President Obama’s selection of Francis Collins to direct the National Institutes of Health has led to unusually passionate posts from the right, especially here at Townhall. Michell Malkins’ Two Scientists Two Standards and Ken Conner’s Science: Theists Need Not Apply aptly sum up in their titles concerns about double standards involving religious faith and public service, especially in scientific fields. Conner charged that “Religious bigotry is alive and well in the scientific community, as evidenced by its response to President Obama's decision to appoint Dr. Francis Collins as the head of the National Institutes of Health.” And Cal Thomas added in President Obama’s Excellent Choice his take that “it troubles some secularists who believe science should proceed unrestrained by any higher principles than what can be achieved in a laboratory.”

These views are unusually passionate in that the reaction to the selection of Collins has been rather quiet so far. Perhaps more of the alleged bigotry will manifest itself in the days ahead when both science organizations and editors of science journals have had more time to digest the news. Until now, most of the major new outlets (CNN: Washington Post) and major science publications (Nature; Scientific American) carried innocuous straightforward accounts of Collins that focused as much on his guitar playing as on his religious views. There does not seem to be widespread bigotry to Obama’s selection in the science community at all. The New York Times, citing anonymous sources of course, suggested that there are some reservations out there. Since the article citied anonymous sources, however, the point is irrelevant. And no one can accuse the Times reporters of membership in the scientific community. The paper’s reporters are trained to write well; most of them know next to nothing about science or religion.

More important is the misunderstanding of these conservative commentators on the nature of science and its relationship to religion. Science as “first order” knowledge is the examination of the physical world using empirical modes of inquiry. Now its methods are subject to analysis and criticism from a philosophical point of view. Philosophy can be helpful as “second order” knowledge by using its own mode of inquiry to help science clarify definitions, refine explanatory models, and design experiments, etc. When people criticize science for its materialistic or atheistic world view, however, they make two errors.

First, they forget that because of the object of its study and its mode of inquiry, science cannot factor the possible existence of a deity into their explanatory models. Scientists focus on the material world and natural forces. Traditionally, a supreme being is conceived as an immaterial being--a mind without a body--if you will. Consequently, no supreme being can be discovered by science and its empirical modes of inquiry. The possible existence of a supreme being will become an object of scientific study only if science develops a way to detect the existence of immaterial entities (a human soul? angels? ghosts? a truly conservative Republican presidential candidate?).

Second, when they challenge the materialistic world view of modern science, they abandon their domain of “second order” analytical knowledge without clearly alerting us and assert “first order” metaphysical knowledge about the existence of a supreme being. Now this is the proper role of philosophy, especially philosophical theology. By philosophical theology, I mean the attempt to examine the possible existence of a supreme being strictly through philosophy and its particular modes of inquiry. Philosophers have made some formidable arguments in support of the existence of a supreme being. But the arguments, however logically crisp, are not science and at this time cannot be evaluated by scientific modes of inquiry. In that way they are irrelevant to science.

This does not imply that philosophical theology is irrelevant altogether. Philosophical religion has a different object of study from science and different modes of inquiry in its quest for truth. In this sense is compatible with science; it just remains difficult for the two different fields to engage each other. Consequently, religious believers should not experience alarm when science does not employ the concept of a supreme being in its explanatory models. Conversely, scientists should use caution whenever discussing the concept of a supreme being. When they do, they are no longer working as scientists; they are acting as philosophers. And their scientific knowledge brings little to bear on this question. Unfortunately, this has not stopped them. As one philosopher noted while trying to establish this point, one can always find a bunch of scientists ready to barge in where angels fear to tread.