Cross-Explanatory Reductionism
Certain biologists who reject the
possibility that religious truth-claims could be valid go beyond a mere
preference for a certain level of scientific explanation.
Monod, Dawkins, and E.O. Wilson are also what might be called ‘cross-explanatory reductionists’, in that they
assert that naturalistic explanations, interpretative and descriptive in
nature, render unnecessary explanations which give reasons in terms of
purposes.
To them theistic truth-claims are
unnecessary and misplaced, and the underlying reasons for them must be sought
in terms of behaviours which were adaptive at earlier points in the history of
humanity.
This
cross-explanatory reductionism presumes not simply that lower-level, gene-based
description is adequate, and other explanations such as the religious are
therefore redundant, but that the lower-level, the scientific, is adequate and
that therefore the religious must be wrong.
The weakness of this sort of argument
should be evident. It could be valid only if its particular, often unstated,
presuppositions were also accepted. Dawkins’ presuppositions are listed by
Keith Ward as:
- that only material entities have any
existence,
- that the universe lacks purpose or
meaning,
- that scientific explanations are the
only proper explanations.
As Ward shows, theism, which rejects these assumptions, operates on
presuppositions of a similarly metaphysical kind, and may be considered to be a
simpler and more comprehensive explanation of the universe as we find it.
Email
link | Feedback | Contributed by: Dr.
Christopher Southgate
Source: God, Humanity and the
Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999)
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