unique from other animals, created in the image of God and given a special place in the universe. Outside Genesis, many references (about 14) imply Earth is flat.

All this is inconsistent with Copernicus, Darwin, and modern cosmology. Creationists such as Henry Morris deny the big bang and evolution, but still accept that Earth is round and moves about the sun. In any case, if you are to take the Bible as a scientific statement, it has long been falsified by the data. Most Christians. of course, do not take the Bible literally. But if it had been more scientifically accurate we would have a basis for taking its other teachings seriously.


Purpose
Even those Christians who do not take the Bible literally accept the teaching than humankind is a special creation of God and part of God’s divine purpose. They claim there is evidence, at least for purpose, in what they perceive as the intelligent design of the universe.

Since Copernicus, we have known that we are not at the center of the universe. Since Darwin we have known that we are not a creature apart from other animals. Richard Dawkins has famously asserted that

• The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

Many Christians object this naturalistic or materialistic picture of science, which implies there is matter and nothing else with no room for spirit, no sign of purpose. One of the leaders of the new Christian anti-science movement, law professor Phillip Johnson, has said:

• [Evolution] doesn't mean God-guided, gradual creation. It means unguided, purposeless change. The Darwinian theory doesn't say that God created slowly. It says that naturalistic evolution is the creator, and so God had nothing to do with it.

Johnson finds naturalism to blame for the evils of society,

• Scientific naturalism is a story that reduces reality to physical particles and impersonal laws, [and] portrays life as a meaningless competition among organisms that exist only to survive and reproduce.

and claims it dominates our universities,

• In our greatest universities, naturalism––the doctrine that nature is "all there is"––is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds.

Non Overlapping Magesteria
Most scientists, believers and nonbelievers alike, probably agree with the Non Overlapping Magesteria (NOMA) view articulated by recently deceased Stephen J. Gould. In this view, science and religion should confine themselves to different domains. Science should deal with material world, while religion should deal with morality. However, Gould has redefined religion as "ethical philosophy." This is not Christianity, which makes assertions that are scientifically testable.

Richard Dawkins has pointed out that

• A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.

He also notes that

There is something dishonestly self-serving in the tactic of claiming that all religious beliefs are outside the domain of science. On the one hand, miracle stories and the promise of life after death are used to impress simple people, win converts, and swell congregations. It is precisely their scientific power that gives these stories their popular appeal. But at the same time it is considered below the belt to subject the same stories to the ordinary rigors of scientific criticism: these are religious matters and therefore outside the domain of science. But you cannot have it both ways. At least, religious theorists and apologists should not be allowed to get away with having it both ways. Unfortunately all too many of us, including nonreligious people, are unaccountably ready to let them.

Scientists freely criticize those who make claims that are not based on good science. Yet religion is given a free ride. Scientists rarely criticize religion. I guess they are afraid of losing public funding for their research, and funding is the research scientists top priority. You have to be retired to take on religion, at least in this country with it current theocratic administration.

Is Science Dogmatically Naturalistic?
Many scientists play right into Johnson's hands by agreeing with him that science, by definition, is limited to natural explanations. This is called methodological naturalism, as opposed to philosophical naturalism.

But the great success of scientific naturalism implies that it is more than just method. Science is clearly saying something profound about ultimate reality. Quarks and electrons really exist. However, science is never dogmatic--or it isn't science. So far, materialism is a sufficient hypothesis to explain all observations. If some new evidence were found that cannot be explained naturally, then science would be open to supernatural interpretations. Show us the data. Any scientist would all be thrilled if a whole new world opened up that could be explored scientifically. Think of the funding opportunities! And, it wouldn’t be faith-based research. It would be fact-based research.

Is the Supernatural Beyond Scientific Study?
Many scientists and theologians make the claim that the supernatural is not amenable to scientific study. But we can easily imagine observations that would defy natural explanation. Suppose that all around the world the dead started rising out of their graves. Or a 50-foot tall Jesus appeared at half time during a Bronco's game at Invesco Field. Then we would all become believers.

Several books have appeared in recent years claiming scientific evidence for God. A lot of these claims are nothing more than rehashed arguments from design. People simply "can’t see" how the universe and life could have happened naturally. They can’t see how God did it, either, but somehow that doesn’t bother them. They calculate a low probability for the universe or some biological structure to be produced naturally, but fail to calculate the probability that it was produced by some super being for which zero evidence exists.

