LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 218

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IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

to expect a natural causal explanation, some phenomena (e.g., fine-tuning,
biological information, miracles) seem to resist such explanation, and it
seems odd to suggest that science could not, even in principle, conclude that
the best explanation of these phenomena is a supernatural cause. Further,
asserting that science could never say this means that science can no longer
claim to be a no-holds-barred attempt to gain knowledge of the world. After
all, “science” means knowledge, and it is hard to see why the discovery that
some phenomena are best explained by a supernatural cause does not qualify
as something scientists could know. Why should science truncate its inquiry
so that it only considers natural causes, instead of following the evidence
wherever it leads?
In fact, if it is taken as a universal, a priori principle of science, methodological naturalism appears to be an irrational rule, as can be brought out by
analogies. Suppose one drops one’s car keys at night, but decides to look for
them only in the light of the street lamps, because one is afraid of the dark
and it is harder to see. This provides no evidence that the keys are not lying
in the dark. Or suppose a pirate with a map goes to an island to find buried
treasure, and decides to search every region of the island except the one
marked “Here there be dragons.” This provides no evidence that the treasure
is not to be found where the alleged dragons are located. In general, refusing
in principle to consider some kinds of causes provides no reason to think that
they are not the true causes, or that the evidence does not point most strongly
to those causes.

2) In-fact arguments for methodological naturalism
Quite a few defenders of methodological naturalism admit that there is
no way to establish the principle on a priori grounds. Instead, they content
themselves with the a posteriori argument that, as a matter of fact, excluding
the supernatural from science has proven very fruitful for scientific discoveries.221 As we saw in the previous chapter, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and
Galileo all attacked the idea of design in the form of Aristotelian final causes.
It can be argued that science has been very successful in many areas by only
considering undirected causes operating wholly within nature. If science has
had so much success ignoring intelligent causes, why should it remain open
to discovering them?
The problem with this argument is that it is easy to explain why science
obedient to methodological naturalism has been successful in some areas
without taking this as evidence that it is a sound, general principle. As we saw
earlier, when we are investigating the proximal, secondary causes of physical events, there is generally no reason to expect an intelligent cause (finite
or supernatural). Since, for many people, this kind of “operations science”
dominates their conception of what science is, it is not surprising if they con-

clude that methodological naturalism is a sensible rule. But as we also saw,
historical science, by its nature, has to be open to intelligent causes: there is no
way to rule out the possibility that the intelligent choice of a human, machine,
alien, or transcendent being is the best explanation of a historical event. And,
as philosopher of science Del Ratzsch has argued, to make the case that an
intelligent cause of a historical event is supernatural, all one would have to
do is provide evidence that none of the finite intelligences within nature is
causally adequate to account for that event:
If unaided nature cannot generate some phenomenon, and
there that phenomenon is in front of us, then obviously some
other agency was involved. If we add the premise that humans
couldn’t or didn’t produce the phenomenon, whereas aliens
could have, we get the aliens-of-the-gaps arguments, which is
precisely what underlies SETI. If we add the further premise
that aliens couldn’t or didn’t … then supernatural agency follows.222
Further, there are a number of historical facts about the universe that continue to resist the best naturalistic explanations, such as the ultimate origin
of the universe, its fine-tuning for intelligent life and observation, the origin
of biological life, the emergence of consciousness and of beings capable of
grasping objective moral values. So it is not true that all of science provides
a posteriori evidence of the soundness of methodological naturalism. Rather,
our total evidence suggests a more modest conclusion: methodological naturalism is a reasonable rule of thumb in some areas of science. Obviously, this modest
conclusion is compatible with the existence of good evidence for supernatural
design in other areas of science.
At this point, some are likely to protest that scientists can simply maintain
that any remarkable phenomenon is most likely the result of unknown natural causes. The problem with this response is that it misunderstands the logic
used in historical science. As we saw earlier, in historical science scientists
use a method of abductive logic (or inference to the best explanation) which
examines the evidential traces surrounding a historical event and infers the
best current explanation. What this means is that the inference is made in light
of currently available data and theories. This inference may, of course, be
upset by the discovery of new data or by the proposal of new theories, so
abductive inference is unstable: today’s best explanation may not be the best
tomorrow. However, the claim that an unknown natural cause is the best
explanation is an illicit appeal to possible, future evidence, not to evidence
that we actually have. It is, in effect, “promissory naturalism”: it issues a
promissory note that there will be a natural explanation sometime in the
future. Since science must confine itself to the data and available explanations

221
See, for example, Patrick McDonald and Nivaldo J. Tro, “In Defense of Methodological
Naturalism,” Christian Scholar’s Review 38: 2 (2009), 201–229.

222
Del Ratzsch, Nature, Design and Science: The Status of Design in Natural Science (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 2001), 119.

