Here’s a quick answer. The characteristic thing about fact-statements is that they can be empirically tested, whereas ought-statements cannot. Religious beliefs form a cluster, some of which are norms (Thou shalt not kill) and some purported facts (God created heaven and earth in six days), but none of them are empirically testable. So we lump them all together as values.
The quick answer grounds a distinction that seems evident. If a biologist sets out with a constraint to the effect that any acceptable biological theory must be compatible with Genesis, we would condemn this is as value-laden research. But if a chemist sets out with a constraint that any acceptable chemical theory must be compatible with quantum mechanics, we applaud this scientific good sense. The quick answer says that the quantum mechanical constraint was empirically grounded, whereas the religious one was not, and that’s the basis of our approval in the one case and disapproval in the other.
I’m sure the quick answer could be justified, but things are inevitably more complicated. During the heyday of fruitful interaction of science and religion, Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, and many others brought religious considerations to bear on scientific theorizing. Kepler geometrized nature on the grounds that God is a great geometer and would want to create the world in the most beautiful of all paterns. Newton argued that his own account of the workings of nature was best because it required God’s occasional intervention to keep the world from running down. Leibniz scoffed at this, saying it showed Newton’s physics to be preposterous, since it implied that God was less than a perfect craftsman.
Not only is the notion of God intrinsic in each of these cases, but Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, and others believed they had considerable evidence for the existence of God. Their religious beliefs were not mere acts of faith, but the consequence of rational considerations. After all, prior to Darwin, the argument from design had considerable force. The design argument for God’s existence runs as follows: We see design all about us: bees pollinate flowers and flowers feed bees; this could not have come about by mere chance; thus, there must exist a designer, a highly intelligent and powerful creator. Sensible and intelligent people in the seventeenth century quite rightly found the argument from design persuasive. When Kepler and others brought religious considerations to bear on physics and astronomy, they were acting no differently in their day than a contemporary chemist who rightly insists that all theorizing be constrained by what we already believe about quantum mechanics. If belief in quantum mechanics is not a value, then neither was Christian cosmology in the seventeenth century. These were not subjective values that Newton and Leibniz imposed on science, but rather background beliefs that had some degree of plausibility.
But notice the tense: I use is when mentioning rationality and values in connection with the constraints of quantum mechanics and was when mentioning values and rationality with the constraints of religion. Over time and with new evidence, the rationality of a particular belief changes. It is no longer rational to set religious constraints on theorizing in biology or astronomy or anywhere else. To do otherwise is utterly irrational and very likely dishonest. So we can return to the quick answer: religious beliefs are values in the derivative sense that they are not currently evidentially grounded.
Three key terms [fragment]
uit: Who rules in science? : an opiniated guide to the wars - James Robert Brown
