This is the first piece of a semi-lengthy series of articles where I hope to raise philosophically relevant questions that pertain to the field or major you are currently studying or perhaps might study in the future. Before I begin, I want to lay some groundwork. First, I should be crystal clear that I am approaching these issues as a conservative, born-again Christian. Thus I make no pretensions of trying to be neutral about these issues. I honestly do not believe anyone can reasonably claim to be neutral and yet have a viewpoint about these matters I will discuss today. There will, for example, be cases where an atheist or agnostic will agree with me on a particular matter and there will be other matters where we significantly differ.

Second, I do not claim to be an authority in these areas. I have no degree in any scientific area of thought. I am a layman who is interested in these topics as someone who is a believer approaching them philosophically. Thus, I sincerely ask for forgiveness if there is any potential frustration you might have for a lack of precision or detail on an issue I will briefly discuss. Lastly and building on the previous point, I also apologize for how brief this piece will be on these issues and the potential frustration some might have for me not going into enough detail. I do not have the time or expertise to give these issues the depth of discussion they immeasurably deserve. So I have decided to include a list of references at the end of this piece that can enable you to explore these things in greater detail if you so wish. So here we go!

1. Are any or all meaningful questions "scientific" questions?

Science has been arguably the most successful human enterprise, at least in the last century or more. We have discovered more stars and planets, animals, understanding of the human brain, invented cures for certain diseases, and especially breakthrough discoveries in physics and astronomy. Some might walk away with the impression that science must be considered to be the most reliable tool for getting knowledge about the world in general and perhaps reality as a whole. If this is true, then any and all questions can be principally "scientific" questions because - on this view - a meaningful question is a question that can be answered that accords with well-established facts and science as a whole are the best route for getting those "well-established facts".

But is this really true? Can any and all meaningful questions be considered nothing more than ultimately scientific questions? Here, two illustrations might help illuminate what I am getting at:

(1) Is a human person a human being with organized cortical brain activity that allows for the possibility of having a desire for a right to life? For this question, whether you are a person or not is something that can be established through the field of neuroscience. Thus it seems that the question of personhood has almost become a scientific question. Or even still, one question that is also asked is whether newborns have a "self-concept"? A self-concept is the ability to see yourself as distinct from other beings and objects. Some bioethicists have come to see this as a standard for whether personhood has been achieved.

One article I read that defended the controversial thesis that it is permissible to kill newborns at certain times, considered the neurological and behavior evidence offered in order to consider the newborn child as one whom it's immoral to kill. Whether they were persuaded by the evidence is not relevant for the purposes here. What matters is are the key terms in evaluating an argument for the personhood of the newborn: neurological and behavioral. It was almost as if they considered this question something science could in principle answer.

(2) Does consciousness come from an immaterial soul or is a byproduct effect of the brain? Many philosophers that hold to physicalism - the view that human beings are essentially or primarily physical beings - might think that explaining consciousness as being derived from the soul is a "mysterious" or perhaps "magical" explanation. They might agree that physicalistic theories of where consciousness comes from are fraught with problems and have gaps in their knowledge, but they might say they are no worse off than the person who "postulates" the soul as the explanation for why consciousness exists. Consciousness, it seems, should be primarily relegated to the hard sciences: physics, chemistry, and (in this case) neuroscience.

2. Is science the only or most reliable way of gaining knowledge for anything?

J.P Moreland, a Christian philosopher, was scheduled to speak at an event and dined with several people, including a seemingly hostile scientist who was not religious. The scientist remarked of how he used to be interested in philosophy as a teenager but then pursued other "nobler" avenues of life such as science. He made the startling claim that if one could not prove a claim to be true through the rigorous steps in the laboratory through the scientific method, it was nothing but a bunch of "hot air". J.P. sat back and patiently listened as this man rambled for about five or so minutes until he finally interrupted him and said that he (J.P.) could not find a single statement in anything the scientist said that could be proven "to be true through the rigorous steps in the laboratory." Thus, J.P. ended up pointing out to the gentleman that he had been spilling nothing but a bunch of "hot air" for the last 5 minutes!

Though this story might make us laugh, it does to an extent illustrate the kind of culture we live in today. If a claim does not have some kind of scientific backing, then it loses a lot of credibility. To build off the previous point earlier about the questions one could ask, some have implied that science is the best or only legitimate domain for answering questions or evaluating claims. The claim that science alone is how we know things to be true or to exist is what we might call "strong scientism." The more modest claim is "weak scientism."

Moreland describes strong scientism as claiming that "some proposition is true and/or rational to believe if and only if it is a scientific proposition... There are no truths apart from scientific truths, and even if there were, there would be no reason whatever to believe them" (J.P. Moreland). Since science is primarily or only concerned with discovering the physical world (despite the issue of postulating unobservable entities like quarks and multiverses), it seems that whatever question is a meaningful question is one that is about - to some extent - the physical world.

Christianity believes that God exists as a transcendent source and cause of the universe. Moreover, it seems commonplace for people to believe that angels and demons are real. But if this form of scientism is true, then these questions about God and angels are not merely based on false beliefs but are not "real" questions at all. Weak scientism says that there are other domains of knowledge but that they are inferior to science. For both forms of scientism, even if not every question is a scientific question, every meaningful question will ultimately have some scientific basis for how it's answered.

There are two main objections to be considered here: Self-refutation and the existence of scientifically unprovable reasonably true beliefs. For the first one, strong scientism says that a statement must be capable of being verified by the scientific method in order to be known to be true. But is *that* statement *itself* capable of being verified by the scientific method? No, it is not. It is a statement about what can be known in general, not science per se. In other words, it is a philosophical claim about knowledge but not a *scientific* claim.

One cannot prove *by science* that science is the "only source of knowledge" without falling into a vicious circle or refuting oneself. To say that something is self-refuting is to say that it refutes *itself* or makes itself false by its own rules or claims. Here are some examples: (1) I am not typing this sentence; (2) I cannot speak a word in English (while saying it in English); (3) I do not exist (One has to exist in order to make that claim); and (4) There is no truth (This statement purports to be taken as true).

For the weaker form of scientism, it seems to deny that there could be things that we know but which do not need to be justified by science. There seem to be things I can know to be true without being able to prove them scientifically such as the following: (1) I was grumpy this morning for not having coffee; (2) The past has existed for longer than at least five minutes; (3) Torturing a child for fun is always wrong (4) The physical world is real and not an illusion; and (5) Love is a virtue, not a vice. I could provide many more examples but the point is that none of these beliefs I have could be proven scientifically. Since weak scientism does not seem able to make sense of these justified beliefs I have, it should be discarded.

Even though I have not gotten to any particular fields of science, I hope you can see - whether you're a science major or just love it - that these questions matter to how you think about your major or field of study. Next time I will talk about two specific issues that serve two roles: (1) They are about the nature of science as a whole and not about any particular scientific field and (2) They are directly concerned with the relationship between science and Christianity. These two issues will be about the issue of when the unborn child is considered to be an image bearer of God (whether at conception or sometime later) and the general question of how two interpretations or records of God's revelation to human beings are to be handled when they conflict: Scripture and Creation. Until then, stay tuned!

List of References: Dictionary ofChristianityandScience edited by Paul Copan, Tremper Longman III, Christopher L. Reese, and Michael G. Strauss; Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig; Scientism: The New Orthodoxy edited by Richard N. Williams and Daniel N. Robinson.