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Science teaching and religion: was Unorthodox science projects



The central question is whether science is simply a (very good) method of gaining
understanding about the natural world, or whether it provides the basis for an
all-encompassing philosophy about the nature of the world. Whether we realize it
or not, everyone starts making some starting assumptions about the world on the
basis of which we can then start to reason. Science as an all-encompassing
philosophy starts with an assumption that the only things that exist are things
that are accessible through scientific method (i.e. denying the existence any
spiritual beings). That assumption is as much a statement of faith as a belief in
God—it can’t be proven correct or proven wrong, since the assumption itself
establishes what one judges as valid and invalid arguments. Science as simply a
method of study is something that forms one part of the scientist’s world
philosophy, whether that be Christian, Buddhist, Confucian, Naturalistic, Marxist,
ect. In that case, at one level all science is from a Naturalistic, Christian,
Islamic or other perspective, but the beauty of science is that in the vast
majority of the cases a scientist’s philosophy doesn’t matter, so one doesn’t need
to know whether the author of an article in Physics Review is Islamic or not. But
it does come into play in boundary areas, such as fundamentals and teleology.
Take for example the uniformity principle, the principle that the laws of physics
do not change over time or space. Someone who believes in God could see that as a
natural result of the universe being created by an unchanging, omnipresent God,
where someone who denies the existence of God might have to accept it as a
fundamental assumption. Since physical science is primarily about understanding
the mechanisms and processes of nature, a view of science as the only reliable way
to learn about the world around us almost inevitably leads to a view of
purposeless, chance driven world, which is anathema to most religious persons.
That, I believe, is the core reason for fundamentalist Christians' rejection of
modern science as popularized by people such as Richard Dawkins. We all do
science from some perspective, though some of them may be better than others, and
we may or may not be aware of it.

Scott Bonham
Western Kentucky University