Science and Religion: Problem of Other Minds (or Lack Thereof)

Science and Religion

Does science discredit religion? In general we have the sense that, historically speaking, it does -- but only because so much of the historical conflict between science and religion has hinged upon the way in which scientific advances have disproved factual claims that were advanced by religion, or (as Worrall phrases it) where religion is "directly inconsistent with well-accredited scientific theories…the erstwhile religious claim…must, from a rational point-of-view, give way" (2004, Science, 63). So for example Martin Luther famously rejected the claim by Copernicus that the earth revolves around the sun because the Old Testament story of Joshua depicts the Biblical hero commanding the sun and the moon to stand still in the sky -- because Luther accepted the Bible as literally true, Luther would not accept the scientific theory that showed it was not factually true. This is the way in which many have approached the conflict between science and religion, but it is important to note that not all religion is as obviously arrogant as Protestant fundamentalist Biblical literalism, and not all science is as obviously factual and verifiable as Copernican heliocentrism. This is not to claim that the simple version of the conflict is not still present -- the recent 2014 public debate over Darwinian evolution between Bill Nye and Ken Ham was, in fact, a reflection of the most simplistic way in which the conflict can be stated, and therefore made religion look worse than it really is. The majority of the world's Christians are, after all, Roman Catholics whose church fully endorses Darwin's theory of evolution. And moreover, it was possible to be on the side of science and feel like the debate was a disaster for science: as Michael Schulson argued in The Daily Beast, "Ham won this debate months ago, when Nye agreed to participate" (Schulson, 2014).

Indeed it is clear, as Ratzsch argues, that "making the case that science destabilizes fundamental religious belief is not so easy as some claims would make it seem" (2004, Demise, 87). In part this is what Schulson is arguing: by giving Ham the opportunity to perform his public auto-da-fe, Nye already has lost the debate for science. Yet it is worth considering what the possible claims that religion can make are, beyond the coarse caricature of faith-for-spite presented by Ham. Plantinga and Dennett in their 2010 published exchange essentially remove the debate from conflicts between religious scripture and observable reality -- the debate has become epistemological. Plantinga is eager to liken atheism to solipsism, in order to show that the existence of God might be considered as part of the larger philosophical "problem of other minds" (2010). This leads Plantinga into the dubious position of advancing what he calls the "sensus divinitatis," an inborn propensity to understand the world as something which would have a creator. But his point about the problem of other minds is, in fact, valid: Dennett has no reason to believe automatically that Plantinga has an internal thought process to which Dennett has no access, there is only the evidence of Plantinga's words on the page to suggest the existence of Plantinga's mind. The same issue is handled differently by Ratzsch and Worrall. Worrall in his "Reply" notes that Ratzsch's handling of the epistemological question is "confused" because from the standpoint of science the existence of other minds is not proven but can be considered among "well-confirmed hypotheses" (2004, 90). This is to say, it remains potentially falsifiable. But Ratzsch in his "Reply to Worrall" does have the last word: if Worrall must concede the epistemological point, and he must, then why "should science epistemologically rule all?" (2004, 93). The only answer to this is to rely on Worrall's distinction between proof and hypothesis, and in essence to argue that science's superiority is its codification of doubt or potential falsifiability. But this does not exactly remove the question of what to do with belief: in some sense, it reduces science to a matter of belief precisely like religion, and then claiming that the preference hinges upon capacity for prediction.