Joshualetter

The Definition of “Religion”

Defining “Religion” within the Meaning of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

For constitutional purposes–and whenever we speak of religion and the public schools, we cannot avoid speaking in terms of the Constitution–the United States Supreme Court has favored a functional definition of religion in deciding what sorts of beliefs qualify for protection under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment. An older line of cases emphasized the transcendent nature of the beliefs in question: belief systems based on the existence of a Supreme Being were treated as religious; others were not. But the modern approach to defining religion for constitutional purposes is to emphasize the role which beliefs play in the life of the individual.

Thus in United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965), the Court, interpreting the intent of Congress in granting a religious exemption from military service, held that religion includes beliefs which occupy “a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in God.” 380 U.S. at 176 (emphasis added). In reaching this conclusion, the Court relied in part upon a statement by the Ecumenical Council:

Men expect from the various religions answers to the riddles of the human condition: What is man? What is the meaning and purpose of our lives? What is the moral good and what is sin? What are death, judgment, and retribution after death? (380 U.S. at 182)

Subsequent lower court cases have followed the Supreme Court’s lead. In Malnak v. Yogi, 592 F.2d 197 (1979), the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that the teaching of the Science of Creative Intelligence (Transcendental Meditation) in public schools was unconstitutional. Judge Adams, concurring, discussed the history of constitutional doctrine on this question in the following way:

It seems unavoidable, from Seeger, Welsh and Torcaso, that the Theistic formulation presumed to be applicable in the late nineteenth century cases is no longer sustainable. Under the modern view, “religion” is not confined to the relationship of man with his Creator, either as a matter of law or as a matter of theology. Even theologians of traditionally recognized faiths have moved away from a strictly Theistic approach in explaining their own religions. Such movement, when coupled with the growth in the United States of many Eastern and non-traditional belief systems, suggests that the older, limited definition would deny “religious” identification to faiths now adhered to by millions of Americans. The Court’s more recent cases reject such a result. (592 F.2d at 207)

The case of Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961), to which Judge Adams referred, contains a dictum recognizing that there are “religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God [including] Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others. . . .” 367 U.S. at 495, footnote 11. In Grove v. Mead School District No. 354, 753 F.2d 1528, 1534 (1985), the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals stated that “Secular humanism may be a religion,” citing Rhode Island Federation of Teachers v. Norbert, 630 F.2d 850, 854 (First Circuit 1980).¹

Judge Adams concluded that in the modern approach toward defining “religion” for constitutional purposes, the most important criterion is the nature of the ideas in question. If they relate to “ultimate” questions of life such as “the meaning of life and death, man’s role in the universe, the proper moral code of right and wrong . . . , they should be treated as religious.” 592 F.2d at 208. See also Africa v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 662 F.2d 1025 (First Circuit 1981); and Dettmer v. Landon, 799 F.2d 929 (Fourth Circuit 1986).

The Oregon Court of Appeals has followed suit in the case of Christofferson v. Church of Scientology, 57 Or App 203 (1982). Said the Court, “We find that, while beliefs relating to the existence of, and man’s relationship to, a God are certainly religious, belief in a traditional, or any, `god’ is not a prerequisite to a finding that a belief is religious,” citing Torcaso v. Watkins, and Malnak v. Yogi, both supra, among other cases. 57 Or App at 240.

The functional definition of religion is not only the better rule for constitutional purposes, but also is more consistent with democratic ideas of fairness and equality. What one believes about the ultimate nature of things profoundly affects his or her temporal values, and temporal values determine one’s political orientation. When only theistic belief systems are recognized as religious, there is a tendency to exclude only those viewpoints from the public dialogue, while other viewpoints that are just as religious but which happen to be non-theistic are given free rein, because their religious nature is not understood. This places people whose belief systems entail the existence of a Supreme Being at an unfair disadvantage in the exercise of their rights to participate in the democratic process, and to address the great policy questions of their day. A pluralistic society cannot allow such an imbalance.

It is of great importance to understand the major world-views in order to maintain a balanced pluralism and to ensure that our educational processes reflect this balance. Space does not permit a detailed examination of all of the world-views outlined above. However, the fact that the influence of New Age philosophy is both widespread and little understood indicates the need for a more in-depth consideration of the New Age world-view. This world-view has made an impact upon public policy and in education. The amorphous character and continual flux of the New Age world-view make it difficult to grasp, and it is, therefore, critically important to make the effort to delineate the essential features of this movement.

———

Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961).

United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965);

Malnak v. Yogi, 592 F.2d 197 (3d Cir. 1979).

Rhode Island Federation of Teachers v. Norbert, 630 F.2d 850, 854 (1^st Cir. 1980).

Africa v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 662 F.2d 1025 (1^st Cir. 1981).

Grove v. Mead School District No. 354, 753 F.2d 1528, 1534 (9^th Cir. 1985).

Dettmer v. Landon, 799 F.2d 929 (4^th Cir. 1986).

Christofferson v. Church of Scientology, 57 Or App 203 (1982). Said the Court, “We find that, while beliefs relating to the existence of, and man’s relationship to, a God are certainly religious, belief in a traditional, or any, `god’ is not a prerequisite to a finding that a belief is religious,” citing Torcaso v. Watkins, and Malnak v. Yogi, both supra, among other cases. 57 Or App at 240.