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it has, promissory naturalism is not part of a legitimate scientific attitude.
Instead, it serves to immunize naturalism from the scientific data that would
count against it. Surely, however, the main goal of science is to find the truth
about the natural world, not to protect a preconceived philosophical idea
(naturalism) from embarrassing data.

whom all things hold together. The creation is vital to the Gospel because it
sets forth God’s original will for mankind as beings made specially in His
image, who by nature feared, loved, and trusted Him above all things. Since
we fell from that state, losing original righteousness, God’s redemptive work
is to heal us and restore us so that we may become the people He originally
intended us to be. Without these facts about our creation, Christ’s redemptive
work makes no sense: we cannot be restored to our originally intended state
if we are unintended accidents of an indifferent cosmos. Most scandalous of
all, Paul himself says that our faith is founded on the fact of the resurrection,
and that if there were no such fact, our faith would be futile (I Cor. 15:17). He
makes it clear on numerous occasions that the resurrection was a fact of public
history and that there was objective evidence to support it. So it appears that
Gould is implicitly siding with those theologians like Karl Barth (1886–1968)
who deny any role for natural theology and evidential apologetics. Gould
also seems wrong about the domain of science: in principle, historical science
could produce evidence that counts for or against the facticity of the resurrection.

To conclude, it seems that one can make a strong case for methodological
naturalism as a useful and successful rule of thumb in many areas of science,
but neither a priori nor a posteriori arguments are sufficient to show that it is a
universally valid principle. Thoughtful Christians who hope to present scientific evidence to support their claim of faith that we live in a designed world
in which God also intervenes should not be deterred by methodological naturalism from making that case. They are well-advised to distinguish clearly
between primary and secondary causes and between operations science and
historical science, and to focus their argument on examples where there is no
reasonable way to exclude the possibility of a supernatural, intelligent cause.

d. The NOMA model of science and theology
Closely related to methodological naturalism are attempts to put science and religion in watertight compartments. Thus the late paleontologist
and popular science columnist Stephen Jay Gould claimed that science and
religion should be regarded as belonging to “non-overlapping magisteria” (or
NOMA for short).223 Gould borrows the term “magisteria” from the Catholic
Church, in which it means a sphere of teaching authority. His suggestion follows the claim, widely attributed to Galileo, that the Holy Spirit’s intention in
inspiring Scripture was to tell us how we go to heaven, not to tell us how the
heavens go.224 If this dictum is true, and the teaching of the church rests on
biblical revelation, then its seems reasonable to claim that the church’s proper
sphere of authority is to tell mankind how it is saved, not to tell us how the
natural world works. If so, it seems reasonable that science is the sole proper
authority in the latter domain.
As critics have pointed out, however, an absolute divide between science
and religion seems to be unfaithful to the goals of both biblical theology and
science. If religion can say nothing authoritative about the natural world, then
there is no such thing as natural knowledge of God—contrary to Romans
1 and 2. Moreover, we lose the fact that the Gospel itself makes historical
claims—claims about what God in Christ did (and does) within ordinary
history, claims that are in principle amenable to investigation by historical
science. We know from Scripture that our cosmos and everything in it form
a coherent reality because they are all the creations of Christ (Col. 1:16) in
223
See Stephen Jay Gould, Rock of Ages, and his “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History,
16–22, 60–62.
224
For brief discussion over the historical question of whether Galileo was the origin of this
dictum, see Edoardo Aldo Cerrato, “How to go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go,” available online at: http://www.oratoriosanfilippo.org/galileo-baronio-english.pdf.

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In practice, as well, NOMA seems to be disingenuous, because while
religion is told that it can make no cognitive (knowledge) claims about the
natural world (i.e., it has no authority to make statements with scientific
implications), this did not prevent Gould from making claims in the name
of science which do have religious implications. Thus Gould asserts that
human beings are “a wildly improbable evolutionary event, and not the nub
of universal purpose … We are the offspring of history, and must establish
our own paths.”225
This is a statement loaded with religious significance: it claims that science has established that we are not the intended creations of God, that we
are not here on earth for a divine purpose and that we do not have divine
vocations that define the meaning of life. Rather, we must simply make up
our own meanings. So apparently, while religion is prevented from making
any claim with scientific implications, science can refute the religious claim
of orthodox Christians that human beings are specially made in the image of
God to be stewards of the natural world and to carry out the vocations that
God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10).
As developed by Gould, science includes not only the data and theories
we would expect, but also philosophical interpretations which are anything
but religiously neutral. So NOMA is really a misnomer. What Gould actually
believes in is a one-way overlapping magisteria (OOMA): there is overlap from
science into religion, but not from religion to science. In other words, while
Gould officially portrays science and religion as separate but equal—or
complementary—he is actually advancing a scientific imperialist model.
According to this model science can continue to make inroads undermining
225

Gould, Rock of Ages, 206–207.

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