For the last several centuries, there has been an on-going and vituperative dispute over what is and what is not religion’s purview, and in the recent past, a number of disciplines have seen fit to jettison insights from religious texts, clerics, and theology departments on account of the fact their contributions are increasingly seen as nonsensical, déclassé, and irrelevant. Nowhere is this truer than within the sciences. A stunning majority of scientists operating today, when it comes to the question of God (and religion, generally), say, as 18th-century polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace said, “I have no need of that hypothesis.” Indeed, a vocal segment of scientists have said that God is not only not needed but not wanted in their labs and experiments. And yet, ambivalent and/or antipathetic receptions have hardly kept the good and faithful at bay. On the contrary, they’ve historically set the stage for electrifying religion versus science debates. That being said, if one were to take a survey of the most memorable dust-ups between science and religion, science would seem to have carried the day. The inquisition of Galileo Galilei, the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, and the more recent Dover Trial in 2005 all live on in infamy as noteworthy moments of what is widely seen as unabashed religious overreach, making contemporary religious adherents cringe and scientific materialists congratulate themselves on the fact that, in the words of Elizabeth Bennet, religious believers “made [themselves] ridiculous.” However, despite those not insignificant moments of egg on face auto-da-fé, when it comes to religion and science debates, religious adherents just will not go away. Indeed, they display an aggravating capacity, having been humiliated and splayed across the mat, to pop back up again with nary any discernible dispiritedness. In response to this, many within the scientific community, perturbed and incensed at the fact religious people are seemingly made of rubber or else endowed with an apparently limitless second-wind (perchance the Breath of Almighty Providence), have decided that the best defense against religious incursions is a strong offense, and as Enlightened Russian Despot Catherine the Great once said, they now contend, “I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to will terribly what I will at all. I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.” And so they have. Not wanting to barricade themselves inside their labs waiting for the indefatigable religionist advance, many scientists have taken to blowing glass, creating an exhaustive and (they hope) impenetrable materialist snow globe that encompasses not only their lives and labs but the universe in aggregate. “After all,” they contend, “methodologically, science deals in real things—testable, observable facts. None of that wooly supernatural nonsense. And furthermore! Metaphysically, the universe is all there is. As the late, great astrophysicist Carl Sagan put it: ‘The Cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be.’ The supernatural does not exist empirically. We are scientists. We know so, and we say so. So there. Our materialist snow globe stands, and NO DEITY SHALL PASS.” However, something—or Someone—appears to be tapping on the glass. In fact, both practical and philosophical materialism have inherent and ineluctable cracks, and this paper will contend that the materialist paradigm so many scientists defend cannot hope to last because it is, in point of fact, incoherent in both the methodological and the metaphysical sense.   

In order to best see the short-comings and cracks intrinsic to methodological materialism, it’s important to first get a definition of the term and a sense of how it has become an ideological bastion within the sciences. Helpfully, former Executive Director of The National Center for Science Education Eugenie Scott has offered both, explaining what methodmat is and why so many scientists hold it close: 

Most scientists today require that science be carried out according to the rule of methodological materialism: to explain the natural world scientifically, scientists must restrict themselves only to material causes (to matter, energy, and their interaction). There is a practical reason for this restriction: it works. By continuing to seek natural explanations for how the world works, we have been able to find them. If supernatural explanations are allowed, they will discourage – or at least delay – the discovery of natural explanations, and we will understand less about the universe.

For Scott, as well as many other scientists, methodological materialism has proven its effectiveness again and again to such an extent that in the words of atheist and evolutionary biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne, science and methodmat are now “deeply wedded.” A divorce would be costly and onerous, and the last thing any scientist would want to be accused of is faithlessness. They’ll not have any roving eyes, certainly not heavenward. Certainly not towards the divine. However, that being said, even Coyne himself admits that the marriage between science and materialism was no cradle betrothal—it arose over time—a union born of utility and successes. Hardly romantic, but such is life. And yet, there are scientists who object to the marriage. Who claim it was entered into under false pretenses, and that, far from aiding scientific advancement, methodological materialism has been less of a help and more of a hindrance.   

