The Ethics of Integrating Faith and Science

Abstract

Both faith and science can be defined in three ways: (1) a methodology; (2) a body of knowledge; and (3) an institution. In other words, each can be understood in terms of what it is, what it does, and who does it. The third way of understanding science—as an institution—seems to be often overlooked. Thus, the ethical underpinnings and implications are also underappreciated. In the 21st century, any model of the interaction between science and faith must include an ethical component. This essay briefly surveys significant areas of disagreement in which the conflicts are demonstrated to be essentially ethical in nature.

1. Introduction

Ian Barbour spent the better part of his life writing about the integration of science and faith. Over the years, he presented several models. He settled on a three-fold categorization: Enemies, Strangers, or Friends.1 I affirm this taxonomy and I will argue that the Friends Model is the best characterization of the relationship between faith and science. However, most discussions leave out an important feature. The institutional aspect of both fields is often ignored, and thus the ethical elements are not addressed.2 In the 21st century, any model of science and faith must include an ethical component. This essay briefly surveys certain areas of disagreement in which the conflicts are demonstrated to be essentially ethical in nature.

2. The Challenge of Definitions

This week I saw a fellow wearing a T-shirt that said, “Science is real!” I think I know the point the person was trying to make, but the statement is incoherent. Science is not real in the sense that persons, places, and things are real. However, the slogan helps to highlight one of problems facing discussions about faith and science—multiple definitions and the tendency to equivocate between them.

Both faith and science can be defined in three ways: (1) A body of knowledge; (2) A methodology; and (3) an institution. In other words, each can be understood in terms of what it is, what it does, and who does it. The third way of understanding science—as an institution—seems to be often overlooked. Thus, the ethical underpinnings and implications are also underappreciated.

Each of the three definitions has problems. For instance, neither faith nor science use just one methodology or approach to knowing. Nor is there a clear line of demarcation about the proper realm or range for the body of knowledge. Similarly, the institutional communities engaged in the process of gathering and affirming the respective bodies of knowledge are complex, variegated, and multileveled. So, these definitions will have to be simply working definitions, approximations that have exceptions and caveats. But they should operate sufficiently for the task at hand.

3. Defining Faith

Let us start with a definition of faith. First, I do not mean religion or all faiths in general. The Faith—the body of knowledge—I have in mind is the Christian faith as expressed in the Apostle’s Creed. Those who affirm the Triune God, Jesus Christ, and his saving work are brethren, walking together on the journey of faith. Within this community, I identify as a conservative evangelical (in the non-political sense of the term). I teach at a Southern Baptist school, affirm the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and also affirm the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) (including its declaration that humanity is the special creation of God, made in His image). For the purposes of this paper, faith refers to the body of beliefs that could be held by someone who affirms what C.S. Lewis called “mere Christianity,” (Lewis 2015), though I personally write from the perspective of someone who is a member in good standing in the Evangelical Theological Society.

The second way to define faith is by its approach to gathering knowledge. Christian theology attempts to understand and summarize what God has revealed. Revelation comes to us through the world, Scripture, and ultimately His Son, Jesus Christ. Christians engage in theology by means of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience—with priority given to Scripture.

Third, this activity of knowing and affirming the resulting body of knowledge is done in community. This community is the Church. The Church is simultaneously a divinely ordained and humanly populated institution. As a human institution, the Church—the community of faith—is flawed and fallible. However, we Christians are on a journey, one in which we believe we have the Bible as an infallible authority, the Holy Spirit as an indwelling reality, and the providential hand of God as our guide. We move forward, often stumbling, but still progressing.

So, in this paper faith refers to (1) the body of historic Christian beliefs (2) assembled by Christian theology and (3) affirmed by the universal Church in general.

4. Science

Science also needs defining. As noted above, science is not as easy to define as often popularly believed. In fact, generally accepted definitions have significant exceptions and vocal opponents (Zimring 2019).3 Again, we will take a three-fold approach to defining science in terms of what it is, what it does, and who does it.

