Does Religion Always Lose?

A common debating tactic, and a successful one in the eyes of many, is to say that whenever religion and science have a dispute about some question of fact, religion always loses.1 The implication is that religion should never make any factual claims, and it is even implied that religion has no contact with reality. Supporting evidence for this claim is said to include the physics of Galileo, the geology of Hutton and Lyell, the biology of Darwin, and the psychology of Freud and others. Religion, especially
supernatural religion, has always lost in the past, and it will always lose
in the future. We should either abandon it or at least adopt a liberal version
that makes no testable claims.

There are several problems with the above scenario. First, strictly
speaking, the disputes were not really between science and religion; there
were scientists on the “religion” side, and theologians on the “science”
side. It would be more proper to make the claim that the argument was
between naturalistic and supernaturalistic philosophies.
If so, the Galileo affair does not really belong with the other examples.
The Galileo affair resulted from the reaction of the Catholic Church,
which had just been rocked by the Protestant Reformation, to the
cosmology of Copernicus. The only issues which might impact the conflict
between naturalistic and supernaturalistic philosophy were whether
incidental details in the Bible were to be treated as ontologically (really)
accurate, or merely phenomenologically (only describing appearances)
accurate, and the authority of the Catholic Church. As far as I know, it
does not even involve the authority of the Pope speaking ex cathedra, as
I know of no such pronouncement of the Pope on the Galileo affair.
It could be (and has been) argued that the other “advances” listed
above were not really advances. Certainly a creationist will not find them
very persuasive. But there is a more basic flaw in the argument. Specifically,
there are important counterexamples to the argument. Religion does
not always lose.

We need to rephrase the above statement to give it more empirical
content, because we can never be completely certain that science has a
particular theory. Even if a theory appears to be well ahead of another, it
is always possible that more evidence will tip the scales in favor of the
currently out-of-favor theory. Thus a believer in naturalism could always
claim that in a given subject where a supernaturalist explanation fits best
with the known facts, more facts will tip the scales. Just wait a while;
your supernatural explanation will turn out to be wrong or unnecessary.
Of course, a supernaturalist could argue in a similar manner. And both
statements are basically faith statements. The only evidence we can have
for them is that the same process has occurred in other areas of knowledge
in the past.

So we will rephrase the proposition more carefully. Scientific and
historical hypotheses arising from and/or compatible with supernaturalistic
philosophy sometimes have considerably more empirical support
than hypotheses arising from and/or compatible with naturalistic philosophy.
Perhaps more importantly, this support has, in some cases increased
with time.

In the domain of history, one counterexample to the “religion always
loses” argument is the reliability of the chronology of the books of Kings
and Chronicles in the Bible. For a long time, skeptics believed a “Biblical”
chronology did not exist, and that what confused pieces of chronology
did exist were totally incompatible with the “real”, secular chronology.
After Thiele,2 the chronology of Kings and Chronicles was (and is) seen
not only as coherent, but able to serve as a corrective to secular chronology.
A Biblical approach has won, or at least has shown itself to be
much better at explaining the data. Religion did not lose in this case, and
it appears unlikely to lose in the future here.

Another counterexample is the book of Daniel, where skeptics originally
confidently stated that Belshazzar never existed, that the chronology
was hopelessly confused, and that since the entire book was fiction, there
was no point in looking for the characters in history. With time, that view
of history has been forced to change. Belshazzar not only existed, but
also turned out to be the crown prince (also king in Hebrew parlance),
able only to offer the third rulership in the kingdom. The chronology of
Nebuchadnezzar taking captives from Jerusalem turns out to have been
precisely correct. Perhaps most interesting, the names of Daniel4 and his
three friends5 have been found in Babylonian documents. This does not
mean that every statement in the book of Daniel has been confirmed.
The identity of Darius the Mede is still in doubt (although we have not
eliminated all candidates). But the case for the historicity of Daniel is
clearly better than it was in the past. Religion is winning here.