Theoretical physicist, fellow of The Royal Society, and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne is one such scientist who has argued that methodological materialism has had an intellectually stultifying effect, writing, “The laws of nature… which science itself has simply to treat as given brute facts, are held to display a character that makes it intellectually satisfying to terminate the search for understanding at this point.” Far from being a genial and fecund relationship, the union of science and methodological materialism, per Polkinghorne, has been brutal and abortive, forcing scientists to cut short their exploration of the things they find, lest they be accused of introducing aspects of the divine. Mathematician and statistician Dr. William Dembski has been even more forthright, alleging that the powers that be within the scientific community have engaged in “conceptual gerrymandering.” In fact, he further writes that their preferred modus operandi of methodological materialism is based on a lie:  

Methodological materialism presents us with a false dilemma: either science must be limited to natural explanations or it must embrace ‘supernatural explanations,’ by which is meant magic. But there is a third possibility: neither materialism nor magic, but Mind.

Eugenie Scott’s aforementioned list of permitted scientific causes—matter, energy, and their interaction—does not include mind, a short-coming that even fellow atheist, notable NYU Professor Emeritus Thomas Nagel, says must be rectified: 

The great advances in the physical and biological sciences were made possible by excluding the mind from the physical world. This has permitted a quantitative understanding of that world, expressed in timeless, mathematically formulated physical laws. But at some point it will be necessary to make a new start on a more comprehensive understanding that includes the mind… 

For Nagel, Polkinghorne, and Dembski, minds are real things. They may be immaterial, but their existence and effects are certainties worth including in the concatenation of scientific inquiry. Frankly, few thinking people would disagree, and yet, many scientists do so quite heartily. They claim all there is is the brain—we are just “meat machines”—and the deterministic firing of the three pound pink slime between our ears determines all our thoughts and the course of our lives. It’s a spicy position to take, made more so by the fact that, philosophically, they’re somewhat awkwardly out of date as it was almost a full four-hundred years ago that polymath Rene Descartes provided a proof that the body (i.e. the brain) and mind are self-evidently not the same:

There is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible. For, as a matter of fact, when I consider the mind, that is to say, myself inasmuch as I am only a thinking thing, I cannot distinguish in myself any parts, but apprehend myself to be clearly one and entire; and although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, yet if a foot, or an arm, or some other part, is separated from my body, I am aware that nothing has been taken away from my mind.

For Descartes, the fact we can easily conceive of a body absent a mind (ex. a corpse) and a mind without a physical body (ex. spirits/souls/ghosts) is proof that they are different in kind, not just in degree. And yet monists, like Richard Dawkins, are bound and determined (pun intended) to be mindless. At least philosophically. Practically, though, it’s a different story because as triple doctorate and Oxford Professor Emeritus John Lennox has pointed out, for scientists to say their minds are the same as their brains (that is, the end product of what they themselves claim is a mindless, unguided, evolutionary process), is to admit they have no reason for believing their thoughts are in any way trustworthy or significant. In fact, any “thoughts” they might have are essentially an intellectual gag-reflex predetermined by the laws of physics. And thus, Lennox contends, materialism doesn’t just shoot itself in the foot, it shoots itself in the head. That makes it quite hard to do science experiments. 

“Alright, alright!” the aggrieved scientific materialist cries. “I admit it! I have a mind.” But like any good scientist, he’ll want to be parsimonious about that hypothesis, and as a materialist, he’ll want to do everything he can to downplay the admittance. After all, it’s a sledgehammer to his methodological commitments. Thus, his mind and his alone will be the only one allowed existence and the only one permitted anywhere near his laboratory experiments for if materialism must permit a crack, it will be the skinniest one the adherent can get away with. “I think, therefore, I am—the rest of you yayhoos are pink slime meatheads.” Ironically, this position, helpfully illumined by physicist, astronomer, and religious Brother Guy Consolmagno in his book God’s Mechanics, leads the materialist—one committed to seeing matter as the alpha and omega of existence—to say everything is just an illusion:

Solipsism—the philosophical theory that suggests that the universe is just a projection of an individual’s own imagination—starts with the mindset that “I am the only mind that exists.” The story goes that one such-minded amateur philosopher once said to George Bernard Shaw, “I am a Solipsist, and most of my friends are, too.” Shaw was understandably amused.

