Book Review: Why I Became an Atheist, chapter 6

I am reviewing Why I Became an Atheist, by John W. Loftus. Other posts are here.

Chapter 6: The Lessons of Galileo, Science, and Religion

Loftus begins by discussing the historical case of Galileo. Loftus points out that the Church was following “Aristotelian science.” Loftus quotes other authorities who say that some Christians felt there was a deep harmony between this ancient science and “the moral drama of Christianity.” Medieval theologians were attached to the symbolism of, for example, earth as the physical center of things.

It is unclear why Loftus talks about this event in particular. He repeatedly emphasizes that the church was trying to make its teaching cohere with ancient non-Christian teaching, which wouldn’t reflect poorly on Christianity as such. It’s also not clear what Loftus thinks of bizarre Christian reasoning about the cosmos at the time. The desire for symmetry between spiritual and physical truths is somewhat crude. Loftus then says at the end of the discussion that “the Copernican system was not yet established on scientific grounds.” So does he think this anecdote highlights a religion-science conflict or not? It’s not clear.

Loftus goes on to discuss, on a conceptual level, “the relationship of science to religion. He uses Ian Barbour’s parsing into four approaches.

(1) Conflict: Scientific materialism vs. Biblical literalism
(2) Independence
(3) Dialogue
(4) Integration

Loftus’s comments on (1) will be unhelpful to the majority of readers. “Scientific materialism” is described as the belief that “the scientific method is the only reliable path to knowledge.” Biblical literalism is the view that “a literal interpretation of the Bible sets the limits for science.” I don’t think very many people think in these ways. Most scientists and philosophers of science would say that “the scientific method” (whatever it means here) is the best path to knowledge of a particular kind, not the only reliable path to knowledge. Biblical literalists almost never think that the Bible sets “limits” on science. Go to their websites and you’ll see that they think the science overwhelmingly confirms the Biblical record. Loftus finds Biblical literalism a “very untrustworthy approach to science.” Construed as it is here, hopefully everyone will agree. In any case, Biblical literalism is an approach to the Bible, not an approach to science.

The most prominent advocate for position (2) is probably the late Stephen Jay Gould, who called religion and science “non-overlapping magisteria.” Loftus is very quick with this position, making two statements that are supposed to be objections. The first objection Loftus gives is Ian Barbour’s objection, that this view leaves no one to investigate things like “the relationship between God and nature, or between the self and nature.” It seems to me that this would require just combining the knowledge from the non-overlapping magisteria, but Loftus doesn’t explain why he thinks this constitutes a good objection. His second problem is curious: “Unless someone can propose a mutually agreed-upon reliable scientific test to show that religion is a legitimate domain of knowledge on its own merits, it doesn’t have any independent status.” This doesn’t follow. If they really are both non-overlapping magisteria, applying a scientific test to find out if religion produces knowledge is not sensible. After all, why not apply a religious test to science? Second, it’s not at all clear why any field of inquiry or human activity requires any kind of “test” to discover its epistemic value. Can science pass such a “test”? I suspect not. Instead, science just progresses, with good results within its sphere of relevance.

Loftus has a similar objection to position (3). “[U]nless someone can propose a mutually agreed-upon reliable scientific test to distinguish between competing religious claims, scientists don’t know which one of them to dialogue with.” This is bizarre. Presumably, scientists aren’t forced to dialogue with any religious claims or people at all. But if they do want to dialogue, it’s up to them which claims they dialogue with. If they want to, they can do lots of research into apologetics, natural theology, and comparative religion. It seems to me that this would be unreasonable. So how about they dialogue with whatever religion makes sense in their cultural context? Loftus gives an extended quote from Dawkins, where a red herring is presented. The Dawkins quote has to do with scientists discussing religious topics and religion failing to address those topics properly. Dawkins also gives some indication that he thinks the “why” questions of religion are nonsense questions. “What is the smell of hope?” Dawkins’ point is not related to the issue of science dialoguing with religion. When copy-pasting other people’s statements to critique dialogue position, Loftus forgot what that position even was, described a few paragraphs earlier.

Position (4), integration, might not really be a position. I’m not sure what Loftus means by it. It seems rather similar to dialogue. In fact, some degree of “integration” could be present in all three other positions, even independence, if both science and religion are describing the world. Anyway Loftus says that it’s always religion giving way to science, so “why not just admit science sets the boundaries for what we believe?” People like Swinburne and Alister McGrath would probably deny this claim, and say that over time we have clarified distinctions between the two fields which used to be mushed up in a big soup.