David Brooks and the meaning of life

Today in the New York Times Online, columnist David Brooks invited readers to post essays on the formation of good character. I posted the following.

Does believing the Gospel produce good character? If so, how?

I believe it does, but not in the way most people, even most Christians perhaps, might suppose.

It’s not by personal effort, that much is clear; for the Bible teaches that salvation is a gift of grace, received with the empty hands of faith.

The truth of the Gospel, when it is believed, produces a complete reorientation of the mind and will, just by virtue of its being true and by its being believed to be true. Whereas the unbeliever is uncertain whether there is meaning or purpose to the cosmos or to his or her life, the believer now realizes not only that there is tremendous meaning to life, but that we now have the freedom to embody that meaning in everything we do.

The Gospel shows us that our longing for truth, justice, and peace are destined to be fulfilled, and that by being truthful, just, and kind we are participating already in that wonderful Age to come. It shows us that there is no act of kindness which goes unnoticed by the One who loved us and gave Himself for us.

“What Can I Do?”

Today I received an e-mail from a reader asking, “What can I do?” And I responded:

Will,

I’m not ready to say the battle is lost. I prefer to emphasize the fact that we have the victory and really cannot lose.

However, we will lose (although here I am not even talking about the political contest) if our response is merely a repeat of “the Christian Right” of the 1980s and 1990s. How do we avoid that?

First, pray.

Next, remember that the battle is not ours, but God’s. Gays’ quarrel is not with us – it is with God and His Word. Let them wrestle with Him and with their own consciences.

Next, when we address the question of homosexuality, always lead with God’s love and grace and His offer of forgiveness in His wonderful son Jesus. Emphasize that we are all sinners. There was a good article about this in Sunday’s NY Times Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/why-evangelicals-should-love-the-pope.html.

Remember that religious freedom includes the non-establishment of religion as well as the right to the free exercise of religion. That means that it is never enough to quote the Bible in a debate about public policy. If the government were to adopt a policy based solely on scripture, it would constitute an unconstitutional establishment of religion. Furthermore, in very practical terms, religious appeals are of no use if we hope to persuade those who do not already understand that the Bible is God’s Word; and of course that is the task. If we venture into policy advocacy at all, we must be prepared with non-religious grounds for our point of view.

Next, inform yourself. This is something I have not yet completed by any means, but I am working on it. It’s my view that homosexuality is very poorly understood scientifically, but that if it were understood, the biblical view would be vindicated. This would merely be a corollary of the “Two Books” model, would it not? Our understanding of nature is aided by our understanding of the Bible, and vice versa. So we should make sure we are familiar with the scientific literature that does exist, try to form some understanding of what research still needs to be done, and advocate for the funding of that research.

Finally, pray.

Tom

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Freedom

I. Love is Foremost.

The action of the Indiana legislature in adopting a religious freedom restoration bill has provoked a maelstrom of invective against Christians. If you only read your local newspaper, you may not appreciate the extent of it.

In this atmosphere it is crucial for us to remember that we are within the protection of God most high. We must also remember that God loves gays (see April 1 post). He calls us to pray for our enemies and to rejoice when we are persecuted:

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matt 5: 11-12.

II. We Must Address the World’s Incomprehension of our Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage.

That said, something must be done to attempt to resolve the incomprehension with which we are met when we decline to be involved in gay weddings, for that incomprehension could do a great deal of damage to our communities.

A. Marriage is Sacred.

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes that there are many humane people who hold to the traditional view of marriage, and that they should be treated with respect and gentle persuasion – to which one Times reader responds,

How can anyone who is deeply humane define marriage in a way that excludes so many humans? If you are deeply humane, you should be able to fully embrace a belief system that includes heterosexual definitions of marriage while also welcoming those participating in same-sex marriages into your businesses and circle of friends.

Please listen carefully: I do welcome gays into my business and circle of friends. Many in wedding services vocations do the same, such as Aaron and Melissa Klein, the Gresham, Oregon bakers who face penalties in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for declining to bake a wedding cake for two brides. They are happy to sell their breads and cakes to gays – except their wedding cakes. They treat their customers the same, except when it entails their own involvement in something to which they are conscientiously opposed.

Part of the misunderstanding stems from the fact that, depending on the circumstances of each particular case, involvement in the ceremony is a matter of degree. Since making a cake entails relatively minor involvement, it may not be the best example. Let’s sharpen the issue, by considering a slightly different scenario that entails deeper involvement: the wedding singer. She does not merely produce a physical object and send it to the chapel: she must go to the chapel personally and use her voice and her art to sing lyrics celebrating homosexual love. Depending on what kind of person she is, forcing her to do this could be a human rights atrocity of the first degree. If she is a devout Christian, then for her the institution of marriage is provided to us by God as a microcosm of the relationship between the Son of God and His Church, which the Bible describes as the Bride of Christ. (Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church, chapter 5, verses 22-33; Revelation 21:9.) The Bible predicts that when Christ returns we will all be changed into His likeness: that is, all the shame and impediments of sin will fall away and we will be free to love as He loves, and there will be a great Wedding Feast (Revelation 19:9). Not only is marriage sacred, but it represents the Christian’s deepest longings to be with her savior in a relationship of complete purity. To think that the Christian wedding singer – or a Christian baker, for that matter – could think of marriage as anything else is delusional.

