The Contemporary Ethos of Congregational Life in North America: What to make of Science?

In a recent series of posts, I have been reflecting about congregational life in North America and have suggested that what happens in local congregations is quite extraordinary and anomalous with respect to other human activities and endeavors. Consider for a moment what it would be to come upon congregational life from the outside, as it were, with no pre-understanding of what congregational life is all about. What would one see? 

Bob walks into a building with people he does not know, and strangers come up to him exchanging greetings or engaging in conversation with him. He sits down on a chair or long bench and remains dutifully silent while a series of non-mundane events transpire. People speak from the front, sometimes in conversational voices and other times in a very solemn way. Sometimes they read from texts for long periods of time. Someone either in the front or elsewhere in the building starts singing and others join in. Finally, a person in the front addresses those listening for 15 minutes or longer speaking of events from long ago that he or she believes have significance for today. After this, an even stranger event occurs. After some serious words, people sitting on chairs or benches rise from their seats and walk forward, gathering at a rail in the front where they are given little wafers and a sip of wine and told that these things are the Body and Blood of Christ. At other times infants or adults are splashed with water with concomitant solemn pronouncements and prayers.  

After more singing, people finally leave their seats and congregate in the back where friendly discussion ensues about divers and sundry matters. Perhaps Bob is invited to go downstairs or into another part of the building to be part of a class, or maybe he is offered coffee and donuts. Bob's experience here might be like Rita's at another time or another place, or it could be quite different. Rita might be asked to help feed people who have limited funds, or to aid in cleaning the building itself, or to bring a dessert next week. Perhaps someone asks her as to what she thought of the address that someone had given.  

Christians have been meeting in communities like this from their earliest days in the catacombs. In those days men and women listened to readings from texts and speeches about those texts. They cared for each other and oftentimes pooled their resources to help each other. With people they knew and some they just met they worshipped Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfillment of God's messianic expectation. While contemporary church buildings do not look much like the early catacombs, there remain between those days and today common practices of congregational life. 

Congregational life happened then and happens now, and people involved in that life seem to know how to participate in that life. One might say that they have an unthematized pre-understanding of the possibilities and inevitabilities of their gathering together. Congregating to worship a God, hearing speeches, singing and murmuring prayers are all activities that are quite unlike what most people do in contemporary societies of the North Atlantic countries. It is so unlike what people generally do, that one naturally wonders whether these things would be done if there was no already operating social institution for doing these things. Already established is the practice of congregational activity and participation. Without this already established practice, would it ever happen that these activities would develop to be practiced again? In other words, if congregational life were not already occurring, would it happen that it would ever come to occur? Without the reality of an historical institutional of congregational practice and participation, would there be any cultural motivation to invent congregational life again? Is there something about us as social animals that would make the development of congregational life inevitable, or is the having of it fully contingent?

I fear that the answer to the question of inevitability is likely a resounding "no." The fact that there still exist Christian congregations goes against general cultural expectations. I believe that it is because of the unlikeliness of it developing again ars nova, that congregational life is so precious now. Speaking theologically, we might say that the utter contingency of congregational existence is entirely a matter of grace. The practices of congregational living are not something that can be facilely established upon the horizon of contemporary individual piety. One might say that Christian congregations have an ecstatic existence; they live not on their own but out of the life of the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ. They are creatures of grace first, and only secondarily of law.  

In the last post I began to explore facets of the intellectual and cultural ethos of those today participating in Christian congregational life. I spoke of the general cultural default of contemporary man and woman who judge God morally and find Him lacking. As pointed out then, I follow Charles Tylor in claiming that Christianity has not been slowed in its growth primarily because of the rise of science, but rather because the traditional God of Christianity appears arbitrary, capricious and decidedly old fashioned in His choices and judgments, and thus is either widely rejected or deemed irrelevant. Accordingly, it is God's putative morality that makes His existence suspect for millions of denizens of the North Atlantic countries in the early twenty-first century.  