Clearly, “no mind but mine” simply will not do. Setting aside the hubris it takes to assume everyone in the room is a pink slime meat cube except you, taking that view turns all matter into something you can see straight through, a move that would seem to intrinsically torpedo a materialistic worldview. And if that wasn’t enough to prove, for the materialist, that solipsism simply will not do, Professor Nagel swings in to further pop their egomaniacal balloon: 

The understanding of mind cannot be contained within the personal point of view, since mind is the product of a partly physical process… by the same token, the separateness of physical science, and its claim to completeness, has to end in the long run.

Not only is the no-longer-quite-so-committed scientific materialist’s mind not the only one in existence, his entire methodological position, per Nagel (who is, once again, himself, an atheist), must come to an end. Minds exist independent of our own personal experiences and science has to be able to give an account for them. Matter, energy, and their interaction alone simply aren’t up for the task and because of that, the materialists’ methodological snow globe suffers an earth-shaking CRACK! Mind has swung its hammer, and there’s no going back. 

“Okay,” the scientific not-quite materialist admits, shivering at the sudden breeze and tightening his lab coat around him, “we’ll let minds inside our laboratory experiments—but that’s it! There’s no need to be gratuitous—no need to extend the argument. Actually, I’m quite content to leave it. Parsimony! Parsimony! A few minds (our minds) will be more than sufficient.” 

“We cannot leave it,” another white-frocked scientist indignantly says, brow furrowed, tone mellowed by a distinctly British accent. “Science is not content with ignorance. That’s something for those meathead religionists. The argument must be extended.” 

“But Dick,” his quivering lab mate says, “don’t you… don’t you sense that if we grant mind in excess—that is, beyond the bounds of our experiments, though we could maybe grant some to a few amusing lyricists like John Lennon. He has that great line about imagining there’s no Heaven—that could have, eh-hem (his voice cracks), broader metaphysical consequences?”

“As long as my genitals are left alone, I am okay with that.”

In 2017 during a debate with previously mentioned triple doctorate (and committed Christian) John Lennox on the topic “Has Science Buried God?”, Richard Dawkins, self-professed monist and materialist, admitted,

You could possibly persuade me that there was some kind of creative force in the universe. Some kind of physical, mathematical genius who created everything… You could possibly persuade me of that, but that is radically and fundamentally incompatible with the sort of god who cares about sin, a sort of god who cares about what you do with your genitals, or the sort of god who has the slightest interest in your private thoughts and wickedness. 

That Richard Dawkins—scientific atheist poster man—of all people would admit he could be convinced “some kind of physical, mathematical genius created everything” is nothing short of miraculous. And yet, as evinced by his rejection of any such genius that would have an interest in our sins, private thoughts, and wickedness, Dawkins made it very clear that while he might admit a higher mind, he will not admit a higher interest. His life and genitals are OFF LIMITS. He doesn’t want to be messed with. And that is the rub, isn’t it? Because for all that scientists must now increasingly admit that they use their immaterial minds to intervene—to “mess with”—their laboratory experiments, the idea that another, higher mind might reach into their lives cannot be countenanced. However, while scientific atheists might not like it, science, we are told, is not about preferences. It’s about evidence. And the question, having admitted that a higher mind might exist, is is there any evidence for it? That is, when we observe the world, do we see occurrences and events that smack of an interested, intervening genius? (I’ll call Him God from here on for the sake of being typographically parsimonious).