B. The Bible is the Inerrant Word of God.

The second key to understanding this question is to realize that the reason gay marriage remains a problem for many branches of the church is that for us, the Bible is the inerrant, inspired Word of God, which does not change. As the Lord Jesus Himself stated, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Matthew 24:35. We could not change our views about same-sex marriage, even if we wanted to.

And of course we don’t want to. There are many things about the Bible which are hard to accept, even for Christians, and many which are simply difficult to understand. But we have excellent reasons for believing that the Bible – yes, in its entirety – is the inspired Word of God, and hence that it is the means chosen by God to reveal His offer of forgiveness to men through the atoning work of His Son, who died to set us free from the guilt and power of sin. If what the Bible says about any one topic, such as homosexuality, is unreliable, then we cannot know that what it says about another topic, such as forgiveness, is not also unreliable. Thus without this high view of the scriptures as the very Word of God – all of it – there is no way to know whether the message about God’s forgiveness of sin is reliable or not. To ask us to throw out the parts you don’t like is to ask us to jeopardize our very salvation. It isn’t going to happen – not ever. Christians in the First Century went to their deaths rejoicing for this message of God’s forgiveness. If necessary, we will do the same.

Thus, those who counsel patience while we struggle with this issue, predicting that we will eventually get on board, are kidding themselves. We are not struggling with the question of gay marriage. We know what we believe about it, because the scriptures are clear. But to advocates of forced participation in same-sex marriage, we say: We are also not struggling with you. You are struggling with God.

C. Religious Liberty Matters.

The final key to understanding is to realize that those who advocate forcing Christians to participate in gay weddings are demonstrating deplorable ignorance about the nature of religious liberty.

Religious liberty is a human right. Indeed, it is the source of human rights; for all human rights depend on a religious view of what it means to be human.

The view that humans are inherently valuable is rooted in the Bible – and nowhere else. If you think you know of another source of human rights, please instruct us. You cannot do it. The Bible teaches that we have value and dignity inherently by virtue of who we are as humans: namely, beings who have been created in the image of God.

This is a religious view not merely because it derives from a religious text; it is also religious because it poses an answer to an inherently religious question: does it mean anything to be human, and if so, what does it mean? It is a well-settled legal doctrine in American constitutional jurisprudence, that it is not whether one’s answer to such a question is theistic or not, or even whether your answer is affirmative or not, which makes it religious. It is the question itself which is religious. Therefore, any and every answer to this question is itself religious and therefore has protection under the religion clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.¹

The Declaration of Independence expresses a weaker form of this same doctrine: “All men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” This idea, more than any other, has been the glory and strength of America for almost 250 years.

The Indiana legislature realizes that forced participation in same-sex weddings threatens religious liberty and enacts a bill to protect religious belief and expression. But then, because of political pressure and economic duress (a boycott is not a reasoned argument: it is a form of compulsion), it reconsiders, for the love of money and power, and realizes instead that religious belief and practice deserve protection unless it is a belief or practice concerning homosexuality, in which case they do not deserve protection.

We must pause to clarify something which is capable of causing a lot of confusion: according to my research, which admittedly has not been exhaustive, twenty-one states prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation²; many of those state anti-discrimination laws have religious exemptions, but generally those exemptions apply only to religious organizations, and they only cover employment; they do not apply to individuals, and they do not provide exemptions for anyone engaged in the providing of public accommodations. Twenty states have religious freedom restoration acts³ (“RFRA’s”), which are general in application and can be invoked to effect exemptions from anti-discrimination laws for individuals and businesses in the providing of public accommodations.⁴ However (and this is important), the list of states prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not the same as the list of states which have adopted RFRA’s. Of the 21 states which prohibit such discrimination, only three – Connecticut, New Mexico, and Rhode Island – have adopted RFRA’s. Thus, in 18 states – not including Indiana, very interestingly – citizens providing wedding services may be compelled to participate in gay weddings regardless of their religious objections. In those states, you are not permitted to believe that homosexuality is a sin; or if you do, you are not permitted to act in accordance with that belief; or if you do act in accordance with it, you may be fined, you may be publically humiliated, and you may be forced out of your chosen vocation.

Observe that the bill as originally adopted essentially would have restored the former US Supreme Court doctrine in such matters (as do the federal RFRA and the 20 state RFRA’s): an otherwise neutral public policy must not place a substantial burden on religious belief or practice unless the government shows both that the policy protects a compelling governmental interest and that the policy adopts the least intrusive means for protecting that interest. Thus the original bill did not by its terms permit any type of discrimination: it merely recognized that forced participation in gay weddings has the potential of impairing legitimate expressions of religion and that the courts must have the authority to determine whether it does that, and if it does, whether the impairment is so serious as to justify exempting the religious claimant from such forced participation or not.

It is distinctly possible that some courts, if they had the opportunity, would rule against bakers, but in favor of singers. They are different cases. Again, to emphasize the point: the original act did not by itself authorize any form of discrimination, but merely recognized that citizens should have the opportunity to offer proof that under the particular facts of their situation, the burden to religious expression justifies asking the brides or grooms to obtain their wedding services from another merchant.

But as amended, the bill makes it the policy of the State of Indiana that where homosexuality is concerned, any burden on religious belief or practice is permissible. In Oregon, and 17 other states, in the case of same-sex marriage, anyone offering goods or services which are used in gay wedding ceremonies must participate regardless of their religious beliefs and regardless of the severity of the burden on their religious expression, or they will be punished.

