 Up to this point, we've been looking at the question of whether or not science and religion are or can be in conflict. But there's another set of questions that we could ask here, and that is, is it possible under any circumstances for science to provide support for certain religious or theological beliefs? So far from seeing science as this perpetual threat to religion, some scientists and philosophers argue that scientific discoveries actually provide us some evidence for the truth of certain religious claims. And that's a topic that you'll take up at other parts of this course, looking at particular cases where scientists and philosophers and others have argued that there are certain scientific data that supports religious beliefs. In this part of this talk, I'd like to look at something a little bit different. And that's the question of whether or not the scientific method itself might be seen to lend some support to religious claims. So let me explain how an argument like this might go. For example, of a graph like this one, where we can show a bunch of data points that are plotted on a particular graph, we might take these points as being the conclusion of an experiment that we've done. When we look at this series of dots, you might ask, how should we sort of plot the line that provides the theory that explains how these different points fit together? And the most natural way for us to do that is simply to draw a straight line through them. If we were to be in a physics class or in a chemistry class, we had a graph like this with a bunch of dots on the board, and we asked the student to come up and plot the graph for us. What they would most naturally do is to draw the straight line. But what if we had one student that came to the front of the class and drew a line that looked more like this? This squiggly line, it seems to have all sorts of curves that, in one sense, don't seem to make any sense, given the dots that we have on the graph. Well, here's the question. I think when all of us see these two different graphs, we think probably, most obviously, the one that's closest to the truth is the straight line, not the very squiggly line. But why do we think that? Why do we think that the straight line is more likely to be a true explanation of how to understand the relationship between these two variables, the two variables on the graph, as opposed to the squiggly line? Well, that's a really hard question to answer. But what we know is true is that we do have this tendency to believe that simpler explanations, all of the things being equal, simpler explanations are more likely to be true. Now, there's a lot to say about why we're disposed to think that way. But what it really boils down to is that there are two main options. Either we're disposed to think that simpler explanations are more likely to be true because evolutionary forces have wired us to favor these sorts of explanations, these simpler ones over more complex ones. Maybe evolution is wired us to favor simpler explanations because it takes less mental computing power to understand and remember simpler curves or simpler theories, and it does more complex ones. But if that's right, if the reason we favor simpler explanations is because evolution wired us to do so, then we have to worry about what we're actually doing when we do science. Because what we thought we were doing was getting at the truth about things. But in this way of thinking about things, what we're doing is just sort of following the lead of evolved dispositions we have. And those evolved dispositions may or may not be leading us closer to the truth. Now, you might think, well, look, there's another answer to this question. Maybe we just know through experience that simpler theories are more likely to be true, or maybe there's some other argument in favor of the claim. But if you think that, I challenge you to try to articulate what those reasons are. Oftentimes, when individuals are challenged with why we think simpler theories are more likely to be true, the reason that they'll give is something that just translates into, because they're simpler. Which isn't a very good explanation for holding that belief. So it looks like it defaults to, on the one hand, either we have evolved dispositions to come to believe that, in which case science is a very different enterprise than what we thought, or we need a different explanation. So what would that different explanation be? Well, one way to think about it is this, rational beings, one of the things we think are characteristic of rational beings is that they tend to operate by the simplest means, all of the things being equal. So if I want to walk from my living room to the next room over, which is my kitchen, I simply walk through the opening in the wall. What I don't do is climb up the downspout, climb in the window, or climb up onto the roof, descend down through the chimney, and walk through my living room to get to the kitchen. Why? Well, because there's no reason to do that. I would do it by the simplest means possible, unless, again, there was some reason not to do that. So all of the things being equal, rational beings tend to operate by the simplest means, again, all of the things being equal. Now, why does that matter? Well, if the universe is a product of a rational creator, then it would make sense that simpler theories are more likely to be true, because rational agents tend to operate by the simplest means possible, all of the things being equal. So if that's right, it gives us some justification for something that seems to be a very natural tendency that we have in the scientific domain. When we're looking at competing theoretical explanations, we tend to favor the simplest one. That's a puzzling thing, unless the universe is a product of a rational designer. So there we've got an instance where we're not trying to infer something about the supernatural or about the divine on the basis of some fact, the fine-tuning of the universe or cosmological origins, but we're looking at how we reason about science itself and whether or not that provides us with some reason to assume or presume that there's some sort of design or creator behind the reality of the cosmos.