First, science can be defined as a field of study, namely the natural world. This definition is problematic because it excludes disciplines that historically have been understood to be scientific endeavors. For example, there was a time when theology was considered the queen of the sciences. Personally, I still think that. However, when people reference science without qualifiers, typically they are referring to the natural sciences.

Second, science can be defined as a method of learning, primarily by means of observation and experimentation. However, what exactly those methods are, is a matter of debate. Some, such as Paul Feyerabend, reject the notion that science can be defined in terms of method, since there is no universal method that all scientific fields use or accept.4

Third, science is also an institution. One of Thomas Huxley’s goals in life was to create and establish science as a stand-alone profession (See Ruth Barton 1990, pp. 53–81). By any measure, he succeeded. However, institutional science, by definition, is composed of human beings, and they bring all the foibles and limitations of humanity with them. A major source of trouble has been the practice of cloaking institutional science with the respectability of science as a discipline (Paul Scherz 2017, pp. 11–17).

Still, though a perfect definition of science or the scientific method does not seem to be possible, a reasonably good approximation can be given, or perhaps a galaxy of definitions can be recognized. Imperfect as they are, we will define science as (1) a highly specialized method of learning, (2) a specific field of study, and (3) an immense institution of human endeavor.

5. The Three Models

Thus armed with sufficiently working definitions, we can proceed to the three primary models for relating faith and science. As noted above, these models present faith and science as enemies, strangers, or friends.

6. Enemies

The Enemies Model, which is also often called the conflict or warfare model, was first formulated during the Enlightenment but came to the fore during the Victorian era. Two notable books laid out the conflict theses: History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) by John William Draper and A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) by Andrew Dickson White. Thomas Huxley, who was often called “Darwin’s Bulldog”, epitomized this attitude when he famously likened theologians to “strangled snakes”:

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules, and history records that whenever science and dogmatism have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched if not slain.

(Huxley 1860)

Today, one would be hard-pressed to find a serious philosopher or historian of science who advocates the conflict model. But the Enemies Paradigm can be found at the popular level, in modern culture, and, unfortunately, among a majority of those engaged in the STEM fields.5

Unfortunately, on the other side of the theological aisle from Huxley, a significant segment of evangelicalism confuses the Protestant affirmation of Sola Scriptura with a form of naïve biblicism. Thus, they understand the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture to mean that Christians do not need to use the resources afforded by tradition, reason, and experience. In fact, some of the worst attacks that evangelical scientists such as Hugh Ross have had to endure have come from these fellow believers (See for example, Sarfati 2004).

Proponents of naïve biblicism view any attempt to relate faith and science as a slippery slope that results in an inevitable denial of biblical authority. In May of 2022, the Sexual Abuse Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention gave its report and recommendations at the annual meeting. One recommendation was to provide professional counseling services to victims of sexual abuse. One SBC pastor took to Twitter to oppose the recommendation, tweeting, “The church doesn’t need ‘trauma counselors.’ We need BIBLICAL counselors. Scripture is sufficient!” (emphasis original). Though the pastor is not an academic, his tweet expresses the viewpoint of many evangelicals (as evidenced by his nearly 40,000 followers).

7. Strangers

Barbour presents a second approach, the Strangers Model, which he also calls the independence model. This viewpoint avoids conflict between faith and science by keeping them separate in “watertight compartments”. (Barbour 2013, p. 27). Stephen Jay Gould referred to this approach as “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” (NOMA). Gould explains that the two cannot conflict because they operate in entirely distinct domains.6 Science provides facts; religion expresses values. Never the twain shall meet.

Scientists are not the only ones to advocate the Strangers Model. It can also be seen in the work of the preeminent theologians of the 20th century. Neo-orthodoxy reigned through the writings of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr. From reading their works one could get the impression that science didn’t exist. They “virtually ignored science in their theological writing.” (Larson and Ruse 2017, p. 11). Barth’s Church Dogmatics is over six million words long, yet he never finds space to discuss science.

