SUMMER 2009
W HO O W N S S C I E NC E ? ]the0end0of0secularism}
H
Hunter Baker
ere is the real knowledge situation. We have science to give us unparalleled understanding of the natural worlds. We can gather an astounding array of facts, methods, and theories. None of them can help us formulate political ends. The rest of it, the non-material things that are unquestionably real in our experience as human beings in a material world, things like justice, love, morality, righteousness, charity, and mercy, these things all lie outside the ability of science to fill with meaning. Therefore, what I propose to the reader is that we stop simplistically contrasting science and faith or science and religion and refer more honestly to science and all other types of knowledge with varying levels of dependability. A thoroughgoing positivist would look upon the situation I have described and would say there is empirically verifiable knowledge and the rest is mere sentiment. The problem, of course, as Francis Schaeffer and many others have pointed out, is that no one lives as though they really believe that. Show me a positivist and I will show you someone who rages at being treated unfairly. We all believe in justice, fairness, love, and morality. There are differences to be sure, but they are not so great as to render them utterly unrecognizable to each other. Stanley Fish remarked on the chasm of understanding between versions of fairness with which he might identify and which others might embrace. Nevertheless, we know we are talking about fairness still, and not aliens or petting zoos or softball. Morality cannot be empirically 43