A philosophical framework within the science-theology dialogue: A critical reflection on the work of Ernan McMullin

By engaging key questions, such as the existence of God, and the relationship between God and the world in the context of a dialogue with science, theologians need to attend to the character of theological knowledge claims. What is the unity and what are the differences in scientific and theological inquiry? The work of philosopher Ernan McMullin best accounts for scientific rationality as broadly consistent with and even supportive of theological knowledge claims about God and the world.; The argument will be laid out in six steps. In the first chapter, the theological work of three recent Gifford lecturers, Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne, is examined.; Chapter two begins by identifying a philosopher, Ernan McMullin, whose fifty years of writing tenders an extensive account of scientific rationality. More recently, his writing includes a thread of analysis through the science-theology dialogue, thus providing a unique conjunction of perspectives that, according to this study, indicates a synthetic approach. A theory of scientific rationality is developed on the basis of the philosophical analyses by Ernan McMullin. His theory of scientific rationality is known as retroduction. Retroduction is a pattern of inference, which accounts for the hypothetical causes of unobservable entities as verifiable, meaningful objects of a scientific inquiry.; In chapter three, the theory of retroduction is verified as a historically secure theory of scientific progress. Retroduction is a theory that can thus be transposed from a theory of scientific explanation to the basis for an integrated critical realist theory of knowledge in the natural sciences. Retroduction meets the objections of anti-realist. Equally important, in light of the popularity of Imre Lakatos' historically inspired methodology, McMullin lays out a challenge to idealist constructs of science.; In chapter four, the contemporary discipline of cosmology is treated as unique in illustrating the power of McMullin's theory of retroduction. Cosmology is an explanatory and a limit discipline in the natural sciences. An integrated notion of critical realism is tested against the cosmology, where retroduction meets particular success in both extrapolating to the existence of theoretical structures and then, opening up the theological question of God from the vantage point of ongoing verifications of universal intelligibility.; In chapter five, as a result of the way in which critical realism is understood to operate in the sciences, McMullin's distinction between faith and rationality is presented with regard to the notions of creation, the anthropic principle and evolution.; Chapter six brings forward McMullin's contribution of the term ‘consonance’ as a view of integration among the disciplines that respects the view of a transcendent creator God. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...