My views on Scientific Anti-Realism

A Facebook friend of mine asked me some questions. Below are his questions and my response.

Hello [Annoyed Pinoy]! I read this from you and found it very interesting:

"...really is best for Christians to hold to some form of scientific anti-realism (e.g. Clarkian operationalism, or some other scientific anti-realism that's compatible with Christianity)."

What do you mean by Clarkian operationalism? From my understanding, they reject that science is a source of knowledge. Is this what Clarkian operationalism entails or would it be another aspect to Clarkian philosophy of science? Also, how far do we take scientific anti-realism?

My response:

As you know, I have great respect for Steve Hays' apologetics. In his blogger profile he wrote, "...I’m an Augustinian exemplarist. I’m a Cartesian dualist. I’m an alethic realist, but scientific antirealist...." Steve isn't a Clarkian. He is a presupper more along the lines of Van Til, but he might not call himself a Van Tillian. Even though I think for a while he was a teaching assistant for John Frame (one of Van Til's protégés). I too am a presupper, but don't mind calling myself a Van Tillian because I *mostly* agree with him (with minor disagreements). When I call myself a scientific anti-realist, I'm not using the term exactly as it's normally used. Simply, I use it to affirm what I believe about science which is similar (not exactly) to what Clarkians generally believe. Namely, that what the world calls "science" cannot tell us (either in principle and/or in actuality) what reality is really like. Including and especially physical reality. See Gordon H. Clark's brilliant book The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God which devastatingly demolishes all scientific pretensions to knowledge. The word "science" of course has been used for centuries to refer to all types of "knowedge", generally speaking. Though, nowadays it mostly refers to the physical and natural sciences. I suspect different Clarkians have different specific views regarding science. See for example the works of Vincent Cheung regarding the limits of science and induction. He's a modified Clarkian. As You know, I have disagreements with Cheung too (cf. Aquascum's dismantling of Cheung's apologetic).

Clarkians are Opperationalists (which I think is a version of Instrumentalism). Namely, that science tells us useful things about the physical world. But it does not give us true knowledge about the physical world (and obviously also nothing about non-natural and/or spiritual worlds/realms). Clarkians believe science can only tells us how to better operate in the world to get things accomplished and improve our lives. That makes sense since Clarkians are empirical skeptics. I'm not an empirical skeptic.

I think science *might* be able to tell us some univocally true things about the physical world (I doubt it), but it CANNOT DEFINITELY do so. As a Van Tillian, I think general revelation (and therefore also science) tells us analogically true things about the physical world, but not necessarily univocal truths as God knows them. This is especially true if there's some truth to the growing Quantum Idealism movement (of which there are Christian versions, or what I'll call CQI). I'm very open to CQI, though I'm not dogmatic on its truth. CQI argues that physical realism is false and that divine idealism is true. That the physical world we experience is a simulation "in" God's mind (similar to Bishop George Berkeley's idealism). There are variations of CQI. See my collected links to videos on QI by Johanan Raatz and by whoever it is who creates the videos on Inspiring Philosophy's youtube channel here:
http://misclane.blogspot.com/2014/09/scientific-evidence-against-materialism.html

Yesterday [9/2/2017], Dr. Bruce Gordon was the guest lecturer at Jonathan McLatchie's Apologetics Academy webinar and he spoke on "On the Tension Between Quantum Physics and Physicalism". To my surprise and delight, he argued for his own version of CQI. He says he has some differences with Raatz, but seemed to say that they were in much agreement too. The video of the lecture should be uploaded to YouTube in a few days at their channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKJ_EeoOeUtCyRT4g8OUlkQ/videos

When it is uploaded I'll link to it HERE (along with the video).

I said that it would be beneficial if Christians were to hold to some form of scientific anti-realism for 3 reasons.

1. Because a truly rational (and possibly also a truly scientific) approach demands that science cannot tell us definitely truth things about the physical world or any other part of reality(ies). This is demonstrable via Clarkian apologetics and suggested by modern science itself. Including the recent discoveries in quantum physics.

2. Since science cannot tell us anything univocally true about the physical world, no scientific evidence or argument could possibly disprove Christianity.

3. Since science cannot disprove Christianity, the approach of scientific anti-realism by Christians would forever protect believers' faith from ever being damaged by the external evidence of science. The only possible way to undermine or attack Christianity now would be to show internal and/or logical contradictions WITHIN the Christian worldview. Something both doubting Christians and non-Christians (including atheists & anti-theists) can attempt to come up with.

Karl Popper, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century wrote:

First, although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it.... [W]e know that our scientific theories always remain hypotheses.... [I]n science there is no "knowledge" in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth.... Einstein declared that his theory was false: he said that it would be a better approximation to the truth than Newton's, but he gave reasons why he would not, even if all predictions came out right, regard it as a true theory.... Our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement;... our knowledge, our doctrine is conjectural;... it consist of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths.- Karl Popper

"It can even be shown that all [scientific] theories, including the best, have the same probability, namely zero."- Karl Popper

"The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game."- Karl Popper