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Theistic realism is a term coined by Phillip E. Johnson in his book, Reason in the Balance, although the basic idea has been held in one form or another by others. The idea holds that true knowledge must begin with the acknowledgment of God as creator, because the unifying characteristic of the universe is that it was created by God. More broadly, it is the idea that God is real and personal, and that a proper theism requires an understanding of God as acting in the world, particularly through Creation.

Theistic realism stands in opposition to philosophical naturalism. While philosophical naturalism holds that natural phenomena are best understood with reference only to themselves and hypotheses about creators are unnecessary and unparsimonious, theistic realism holds that natural phenomena are best understood with reference to the Creator, and that because they were created, any attempt to understand them without acknowledging the creator is doomed to fail. Theistic realists therefore ascribe to intelligent design and hold that the universe and life cannot be explained naturalistically. By extension, it is claimed that theories attempting to do so are fundamentally flawed and that the universe and life can only be explained with reference to an intelligent creator.

Scriptural basis

Johnson grounds his argument for theistic realism in several verses in the New Testament of the Bible. Particularly:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." John 1:1-3

"Ever since the creation of the world eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling the mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles." Romans 1:20-23.

"The fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom." Proverbs 1:7

As with much of Johnson's work in the area of science and religion, faith-based foundations of theistic realism are considered convincing arguments since his audience tends to be theists, and particularly Christians who are on the creationist side of the creation-evolution controversy.

Theistic realism and philosophical naturalism

Johnson argues that in the theistic worldview, true knowledge begins with acknowledging that humanity and the universe are created, and then progresses by exploring the nature of that creation, and through it, seeks to understand God. By contrast, philosophical naturalism is neutral on the subject of the existence of the creator, seeks to understand creation without reference to the creator, and therefore, according to Johnson, leads to inevitable failure.

Johnson argues that mainstream science has been taken hostage by evolutionary philosophy, and therefore it and theistic realism are diametrically opposed, because:

"Naturalistic evolutionary theory, as part of the grand metaphysical story of science, says that creation was by impersonal and unintelligent forces. The opposition between the biblical and naturalistic stories is fundamental, and neither side can compromise over it. To compromise is to surrender."

He criticized modern science further:

" collapse into intellectual futility and confusion when we discard the Creator as a remnant of prescientific superstition, but that it is precisely by the 'death of God' that humankind comes of age and becomes ready to receive the truth that Darwinism is all too ready to provide."

He concludes:

"....here is absolutely no mystery about why living organisms appear to be the products of intelligent creation, and why scientific naturalists have to work so hard to keep themselves from perceiving the obvious. The reason living things give that appearance is that they actually are what they appear to be, and this fact is evident to all who do not cloud their minds with naturalistic philosophy or some comparable drug."

Theistic realism and theistic naturalism

Johnson asserts that theistic naturalism is an effort by theists to accommodate to academia by "accepting not just the particular conclusions that scientists have reached by also the naturalistic methodology that generated those conclusions." In essence, theistic naturalists do science as though God didn't exist, but then hold "by faith" that he does. This reasoning draws a strict dichotomy between "faith" and "science" and, according to Johnson, allows for no overlap. Naturally, such a faith is irrelevant to science, and falls to Occam's razor. On the contrary, Johnson argues, Theism can only be rational when we allow for the possibility the God physically acting in history. Here Johnson parallels the arguments made by atheists as to why they do not remain agnostics. Nevertheless, the arguments of many mainstream denominations that accept the scientific consensus on issues of material origins are in stark contrast to Johnson's theological conceits.

Johnson argues that creation biology grounded in theistic realism presents a challenge to philosophical and theistic naturalism:

"I do not urge scientists to give up on any theory or research agenda until they themselves are convinced that further efforts would be fruitless. In view of the cultural importance of the naturalistic worldview, however, and its status as virtually the official philosophy of government and education, there is a need for informed outsiders to point out that claims are often made in the name of science that go far beyond the available evidence. The public needs to learn to discount those claims, and the scientists themselves need to learn how profoundly their interpretations of the evidence are influenced by their metaphysical preconceptions. IF the resulting embarrassment spurs scientists on to greater achievements, leading to a smashing vindication of their basic viewpoint, then so be it."