According to scientific atheists, the answer is no. They see zippo signs of Divine intervention within the cosmic snow globe. Indeed, everything is precisely as we should expect in a universe of “blind, pitiless, indifference.” And! They hasten to add, even if we were to run into something unexpected, dare we say, miraculous, all that would indicate was that we hadn’t discovered a scientific explanation. Yet. Nineteenth century French skeptic Anatole France put it like this: 

If an observer with true scientific spirit witnessed the regrowing of a man’s severed leg after immersion in a sacred pool or the like, he would not say ‘Voila—a miracle!’ Rather he would say, ‘A single observation like this would lead us to believe only that circumstances we don’t fully understand could regrow the leg tissue of a human—just like they regrow the claws of lobsters on the tails of lizards, but much faster.’ 

According to biologist and atheist Dr. Jerry Coyne, to have real confidence in a miracle, one needs “massive, well-documented, and either replicated or independently corroborated evidence from multiple and reliable sources.” He immediately adds, “No religious miracle even comes close to meeting those standards.” 

In Ezekiel 36:26, God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Today, a massive quantity of people—over 2.3 billion strong—claim to have had this same, that is, replicated, experience. Spanning the globe and coming from all walks of life, they all nevertheless attest that they’ve encountered and been changed by one Jesus Christ. 

In C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles, he writes, “Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write…” 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 declares: “You show that you are a letter from Christ… written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” If Dr. Coyne wants well-documented miracles, there are 2.3 billion living letters walking around. They might be a good place to start. 

“But how,” he and others will doubtless ask, “can their claims be corroborated?” Well, Galatians 5:22 says: “The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” and for anyone claiming to have met Jesus, there’s a very simple test to assess whether or not they have the indwelling Holy Spirit. Bite them. Taste and see if the fruit of their life indicates they’ve undergone supernatural heart surgery. 

“But hold on,” Coyne and crew object, “we have a ‘non-divine explanation’ for people being nice. Selfish genes and cultural indoctrination work for us just fine.” And they might most of the time. But an honest person would be hard pressed to say Corrie ten Boom, Rachel Denhollander, and Brandt Jean were driven either by selfish genes or by cultural indoctrination in offering their abusers and enemies forgiveness and clemency. In the words of physicist-priest John Polkinghorne, “Theistic belief is more comprehensive and fully explanatory than atheism can manage to be” because, as a simple fact, in a universe of “blind, pitiless indifference,” such love should be an impossibility. It is entirely ridiculous. It makes no sense. And yet, love is an irrefutable part of our lived experience. Moreover and more to the point, love is, at the end of the day, the heart of the great Christian claim which states a divine hand reached into the world—not to castigate or (as Richard Dawkins fears) to castrate—but to offer us Jesus Christ. Love incarnate. 

That is the miraculous offer on the table. That is what scientific atheists have to face. And now all there is to do is watch and wait because while 2 Peter 3:9 states that “God is not slow as men are slow, but He is patient, that all might come to repentance,” He’s also promised to come back someday. 

For Christians, we say Jesus is coming to take us home. For atheists like Dr. Coyne and Richard Dawkins, they say, in five billion years or so, the sun will swallow the only earth they’ll ever know. In either case, none of us will be stuck inside a hermetically sealed snow globe. Presently, though, for those who choose to persists as methodological and/or metaphysical materialists, making the cosmic dome their home, it has to be said that as time goes on, their oxygen is going to start running low, and anyone who’s ever been intoxicated before knows that in that state, clear vision and good decisions go out the window. You go cross-eyed, you shrink back from the light, and eventually, given time, say several decades of life, you go blind, unable to see what’s right before your eyes. In an interview with The Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson, Dr. David Berlinski, author of the Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions put it like this: “It seems to me that those who cannot see [God’s] handiwork will not be able to see [His] countenance either. There is a limitation, a kind of aspect blindness at work.” And so there is. But it will not always be like this, and in the end (the Christian says),  “every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord to the glory of God the Father, forever and ever.” Amen.

 Amen.

Religion & Science Spring 2022.