Theistic realism

Theistic realism is a philosophical justification for intelligent design proposed by Phillip E. Johnson in his book, Reason in the Balance. According to Johnson, true knowledge must begin with the acknowledgment of God as creator because he believes that the unifying characteristic of the universe is that it was created by God. Theistic realism, therefore, relies on a God that is real, personal, and acting in the world, through mechanistic creationism.

Theistic realism was developed by Johnson to be a counter to methodological naturalism. To Johnson, any attempt to understand nature without acknowledging the creator is doomed to fail. As he and his supporters describe it, theistic realism holds that the universe and life cannot be explained completely naturalistically.

1 Scriptural basis
2 Theistic realism and methodological naturalism
3 Theistic realism and theistic naturalism
4 Criticism of theistic realism

[edit] Scriptural basis

Johnson grounds his argument for theistic realism in several verses in the New Testament and Old Testament of the Bible, particularly John 1:1-3, Romans 1:20-23, and Proverbs 1:7.

As with much of Johnson's work in the area of science and religion, biblical citations are considered convincing arguments since his audience tends to be theists, and particularly Christians who are on the creationist side of the creation-evolution controversy.

[edit] Theistic realism and methodological naturalism

Johnson argues that mainstream science has been taken hostage by evolutionary philosophy, and therefore it and theistic realism are diametrically opposed, because:

"Naturalistic evolutionary theory, as part of the grand metaphysical story of science, says that creation was by impersonal and unintelligent forces. The opposition between the biblical and naturalistic stories is fundamental, and neither side can compromise over it. To compromise is to surrender."

He criticized modern science further:

"[We] collapse into intellectual futility and confusion when we discard the Creator as a remnant of prescientific superstition, but that it is precisely by the 'death of God' that humankind comes of age and becomes ready to receive the truth that Darwinism is all too ready to provide."

To Johnson, most of mainstream science is wrong because of the nearly universal rejection of intelligent design:

"....[T]here is absolutely no mystery about why living organisms appear to be the products of intelligent creation, and why scientific naturalists have to work so hard to keep themselves from perceiving the obvious. The reason living things give that appearance is that they actually are what they appear to be, and this fact is evident to all who do not cloud their minds with naturalistic philosophy or some comparable drug."

[edit] Theistic realism and theistic naturalism

Johnson asserts that Theistic evolution, progressive creationism, and other more accommodating faith-based philosophies that try to integrate science and religion is a misguided effort by theists to accommodate the academia by "accepting not just the particular conclusions that scientists have reached by also the naturalistic methodology that generated those conclusions." In essence, he criticizes these people for approaching an understanding of the material world as though God didn't exist, but then hold "by faith" that he does. This reasoning draws a strict dichotomy between "faith" and "science" and, according to Johnson, allows for no overlap. Naturally, such a faith is irrelevant to science, and falls to Occam's razor. On the contrary, Johnson argues, Theism can only be rational when we allow for the possibility of God physically acting in history. Here Johnson parallels the arguments made by atheists as to why they do not remain agnostics. Nevertheless, the arguments of many mainstream denominations that accept the scientific consensus on issues of material origins are in stark contrast to Johnson's theological conceits.

Johnson argues that creation biology grounded in theistic realism presents a challenge to philosophical and theistic naturalism:

"I do not urge scientists to give up on any theory or research agenda until they themselves are convinced that further efforts would be fruitless. In view of the cultural importance of the naturalistic worldview, however, and its status as virtually the official philosophy of government and education, there is a need for informed outsiders to point out that claims are often made in the name of science that go far beyond the available evidence. The public needs to learn to discount those claims, and the scientists themselves need to learn how profoundly their interpretations of the evidence are influenced by their metaphysical preconceptions. IF the resulting embarrassment spurs scientists on to greater achievements, leading to a smashing vindication of their basic viewpoint, then so be it."

[edit] Criticism of theistic realism

Theistic realism as Johnson describes it is an attempt to redefine science outside of naturalistic constraints. The fundamental tenets of science, summarized in the philosophy of science, eschew any appeal to supernatural causes or events. Therefore, adding the theistic assumption as a prerequisite for doing science is fundamentally at odds with the very definition of science.

The existence of a god or deity is a question that science alone cannot answer since there is no experiment that can conclusively answer the question. However, since certain descriptions of the hypothesized deity can be and have been scientifically falsified, there is a level to which claims of theistic realists can be tested. For Johnson, using the scientific method to prove or disprove aspects of the omnipotent and omniscient God in which he believes is strictly not permitted. The natural consequence of this is that Johnson rejects any universalist statement made about the primacy of natural laws or mathematical proof since there exist conditions whereby all such things can be violated by God. This is diametrically opposed to the empirical assumption of science and mathematics. As Johnson has it, then, mathematics and science cannot be done on their own terms and must only be realized in the context of his conception of theism.

As a statement of faith, there is nothing a priori evident in science or in methodological naturalism that requires the rejection of a creator or deity. The existence or lack of existence of a creator is not a fundamental premise for the ability to do scientific research. If the opposite were true, it would be expected that theistic scientists would be more successful than atheistic scientists, but there is no evidence that such is the case. Theistic realism makes the claim that any scientific endeavor which does not explicitly accept a creator as an a priori premise is doomed to failure. This claim can either be considered to be falsified by virtue of the fact that current scientific models are successful at predicitively explaining natural phenomenon without explicitly taking that condition, or it can be considered to be unfalsifiable since the theistic realist can claim the failure to be always on the horizon, though not yet seen (see God of the gaps).

Additionally, Johnson's appeal to design arguments (Johnson was the person who coined the term Intelligent Design) has been rejected in the natural sciences, in biology, for example, it was rejected in favor of Darwinian evolution. Holding that the grandeur of the universe leads inevitably to the existence of a deity is a statement of faith, and as such is not an empirical observation.

Topics about or related to Creationism
Types: Creationism - Young Earth Creationism - Old Earth creationism - Progressive creationism - Theistic evolution - Intelligent design
Interpretations of Genesis: Framework interpretation - Day-Age theory - Gap theory - Biblical literalism
Related concepts: Creation according to Genesis - Omphalos hypothesis - Specified complexity - Irreducible complexity - Dating Creation - Theistic realism - Intelligent designer
Pseudoscience: Creation science - Creationist cosmologies - Creation biology - Created kinds - Flood geology - Vapor canopy - Modern geocentrism - Flat Earth creationism
Controversy: Creation-evolution controversy - History of creationism - Creation and evolution in public education - Quotes about creation and evolution - Teach the Controversy