While all of this is true, there is also little doubt that Christianity today is simply a non-starter for many because it appears to violate the very presuppositions of science itself. Many participating in contemporary congregational life carry with them both a sense that God is morally unreasonable or suspect and that the ultimate description of reality is physical, that what ultimately exists are those entities over which our fundamental theories of physics quantify. In other words, what ultimately exists are those entities to which our fundamental physical theories refer.  Accordingly, while people might enjoy participating in congregational life, there is a sense that they actually know better, that human existence is ultimately a physical matter and that congregational life is a living as if this were not the case.

It is unfortunately characteristic of our time that people generally know little about the practices and theories of science, particularly those of natural science. Most think that science simply deals with facts, not recognizing the deeply theoretical nature of scientific research. Accordingly, some review of what we claim when we make scientific claims is perhaps useful.

Every scientific claim is theoretical. To claim that the earth revolves around the sun is to have a theory in which the terms 'sun', 'earth', and 'revolves' occur. The meaning of a set of theoretical statements is found in the models which make these statements true. 'Sun' refers to a particular entity, 'earth' refers to a particular entity as well, while 'revolves' refers to a complex set of duples or ordered pairs. Theories, no matter how simple or complex, state the way the world might be. At the risk of gross oversimplification, true theories state how the world actually is -- or alternately what is reasonable to believe about how the world is -- and false theories how the world is not -- or what is reasonable not to believe about the world. 

Theoretical claims of how the world is are tentative and provisional because we are never certain that the theory we are assuming won't finally be shown to be false by how the world ultimately turns out to be. It could take hundreds of years to disconfirm statements of scientific theory. For instance, our theory of the early universe makes theoretical statements about states of the universe in its initial nanoseconds, and these statements are presently untestable because we don't have requisite energy to recreate conditions of the early universe to confirm or disconfirm the statements.  Maybe 500 years from now we would have the technology to accelerate particles to velocities characteristic of the very early universe, and we can then claim that the theory then regnant is consistent with observations or that it has been falsified by them. 

When we construct scientific theories, we bring certain values with us as to what a good scientific theory might be. We want our theories to be simple if possible. They should be applicable to our observational experiences and adequate to them. Adequacy means that the theories can deal in principle with all the kinds of experience we have. Theories should be internally consistent and coherent. Coherency means that we should not have in them arbitrarily disconnected assumptions or that we should not appeal to different kinds of entities if explanation is possible by appeal to only one kind of entity. Simple theories that appeal to one principle are often thought to be more beautiful than those making appeal to differing fundamental principles. While there is nothing necessarily in nature that would disallow it from operating upon many different ultimate principles rather than one, human theory-making always attempts to explain experience in terms of one rather than many. Theories doing this are simply assumed by most to be more beautiful than others. Another value we want theories to have is fecundity. Can a theory sustain a hearty research program? Is it properly relatable to other theories? Theories which do not sustain interest or research are simply irrelevant, and science in general does not develop its views of the world on the basis of irrelevant and/or isolated theories. 

Scientific theory formation happens by adopting likely stories of explanation, stories which fit our already theoretical views of the world. We establish theories that try to give natural explanations for natural events. Because we assume in the practice of science a methodological naturalism, God cannot be a theoretical entity within scientific theory. It is not that science ultimately excludes God from the universe, but it is rather that the humble practice of scientific theory-building limits itself to explanation in terms of natural processes, events and laws. By its very nature, science does not and cannot appeal to non-natural explanations for natural events. Despite the final metaphysical implausibility of a particular physicalist explanation, natural science must attempt to explain why something is the case by appealing to only those natural entities and processes that can be in principle referred to by standard scientific theory.  

One can see this clearly in the way that explanation often occurs in macro-evolutionary theory. Since 'natural adaptation' is a theoretical notion it can be appealed to in explaining why this particular life form developed in this way and not another. Oftentimes 'natural adaptation' is a notion that can't be profoundly specified. One appeals to it in a way that mimics perhaps the appeal that earlier generations made to God's will. Why did x develop in a P way and not in Q way? God willed it!  

