{RJW Note: The second position paper given was by Dr. John Mark Reynolds, Professor of Philosophy, Biola University, Los Angeles, California, and founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute, a great books program, and fellow Celtophile. As a philosopher, he is a departure from the theologian-heavy lineup and his perspective helps also to define the discussions. Dr. Reynolds also comes from a young-earth perspective.
When I asked him for a copy of his notes as we walked down the hall, he stopped, pulled out a notepad and ripped out a single sheet of paper with a loose handwritten outline and handed it to me. Again, the generosity of these scholars in sharing their work for me to share here is humbling and I am very grateful. It is remarkable to see the different styles of preparation and presentation each uses. Today’s post will constitute a merging of his rough outline with my notes. Any inaccuracies in the substance and intent of his message are mine.}
Dr. Reynolds began by making it clear that even at this conference on faith and science, he was neither theologian nor scientist, and plays neither on TV or movies, as some might wonder given he’s in LA. To begin with offering his epistemological perspective, he defined and discussed the nature of science and then theology. He seemed largely unconcerned with the tensions between the two fields, and appears to be a NOMAist, one who adheres to the idea that they are non-overlapping magisteria (that science and faith answer fundamentally different questions and so do not overlap areas of expertise, so the tensions should be in mostly in appearance than reality). This is my assessment of his views, not an explicit statement by Reynolds.
What is science? It is a likely story of sensory experience that becomes rapidly complicated by philosophical assumptions. {See my 8-part series on “What is Science?”} To ask the question, ‘how to do science?’ is not a science question, but a philosophy question. To cloud it further, if you ask {most} scientists how they do science, their answer is {most likely} different than how they actually do it. Furthermore, scientists do not reject the ‘wrong’ model for the ‘right’ model, but make forward progress by getting rid of one wrong answer in favor of another wrong answer. {but maybe, hopefully, less wrong?} To muddy the waters further, it is possible to adopt the right idea at the wrong time and it could retard the advancement of science.
