Science and theology

Some people try to exclude arguments about theology from science. This is part of a strategy that goes like this:

Science is the only reliable source of knowledge about the natural world.

Science excludes all arguments about theology.

Therefore, wherever science goes, theology must retreat.

Also, theology has no knowledge to contribute to science.

If Charles Darwin thought that science excluded theology, he would have ignored natural theology in his scientific works. He didn’t. He engaged the natural theology of his day and argued for his own natural theology. In his award-winning book, “Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil,” Cornelius G. Hunter examined Darwin’s natural theology in detail.

Since Darwin argued about theology in his scientific writings, an argument for evolution has no business presuming that science excludes theology. On the other hand, if science does exclude arguments about theology, then The Origin of Species is not science. If The Origin of Species is not science, this article would be even shorter.

Newton also included something about theology in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, often considered the greatest scientific work of all time. So science may in fact include arguments about theology and we are free to consider such arguments when discussing the merits of a scientific theory. By the way, the same argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to the inclusion of philosophical arguments in science.

2008