But while all would agree that God willing nature to develop in a P way rather than a Q way is not a persuasive explanation in our time, many nonetheless believe that a simple appeal to natural adaptation can explain P development rather than Q development. But when it comes to the really big issues of macro-evolutionary theory, the devil is clearly in the details. Oftentimes, mechanisms by which putative natural adaptation selects for P development rather than Q development cannot yet be specified, and one is left with a direction and a trust that someday a mature theory will be able to explain this P development. While appealing to the general direction of "nature selects it" rather than "God wills it" has greater plausibility in our time, the logic of the argument remains the same. Unless particular natural explanations can be given that explain the particulars of macro-evolutionary development plausibly no true explanation has been given. Simply put, just because "natural adaptation" is a more popular explanation today than "God wills it," does not mean that the former explanation is, or ultimately will be, more successful. 

My point here is simply to say that natural science is a deeply theoretical human activity. In casting about for a natural theory to explain some set of natural events, one must select a theory that "fits in" with the theories that one already has, and that is supported by the observational data. Scientific theory, we now know, is always underdetermined by observation and the acceptance of other theories. It is always logically possible to explain events by appealing to other sets of natural events than those assumed in one's theory, or by explaining things in terms of non-natural events. The point is, that explanation in terms of non-natural events is not the way that the institution and practice of scientific theory formation and confirmation/disconfirmation proceeds. Moreover, there is no scientific decision procedure, no algorithm, on the basis of which "correct" scientific theory is selected and "incorrect" theory rejected. Natural science, like all human activity, is messy. 

All of this is simply to say that the best explanation for why the universe bears the marks of design can be the fact that God was at work designing the universe. One can reasonably hold this while still holding that such an explanation is not scientific, for it violates the rules by which scientific theory-formation proceeds. It is not a scientific explanation because it appeals to non-natural agency, something clearly disallowed in the doing of natural science. But why think that all rational explanation must be natural scientific explanation?  

My point is that few people participating in the life of Christian congregations in these days know how theoretical and rule-governed is the activity of scientific explanation. So again, how can it be that God was involved in creation when our natural scientific models show the universe to be a broken symmetry flowing out of an infinitely dense point without extension? 

The answer is not difficult because, in truth, in any explanation we cannot avoid metaphysical models. Ought we explain the universe by making no appeal to non-natural agency? If so, why? The point is that there is nothing in the observational data that disallows a metaphysics of divine action in creation. The choice is ours: Do we want to adopt a materialist/physicalistic metaphysics or not? If so, why, and if not, why not? 

But the horizon of most in congregations is that science does explain things, and that this explanation finally does not rest in human freedom as to the adoption of a metaphysics of physicalism or that of theism. However, just because we can give physicalist explanations of most physical events does not mean that we should always do so, or even that it is rational to do so.  

In summary, the horizon of many within congregations now is that the morality of God is problematic, and that there is something in the nature of the world or natural science itself that calls for natural scientific explanations for things. I acknowledge that the first problem has no easy and quick solution, but want to point out that it is a certain misunderstanding and ignorance of the scientific process itself which makes many simply assume that science is in conflict with religious faith.  Reinvigorating congregational life in North America must deal with the fundamental assumptions of people in the pews today. Of these, two are very important: Can the nature of God be deemed consistent with Christian congregational experience and practice, and can our understanding of the divine escape from the easy physicalisms that dominate much of popular culture today?  

Theology and the Philosophy of Science: The Syntactic and Semantic Views

The Received View in the [hilosophy of science is the syntactic view.  Accordingly, scientific theory is construed as a set of sentences with the laws of the scientific theory being its axioms. By inputting initial conditions and conjoining these conditions to the laws (axioms) of the theory, one deduces future states of the system as theorems.  This is the theory's predictions. The syntactic conception of scientific theory is clearly in the tradition of Euclid, Aristotle, Newton, Carnap and the Logical Positivists. But as we pointed out in the last post, there are problems with the account. 

One problem is that the syntactic view presupposes the so-called analytic/synthetic distinction, that is, the distinction between what is true by definition versus what is true because of the way that the world is. The distinction is rooted in the work of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant famously claimed that an analytical statement or proposition is true because the meaning of the predicate is included in the meaning of the subject.  A synthetic statement, on the other hand is ampliative in that the meaning of the predicate is not included in the meaning of the subject.  The first effectively decomposes the meaning of the subject, finding that what makes the subject true also makes the predicate true. The second amplifies the meaning of the subject; it asserts of the subject that something is true that is not included within the very meaning of the subject. 