With modern cosmology and Darwinian evolution, we now have plausible mechanisms for a purely natural creation. In any case, our inability to understand some process is not "evidence" that the process must be supernatural. It’s simply the old God of the Gaps argument that harks back to the prescientific age when people had no natural explanations for anything and so everything was supernatural.

Prayer Studies, Religious Experiences
Besides their illogical design arguments, recent books also claim evidence for the supernatural in published scientific studies, such as those claiming the efficacy of prayer in healing. Reports of ESP, and mystical or religious experiences, such as Near Death Experiences, are also asserted as evidence for a world beyond matter.

You should not take too seriously the media reports and popular that make these claims. They are generally over-hyped, biased toward telling people what they want to hear so they will buy this magazine or book. Go back to the original published papers and see for yourself how poorly controlled and statistically insignificant these studies are. You will find that not one passes the tests of significance that are conventionally applied in all fields of science that deal with extraordinary claims. The investigators show a propensity to select data favorable to their beliefs and ignore data that are not. Some of the data are even fabricated. In short, the science is very bad, even bogus pseudoscience in many cases.

Theological Inconsistencies
Scientifically knowledgeable theologians accept the fact that no scientific evidence for God exists but still argue that this fact does not make God and science incompatible. Of course, one can imagine a universe created by the Tooth Fairy who otherwise stays out of human affairs except to put an occasional quarter (or, whatever the going rate is) under a child's pillow. But this is not Christianity, where God not only creates the universe but stays actively involved in human affairs.

Some Christian theologians and scientists are struggling to make science and Christianity compatible. They are searching for ways that God can act without being detected. For example, John Polkinghorne--an Oxford physicist-turned Anglican priest (who will be in Denver in a few weeks debating CU biologist Norman Pace), proposes that chaos theory provides a place for God to act undetectably (although, he does not explain why God wants to remain undetectable). In chaos theory we have something called the “butterfly effect” in which tiny changes in initial conditions can dramatically change the outcome of a physical process. Thus God, in Polkinghorne’s theory, pokes his finger in to initiate the butterfly effect. Although it’s a small poke, this is guided evolution, which is not Darwinian

Others have proposed similar kinds of “guided evolution.” Several premise keepers, including Polkinghorne, have received the million dollar Templeton prize for their efforts.

The problem that Christians have with science is the strong role that chance plays in the process of Darwinian natural selection. Also, if current cosmological ideas are correct, the structure of the universe itself is largely an accident. Thus, if you were to go back and start the whole process over, without making any changes in the basic physical laws, you would not have any of the species we have today, including homo sapiens, and perhaps no Earth and sun. Guided evolution, even at the low level proposed by Polkinghorne, is not Darwinian evolution.

Furthermore, there is no evidence for guided evolution--despite what the vocal claims of intelligent design theorists. Thus Polkinghorne’s scheme fails to reconcile science and Christianity. He still has to change well-established science to do it.

A more subtle form of theological reconciliation has been proposed by biologist Kenneth Miller, theologian John Haught, physicist Howard van Till, and others. They suggest that God uses chance itself to achieve his goals. Gods is conceived of having created a series of pathways, any of which can be followed. Chance then acts as part of God’s creation. The implication is that God’s purposes would be served whatever path is followed, even without the evolution of human beings. Maybe this is a self-consistent theology, but it is hard to see how one can call it Christianity. The orthodox Christian view, is typically expressed by the Rev. David A. Staff of Ames, Iowa, is that “Man is God’s very special creation . . . the object of God’s stunning, loving plan.”

When chemist-turned-theologian Arthur Peacock won the Templeton Prize for his premise-keeping efforts, the editor of Christianity Today said that Peacocke’s theology “[entails] a rejection of anything resembling Christian orthodoxy from the first century to the present.”

Why Bother?
Why do the premise keepers even bother? Maybe it’s just the Templeton money :). If evidence for the validity of Christianity cannot be found in science, then Christianity represents a hypothesis not required by the data. Believers like to argue that science isn’t everything, which is true, but they have no credible alternatives to science as a source of reliable knowledge about the world.

The Bible is so filled with errors and unfulfilled prophecies, like Jesus returning in a generation after his death, that only the most blind application of faith would have anyone take it as more than an imaginative and poetic fiction, totally human-made. Claims of revelation by mystics have not produced any testable knowledge that was no already in the mystics’ heads. In short, the premise keepers do not have a premise worth keeping.

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This is based on the author’s latest book, Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe, where references to quotations above can be found.