These cases are from history. Can the same be said of science? If one
is a Seventh-day Adventist, it can. For over a century, Adventists defended,
on the basis of what they believed to be inspiration, the view that tobacco
was an insidious but deadly poison. At the time this view was not shared
by the scientific community, but over the last 50 years the evidence has
become overwhelming that the hypothesis originally associated with religion
was correct. Religion did not lose here. The same comments, although
not quite as vigorously, can be made about vegetarianism.
But it could be countered that these supernaturalist positions were
sectarian, and in any case did not deal a major blow to naturalism. Are
there any cases more directly relevant to the creation-evolution controversy?
It turns out there are. The first example is in cosmology. The question
at issue was whether the universe extended backwards in time indefinitely
or if there was a finite limit to the age of the universe.

The former was strongly favored by most scientists, often with an explicit anti-supernatural
bias expressed as the reason for their preference. This bias formed a
major part of the objection to Big Bang cosmology. If the universe had a
beginning, it at least suggested that it might require a Creator. The desire
to protect an eternal universe was so great that in attempting to do so,
Einstein made what he later called his “greatest mistake”, introducing a
cosmological constant into the equation for the universe to keep it roughly
static. However, the weight of evidence now is solidly behind the concept
that the universe did have a beginning. Religion is not losing here.
Another example is the existence of vestigial organs. Vestigial organs
have been used as an argument against design, and therefore against a
designer, since Darwin. In the classical exposition, Wiedersheim listed
over 150 structures that he considered vestigial. He was careful to note
that some of them, such as the thyroid and adrenal glands, probably had
some function, in which case they might not be truly vestigial, and that
this could be the case with other organs. But some of his followers were
not so cautious, and it was not uncommon for such organs as the thymus,
the pituitary, and the appendix to be written off as completely useless.

This lack of caution was necessary if vestigial organs were to be used
against believers in design, because if there was some function that could
be attributed to them, then their existence in a designed organism would
not count as evidence against a designer.8 However, this lack of caution
was ill-advised, as further investigation has found a reasonable function
for all these structures, destroying, sometimes dramatically, the argument
against design. It could be argued that in this case anti-supernaturalist
prejudice actually was detrimental to science, tending to cause scientists
not to investigate possible functions for a structure because the prejudice
was that it had no function.

It could be further argued that anti-supernatural prejudice actually
killed people. Although the spleen was not on Wiedersheim’s list, when
I went to medical school it was commonly written off as a practically
useless organ that we would be better off not having, as it tended to bleed
when it got injured. Its only use was to show that humans and dogs, for
example (where it stores blood for autotransfusion in case of bleeding),
shared a common ancestor. As a result, when it did get injured, it was
commonly removed, without any attempt to preserve its function. It was
only later that it became apparent that not having a spleen predisposed
one to overwhelming pneumococcal infections. Surgical practice today
is to preserve splenic function whenever possible, either by repairing the
spleen, or failing that, by leaving small bits in the abdomen and hoping
that they attach themselves.

History repeated itself with the “junk DNA” controversy. When DNA
was discovered, many evolutionists predicted that there were vast quantities
of totally useless DNA in the genome of various organisms including
humans. As noted by Standish,9 they were perhaps ignoring evolutionary
theory in their anti-supernaturalist bias. But the point remains that supernaturalists
generally made a better prediction about the extent of “junk
DNA”, and that in this case an anti-supernaturalist bias actually hindered
research (the reverse of what is usually claimed).

This brings up an important point. One of the reasons “science”
(naturalism) claims not to lose is that it incorporates findings which were
originally thought to favor “religion” (supernaturalism). Thus the temporality
of the universe, and some other ideas such as the harmfulness of
tobacco, are simply incorporated into the naturalistic model, and the modern
believer in naturalism often may not be aware of the religious overtones
to the previous controversies. The topic is viewed as simply another
example of the steady advance of science.

The same could have been true for religion. For example, most theologians
have incorporated a heliocentric view of the solar system into
their theology. But the believers in naturalism will not let them forget
that at one time the majority of Christians (not all; note Philip Melancthon)
disagreed with the heliocentric theory, and the Catholic Church disagreed
strongly enough that it forced Galileo to recant and banned his books, an
action it has been forced to repudiate. The Church was in error here. But
if one can hold modern Christianity accountable for the mistakes of the
majority of its predecessors, one can also hold naturalism accountable
for the mistakes of the majority of its predecessors.