Advocates of the Strangers Model are correct when they point out the distinctions between faith and science. They have different frames of reference, different lines of enquiry, and different methodologies. But it does not follow that they have no areas of overlap or engagement. In fact, it is generally recognized that the opposite is true. It is an historical fact that Christianity provided the conceptual, epistemological, and ontological frameworks for modern science as a discipline.7 The Christian worldview gave the moral sanction for engaging in science and still provides the ethical norms for how science should be conducted. Not only do science and faith interact—they do so necessarily. Which brings us to the Friends Model.

8. Friends

The opening claim of the Bible is that the God who gave us the Scriptures is the God who created the heavens and the earth. Both Scripture and creation reveal God, albeit in different ways. The Friends Model is the deliberate, thoughtful attempt to interpret properly both communications of God. Throughout the history of the Church, most Christians have affirmed some version of the Friends Model. The Belgic Confession gives one of the best expressions of this model in its presentation of the “two books metaphor”, which declares that we know God by two means:

First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most beautiful book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many letters leading us to perceive clearly God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature, as the apostle Paul says in Rom 1:20. All these things are sufficient to convict men and leave them without excuse.

Second, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word as far as is necessary for us in this life, to His glory and our salvation.

(The Belgic Confession 1561)

In affirming the two books, the Confession follows the clear teaching of Scripture that there is a general revelation in nature and a special revelation deposited in the Bible (Ps 19; Acts 14 & 17; Rom 1). The Friends Model attempts to properly relate the two modes of revelation. This involves the careful study and interpretation of both. Today, we call the careful study of God’s creation the “natural sciences”.

There are limits to both fields of study. On the one hand, science can tell us how the universe works, but it cannot tell us what it all means. On the other hand, the Christian faith tells us what it means, but typically it does not tell us how it works. As C.S. Lewis puts it, “Christianity does not replace the technical. When it tells you to feed the hungry it doesn’t give you lessons in cooking. If you want to learn that, you must go to a cook rather than a Christian” (Lewis 1970). To give another example, the Bible tells us that the universe was created ex nihilo, out of nothing. It doesn’t tell us that it happened 13.7 billion years ago.

Evangelicals almost universally affirm some version of the Friends Model. However, it must be noted that conservative evangelicals tend to veer into the Enemies Model while more progressive evangelicals at times flirt with the Strangers Model.8 How to relate faith and science with epistemological virtue and intellectual integrity is very much an ethical endeavor.

9. The Ethical Challenges

The Christian view of the world tells us what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. Too often, modern apologetics simply addresses intellectual questions about truth. But humans are not merely brains in a vat, dispassionately thinking rational thoughts. We must also address ethical concerns—the good and the beautiful. To address ethics is to deal with science as a communal effort, an institution comprised of human beings.

10. The Institutional Nature of Scientific Enterprise

The size of scientific institutions. Science, institutionally speaking, is the new leviathan. Compared to most networks of human endeavor, science is a behemoth. Scientific research universities continue to grow while colleges that emphasize the humanities are experiencing a steep decline.9

In terms of money, the latest estimates put worldwide investment in scientific research and development at over $2.2 trillion annually (2019).10 As for the number of people engaged in scientific endeavors, the figures are equally impressive. Worldwide there are 8.8 million scientists, 7.5 million engineers, and 27 million software developers. Throughout the world, the best and brightest minds are entering the STEM fields, with over 10 million STEM graduates every year.11 There are political ramifications. The United States, along with all other major countries, see the STEM fields as essential for economic progress and even political survival. Science, institutionally speaking, plays a central role economically, agriculturally, militarily, and in every area imaginable in modern society and culture.

Science as the new priesthood. In popular culture, scientists are the new magicians, and science is the new priesthood. I believe it was Arthur C. Clarke who said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (Clarke 1964). The role of scientists as the new priesthood in some ways has had a similar effect that the Catholic priesthood had during the Medieval period.12 The Roman Catholic Church taught that Scripture is revelation from God, but only qualified specialists could interpret it properly. Thus, the common man had to have the Catholic priest tell him what the Bible really means. A similar thing has now happened concerning general revelation in nature. The heavens declare the glory of God, but only a scientist can explain what it really means. Only someone trained in quantum or particle physics, genetics, or paleoanthropology, or perhaps climatology, can decipher what the world is really telling us. Luther and a significant part of 16th-century Europe suspected that the Roman Catholic hierarchy was abusing its position of privilege and power. Similar suspicions hang over the scientific clerics of today. (see Oreskes 2017).

