Dr. Richard Perkins Professor of Sociology

Response by Dr. Paul Young, Professor of Psychology

Rich Perkins does a good job reminding us to be honest, warning us not to allow our interested desires to color the way we present or study science. He points out the companion error of using scientific robes to present as scientific truth assertions that are really matters of faith. I thank him for his argument. It is well made.

As I understand his lecture, Rich is arguing the following: 1. Human beings operate within sets of assumptions, or paradigms, which color not only what they say but also what they see. 2. These paradigms are so powerful that they may lead us to believe that something is actually true when really we only want it to be true. 3. To deal with this human tendency to error, we must distinguish between explanations which are empirically testable (Rich calls them scientific explanations) and explanations which are based on religious faith. 4. Not only must we distinguish between scientific and religious explanations, we must assiduously avoid crossing them. In particular, we must not use a scientific explanation for certain religious claims. 5. However, some of the most interesting questions, especially in the Christian college classroom, deal with matters where we would do well to be informed by both scientific and religious explanations. 6. Consequently we need ethical guidelines to prevent us from using our status as scientists to pontificate or as religious teachers to make scientific claims. Rich proposes these guidelines: a. Don't use value labels in scientific explanations. Indeed, the presence of value labels indicates that the explanation is not scientific. b. Deal with contrasts between explanations from the two realms. Don't pretend they don't exist, and don't gloss over them. Connect them by reflecting on your different roles, such as scientist and Christian. c. Reveal your beliefs to your students, but don't let your beliefs mar your scientific detachment. Be disinterested. d. Avoid ideological rhetoric. Be fair and honest. e. Juxtapose and contrast scientific and religious claims about the same topic.

Most of this argument is well and good. But what are the costs of such an approach? Is anything lost in the juxtaposition? I think so. Let me suggest a few losses that are apparent to me.

First, by placing scientific explanations and religious explanations in separate realms, his argument tends to de-Christianize science and "de-scientize" Christianity. Admittedly some aspects of scientific method are not explicitly Christian. But western science, the methods of which social sciences sometimes seek to use, is explicitly Christian in its assumptions and focus. For example, most western scientists assume that 1. the universe of reality is orderly, (chaos theory to the contrary); 2. reality is consistent over dimensions of time and space; 3. the orderliness and consistency may be uncovered by human beings; and 4. results obtained by human beings must be checked by results obtained by other human beings. The theological developments of the late scholastic and Renaissance eras justified the pursuit and development of western science by Christian scholars. Thus, it may be argued that modern science is Christian at its core, and that not again until the 20th century and on the basis of such episodes in cultural history as the fundamentalist-modernist debates have Christians even considered it possible for science to be exclusively non-Christian or secular. I also think that to the extent that social sciences are scientific and not ideological handmaidens, they too are Christian at the core. [Recall, too, that social sciences are not the only human enterprises vulnerable to ideological hijacking. The natural sciences, like genetics, have been used in this failing century as ideological handmaidens. So has Christian theology, not only in Nazi Germany and current Serbia, but even in the United States to justify slavery in the last century and to limit the career options of women in this one.] If we believe that western science is in its essence Christian, then when we engage in careful scientific investigation, we are acting Christianly. By placing scientific explanations in one column, juxtaposed against another column of faith-based explanations, Rich's model risks abandoning an inherently Christian enterprise to the secular order, something I am not willing to do.

Similarly, making scientific thinking separate from Christian faith tends to reduce Christianity to a religion based exclusively on authority and semantic argument: God / The Bible says it, and Pastor Jimmy told me what He meant, and that settles it. Early in his lecture, Rich acknowledges the attempt by Christians to find the Truth in the religious realm, but calls us at the end to an "integration" [which] "means joining two distinct analytical stands together - an analysis which begins with knowing where the one leaves off and where the other properly begins…" He is rightly concerned here lest Christians allow fuzzy thinking and naïve desire to affect their observations. Then he suggests that the answer lies in keeping Christian concerns and scientific facts in adjacent, but separate, compartments. I think a more satisfying answer comes when we learn how to remove the fuzz from our thinking in both science and faith. When we focus on questions common to both faith and science, the clarifying effects of each will benefit the other. Rich acknowledges early in his lecture that science and Christian faith can interact in a number of ways. Does his conclusion about connected compartments contradict those other kinds of interaction?

