CFC Lecture

Jeffrey Koperski: Why Scientific Realism Depends on Theism

Center for Faith and Culture | February 10, 2021
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Some of the central ideas in science rest on a theological foundation…. If you take the theistic foundation away, science is going to have some problems.

Dr. Koperski explains the important connection between science and belief in God in his recent lecture, “Science, Philosophy, and Theology: Who Owes What to Whom?”, delivered at the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture at Southeastern Seminary. You can watch it above, or read highlights below.

Jeffrey Koperski is professor of philosophy at Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan. He has a Ph.D. (Philosophy) from Ohio State University and a B.E.E. (Electrical Engineering) from the University of Dayton. His areas of expertise are philosophy of science and philosophy of religion.

While most of his early work focused on philosophical questions in physics, his more recent publications deal with issues at the intersection of philosophy, science, and religion. He is an editorial board member for Philosophy Compass and has published articles in Philosophy of Science, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, among others. His two books are titled The Physics of Theism: God, Physics, and the Philosophy of Science (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) and Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Routledge, 2020).

If you take the theistic foundation away, science is going to have some problems.

Highlights:

  • “Some of the central ideas in science rest on a theological foundation…. If you take the theistic foundation away, science is going to have some problems — at least if you believe science tells us things that are not merely useful, but things that are actually true.”
  • “If you want to be a scientific realist, you might need to be theist. Otherwise the most you can rationally believe is that science works (it’s useful), but it’s not necessarily true. Scientific realism depends in part on theism.”

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The L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture seeks to engage culture as salt and light, presenting the Christian faith and demonstrating its implications for all areas of human existence.

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