The More You Know, the Less You Understand

I have been interested in philosophy ever since I first read Plato's Republic in my early teens. I then dabbled in existential writers like Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Objectivist Ayn Rand. I was just shy of a minor in philosophy in college where I was especially enjoyed medieval and religious philosophies of Augustine, Algazali, Aquinas, Anselm and the list goes on...

So I was delighted to find a new podcast and website that has thoughtful and interesting information on relevant philosophy, science, ethics in relation to Christianity. Special thanks to my friend Jen, who introduced me to the group Stand to Reason. The founder of Stand to Reason is Greg Koukl. He has a talk radio program that comes weekly as a podcast and this blog will touch on his most recent podcast Science-Is God Out of Bounds? (Subscribe here!)

The podcast is formatted to have around an hour to address a relevant topic, in this episode its science and then an hour of listener calls. Recent podcasts include discussions on Christopher Hitchen's bestseller God is Not Great, How Christians Should think about voting for a Mormon, and Raising Children to be Adults.

Greg is addressing an article by Edward Larson called If its Supernatural it is not Science. Larson makes the statement that even if God did create the universe, its not science. Science as it is currently defined is to explain the material world by naturalistic explanations. Thus science by definition leaves no room for the supernatural.

Greg raises a point that this definition is problematic. He draws a good analogy in that if you find a man with a gun wound, knife stab, and head lopped off, you aren't going to say he died of natural causes. In fact, you will probably search for an agent that caused the death. Why is it that science limits itself arbitrarily to rule out certain agents as causes?

"Is it possible that there are some nonscientific enterprises like philosphy, theology and ethics that might contribute legitimate, defensible conclusions that represent problems for some scientific views? If truth is really the object of the scientific enterprise, scientists should welcome it from any source. So Greg propose that the definition of science should not limit its causes to only the material world.

Greg also addresses scientism. Scientism is a belief propelled by Carl Sagan and others that science is the source of all reliable information about the world. Plainly stated, only that which can be proved by science is true. Society is infected with scientism and you will find a good number of individuals who dismiss anything that is not science. Science is fact and everything else including philosophy and theology may or may not be true, but we will never know.

The limitations of the definition of science as previously stated make this view a rather dangerous one to hold. If science is the only way to truth then science itself is self-refuting because science is built on a series of truths that cannot be demonstrated by science but must be in place even for science to be valid.


Check out more science related articles here. I recommend Sagan and Scientism, Unbelievable Unbelief, and Science Isn't, Science Is.

Thought for the Day: If the wager is your life, what odds will you take?