Atheism and Theism 7bang’ will affect our understanding of the physiology of respiration, or
the fact of evolution of species, the distance from the sun of Alpha
Centauri, or why gunpowder explodes? There is controversy about the inter-
pretation of quantum mechanics, but the facts it tells us seem secure. Even
when a theory is overturned it can usually be seen as an approximation
to the truth.
My position here may be castigated as ‘scientism’. It may be claimed that
there are ways of knowing that are additional to (or alternative to) the sci-
entific method: for example the inner deliverances of consciousness, religious
experience, or even the assumptions of common sense. I of course would
attempt to explain or explain away such putative non-scientific ways of know-
ing. I should make it clear that I am taking a broad view of science and
scientific method, so as to include much historical, archaeological and philo-
logical investigation, as will be apparent in my brief glance later in this essay
at the higher criticism of the New Testament.^3 Another problem is that even
if there were agreement about the importance of plausibility in the light of
total science there may well be disagreement in the assessment of plausibility.
This question of assessment of plausibility is closely related to that of
probabilistic inference to a hypothesis. The method depends on the theorem
that the probability of a hypothesis h relative to evidence e is equal to the
probability of e given h multiplied by the prior probability of hdivided by the
prior probability of e.^4 How do we assess the prior probabilities or estimate
the relative probabilities? Furthermore, the more antecedently improbable
e is, the greater is the probability of h, but how do we know whether to accept
the evidence or to attempt to explain it away in some way, perhaps by
distrusting our observation or bringing in other considerations that reduce
our previous assessment of the high probability of e given h? Thus we may
reject a report of a visitation by a flying saucer by considering how far apart
inhabited planets are likely to be, and whether it would not be much more
apparent that there are flying saucers if there really were such visitations.
Why are they so often seen by remote farmers and why do they never
land in the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge, or some other well-
known place?
Though my approach will be largely based on the relations between
science and religion it will inevitably involve us in many of the traditionally
philosophical concerns, such as the main themes of, for example, J.L. Mackie’s
fine and formidably acute and scholarly book The Miracle of Theism.^5 I shall
pay a good deal of attention to theological speculations arising from recent
physics and cosmology, which to some writers, such as the physicist
Paul Davies in his popular book The Mind of God,^6 and the philosopher
John Leslie in his Universes,^7 have been thought to support broadly theistic
conclusions.