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Science and Religion Science and Religion: A Conflict of Methods Timothy Alexander Smith A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago, June 2017. i Abstract There is an epistemological conflict between religion and science. While the claims of science are justified using epistemic methods whose reliability has been corroborated by other people and by other methods, the claims of religion are not justified in the same way. Different methods are used. This thesis offers both a comprehensive description of the distinctive epistemic methods of religion and a philosophical appraisal of the claim that such methods are knowledge-conferring. The methods explored are various and care has been taken to sample a broad range of religious cultures. It is found that the same religious methods, when used to answer the same questions, generate different answers for different practitioners. Additionally, the results of religious methods fail to agree with the results of other epistemic methods when employed independently. This lack of independent agreement is the primary reason for the exclusion of religious methods from science. It is further argued that (a) this lack of agreement is evidence that religious methods are unreliable, and (b) the agreement generated by scientific methods is evidence for their reliability. ii Acknowledgements In 2013, I approached Greg Dawes at the AAPNZ Conference at the University of Auckland. ‘What’s wrong with creationism?’ I asked him. ‘Is it untestable in principle or has it simply failed too many tests?’ I can’t remember Greg’s exact reply, but this thesis was the result. The question I asked him is no longer the primary concern of this thesis, but it proved to be a good place to start and Greg proved to be the right person to ask. It has been a joy and a treasure to work with him and to learn from his example. Greg’s dutiful work in corralling my ideas cannot be overstated. Many thanks are owed to audiences at the AAHPSSS Conference at the University of Melbourne (2015) and the NZAP Conference at the University of Waikato (2016). Useful contributions were made by Sandy Boucher, John Matthewson, John Bishop, Graham Oppy and Sahanika Ratnayake. I would also like to thank an anonymous and hardworking reviewer for the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. At the University of Otago, I would like to thank James Maclaurin for his enthusiasm and mentorship, Alan Musgrave for the gift of scientific realism, Michael McLeod for supportive friendship, and Sally Holloway for supplying the smoothest sailing this ship could ask for. The ship, however, was not always sturdy. Janette Quennell, thanks for the lifeboat. iii Dedication To the Memory of JOSH PARSONS (1973—2017) iv Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................... iii Dedication ............................................................................................................. iv Introduction .................................................................................... 1 1. Do Religions Make Knowledge Claims? ....................................... 17 1.1 Realism and Antirealism ............................................................................. 17 1.2. Wittgensteinian Antirealism ..................................................................... 20 1.3 Different Meanings of “Truth” .................................................................... 30 1.4 Religious Commitment as Propositional but Unjustifiable. ...................... 34 1.5 Religious Commitment as Non-Propositional ........................................... 40 1.6 NOMA ......................................................................................................... 44 1.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 51 2. Are Supernatural Explanations Prohibited in Science? ...............54 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 54 2.2 Intrinsic Methodological Naturalism ......................................................... 56 2.3 Pragmatic Methodological Naturalism ...................................................... 60 2.4 The Intrinsic and Pragmatic Defenses Defend the Wrong Thing .............. 65 2.5 Problems for this Conception of Methodological Naturalism ................... 71 2.6 Back to the Battleground ............................................................................ 79 v 3. The Epistemic Methods of Religion ............................................ 82 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 82 3.2 Epistemic Methods ..................................................................................... 83 3.3 Religious Epistemic Methods ..................................................................... 86 3.3.1 Types of Religious Epistemic Methods ................................................ 87 3.3.2 Divination ............................................................................................88 3.3.3 Acquaintance ....................................................................................... 99 3.3.3 Innate Beliefs ..................................................................................... 108 3.3.4 Testimony ........................................................................................... 112 3.3.5 Inference ............................................................................................ 124 3.3.6 Paradox .............................................................................................. 128 3.4 Concluding Thoughts on the Epistemic Methods of Religion .................. 131 4. Religious Diversity ................................................................... 135 4.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 135 4.2 Pluralism .................................................................................................. 139 4.3 Perennialism............................................................................................. 150 4.4. Exclusivism...............................................................................................157 4.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 167 5. Religious Disagreement ............................................................ 170 5.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 170 vi 5.2 Preliminary Assumptions ......................................................................... 174 5.3 No Epistemic Peers? ................................................................................. 176 5.4 No Fully Shared Evidence? ...................................................................... 178 5.5 Feldman’s argument ................................................................................. 179 5.6 Maintaining Belief in the Face of Disagreement .......................................181 5.7 The Disanalogy of the Dean in the Quad .................................................. 184 5.8 Religious Disagreement Without Religious Methods .............................. 187 5.9 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 190 6. Religious Parallelism ............................................................... 193 6.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 193 6.2 Boyer’s Theory of Religion ....................................................................... 195 6.3 Barrett’s Theory of Religion .....................................................................203 6.4 Approaches Within Comparative Mythology.......................................... 206 6.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 215 7. Religion, Science and Epistemic Circularity .............................. 217 7.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 217 7.2 Epistemic Circularity ................................................................................ 218 7.3 The Justificatory Role of Agreement ........................................................ 224 7.4 Intermodal Agreement .............................................................................230 7.5 From Agreement to Reliability ................................................................. 236 vii 7.6 The Specialisation of Scientific Observations .......................................... 242 7.7 Autonomous Scientific Methods .............................................................. 246 7.8 The Autonomy of Mathematics ................................................................ 251 7.9 The Failure of Religious Epistemic Methods .......................................... 258 Closing Thoughts on Science, Religion and Methods.....................264 References ................................................................................... 272 viii Introduction
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