Thomism as an antecedent philosophy

Thomism, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, holds that "Everything that is moving is moved by another." Within Thomistic philosophy, given the existence of something, and the premise that everything that is must be caused by something else, the existence of the universe is proof of the existence of a Creator God, the "unmoved mover," more real than the universe itself, and therefore the sole agent able to set it in motion. To a Thomist, the exploration of the cosmos leads irresistibly back to the Creator, more solid and real than the vaporous universe itself. The evidential relationship of material existence to God can be seen as paralleling theistic realism which demands recognition of God before studying material existence.

Scientific criticism of theistic realism

Theistic realism as Johnson, a lawyer with no scientific training, describes it is considered to be anti-scientific. Since the goal of science is to describe natural phenomenon in comprehensible ways, scientists try to rely on as limited a number of assumptions as possible. The fundamental tenets summarized in the philosophy of science do not require any appeal to supernatural causes or events. Therefore, adding the theistic assumption as a prerequisite for doing science is not only scientifically unnecessary, it is bad form.

For one, the existence of a god or deity is a question that science alone cannot answer since there is no experiment that can be made that can conclusively answer the question. However, since certain descriptions of the hypothesized deity can be and have been scientifically falsified, there is a level to which claims of theistic realists can be tested. For Johnson, using the scientific method to prove or disprove aspects of the omnipotent and omniscient God in which he believes is strictly not allowed. The natural consequence of this is that Johnson rejects any universalist statement made about the primacy of natural laws or mathematical proof since there exist conditions whereby all such things can be violated by God. This is diametrically opposed to the empirical assumption of science and mathematics. As Johnson has it, then, mathematics and science cannot be done on their own terms and must only be realized in the context of his conception of theism.

As a statement of faith, there is nothing a priori evident in science or in philosophical naturalism that requires the rejection of a creator or deity. The existence or lack of existence of a creator is not a fundamental premise for the ability to do scientific research. If the opposite were true, it would be expected that theistic scientists would be more successful than atheistic scientists, but there is no evidence that such is the case. Theistic realism makes the claim that any scientific endeavor which does not explicitly accept a creator as an a priori premise is doomed to failure. This claim can either be considered to be falsified by virtue of the fact that current scientific models do an excellent job at predicitively explaining natural phenomenon without explicitly taking that condition, or it can be considered to be unfalsifiable since the failure can be claimed by the theistic realist will always be on the horizon, though not yet seen (see God of the gaps).

Additionally, Johnson's appeal to design arguments (Johnson was the person who coined the term Intelligent Design) is rejected since it is not scientific. While holding that the grandeur of the universe leading inevitably to the existence of a deity is a statement of faith, it is not an empirical observation. Science ultimately remains neutral in such questions of faith since apparent design can be seen in many areas that are not the result intelligent agency. Chaos theory, for example, gives mechanistic explanations for events that appear superficially to be designated but only rely on probabilistic random processes.

What is more, many who hold to the basic tenets of theistic realism do a very poor job at explaining natural phenomenon. For example Flat Earth creationists, modern geocentrists, and creation scientists all rely on miracles and physically impossible models of nature in order to make their view of the created universe compatible with observations. That accepting a theistic realism assumption leads to pseudoscience is a good reason for theistic scientists to accept a more accommodating view how to integrate faith and science. Some theistic realists argue that reference to such groups is an example of a straw man association since many of these groups base their beliefs on assumptions other than theistic realism, but the critics maintain that it is the dogmatic approach to assumptions like theistic realism that causes the promulgation of pseudoscientific ideas.

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