Faith, Science and Agnosticism

In a discussion on Facebook I recently wrote this in response to the question about what our favorite presuppositions are. My friend, Joe said,

"So, I have to identify my most basic presuppostion that governs my worldview...I think its this: "An absolutely true reality exists and is objectively knowable". What's your favorite presupposition?"


One of my responses was,

"Joe - is it possible to maintain the first half of your presupposition and accept the second half in faith and ongoing discovery. There is a view I hold to in that regard called Confessional Realism. It is much like Critical Realism which is a view held by N.T. Wright, Paul Hiebert among others. Basically, the world does make sense, spirituality... See more, science, physics, emotions, etc... all line up and have always lined up without question but based upon our inabilities, infantilities and finitude, we can't see how that works as of yet. The responses vary from the escape into fundamentalist faith or to sola science or agreeable agnosticism. The choice that I've made thus far is Confessional Realism. This basically posits that the world functions as a whole and we are the ones that dissect it and then take positions against each other based upon our view of what is more important to us and how we integrate that arena of thought or discipline in our identity. This is not how God planned us to form our identity - by what the reality of the world is but at the same time we can discover some of his reality through the natural world. Either way, the integrated network of everything is available to us and as Christians we are the most apt to discover those connections but are unable because it might require learning something from someone else that would loosen our faith fidelity. Regardless, all disciplines have a connection to all other disciplines. If we want it to work like that, then we are called to discover and journey towards those connections and not to stop on and build a moat around our first discoveries. Realism posits that there is much more to discover. Given the categories that Christians can have that non-Christians don't have and vice versa, we are holding each other back. The difference is that our side requires a bit more of direct submission to a Person rather than an idea. That is the issue - spiritual knowledge (I Cor. 3) has more to do with categories of belief that unbelievers won't accept because to do so would require submission to the Persons of the Trinity. not an easy thing to do on a relational level unless you have been reached by the Holy Spirit.

It seems it would be best to accept the three different positions - fidel faith, sola science and agreeable agnosticism. In one way we accept the reality of the world, God and his sovereignty through faith while at the same time embracing the freedom and joy of scientific discovery and how that continues to coincide with our discoveries of God. This is going on while at the same time humbly believing through a lens of agnosticism that holds our own contextual situatedness in check. There have to be check and balances for each position and each one does well to listen to the other so we don't end up burning people for believing that the the universe is heliocentric or put people in jail for having anti-government hymn sings or revile those who actually want to take a stand instead of maintaining a neutral and ultimately unjust lifestyle. I wonder what your thoughts would be."

I do wonder!