This brings us to a final point. The argument that “religion always
loses” is used to avoid having to deal with some subject where supernaturalism
is apparently winning at present, and where if it wins, naturalism
is dead. Naturalism can survive the historicity of the numbers in
Kings and Chronicles, or the toxicity of tobacco, or even (as deism) the
Big Bang. Naturalism cannot survive without a naturalistic explanation
for the origin of life. And yet there is not such an explanation, not even a
remotely plausible one. The more we know, the worse it looks.
Naturalism implicitly recognizes this.

The best evidence for this is the insistence on the monophyletic origin of life.
In the face of the Cambrian explosion and different genetic codes for some organisms (e.g., Paramecium), naturalists continue to insist that all organisms on Earth share
a common ancestor. If they really believed that life were that easy to
start, they would simply accept the hypothesis that it started a number of
different times. The fact that they insist on the monophyletic origin of
life is testimony that they implicitly recognize that it is extremely difficult
to get life started even once, let alone multiple times.

But believers in naturalism are absolutely committed to a naturalistic
origin for life. Some idea of the strength of the commitment can be
gathered from a passage in an excellent (and still accurate) book by Robert
Shapiro entitled Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on
Earth.10 In it he points out the flaws of the various theories, finally opting
for a theory of short non-modern peptides as the least problematic. But
on p 130 he displays his own viewpoint:

Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical
experiments run to discover a probable origin for life have failed
unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may indicate a
sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have
explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes
leading to life, elsewhere. In such a case, some scientists might
choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself
included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable
scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still
more likely than the remainder.

So naturalism requires a defense against the obvious. And the best
defense is, “We have never lost yet. You always do if you wait long
enough.” In the case of the origin of life, it appears that naturalism would
have lost a long time ago if its adherents had not refused to recognize the
loss. The major problem with the “religion always loses” defense is that
it is not true. Even in hindsight it is not true without distorting the record,
and from a prospective point of view (the only point of view from which
we can currently view the future), it is certainly not true. It should be
recognized as what it is, a faith statement disagreeing with the apparent
lessons of history. Religion does not always lose.

P.A.G.

ENDNOTES

1. See, for example: (a) Yandell KE. 1986. Protestant theology and natural science in the
twentieth century. In: Lindberg DC, Numbers RL, editors. God and Nature: Historical
Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, p 448-471. Berkeley and
London: University of California Press; (b) White AD. A history of the warfare of science
with theology in Christendom. 2 vols. NY: Dover Press.
2. Thiele E. 1983. The mysterious numbers of the Hebrew Kings. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids,
MI: Zondervan Publishing House.
3. Strand KA. 1996. Thiele’s biblical chronology as a corrective for extrabiblical dates.
Andrews University Seminary Studies 34:295-317.
4. Shea W. 1988. Bel(te)shazzar meets Belshazzar. Andrews University Seminary Studies
26:67-81.
5. Shea W. 1982. Extra-biblical texts and the convocation on the Plain of Dura. Andrews
University Seminary Studies 20:29-57.
6. Robert Jastrow (1978. God and the astronomers. NY: W. W. Norton and Co.) notes the
phenomenon. Although the supernaturalists were not always on one side, or the naturalists
on the other, as noted by Helge Kragh (1999. Cosmology and controversy. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, p 251-268), there was still a tendency to line up on the
side most compatible with one’s evaluation of theism.
7. Bernard H, Bernard M, translators. 1895. The structure of man: an index to his past
history. Howes GB, editor. London: MacMilllan and Co.
8. For an anti-supernaturalist argument to succeed, it is important for the structure under
consideration to have no function. It is not enough simply for it to have minimal and
easily compensated function. Otherwise, such structures as little fingers or toes could be
considered unnecessary, as there are very few functions that cannot be performed equally
well by humans who have lost their little fingers and toes, and yet it seems unreasonable
to claim that they could not have been designed.
The attractiveness of such an argument is such that it is still not completely dead. It
surfaces, for example, in: Miller KR. 1999. Finding Darwin’s God. NY: Cliff Street
Books, p 100-101.
9. Standish TG. 2002. Rushing to judgment: functionality in noncoding or “junk” DNA.
Origins 53:7-20.
10. Shapiro R. 1986. Origins: a skeptic’s guide to the creation of life on Earth. NY: Summit
Books.