Theology and falsification: can science disprove Christian belief?

In a recent New York Times feature, Darwin’s God, the question is asked: Can science explain the origins of religion? If so, what does that mean for religion? The following paragraph from the article is especially interesting:

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

The article raises some important issues and questions, and it is worth our time to at least give them our attention. The key question it seems to me is the following: Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? This is a question that concerns us in a number of different ways. Here are a few of my own follow-up thoughts and questions:

1. We might rephrase the question in a number of different ways, for example: Is explaining the origins of Scripture the same thing as explaining it away? The work of Bart Ehrman is one such example of a person who has made this particular question the work of his whole career. And it is rather common nowadays to hear people speak the political context in which, say, the Bible came into being or the institution of the Church arose—as if explaining the political climate is the same as explaining away the Bible and the church. For me, John Webster offers a substantial theological response to Ehrman on the basis of a doctrine of divine providence. So Webster writes:

God’s work of overseeing such processes as tradition-history, redaction, authorship and canonisation could well be described in terms of the divine providential acts of preserving, accompanying and ruling creaturely activities, annexing them to his self-revelation.

But this leads us to another important issue ...

2. Can all things that appear suspect from a human perspective simply be explained on the basis of some divine providential activity? In other words, is there anything that could possibly cast doubt on Christian faith? As the NYT article puts it, “Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?” This article assumes (rightly, I think) that believers will respond by saying, God did it! And while this makes perfect sense theologically speaking, it also makes me wonder: is that too easy? Are we capable of turning every potential problem into something that fits our system of belief? Can anything break us from our convictions?

This brings us to the important issue of falsification: What would falsify the Christian faith or any other religious belief? Are Christians guilty of what Anthony Flew calls “death by a thousand qualifications”? In his essay, “Theology and Falsification,” Flew asks the pressing question: “What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?” More Christians need to wrestle with this problem. Recently, the question has been raised in light of the so-called “tomb of Jesus,” as John Drury so helpfully pointed out in his excellent post. Drury writes:

What would it take to disprove Christianity? Or, more narrowly, what would it take to disprove that Jesus rose from the dead? It seems to me that Christian claims about Jesus require that they can be disproved, at least in principle. I do not think this requirement is thrust upon Christianity by the world, so that Christians must be accountable to some sort of "universally recognized foundations" (whatever they may be). Rather, this requirement is entailed by the kinds of claims Christians make. Some (though perhaps not all) Christian beliefs are claims about states of affairs in the known universe.

When I was in youth group, I remember our leaders asking us if finding the bones of Jesus would force me to give up faith in Christianity. And I remember that all the kids said, No. At the time, I felt that this was a sign of our great faith. No matter what the world threw at us, we could handle it, because our faith in God could not be shaken by the most damaging evidence against us. Now I am not so sure.

On one hand, I have my issues with insisting upon the bodily resurrection, and I am not entirely convinced that a flesh-and-blood resurrection is actually essential. But on the other hand, I question myself as to why I have doubts about its essential nature. Am I falling into the trap of trying to arbitrate between theology and science? It seems to me there are two ways in which we might rethink the resurrection: (1) the route of Bultmann and Schleiermacher, in which our faith is protected from science by making a pact with science, so that religion and faith never conflict with each other; or (2) the route of Barth, in which our faith is not grounded in something of this world but rather in the self-revelation of God (though Barth, of course, accepts a bodily resurrection). Both routes, that of Bultmann and that of Barth, intend to protect religion from scientific inquiry. Bultmann does this by wedding religion and science—so that religion conforms to science—while Barth does this by divorcing them—so that Christian faith is not of this world at all. Science cannot inform us about the God who became incarnate.

My point is not to question the bodily resurrection or even to make this center-stage. The question is rather: Can science disprove the Christian faith? Is there any way science can falsify the Christian religion or any other religion? Or are all religions, including the most material of religions, Christianity, inherently protected from scientific inquiry? And if they are, is this a good thing, a bad thing, or simply a neutral state of fact?