While this semantic distinction in Kant must be distinguished from the epistemological distinction between what is known "prior to" experience (the a priori) and what is known "after" or on the basis of experience (the a posteriori), we often today simply identify the a priori with analytical judgments and the a posteriori with synthetic judgments.  For instance, "a bachelor is unmarried" is a true analytic statement because one cannot think of married bachelors, but "a bachelor is happy," if it is true, would be a true synthetic statement.  We would know the second on the basis of experience, e.g., surveys, personal observations, controlled experiments, etc. 

W. V. O. Quine famously criticized the analytic-synthetic distinction about seven decades ago, calling it one of the "dogmas" of empiricism.  He claimed that the analytic-synthetic distinction is not a matter of meaning over and against experience, that it is not a matter of the necessary truth of the former over and against the contingent truth of the latter. The distinction is not absolute at all, he avers, but it is merely a matter of degree, of what statements we will give up last.  In our "webs of belief," we hold onto some statements longer than others.  We might say, "water is H20" and "water is odorless," and dutifully subject each statement to our "tribunal of experience."  It is clear that confronted with experience, we would hold onto the truth that water is H20 much longer than water is odorless.  In fact, I can imagine some experience which would compel us to claim that water is not in fact odorless.  Of course, the latter statement could be "saved" from repudiation by declaring that it is not water itself that is not being odorless, but something in the water that is smelling foul.  

Problems with the analytic/synthetic distinction were a profound challenge for the syntactic view of scientific theory because the "bridge rules" of the theory coordinating the theoretical and observational terms were supposed to be a matter of meaning alone.  This theoretical term just means this observational term. In fact, the higher level terms and propositions of the theory could be in principle reduced to phenomenal experience. The classic text of this approach is Carnap's The Logical Construction of the World.  Clearly, if analyticity does not hold by meaning alone, then the very notion of bridge rules is undermined. 

There were, of course, other difficulties with the syntactic approach. It turned out that rigorous axiomatic laws were too cumbersome to be used by actual scientists. Also, because scientific theory was construed in terms of sentences, endless debates in the philosophy of language ensued.  Finally, there were Goedel problems.  As it turns out, no axiom set and system of proof within a theory could prove all of the sentences regarded as true within the theory. The result was the overturning of the syntactic view of scientific theory.  The new approach was called the semantic view of scientific theory.

Emerging in the 1970s and 80s, the semantic view of scientific theory generally identified theories with classes of models or model-types along with hypotheses of how these models relate to nature. A theory thus could thus be cast as a "class of fully articulated mathematical structure-types" using set-theoretical predicates.  (See Demetris Portides, "Scientific Models and the Semantic View of Scientific Theories" in Philosophy of Science, December 2005, pp. 1287-98.)  

Models are thus included in the the theory structure, and are themselves constructed on the basis of data within a context of experimental design and auxiliary theories.  On the semantic view model A is equivalent to Model B if and only if there is a correspondence of the elements and relations of A and B.  (Some advocates claims there must be an isomorphism, some a partial isomorphism and some merely a similarity.) 

Advocates of the semantic view claim that a physical system is represented by a class of model types. Semantic theorists generally hold that data alone does not falsify a theory, but that  data, design and auxiliary theory are important in the construction of data structures. These data structures must be sharply distinguished from the theoretical model, in that the latter is a construction out of the data structure.  But the question arises: What exactly is a data structure? 

It seems that the models in question can be either more abstract, e.g., mathematical structures, or more concrete, e.g., visual models of molecules. Proponents of the semantic view often claims a superiority over the syntactic conception in that scientific theory now is understood as actually focussing on the actual things that scientists treat within their theories.  Moreover, they claim that the semantic view allows that scientific theories can be clearly seen as not simply related to actual chunks of the world, but rather to mathematical objects as idealizations that are connectable to the world. Such idealizations, they claim, are the true objects of science. Accordingly, abstract mathematical structures come to be understood as that which the theory is about. Thus, semantic theories privilege mathematics -- especially "set-theoretical" entities -- over first-order predicate logic.

Rasmus Groenfeldt Winther's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes two general strategies within the semantic view generally.  The state-state approach focuses upon the mathematical models of actual science such that the scientific theory just is a class of mathematical models. Alternatively, the set-model theoretic approach emphasizes that the axioms, theorems and laws of a theory are satisfied, or made true by, certain mathematical structures or models of the theory.  The second approach is often deemed the more fruitful. 