III. Should We be Expected to Keep Our Religion OUT of the Marketplace?

No.

Of the arguments in favor of forcing citizens to participate in same-sex marriage, perhaps the one most frequently made is that such a requirement is an appropriate legal condition for engaging in commerce. That is simply incorrect. The US Supreme Court has rejected that notion. As it stated in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.,

In Braunfeld [v. Brown], 366 U. S. 599 [(1961)], we entertained the free-exercise claims of individuals who were attempting to make a profit as retail merchants, and the Court never even hinted that this objective precluded their claims. As the Court explained in a later case, the “exercise of religion” involves “not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts” that are “engaged in for religious reasons.” [Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v.] Smith, 494 U. S. 872 877 [(1990)]. Business practices that are compelled or limited by the tenets of a religious doctrine fall comfortably within that definition. Thus, a law that “operates so as to make the practice of . . . religious beliefs more expensive” in the context of business activities imposes a burden on the exercise of religion. Braunfeld, supra, at 605; see United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 257 (1982) (recognizing that “compulsory participation in the social security system interferes with [Amish employers’] free exercise rights”).

. . . While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits. If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well. [Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., slip opinion, 27-29 (US, 2014).]

Thus the Court in Hobby Lobby stated that enforcement of the requirement of the Affordable Care Act that employers provide health care insurance coverage for abortifacient contraceptives was a violation of federal RFRA because such enforcement “would effectively exclude these people from full participation in the economic life of the Nation. RFRA was enacted to prevent such an outcome.” (Slip opinion, 52.)

Right now, that is the direction which events are taking.

IV. An Appeal to Our Fellow Citizens.

The conversation to date has been dominated by advocates of same-sex marriage, about 80% of whom dismiss religion-based claims of exemption as signs of bigotry. Another 10% dismiss them as signs of ignorance. Such pronouncements have the effect of excluding Christians from the conversation, and I respectfully submit that this is a perilous course. If we begin the punishment of religious believers who for religious reasons cannot participate in gay weddings without affording them so much as a day in court, the consequences are unpredictable. What we know is that no one can readily accept a policy in the forming of which they had no voice, and no one can easily accept punishment without the right to a hearing. Therefore we should stop insulting one another. We should begin respectfully listening to one another, and engage in a common effort to discover a common basis on which we can live together in peace.

ENDNOTES

¹Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961); United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965); Malnak v. Yogi, 592 F.2d 197 (3d Cir. 1979); Rhode Island Federation of Teachers v. Norbert, 630 F.2d 850, 854 (1^st Cir. 1980); Africa v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 662 F.2d 1025 (1^st Cir. 1981); Grove v. Mead School District No. 354, 753 F.2d 1528, 1534 (9^th Cir. 1985); Dettmer v. Landon, 799 F.2d 929 (4^th Cir. 1986). In Christofferson v. Church of Scientology, 57 Or App 203 (1982), the Court said, “We find that, while beliefs relating to the existence of, and man’s relationship to, a God are certainly religious, belief in a traditional, or any, `god’ is not a prerequisite to a finding that a belief is religious,” citing Torcaso v. Watkins, and Malnak v. Yogi, both supra, among other cases. 57 Or App at 240.

²https://www.aclu.org/maps/non-discrimination-laws-state-state-information-map.

³http://rfraperils.com/states/.

⁴Additionally, the courts in eleven other states have adopted similar standards by judicial decision. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-intolerance-1427760183.

God Loves Gays!

A few hours ago I posted an exchange of comments on a New York Times Online article about gay marriage. In doing so, I violated my own guideline about such conversations, namely: on this subject (religion and homosexuality), misunderstanding is difficult to avoid; therefore, we must always lead with the Good News about God’s love for gays and lesbians. I didn’t do that, so I pulled the post. Please allow me to start over.

God loves homosexuals. Jesus His Son gave His life for them, just as much as for anyone. Christians are called to serve others – gays and lesbians as much as any – because He taught us that to serve them is to serve Him.

But we also cannot lose sight of the reason it was necessary for Christ to die for us: to atone for our sin. One of the conditions of God’s forgiveness is that we recognize our need for it. Homosexuals are also no different in this respect: we all need God’s forgiveness.

In spite of what some say, Christians are not as a class a self-righteous bunch. That is not to deny that there are plenty of hypocrites in the church – Christians are just as susceptible to that vice as anyone. One of our cardinal doctrines, after all, is that all sin (Romans 3:23). But Christians are not as a class any more hypocritical than anyone else. The difference between Christian hypocrites and other hypocrites, you see, is that, by definition, we Christian hypocrites realize we are hypocrites: that is why we are Christians: we have recognized our sin, we have renounced it, we have relied upon Christ’s payment of the penalty for it, and we come to Him for cleansing and for reconciliation to God. What this means is that as a class, we Christians are less hypocritical than we were.

We Christians believe – for excellent reasons – that the Bible is the Word of God, and binding on us. We couldn’t change it if we wanted to. Indeed, I think that in many instances we would like to change it. We might even like to change what it says about homosexuality – frankly, it’s not a fun topic for us, and I’m sure many of us would prefer to just ignore it. That is becoming less and less an option, however.