11. The Role of Trust in Religion and Science

Both faith and science depend on a culture of trust. But trust can operate only in an ethical system. This is why the NOMA approach of the Strangers Model is unworkable.

The Christian faith provides ethical boundaries. Of course, science ventures into areas of ethics and values. How could it not? Ethics informs science as to what proper areas of study are and what the boundaries for research should be. Let us recall what the popular television show Breaking Bad was all about. Chemistry teacher Walter White decides that, before he dies of cancer, he will obtain his family’s financial security by going into the business of making crystal meth. His street name was “Heisenberg”. Let us just say he was ethically challenged.

The Christian faith provides the ethical scaffolding for doing science. There’s another way that science and ethics overlap and interact. In his book, Science and Christian Ethics, Paul Scherz reports that according to one study, 70% of all results published in scientific journals were not able to be reproduced by other scientists (Scherz 2017, pp. 14–20). Some of the unreproducible results were due to malfeasance, fraud, and incompetence, but even more were due to unique facilities and resources. Others were unreproducible because of the level of skill or expertise required. Scherz was not simply claiming that 70% of all scientists are duplicitous. Rather, he was making the point that science, both as a discipline and as an institution, is highly dependent on an environment of trust. I believe we are seeing what happens when trust is eroded. Scherz warns that science cannot survive, much less thrive, in a culture of suspicion.

As a human institution, science is subject to all of the foibles, distortions, biases, and limitations of the human condition. Science as a discipline—as a methodology—was developed for the very purpose of rising above and remedying human shortcomings. For that matter, that is also supposed to be one of the primary purposes of religion. In both cases, the institutional expressions fall egregiously short of the disciplines.

By and large, Creationists who are accused of inadvertently slipping into the conflict model will often respond that they are not at war with the practice of science. They say that their bone of contention is with science as hegemonic leviathan. This distrust of scientific claims and science as a guild is showing up in evangelical culture as an overall rejection of scientific expertise. In the past few years, this skepticism for some has become almost total and has manifested itself in some very surprising arenas. In the eyes of many, establishment science is the intellectual Great Whore of Babylon.

12. The Crisis of Expertise

The ethics of managing risk. One area where ethical concerns become clear is in the field of risk management. As Steven Osterlind points out, science can often do a reasonably good job of quantifying risk (Osterlind 2019, pp. 7–8). What it cannot do is make the moral judgment as to what constitutes an acceptable risk. In January 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) were in open dispute about 5G networks operating next to airports (Duncan and Aratani 2022). The Pilots Association advised against flying; thousands of international flights into the US were cancelled. Experts with the FCC said the 5G networks were safe; those in the FAA disagreed. They did not disagree about the level of risk. Rather the dispute primarily centered on what amount of risk was tolerable. It was a debate about dealing with uncertainty, with managing risk. “Acceptable risk” and “moral hazard” are not scientific terms; they are ethical concepts.

The ethics of defining scientific knowledge. What level of confidence constitutes “scientific knowledge”? Consider, for example, recent pronouncements about the Higgs boson. Scientists announced that the Higgs boson had been “discovered” and that the prediction about its existence had been “proven”. Zimring points out that the more accurate claim would be that evidence consistent with the existence of the Higgs boson had been observed (Zimring 2019, pp. 9–10). But that does not make for a very compelling headline, does it?

