Of course, they think this is purely scientific: based on empirical knowledge alone. They don’t realize that their naturalist worldview forces the conclusion.
They claim that this is only “methodological” naturalism; it simply limits scientists’ studies to what they physically observe. They exclude supernatural explanations as if to exclude all ideology, but in reality, this forces scientists to assume that the physical world acts independently from the supernatural. Such is a metaphysical assertion.
Methodological naturalism is a clever way of forcing scientists to interpret data as if they subscribed to philosophical naturalism. While this “method” prohibits theists from acknowledging God in science, it allows naturalists to treat nature as ultimate. For example, if scientists find a watch, they can develop the most convincing explanation of how the watch resulted only from natural causes.
Ancient Greek philosophers did not have any of the vast fossil evidence that we have today. Yet, some of them subscribed to naturalism, and as a result, they developed a theory of evolution by natural selection more than two thousand years ago.* Naturalism was enough to lead them in that direction.
Creation and evolution are philosophies about origins. Both are models for guiding scientific inquiry and interpreting data. They are scientific in the sense that they involve empirical study, but they depend primarily on assumptions about the past, which cannot be observed first-hand.
When scientists study the fossil record, they see the remains of species that still exist today and many more that no longer exist. Evolutionists with their model see a common family tree, and they work to fit all creatures into that tree. Creationists with their model see a forest, and they fit the creatures into their respective trees.
Another difference in perspective involves the Flood. While evolutionists read rock strata like the rings of a tree trunk, Creationists see much of the fossil record as a single catastrophic event. They point to evidence for a worldwide flood such as fossil graveyards, sea creature fossils at high locations, transcontinental rock layers, rapid or no erosion between strata, folded (and not broken) rock layers, and flood stories in every culture around the world.
When Christians point to scientific evidence for special creation, it is often dismissed as “religion.” The debate is reduced to a game of semantics. Naturalists don’t realize the double standard, because they define their prejudice as “science.”
Like creation, evolution is an ideological doctrine. Naturalists treat it as fact, because it is the only conclusion allowed.
Naturalists do examine evidence, but any obstacle to the evolutionist view can be explained away. For example, when Louis Pasteur disproved the idea of spontaneous generation, Thomas Huxley used the term “abiogenesis” and explained that it was only possible in earth’s distant past. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, had another explanation: “life on earth may have begun when aliens from another planet sent a rocket ship containing spores to seed the earth.”*
The “Cambrian explosion” presents another obstacle; animals in all their diversity appear in the fossil record suddenly and fully formed. Stephen Jay Gould proposed “punctuated equilibrium” to explain the absence of transitional forms; creatures can evolve quickly in certain conditions.
Even if evolution were true, there would need to be a guiding force to direct it, an unchanging truth to govern progress. Naturalists look to mutations, random chance, and natural selection: things that don’t know or care. Mutations are mistakes, a loss of information. Evolution needs an increase of information. Chance cannot help, because it doesn’t exist. Natural selection exists, but it cannot help either, because it only eliminates creatures that do not adapt to their environment.
The variation of a species depends on its genetic information. For example, a wolf has the genetic information for all the wide variety of dogs alive today: from the Great Dane to the chihuahua. Yet, each descendent from the original only has some of the information, so chihuahuas cannot be bred to Great Danes or vice versa. The DNA of a creature allows it to change and adapt, but we do not know of any natural process that can add new information.
Some people say that an intelligent designer could guide the process of evolution, but this also misses the point. There is no need to accept macroevolution apart from a belief in naturalism. Theists who believe in evolution do so because they were taught it as fact.
It all comes down to a definition of “science” that only allows natural explanations. Naturalists compartmentalize science as if it were purely empirical. By definition the natural sciences focus on natural occurrences, but they do not confine us to natural explanations. If we have reason to believe that God created nature, this will influence our understanding of science.
How should science be directed then? I would say, as others have, that science should seek only logical explanations. We should interpret data according to a worldview that fits the order that we observe in the cosmos.
* Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pg. 248.