15
The Intersubjective Worlds
of Science and Religion
B. Alan Wallace
In this paper I shall present a radical alternative to metaphysical re-
alism, a view that underlies most literature on science and religion,
and yet may also set science and religion in fundamental opposition
to each other. Those who advocate metaphysical realism maintain
that (1) the real world consists of mind-independent objects, (2)
there is exactly one true and complete description of the way the
world is, and (3) truth involves some sort of correspondence be-
tween an independently existent world and our descriptions of it.^1
Various sorts of cultural relativism and constructivism have been ad-
vocated as alternatives to metaphysical realism, but while they have
proven appealing to many philosophers, they are generally found to
be inadequate by practicing scientists and theologians alike.^2 In this
paper, I propose a third alternative that emphasizes the intersubjec-
tive nature of both scientific and religious truth-claims, one which
rejects the leap of faith required for metaphysical realism and
equally shuns the nihilism that is implicit in so many versions of
relativism. The central theme of this intersubjective view is that sci-
ence and religion express truths arrayed along a spectrum of “invari-
ance” among diverse cognitive frameworks. All truth-claims are em-
bedded in experience, and their validity is put to the test within the
“lived world” of human experience. They are neither confirmed nor
refuted in relation to some hypothetical “real, objective world” that
exists independently of experience.