So when Moses and Paul unambiguously identify homosexuality as a sin, that pretty much resolves the question in the minds of most Christians. We cannot deny what the Word of God says. Furthermore, it would be wrong to pretend that the Bible is less than clear about this, because if some parts of the Bible are unreliable, then it would be impossible to know which parts are not unreliable, and hence, there would be no way to know that there is any forgiveness of sins. We would therefore be unable to say to gays and lesbians what we must say to everyone: believe in the Lord Jesus and you will have God’s forgiveness.

The Scientific Case for God; and, more evidence for design in nature

Here are two recent articles from Reasons to Believe that I think you will find helpful and encouraging! Enjoy!

http://www.reasons.org/articles/does-science-make-the-case-for-god-or-not-part-1-of-2

http://www.reasons.org/articles/how-we-keep-our-eyes-on-target

Philosophy of Science

[The following essay was presented orally at the University of Oregon on May 3, 2006. – ed.]

Remarks

MARS HILL FORUM

University of Oregon

Defining “Science”:

How Philosophy Reconciles

Science and Religion

Introduction: Science and the Philosophy of Science.

There are two ways to approach the question of human origins: either by discussing the evidence, or by discussing the quality of our reasoning about the evidence.

This is the distinction between science and the philosophy of science.

I think it would be fair to say that many people do not appreciate the importance of philosophy, and this may be especially true of the philosophy of science. Indeed, I submit that the controversy over human origins is intractable not so much because evolutionary biologists are bad scientists as that most of them are atrocious philosophers.

Evidence of design in nature is absolutely astounding. However, I want to emphasize that I do not intend to discuss that evidence in any detail this evening. I have done that on many occasions in the past,¹ and hope to do so many times again; but this evening, for once, I want to focus instead on the false assumptions which prevent many of us from correctly interpreting the evidence; and as we will soon see, this is a huge subject in itself and more than deserving of our attention. Since I have only thirty minutes, I have no intention of proving here the theory of intelligent design to be true – although I can – but only to challenge you, whenever you do consider the evidence, to consider it intelligently.

II. The Philosophy of Science.

What do I mean when I refer to “the philosophy of science?” Webster’s dictionary states that the term philosophy comes from the Greek for “loving wisdom,” and it provides eleven definitions. Two of those definitions are of greatest interest to us in understanding science.

One definition of philosophy is this: philosophy is “the [field of study] comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics and epistemology.” Of those five branches of philosophy, most people assume that science only concerns itself with the last – epistemology, which is the theory of knowledge. In this sense, science is understood as those methods which are regarded as reliable for gaining knowledge of the natural world, and we have no quarrel with this understanding of science, except that it is incomplete. It is important to remember that science is also concerned with at least two other branches of philosophy, namely, logic and metaphysics. Thus, scientists employ both inductive reasoning (generalizing from particular observations) and deductive reasoning (drawing inferences, making predictions based on general principles), and they concern themselves with the ultimate nature of physical reality.

The other definition of philosophy which concerns us this evening is that philosophy is the conceptual framework for a particular subject. Philosophy can thus be understood as the project of offering intelligible reasons for the priorities and methods of a particular discipline, in order to enable us to form judgments as to whether those priorities and methods are appropriate and useful. Thus, for example, we have political philosophy and legal philosophy, we have the philosophy of religion . . . and we have the philosophy of science. When used in this sense, then, the philosophy of science is the conversation which the scientific community has with itself and with the human community as a whole as to the values, goals, rules and methods that are proper to science so that they can be understood, compared, criticized, shown to be valid and useful or not, and if not, improved.

One important task of philosophy is to enable us to think well – to think intelligently and rationally. In fulfilling this task, one of the most useful things philosophy asks us to do is to define our terms carefully. Often we find – and this is nowhere more true than in the controversy over human origins – that much confusion can be traced to the fact that the parties to the conversation never stop to define their terms; consequently, they use the same words to mean very different things, and when that happens, there is no communication.

At the very heart of the philosophical or theoretical framework for science is the question, What is science? How can we distinguish science from non-science, or science from religion, or science from philosophy, if we do not have a common understanding of what science is? And it is here, at the heart of the philosophy of science, that evolutionary theorists fail us, for they cannot give us a defensible definition of science. They either refuse to give us a definition at all, or they give us one which is obviously fallacious. I want to encourage you to consider the possibility that resolving the confusion on this point may be the key to the entire controversy concerning human origins.

III. It is Philosophers, not Scientists, who Define Science.

To begin, we must first realize that the task of defining the term, science, is not a task for scientists as such, but for philosophers. There are at least three important reasons for this.

A.The Question is not one of Science.

One obvious reason is that we cannot answer this question by employing scientific methodology. This is simply because the definition of science is not a question about the natural world, but about science. There is no experiment, there are no empirical observations, which have been made or which could be made, which would help us to decide what we ought to mean when we employ the term, “science.” There are no peer-reviewed articles in the journals proclaiming the discovery of scientific methodology in a test tube, or in a super-collider, or on some distant planet! No, we do not discover the meaning of science as scientists making observations; we discover the meaning of science as philosophers, on the basis of reason.

B.Who is a Scientist?

Another reason why it is clearly fallacious to claim that it is scientists who must define science is that it begs the question. To say that scientists define science is circular. Who is a scientist? We cannot answer that question without first knowing what science is. If only scientists define science, then no one can, because until we define it, no one knows who the scientists are!

