Scientific Method and Appeal to Supernatural Agency: A Christian Case for Modest Methodological Naturalism

Kenneth W. Kemp Scientific Method and Appeal to Supernatural Agency: A Christian Case for Modest Methodological Naturalism A brush fire, whipped up by a sudden wind, posed a threat to the village [of Antsirabé]. The villagers removed their possessions from their thatched huts. The fire was a meter from the first hut. Fed by a hedgerow, it was already lapping the first rooftop. A catechist took an image of Victoire [Rasoamanarivo (1848—1894), a married woman revered in Madagascar as the mother ofRoman Catholicism for the role she assumed in preserving and teaching Catholicism at a time when all the missionaries had been expelled from that country ] in his hands, knelt and raised the image toward the flame, saying , "Ifyou are truly the Servant of God, stop this fire." The catechist had barely gotten to his feet when the wind changed suddenly and turned the fire in another direction. Many local Christians, and some in Rome who looked into the matter, regarded the event as a miracle. The village, they believed, was spared by supernatural agency.Appeal to supernatural agency to explain some ofwhat goes on in the world around us is an essential LOGOS 2 : 2 SPRING 20OO !66LOGOS feature ofChristianity. Indeed, Christianity is founded on miraculous events. The command to pray for what we need2 suggests, and Christian tradition insists, that supernatural agency continues to be a feature of our world. Hence, the belief of the Christian villagers that their salvation was not a matter of good luck but of miraculous intervention. Obviously, Christians do not think that all events—not even all unusual events—are miracles. For the explanation of most events, they turn to the same natural regularities to which everyone else turns. In other words, they turn to science, or, to put the point in a way that highlights what is at issue here, they use the scientific method. The fact that Christians are willing to appeal either to supernatural agency or to natural regularity depending on the circumstances of the event to be explained raises interesting epistemological questions. What similarities and differences between these two explanatory strategies can be identified? Is appeal to supernatural agency on a par with appeal to natural causes, so that there is one general method that encompasses (and evaluates) both? Are they completely different approaches to explanation? Does the willingness to use one preclude or otherwise interfere with the use ofthe other? Is there a possibility of conflict, with the two methods yielding distinct and incompatible explanations of the same phenomenon? These questions are particularly important because ofthe eagerness of many anti-Christian polemicists to draw a sharp contrast between rationality and science, on the one hand, and faith, theology , and religion, on the other. The implication is sometimes that it is difficult to reconcile the acceptance ofthe miracle claims of Christians with the mental habits that seem to have been necessary to the production ofmodern science's account ofthe natural world. In this paper I will argue that the scientific method and the appeal to supernatural agency are generically similar (in that both are A CASE FOR MODEST METHODOLOGICAL NATURALISM instances ofthe same legitimate pattern ofreasoning—appeal to the best explanation) but specifically different (in that there are significant differences in the method by which and in the extent to which each can improve early, reasonably good, explanations). Although nothing in principle precludes competition between natural and supernatural explanations ofthe same event, the prospect ofconflict between scientists and theologians (or believers and non-believers) is diminished by two considerations. The first is the philosophical and theological plausibility ofa modest methodological naturalism. The second is the complementarity between spheres of scientific and theological special interest. 1 . Definitions I want to begin with some definitions, distinctions, and comments on the terms I used in my title. By "the scientific method" I mean the method or methods by which modern scientists develop evidence and arguments for explanations of (or theories about) natural phenomena. Arguments both for large-scale theories (e.g., the atomic theory ofmatter or evolutionary biology) and for more modest explanations (e.g. ofthe San Francisco earthquake) apply a common logical schema that transcends the disputes between Sir Karl...