Scientists disagree among themselves about what level of confirmatory evidence is required. Just as important, they disagree about what to do with results that seem to go against ones’ hypothesis. For example, in Hugh Ross’s book Dual Revelation, Inerrancy and Concordism, he sometimes makes this same point. In the chapter on the scientific evidence concerning an original couple, he responds to those who argue against the possibility of Adam and Eve as the sole progenitors of humanity. They argue that the genetic evidence does not indicate that the human population could ever have gotten below a few thousand. Ross does not challenge the data; he challenges their interpretation of it. He states that their assumptions are “fatally flawed… Mutation rates throughout humanity’s history are impossible to determine with any accuracy. All…methods depend on a chosen mathematical model… [Genetic arguments are] subject to statistical and systemic uncertainties” (Ross, forthcoming, pp. 288–89). Since I know Hugh as a friend, I am inclined to take his opinions seriously. But in the broader scheme of things, the scientific layperson is in a dilemma. Whom are we to trust?

The spectacle of dueling experts. When James Shapiro published Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, in which he challenged the standard neo-Darwinian paradigm, Jerry Coyne dismissed it, saying that Shapiro didn’t “understand how evolution works” (Shapiro 2011; Coyne 2012). Shapiro is a recognized expert in genetics who teaches molecular biology at the University of Chicago. If he can’t understand evolutionary theory, then what hope do I have?

In Redeeming Expertise, Josh Reeves shows that throughout church history, Christians generally have been willing to “rethink traditional interpretations of Scripture when they conflict with the demonstrated truths of science.” He then expresses well the dilemma facing the scientific layperson:

But how can nonscientists know when a scientific theory has been demonstrated? How can nonscientists distinguish between truth and scientific overreach, especially when someone attempts to use the prestige of science to further an anti-religious viewpoint? Questions about the validity of science and expertise are a primary element in the current culture wars…. What are the reliable indicators of specialist knowledge and what are not?

(Reeves 2021, p. 7)

An example of this dilemma can be seen in the book, Four Views on Creation and Evolution, in which the leaders of four major creationist organizations presented their respective views. At nearly the end of the book Deb Haarsma, president of BioLogos concluded, “For any of the scientific disagreements, the lay reader is put in the challenging place of judging between two expert authors who each assert that the other is wrong. It may come down to which voices a reader trusts…” (Haarsma 2017, p. 175).

No doubt she accurately describes the present situation, but I hope that that is not the final word on the matter. If scientific discussions have degenerated to “my scientist is smarter that your scientist,” then it will not matter what model of science and faith we employ. As Reeves points out, man cannot live by skepticism alone (Reeves 2021, p. 7).

13. The Current Climate

I wish I could say that the situation is improving, but we all know that it is not. In fact, evangelicals are in the middle of a great polarization in our culture today and are, in truth, playing a significant part. Many evangelicals display an intense distrust in scientific expertise, with some exhibiting outright hostility. I speak as an evangelical who loves evangelicals, and I will remain an evangelical—come what may—because I am an evangelical by conviction. But many of my brothers and sisters in Christ—whom I know personally; whom I love dearly; who I know love Christ, the Church, and the gospel—exhibit a radical animosity towards science that I find distressing and bewildering.

During the pandemic, debates about best practices concerning prevention or about the efficacy of vaccines became toxic due to misinformation and distrust. Speaking of distrust, just try having a calm, reasonable discussion about climate change. My point is this: in the 21st century any viable model of science and faith is going to have to take the cultural milieu into account.

I can imagine at this point that some of my evangelical brethren might respond by saying that it is always the child who counterpunches that gets in trouble with the teacher. The bully who started it all by tormenting and taunting the poor child, and who actually threw the first punch, often gets off scot-free. And they would have a point. Evangelicals didn’t become the way they are in a cultural vacuum. Many of them lash out like a child cornered in the school bathroom because that’s exactly how they feel. Just say out loud, in public, that children should not be subjected to medical sex change therapies. See what happens.

14. Conclusions

The Christian faith informs us about the true, the good, and the beautiful. I have argued for a Friends Model of science and faith that includes an ethical component. Evangelical apologetics has done a job of defending the truth. In the 21st century, we are going to have also to proclaim the good and the beautiful. We are going to have to display both epistemological and moral virtue to move beyond the “dueling experts” approach so that science and faith together can establish better ethical boundaries for managing the risks of technology and enabling the layperson to discern the limits of scientific (and religious) truth claims.