Now obviously, in practice scientists do define science; but what we must understand is that when they do so, they do not do it in their capacity as scientists, but in their capacity as philosophers. Now, they may or may not be professional philosophers, but that is not what matters. Everyone is a philosopher, whether they know it or not. You don’t need a degree to be a philosopher, any more than you need a degree to be a scientist or a theologian;² what matters is not that a person be a professional philosopher, but that he or she be a good philosopher.

C. Our Appeal Must be to Reason.

Many who insist that scientists must define science, do so honestly – they are making an innocent mistake. Others, however, know better, but they make the claim anyway because they know that modern science enjoys enormous authority and prestige within society, and they hope that this will result in their audience accepting their pronouncements uncritically. This is an appeal to authority.

At other times, the insistence that it is scientists who must define science merely betrays an awareness that the scientific establishment has power over the terms of the discussion – i.e., they control the science departments and the leading journals – and they are hoping that dissenting voices will simply not be heard. Indeed, some scientists will frankly acknowledge this in private. This is an appeal to power.

Such appeals are not entitled to our respect. When we seek to justify what we are doing, we must not make a naked appeal to convention, or authority, or to power. We must appeal to reason. That is the whole point of philosophy, and this is why philosophy is too important to be left to scientists!

IV. Toward a Definition of “Science.”

Since, then, we are all philosophers, and since it is the business of philosophy to define science, how shall we define it? Simple! We again look in the dictionary! According to Webster’s, the term science comes from sciere, which is Latin for “to know.” Thus, science is just another word for knowledge. Therefore, we should define science as follows:

Science is the collective human effort to gain knowledge about reality.

That’s how I would define it.

Let us contrast the foregoing definition with one which differs from it in one small but significant way:

Science is the collective human effort to gain knowledge of the causes of natural phenomena.

The reason the second definition is inferior to the first one is that the second contains a questionable presupposition – namely, that science is or should be concerned only with natural phenomena – or conversely, that science is not or should not be concerned with non-natural phenomena.

What is wrong with that presupposition?

It is wrong because it limits the scope of science and offers no justification for doing so. It declares that there is or may be an aspect of reality concerning which we do not or should not wish to know, and it is therefore antithetical to science.

What is the orthodox definition of science?

Science is the collective human effort to gain knowledge of the physical causes of natural phenomena.³

Notice the difference: according to the orthodox, science is not the search for the causes of natural phenomena, but for the physical causes of natural phenomena. What does this mean?

It means that modern science assumes that all natural phenomena result from physical causation.

What do we mean by physical causation?

Physical causation is what happens when one physical object collides with another.

Physical causation is to be contrasted with . . . what? What other kinds of causation are there? There are only two kinds of causation: physical causation and personal causation. Thus, the orthodox definition of science comes down to this: science is the search for impersonal explanations for natural phenomena.

And this is the distinction we must focus on – not the distinction between the physical and the spiritual; not between the natural and the supernatural; but the distinction between the personal and the impersonal.

Take the case of the billiard ball. When a pool player strikes the cue ball with her stick, the cue ball (if she has any skill) strikes the object ball, causing it to move. In reverse order, the motion of the object ball results from a physical cause, namely, a collision with the cue ball. In turn, the motion of the cue ball is caused by a collision with the cue, and the motion of the cue results from the motion of the body of the player, and the motion of the body of the player is caused – by what? By the player! But what is the player?

Naturalistic scientists – those who are willing to follow their premises to their conclusions – will tell you frankly that the player does not exist. The action of her body is not caused by her, but by prior physical events. Her consciousness and volitions are viewed as some kind of emanation resulting from complex neurochemical events. Our thoughts are supposed to be the results of the motions of the particles in our brains, which, in turn, are caused by the motions of other particles, many of them in the form of electrons reaching our brains through our sensory apparatuses.

Thus we see that orthodoxy commits not one, but two crucial errors. First, it prohibits inquiry into part of reality. Second, even where it permits inquiry, it prohibits inferences to personal causation. And it accomplishes both of these moves by its fallacious definition of science.

Why do evolutionary theorists define science so as to exclude the personal? Because it is congenial to their metaphysics. They have bought into a religious world view known as naturalism.

In this view, nature is considered to be a unitary system of continuous physical (i.e., impersonal) causation. There are two forms of naturalism – strong naturalism, and weak naturalism:

Strong (atheistic) naturalism: Only matter and energy exist. (This view is roughly equivalent to materialism, and the two terms are often used interchangeably.)

Weak (deistic) naturalism: An immaterial reality may or may not exist, but if it does, it is undetectable and hence, not amenable to scientific inquiry.

There are three things that we must understand about naturalism. First, it is not science, because it is not based on any observations. Science has not gone looking for God and found him missing! No, science has not gone looking for God, spirits, persons, or anything immaterial, because science considers it unscientific to do so. Scientists are not likely to do the very thing which they believe their own discipline prohibits.

Another reason naturalism is not science is that it prohibits inquiry into a certain area of knowledge – namely, knowledge of the personal. Therefore, if science is knowledge, then naturalism cannot be science because it is the very antithesis of knowledge!

No, far from being scientific, naturalism is a religious point of view, because in both of its forms it is a statement about God: either that He does not exist at all, or that His activity in nature is unverifiable.

