Four Puzzlers from Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer on why science and religion can never unite:

I don’t think a union between science and religion is possible for a logical reason, but by this same logic I conclude that science cannot contradict religion. Here’s why: A is A. Reality is real. To attempt to use nature to prove the supernatural is a violation of A is A. It is an attempt to make reality unreal. A cannot also be non-A. Nature cannot also be non-Nature. Naturalism cannot also be supernaturalism.

[Link: Edge.org]

This is part of an ongoing discussion on science and faith at Edge.org, to which I have also contributed on the side here. There are several things in his short piece that puzzle me.

The Un-Argument from Unreality
First, we have the editor of The Skeptic telling us that

  1. A is A
  2. Reality is Real
  3. To attempt to use nature to prove the supernatural is … an attempt to make reality unreal.

This is a fiat statement asserting that either the supernatural or the natural is unreal. It’s obvious which one it is in his mind. I’m rather puzzled why he threw in this language of reality/unreality, with no argument or support whatever for it. Given The Edge’s audience, he might not have felt it necessary to argue that the supernatural is unreal, for most readers would already share that opinion. Perhaps space was limited so he couldn’t develop his train of thought on this. That’s the charitable interpretation; another way to look at would be that he forgot to make his argument on the matter, or that he assumed his conclusion; neither of which is a helpful way to demonstrate one’s point.

The Argument From Naturalism: Philosophical Naturalism?
Aside from that, I’m also puzzled by where he goes from there, in what unquestionably is intended to function as an argument. “Naturalism cannot also be supernaturalism,” he says. Of course he’s right, if he means that philosophical (or ontological) naturalism cannot be supernaturalism. They are contrary to one another; it’s completely impossible for both of them to be true descriptions of reality. But how does that have anything to do with the questions at hand?

There actually seem to be two questions. One is, can science contradict religion? To say that philosophical naturalism contradicts supernaturalism does not answer the question, obviously; it’s a merely definitional statement. Shermer moves rather toward the second question, which is epistemological, or one might say methodological in nature: does science deliver knowledge to show that God does not exist? But philosophical naturalism is a metaphysical position, not a methodology. Shermer speaks of the “attempt to use nature to prove the supernatural,” but an ontological position is not something one employs in the pursuit of knowledge. It’s not an epistemological strategy. It is especially not something one would think of as a strategy for proving its own opposite. For if by naturalism he means philosophical naturalism, then the middle sentence from the above excerpt is equivalent to:

To attempt to use my firm conviction that the supernatural does not exist, to prove that the supernatural does exist, is a violation of A is A.

That violates a lot more than just “A is A”!

The Argument From Naturalism: Methodological Naturalism?
So then, I wonder if he meant instead to say that methodological naturalism cannot be supernaturalism? But that would be committing a category error, for the former is an epistemological position, a way of approaching the practice of science for the advancement of knowledge; while the latter is an ontological matter. It would be like saying that doing research in a library is not the same thing as believing that the world really exists. The statement is true enough, but it hardly advances the discussion.

What then did he mean to say? Let’s bring in the rest of his short article and see if it helps at all:

In a natural worldview, there is no non-natural or supernatural. There is only the natural and mysteries left to explain through natural means. Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. The only way to do this for theists is to posit that God is outside of time and space; that is, God is beyond nature—super nature, or supernatural—and therefore cannot be explained by natural causes. This places the God question outside the realm of science. Thus, there can be no conflict between science and religion, unless one attempts to bring God into our time and space, which is a violation of the principle of A is A.

The phrase “In a natural worldview…” and that which follows, suggest that he is speaking of philosophical naturalism. It does nothing whatever to solve the difficulty I’ve already described with taking that view of naturalism. His repeating his non-argument about making reality unreal also accomplishes nothing more here than it did in the prior paragraph. So in the first few sentences, no progress is made.

The Argument From Relying On the Opposite of One’s Conclusion?
And then he presents another puzzler: what does he mean by “the only way for theists to do this is to posit that God is outside of time and space”? What does the pronoun “this” refer to? Grammatically, the best I can make of it is with this substitution for the pronoun: “The only way to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism, is for theists to posit that God is outside of time and space.” Why, though, would theists have any interest in turning naturalism into supernaturalism? We’ve already seen the problems with the way Shermer has presented this. It’s hopelessly muddled. Furthermore (if I’ve read the mysterious pronoun usage right), then he’s saying the only way theists can only prove the supernatural exists is by first making sure it doesn’t. If overthrowing theism were that simple, it would have happened long before Christ walked the earth! But of course that approach is all wrong, as we’ve already covered.

Or, The Argument From Being My Trombone So I Can Play It?
Maybe, though, the antecedent of that mysterious pronoun “this” came from earlier in the preceding sentence. Then it would read, “The only way to have both religion and science is for theists to posit that God is outside of time and space.” Now that, of course, is exactly what theists do posit. Apparently Shermer thinks there’s a problem with that: he says that if “one attempts to bring God into our time and space, [that] is a violation of the principle of A is A.” Here he touches tangentially on a true statement: God is not his creation; God (A) is God (A); he is not his creation (not-A).

Of course theists do not think that God is his creation. Pantheists may think so, but theists disagree with pantheists. We believe that God influences or actually rules over time, space, and events therein, which has nothing to do with his being time or space. I can play my trombone without being my trombone. There is no violation of the law of identity here, nor of the law of non-contradiction.

The Final Puzzle
None of this is very hard to see. So I close with a fourth puzzler, this one in two parts: What am I missing here? Or was this really the best Shermer had to offer?

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3 Responses

  1. Jordan says:

    Shermer’s “argument” sounds like the sort of nonsense peddled by every Randroid I’ve had the misfortune to encounter: Nature is all of existence; supernatural means ‘beyond nature’; therefore, the supernatural doesn’t exist.

    When I used to hang around on atheist forums, I often got accused of being a “closet theist” for rejecting this argument. I guess that’s why I stopped hanging around on atheist forums. 😉

    The problem I have with these Rand/Shermer arguments is that they beg the question as to whether the natural world contains all of existence. Obviously, if God exists, then it doesn’t, in which case the argument falls down.

    The fact that the argument’s conclusion (that the supernatural doesn’t exist) is correct doesn’t make the argument any less stupid, imo.

  2. hblavatsky says:

    I think the problem Shermer faces is that he is unable to make any verifiable objective statements about what he refers to as “the supernatural”. His worldview requires that nothing which is Non-A (the supernatural) has been shown to exist, hence from his point of view it is safe to assume that the natural is all there is (or all worth his time considering).

    Unfortunately for MS, his argument has a weak spot: If you assert that the supernatural cannot exist, all you have to do is provide conclusive evidence that a single supernatural thing does exist… no matter how small.

    We simply have to provide an example of a single member of Non-A and show that we can make verifiable observations about it. I shall leave that as a challenge to my fellow Christians.

    HB

  1. March 2, 2009

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