I find Michael McEwan's 2006 article "The Semantic View of Theories: Models and Misconceptions," helpful in understanding what the semantic view is and is not.  McEwan points to the following slogan of the semantic view: A theory is a collection of models (1).  On what he calls the naive semantic view, the "is" here is the "is" of identity. Tarski famously connects models to semantic concepts through the notion of satisfaction.  He uses model-theoretic models in accomplishing this. A model-theoretic model is an interpretation which satisfies a class of statements by specifying a domain of individuals and defining the predicate symbols, relations and functions on this set of individuals.  Accordingly, a theory is a collection of model-theoretic models (2).  

On the model-theoretic model the theory is a set of sentences and the models are interpretations in which the set of sentences turn out to be true. A model-theoretic theory is true for a given model just in case the sentences are true on that model. The class of model-theoretic models make true the model-theoretic theory.  McEwan calls the identification of the model-theoretic theory with the class of its models a naive semantic view.  If, however, the class of models satisfies the sentences of the model-theoretic theory, McEwan no longer dubs this a simple naive semantic view.  He specifies the naive semantic view as having the following conditions (3).

•  It is identified with M, the class of model-theoretic models,
• The models in M are directly defined, 
• The naive-theory is true for model n just in case n is an element in M. 

One problem with the naive theory is that it is difficult to see how any of it touches the world.  As it turns out, no n need represent the world at all! Another problem is that since the theory itself is just the class of models, it is what it is only when each model is true. This means that no model really instances the theory, for the theory would not be that theory if it had other instances!  As McEwan points out, the question of whether the solar system instances Newtonian mechanics is not a non-trivial one, but on the naive theory, it would be true just in case we stipulate that it is so (5).  Simply put, if the naive theory were true, then one could not axiomatize in model-theoretic theory without knowing in advance which interpretations would satisfy the model-theoretic theory.  But we do not always know in advance which interpretations satisfy our theory; there are sometimes unintended models. (Consider the non-trivial question of whether a newly discovered solar system obeys Newtonian laws.) Thus, by modus tollens, naive theory is not true.  McEwan puts the matter bluntly: "There is nothing above and beyond the models themselves to decide whether a theory is applicable to some model or not" (7). 

Fortunately, the semantic view is not identified with the naive theory.  Indeed, the semantic view realizes that the models of M must represent the world in some way.  Clearly, realists and many empiricists would want this to be so. Why not then simply identify n with a physical model?  But how can a physical system be an interpretation of a formal language?  This seems to have the matter backward.  

As it turns out, semantic views are plagued by the representation problem. Consider the claim that one of the models of M (say n) is the faithful representation of the physical world. But on what basis is n the representation? If the theory is the class of models, one of which is the real world, then why identify the theory with the class of models in the first place (8)?

It seems that the semantic view must somehow deal with the representation problem.  However, Bas von Fraasen a theory's models is identified with a class of structures.  He writes: 

The syntactic picture of a theory identifies it with a body of theorems, stated in one particular language chosen for the expression of that theory.  This should be contrasted with the alternative of presenting a theory in the first instance by identifying a class of structures as its models.  In this second, semantic, approach the language used to express the theory is neither basic nor unique; the same class of structures could well be described in radically different ways, each with its own limitations.  The models occupy center stage.  

So what of these model that occupy center stage? What becomes of realism on the semantic view?  If the models are mathematical structures, then are the objects in these models "real enough" for one to claim that one's scientific theory is true of the real world?  Is the wave function a mathematical object and thus real in the sense that a scientific realist wants?  What would distinguish a real physical object from other pretenders?  What about unobservables -- are they real?  What would distinguish an unobservable mathematical object from an on observable "real" one?  The representation problem is clearly a problem for realism. 

While one might claim that the semantic view is the new "received view" in the philosophy of science, there are very strong voices that have emerged which have pointed to the "extra-scientific" or "extra-rational" factors at work in science, factors that seem as almost as deadly to the semantic view as they are to the syntactic view. We shall attend to these in the next post.