Second, we must also see that naturalism’s denial of the existence of the personal is not limited to God: it also extends to human persons. Remember the pool player? Just as naturalistic science is blind to the evidence for design in nature, it is also blind to the ontological authenticity of the human person.

This is why William Provine of Cornell University, a leading historian of science, can say:

Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with mechanistic principles. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable. . . .

. . . [M]odern science directly implies that . . . human beings are marvelously complex machines. The individual human becomes an ethical person by means of two . . . mechanisms: heredity and environmental influences. That is all there is.

Finally, free will . . . simply does not exist. . . . There is no way that the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make choices.

Thus, according to naturalism, you as a person do not exist.

How does the naturalistic scientist know this? What experiment has shown this? No experiment.

Brain science is showing in greater and greater detail that mind and body are closely related, but it has not solved the problem of consciousness. The naturalistic scientist knows that personal causation does not occur not because he has gone looking for it and found it to be absent, but because he has deliberately defined science in such a way as to guarantee that no evidence will be considered contrary to his prior metaphysical commitment to the proposition that personal causation does not occur. As a result, to the orthodox, no evidence is necessary to justify naturalistic explanations; and to the orthodox, no evidence can ever be sufficient to warrant a finding of personal causation.

V. The Divided Field of Knowledge.

Even human personal causation is a problem for naturalistic science, but what about physical phenomena that are not “man-made”? That is to say, what is the cause of, say, the information content of DNA? No naturalistic answer has been provided. Again, physical causation is simply assumed, on the basis that the notion of personal causation of natural systems is not science, but religion. This is another form of the same error.

The term religion comes from the Latin, religare, “to bind.” It does not come from the Latin for ignorance. Thus, science and religion are certainly different things, but they are not opposites, and there is no reason for regarding them as mutually exclusive or even incompatible.

So why, then, do many scientists subscribe to this viewpoint? The truth is that very few of them know why. It is just what they have always been taught, and so have most of us – this is not just the view of the scientific establishment; it is part of the furniture of the western mind. Most of us think this way.

The reason most of us don’t know why we think this way is that we don’t know when or why science and religion parted company in the first place. To many of us, the 17^th century may seem like a long time ago, but it’s really not; and until then, both science and religion were almost universally seen as valid and mutually compatible. But over the course of the next 300 years, they parted company. There were many reasons for this, but in my opinion the most important single reason is that the church made the colossal blunder of sacralizing a nonbiblical view of the cosmos and clinging to it when it became discredited. This practice occurred across centuries,⁴ but no doubt its most stunning example occurred in the year 1616, when the church continued to teach that the sun revolves around the earth when science had shown that the earth revolves around the sun, and forced Galileo to disavow what he had plainly seen.

This was followed quickly by the wars of religion 1618-1648, the discoveries of Isaac Newton, and in the 18^th Century, the failed attempt of the Enlightenment to contrive a nonbiblical basis for morality. And that brings us to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who tried to rescue morality in the following way. He said:

the doctrine of morality and the doctrine of science may each be true in its own sphere. I have, therefore, found it necessary to deny knowledge of God, freedom, and immortality, in order to find a place for faith.

In other words, there is, according to Kant, a divided field of knowledge. He justifies our beliefs in God and morality, but he denies that they are verifiable: he declares faith and fact to be mutually exclusive!

It is this divided field of knowledge which is responsible for the modern proclivity for thinking of science as an exclusively secular pursuit of mechanistic, naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena, and not as an integral part of man’s unitary quest for knowledge. And thus has it been ever since.

This way of thinking is so deeply embedded in the western mind that we are not even aware of it. Of course, evolutionary theorists do everything they can to perpetuate it, but it was and remains a catastrophic blunder. There is only one field of knowledge. Whatever is, is, and whatever is not, is not. But by the turn of the 20^th century, for many reasons, naturalism and science had become synonymous, and naturalism has ruled science ever since.

Thus Stephen Jay Gould, who until his death in 2005 was the world’s best-known popularizer of evolutionary theory, stated that “science treats factual reality, while religion struggles with human morality.” As Phillip Johnson says, this is naturalistic metaphysics in a nutshell, and it is transparently fallacious, because God’s commandments cannot provide a basis for morality unless He actually exists. But if God actually exists, then we are not entitled to assume that all natural phenomena have resulted from physical causation.

Furthermore, mountains of scientific evidence, including Big Bang theory and the Fine Tuning of the Universe, which I will discuss in a moment, strongly suggest not only that God does in fact exist, but also that He made the universe and everything in it.

VI. Design Theory.

What, then, is design theory, after all?

First, let us be clear about what design theory is not. Design theory is NOT the theory that God created living things. That is what the opponents of design want you to think design theory is, because it is easier for them to argue against that than it is for them to argue against design theory. But that is not design theory.

Design theory is many things, but for the sake of brevity, let me discuss just one aspect of design theory, which is that it is simply a formal test for design. It applies three simple criteria to physical phenomena which enable us to reliably detect design when it is present and to exclude design when it is not present. Here are the three criteria:

1. If an object or event is relatively complex;

2. If the object or event corresponds to some meaningful extrinsic standard – that is, if it matches something else, the purpose of which is already known; and

3. If there is no known, plausible, physical explanation for the object, such as erosion, or seismic activity, or gamma rays, etc. . .

then we infer design.

