The Warfare Myth

Ever since the 19th century there's been a myth circulating that there's an inherent conflict between science and religion, specifically Christianity. The belief, often held by contemporary atheists but rejected by virtually every historian of science, is that there's a logical incompatibility between the two spheres that has led to intellectual warfare between them. 

According to this myth, to be either a person of science or a religious person is to automatically exclude being the other.

In his book The War That Never Was philosopher of science Kenneth Kemp explains why the Warfare Myth is false and why there's in fact no incompatibility between science and the Christian belief that God both created the world and has acted in it.

He gives four possible views of the relationship between nature and non-nature (or the supernatural). In the list below V stands for "View." Kemp uses a slightly different notation that would require a bit of explanation so I've taken the liberty of using a simpler notation:

V1- Only natural beings exist.
V2- Non-natural beings (if they exist at all) have no causal influence on the natural world.
V3- Non-natural beings exist, but they only occasionally act as direct causes of events in the natural world.
V4- Non-natural beings exist and frequently act as direct causes of what happens in the natural world.

V1 is incompatible with Christianity but is not at all necessary for the conduct of science. Indeed 50 of the 52 greatest progenitors of the scientific revolution were theists who rejected V1.

V2 is sometimes said to be necessary for science because if a non-natural being (God) exerted causal influence on the world then it would be impossible to formulate laws of nature since there'd be no regularities to provide the basis for such laws. This, however, is not true. A law of nature is simply a description of the way nature operates as long as there's no outside interference.

If an outside force interferes with a falling object by catching it that doesn't violate the law of gravitational attraction nor does it render the law invalid. As Kemp says, "Science does not presuppose, entail, or have any other logical connection to V2."

V4 would indeed make science difficult, but the belief that non-natural interventions are frequent is not essential to Christianity. That leaves V3 which is the position, probably, of most philosophically informed Christians.

Some naturalists have argued against V3, however. Biologist Richard Lewontin, for example, famously wrote that,

Either the world of phenomena is a consequence of the regular operation of repeatable causes and their repeatable effects... or else at every instant all physical regularities may be ruptured and a totally unforeseeable set of events may occur. One must take sides on the issue of whether the sun is sure to rise tomorrow. We cannot live simultaneously in a world of natural causation and of miracles, for if one miracle can occur, then there is no limit.

At first reading this sounds like a compelling refutation of V3, but Kemp offers a trenchant criticism of it. He begins with this sentence:

Science no more requires that all of what we observe be caused by natural interaction than it requires perfect observation on the part of scientists or the absolute impossibility of scientific fraud.

He then asks us to imagine Lewontin's quote modified by replacing parts of it with the words underlined as follows:

Either the world of phenomena is exactly as it is reported in laboratory notebooks ... or else all the data in all our laboratory notebooks could be completely wrong...We cannot simultaneously rely on science and admit that scientists can make mistakes, for if one mistake can occur, then there is no limit.

Kemp observes that phenomena are not exactly as reported in lab notebooks, scientists sometimes make imperfect measurements, sometimes they cheat, but these things are not common and despite them science is a very reliable guide to the way the world usually works. 

Just as science is fruitful despite these irregularities, it would still be reliable and fruitful, he argues, if there are occasional instances of supernatural intervention.

There's much more to Kemp's argument, but the point here is that there's no necessary or inevitable conflict, then, between the practice of science and the beliefs articulated in the Christian creeds. The claim that there is may perhaps be an expression of wish fulfillment on the part of naturalists who are a priori hostile to those creeds.