Loftus’s usage of the words like “limits” and “boundaries” might be problematic. Does he just mean, “Science decides what we should believe?” What is a “limit”? Academic fields tend to tell us about a small number of things. Physics, for example, doesn’t tell us which kind of political system is best, or what the moral truths are, or what is for breakfast. Loftus is very excited about something called “science,” which he either thinks is all knowledge that everyone ever had and will have, or is the way to all this knowledge.

The next section of the chapter is titled, “Here is some scientific evidence against the christian belief in the God of the Bible.”

Loftus says things like “No account of the development of this universe can be harmonized with the creation accounts in Genesis except that these accounts were pure mythic folklore.” Those familiar with the literature know that there are plenty of readings of Genesis that mesh well with the latest science. The eccentric Gerald Schroeder has one. Robert Farrar Capon has another extremely erudite treatment. But the real question is which reading of Genesis is intellectually permissible?

Lofuts also quickly lists a number of other instances where this scientific stuff disproves all sorts of religious stuff. Christian readers may be struck by the narrowness of Loftus’s apparent understanding of the religion he left. Keep in mind that part of his de-conversion story was a relative of his sending him arguments for evolutionary science. It is no wonder, then, that other academic fields Loftus cites in their entirety, like “psychology,” “archaeology,” and so on, also seem atheistic to him. Loftus invokes entire academic disciplines to support his points without argument. He is either unaware of disagreements in these fields, or he is aware and doesn’t want his readers to think his case is any less rock-solid than it is. [EDIT: The latter interpretation has now been confirmed]

Loftus says science has “displaced” God, for anachronistic reasons like the idea that “man” is not the “center” of the solar system. Since this vulgar idea was always ill-conceived, why bring it up? The second and third examples are variations on this same point. The fourth example is “the possibility that there are an infinite number of universes.” This means “God is no longer needed.” What Loftus means is, “If there is a multiverse, then God is not necessary to explain the particular fact of anthropic principle.” A much less dramatic claim than Loftus makes. His overconfidence will unfortunately deceive uneducated readers.

Loftus then argues against the idea that the Christian world is what gave rise to modern science. Following Josh McDowell’s apologetical method, Loftus gives a bunch of quotes from various scholars who agree with him. All you might learn is that some other people, not Loftus, have some arguments about how science arose – go read their books if you actually want the full treatment. I’d recommend this book as an excellent starting point. Unfortunately the hodgepodge of quotations Loftus gathers don’t even address the major contention of this supposed Christian argument – that Christianity provided some historically friendly conditions, plus a view of an ordered universe. Loftus doesn’t elaborate on what the argument is in this direction. Instead, he just quotes it, then quotes a bunch of opinions against it, and adds commentary. Why didn’t he add this elaboration and commentary for the view under discussion? Maybe because he wants his readers to think that the falsity of the Christian view is “beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt.” Loftus then uses another person’s credentials (Richard Carrier) to just that in fact scientific achievements are anti-Christian. So the pro-science stuff in Christian history has got to be anti-Christian, and the anti-science stuff is the true Christianity. This is thinly veiled tautology.

The final section of the chapter is about methodological naturalism. Loftus says that we use methodological naturalism every day, say in explaining a strange noise. We assume a natural explanation. Loftus says that science has been very successful in using naturalistic assumptions. I generally agree with these statements. I’m not very supportive in general of the “natural/supernatural” distinction itself, so this might be part of why I don’t find the section objectionable. It is weird that Loftus quotes and refers to Alvin Plantinga in this section without mentioning his widely-discussed “evolutionary argument against naturalism,” or his actual arguments against methodological naturalism. Again, the Loftus strategy is like Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel. Briefly caricature your opponent, and then barrage your reader with quotations from scholars who are more educated than they are. Finally, claim decisive victory.
Note: It’s hard to review this book because in many ways it is not a book. Loftus might have zero arguments of his own, and frequently doesn’t explain what he is arguing against. In order to discuss the pithy quotes given from Michael Martin, Paul Kurtz, Robert Pennock, and the rest, the reviewer would have to go and read their books and analyze their arguments. Undoubtedly this would be more satisfying and engaging.