Now, the more complex the object, and the more exactly it matches an extrinsic standard, and the more unlikely physical causation happens to be, the greater our confidence that the object was designed. So it is always a matter of probability.

For example: If we find a styrofoam cup in the wilderness, we will never mistake it for an accident of nature.

Please note carefully that unlike scientific naturalism, design theory is metaphysically neutral. It does not presuppose that anything was designed, and it does not presuppose who a designer may be. It certainly does not presuppose that there is a God or that anything was designed by God. It is merely a metaphysically neutral test for deciding whether a particular item was or was not designed.

The scientific status of this aspect of design theory is already recognized by the scientific establishment in fields other than biology.

For instance, it is employed every day in archeology to distinguish human artifacts from natural objects. If an archeologist finds a hieroglyph, he knows immediately that it was designed by an intelligent agent.

The reason design theory works is that design is a mental activity and therefore necessarily implies personal causation. It is meaningless to say that an object was “designed” by an impersonal process.

Now, it may come as a surprise to many of you that design theory is also commonly employed in the field of physics – that is, in the study of non-living physical phenomena.

There is a mountain of evidence that the physical universe was designed. Here I am referring to what has become known as “the fine-tuning of the universe.”

There is a wealth of recent discoveries in the fields of physics and astrophysics which strongly suggests that the cosmos was designed, from the smallest structures to the largest. Physical matter appears to be specific to the fostering of complex life. The physical specifications necessary for complex life to exist are so numerous and exacting that the inference to design is quite strong – strong enough, at least, for many leading physicists to acknowledge openly the apparent necessity of the design inference.

Most Americans, I suppose, would be surprised to learn this, and I am sure we can thank our ever-vigilant mainstream media for this. But it’s not a secret to leading scientists. For instance, Stephen J. Hawking, acknowledged as one of the greatest theoretical physicists since Einstein (and not a traditional theist), describes the evidence in the following way:

The laws of science . . . contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. . . . The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. For example, if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, stars either would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would not have exploded. . . . [There have been several generations of stars, and it was the first generation of stars which produced the heavy elements, and the explosion of those stars was necessary in order for those heavy elements to be dispersed for the formation both of the rocky planets and of our bodies of flesh and bone.] [I]t seems clear that there are relatively few ranges of values for the numbers that would allow the development of any form of intelligent life. . . .

. . . .

. . . It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.⁵

So is design theory science when it is employed in the fields of archeology and physics, but not science when it is employed in biology?

As we have seen, the orthodox justify their refusal to permit inquiry about personal causation in biology by excluding the personal from science not on the basis of experiment or observation, but by definition.

And this is why evolutionary theorists can look at evidence for design in nature, call it design, and still not see it. For example, A. G. Cairns-Smith is a prominent evolutionist who, in Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, states:

[W]hat impresses us about a living thing is its in-built ingenuity, its appearance of having been designed, thought out – of having been put together with a purpose. . . .

Similarly, Richard Dawkins, one of today’s most active anti-design polemicists, writes,

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

This is why famed British historian Paul Johnson refers to evolutionary orthodoxy as a form of “intellectual totalitarianism.” According to Johnson, fervent Darwinists are inadvertently undoing the very cause they champion. He states:

[T]o anyone who has studied the history of science . . . it is inevitable that Darwinism, at least in its fundamentalist form, will come crashing down. The only question is: when? The likelihood that Darwin’s eventual debacle will be sensational and brutal is increased by the arrogance of his acolytes, by their insistence on the unchallengeable truth of the theory of natural selection – which to them is not a hypothesis but a demonstrated fact, and its critics mere flat-earthers – and by their success in occupying the commanding heights in the university science departments and the scientific journals, denying a hearing to anyone who disagrees with them. [Johnson says] I detect a groundswell of discontent at this intellectual totalitarianism, so unscientific by its very nature. It is wrong that any debate, especially one on so momentous a subject as the origin of species, and the human race above all, should be arbitrarily declared to be closed, and the current orthodoxy set in granite for all time. Such a position is not tenable, and the evidence that it is crumbling is growing.

Antony Flew, professor emeritus at Oxford University, until 2004 was one of the planet’s leading proponents of atheism. But after reading Michael Behe’s bombshell, Darwin’s Black Box: the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Flew became a theist. He said:

My whole life has been guided by the principle of . . . Socrates: follow the evidence, wherever it leads.

And the evidence leads to design.

ENDNOTES

¹Joshualetter 2002. Click Articles and Essays/Science/Darwinism. [This link is no longer active.]

²Michael Faraday (1791-1867) had no formal scientific training, but became famous for his discoveries in the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. There have been many other important amateur scientists.

³“The most basic characteristic of science [is] reliance upon naturalistic explanations.” Brief of amicus curiae National Academy of Sciences, Aguillard v. Edwards, 482 US 578 (1987).

⁴Beginning at least as early as Averroes, b. 1126.

⁵Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1998, 1996), pp. 129-131. More than 200 physical constants have been discovered which must be exactly what they are in order for the universe to have developed in such a way as to produce habitat suitable for humanity. See, for instance, The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, J. P. Moreland, ed. (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996); http://www.reasons.org; http://www.joshualetter.org (click links to Articles and Essays, Science, Darwinism, Chapter 5).[Website not currently available.] The resulting probability of even one earth-like planet occurring anywhere in the cosmos by chance is infinitesimal.