@Rhea, thanks for starting this thread. It is quite an interesting topic above and beyond the religious aspect to it. How do we know what we think we know about … anything?
Here is where philosophy steps in. Some people think philosophy is worthless, but they are wrong.
In fact, philosophy might help us get at the core of the distinction between how naturalists and theists view the world.
There are four classical theories of truth, which overlap in places, and there are others as well. But the big four are correspondence, coherence, consensus and pragmatic. At the risk of great oversimplification:
Correspondence theory basically says that truth inheres in propositions that describe what actually happens in the world.
Coherence theory says that truth “coheres” in a manner that is consistent with a great deal of other knowledge, and is used in making valid and sound arguments.
Consensus theory basically is that truth is an intersubjective construct of what many people agree to be right.
Pragmatist theory says if your “truth” works for you, go for it. This might accord with what Richard Rorty called the non-existent “view from nowhere” and his claim that truth is what you can convince yourself and others is true.
Now I think science basically uses correspondence theory, perhaps with elements of other theories, such as coherence. Coherence is often used philosophy, in constructing arguments that are both valid and sound, and as such has a place in science.
Consensus theory is used when people who simply can’t check stuff for themselves agree to defer to the knowledge of experts, who may themselves later change their minds based on new evidence. For hundreds of years we had a consensus view of the total validity of Newtonian mechanics, and then suddenly we didn’t.
Pragmatic theory of truth holds that whatever is useful for you, is true. If Jack Daniel’s gets you through the night, then Jack Daniel’s getting you through the night is true for you. If Jesus dying as payment for your sins gets you through the night, then Jesus dying for your sins is true for you.
On this account truth is subjective, not intersubjective or objective. And there can be no other kind of truth because of Rorty’s “view from nowhere,” on this account. There is no view from nowhere.
Pragmatic theory has fascinating aspects to it. It means that one can embrace a truth instrumentally, without being wedded to its actuality. To take an obviously unlikely but nevertheless possible example, it might be the case that a young earth creationist intensively studies evolutionary biology. Perhaps he even becomes a professor of it, and teaches it impeccably, while remaining a young earth creationist. How could that be?
Well, he might conclude that evolutionary biology is an instrumentally useful account, and that in any case it is best to teach it rather than risk tenure. But “instrumentally useful” does not mean true in an absolute sense. He might even then deduce that his own young earth creationism is instrumentally useful, and indeed that
all truths are such.
And this is where I find overlaps between the four classical theories. While I think most scientists probably adhere to correspondence with some coherence theory thrown in, it can very definitely be the case that our models of the world can be instrumentally useful without being strictly true — once again, Newtonian mechanics serves as an example.
There are other theories of truth as well. Kant made the distinction between the noumena and the phenomenal; in modern times it has been suggested that most of us are like people using a computer with no idea of what goes on “under the hood.” What we call the actual world is equivalent to icons on a desktop, which symbolize an underlying reality beyond our grasp. We just manipulate the icons to get the prize, like lab rats pulling levers to get a treat.
Then there is the issue of justified true belief and Gettier counterexamples. And there are truths of math and logic. But are they really true? It was once thought that Euclidean geometry was axiomatically and self-evidently true. Then we discovered the geometry of the world is non-Euclidean. Or is it? There are counterexamples that would attempt to restore Euclidean geometry as the true ontology of the world.
One could go on. Philosophy is endlessly beguiling and most definitely informative.
For the purposes of this discussion, I suspect a lot of the reason naturalists and theists find themselves talking past each other is because while most naturalists pretty much adhere to a correspondence/coherence view of truth, most theists adhere to a pragmatic view of truth with some consensus thrown in, particularly when they subscribe to a community of believers.
The upshot here is that
failure to agree on a theory of truth, rather than
failure to agree on facts, is probably at the crux of the disputatious threads we are seeing with RIS and other theists.
Here we might also introduce the philosophy of ethics into the discussion. The issue of God’s monstrous behavior in the OT was raised. RIS seemed to dismiss it as of little importance, though I admit I skimmed that post and might not being doing him justice; but be that as it may, I suggest that naturalists and theists also disagree on a theory of ethics, as well as a theory of truth.
The issue goes back to the Euthyphro dilemma. Does god love the good because it is good, or is something good because god says so? The root of the dilemma of course is that if god loves the good because it is good, then god is not the standard for good and there must be some objective standard for it that is beyond god. That would make god superfluous as far as ethics is concerned.
But if something is good because god says so, then the good is arbitrary — subject to god’s whim. This is called Divine Command theory, and it seems to me that many theists subscribe to it, including I think RIS. Most naturalists would find Divine Command theory appalling if they actually believed there was a Divine Commander. But many theists do not. On Divine Command theory they can support the God-ordered genocides of the bible, because if god says it is good it must good.
Here again, I think, on the theory of ethics as well as on the theory of truth, naturalists and theists talk past each other because, perhaps in many cases without even knowing it, they each have a different set of metaphysical assumptions. Philosophy can help in laying bare those assumptions so that naturalists and theists could perhaps communicate more profitably.