Second, in emphasizing empiricism as the hallmark of scientific explanations, Rich's model tends to ignore the long history of rationalism in the western scientific enterprise. Indeed, the genius of western science lies in its integration of reason and empiricism. It is not true that reason merely generates the hypotheses and empiricism tests whether they are true. That understanding leaves empirical methods as the arbiters of truth. Rather, reason and empiricism occupy a two-way street. Empirical observations are assessed rationally to form hypotheses. Hypotheses necessarily focus on some of the empirical observations and ignore a great many others, totally on rational grounds. Some empirical information, even if repeatedly tested and verified by independent observers, is rejected on rational grounds as impossible, unimportant, or inconvenient.

Third, we risk sacrificing our human integrity if we suspend our core beliefs in order to act as social scientists. Rich correctly points to problems that arise when we do not suspend our beliefs, problems such as ignoring the inconvenient fact that conflicts with our dominant beliefs. That happens to scientists regardless of their faith position. I will go further than Rich in this one direction: We should train ourselves and our students to be especially skeptical about research results which support our religious preferences. But the problems Rich identifies can be avoided in ways other than direct suspension of our beliefs. For example, we can acknowledge our beliefs, and examine together how they may tempt us to mislead ourselves and our students. Then we insert correctives. It seems to me that such an approach is characteristic of the liberal arts. In evaluating an issue, we need not suspend our beliefs. Instead, it is appropriate to investigate and present arguments on all sides of an issue, including those arguments influenced by our own beliefs. Then, our beliefs are put in a place where they can be evaluated against multiple standards, not just empirical science. Should we suspend our beliefs, or constantly acknowledge and deal with the biasing factors in our lives? Rich may mean the same thing. But when he says, The point is this: to the degree that we are unable to suspend our beliefs is the degree we will not be able to understand how others see their world. If we can't set aside our own beliefs, then we won't understand why others act as they do. I ask, "Why do you say that? Do you have empirical support for such a bold, empirical claim?" Can't we develop a truer understanding of how others see their world if we compare their viewpoint to those of others, including ourselves? My experiences crossing cultural lines, where the differences are large and obvious, says we can. For example, why is American culture so full of violence? Surely I can gain a better understanding by examining my Canadian assumptions about violence, trying to get the beam out of my own eye. Then I can compare those assumptions and the resulting interpretations about American violence with American assumptions and interpretations of violence. It may be that my Canadian assumptions about violence make American violence stand out in such bold relief that I am lead to ask the question in the first place. Again, do we need to suspend our beliefs, or should we acknowledge them and hold them in the mix as we seek the truth? Religious people, like Christians, may actually have an advantage over others because we possess precise belief statements that we can explicitly acknowledge and address as potential sources of bias. If I know what I believe, then I can see how my beliefs affect my understanding of social reality: not by setting it aside, but by examining its effects carefully and honestly. Surely Rich didn't mean what I take him to mean when he said, "The role of social scientist cannot be performed well by Christians unwilling to see the world in secular, non-spiritual terms." That is at best a special case of a much larger problem. People who are unaware of and unable to see the world in terms other than those of their own devising--including Christian faith, and sociology, and psychology-are the ones who cannot do the job. It is not Christian faith or personal belief that gets in the way, but a pigheaded refusal to see the world from someone else's point of view.

Does thinking and talking about different points of view, including one acknowledged as your own, necessarily lead to "mixing and confusing them"? Of course not. The simple observation that sometimes we make a bad job of comparison and contrast does not mean we should stop trying to do it better. The alternative offered by Rich would have us keep our beliefs in a box, nicely lined up beside the scientific evidence, but subordinate to the facts and not allowed to "even influence the collection and interpretation of evidence…" Jesus taught us that the house made empty by casting out one spirit will soon be occupied by seven others, making the final state worse than the first. The idea that we should set aside our core beliefs while we collect and interpret evidence looks objective at first. It sweeps the house clean. Unfortunately, behind the idea is the assumption that we can collect and interpret evidence with no values influencing us at all. That is simply self-deception. With our faith inactive, we are not scientific automatons of objectivity, but are blown here and there by every wind of teaching, by every ideological angle. Our latter state is worse than the former. We are better off doing science within the framework of a core set of beliefs, with their potentially biasing effects carefully examined, balanced, and ever before us: coherent, calculated, and conscious. Such a lived integration is what we must demonstrate and teach to our students.