Open Journal of Philosophy, 2023, 13, 171-182

https://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpp
ISSN Online: 2163-9442
ISSN Print: 2163-9434

Science, Pseudoscience, and Religion

Shane Andre

(Retired) Department of Philosophy, California State University, Long Beach, USA

How to cite this paper: Andre, S. (2023). Abstract

Science, Pseudoscience, and Religion. Open
Journal of Philosophy, 13, 171-182. Astrology, homeopathy, and creationism are common examples of pseudo-
https://doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2023.132011 science, but scientist Alan Sokal in “Beyond the Hoax” adds several novel
examples to this list—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I contend that this is a
Received: February 17, 2023
Accepted: May 3, 2023 mistake, for several reasons. First, none of these religions claims to approach
Published: May 6, 2023 the world in scientific terms. Second, all of these religions are examples of
ethical monotheism, but there are many other kinds of religion—for example,
Copyright © 2023 by author(s) and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
Hinduism (many gods), Buddhism (no god), and Taoism (nature religion).
This work is licensed under the Creative Third, unlike some other religions, ethical monotheism tends to place greater
Commons Attribution International weight on orthodox belief than on orthopraxy or right ways of life. You can
License (CC BY 4.0).
be a good Hindu without having to subscribe to the Hindu pantheon of gods.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Open Access
Finally, the foundation of revelation and the source of morality in ethical
monotheism make its goal and methodology very different from those of
science. We can only conclude that Sokal’s examples of religion are not
pseudosciences. If any of the revelations on which they are founded prove to
be unwarranted, it would be more accurate to call them pseudo-revelations.

Keywords
Pseudoscience, Ethical Monotheism, NOMA-Principle, Diversity of Religion,
Methodological Naturalism

1. Introduction
Thanks in part to Karl Popper’s criterion of falsifiability, many of the ideologies
of modern science have come to be known as pseudoscience, and examples of it
have proliferated, from lore about ancient astronauts to fantasies about visitors
from outer space. Author of Beyond the Hoax1 (Sokal, 2008) has added a volley
of novel members to the list—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the nationalistic
1
Sokal is perhaps best-known through his parody “Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a trans-
formative hermeneutics of quantum gravity,” published in Social Text, 1996, and reprinted with an-
notations here.

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S. Andre

ideology of modern Hinduism (not the ancient religion of India)—along with

the familiar examples of astrology, homeopathy, and “creation science.” As he
puts it, “Indeed, an unbiased count [of followers] would probably show that
Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are the most widely practiced pseudosciences
in the world today, far above homeopathy or astrology. And in their fundamen-
talist versions they are the most dangerous as well.”
His list of pseudosciences will likely be met with a mixture of agreement and
skepticism. While astrology, homeopathy, and creationism are standard exam-
ples of pseudoscience, the same thing is not true of religion. People today tend to
think of religion and science in different ways. They think of science in terms of
the investigation of the natural world by means of scientific method, and of
pseudoscience as fake or sham science. Religion, on the other hand, is supposed
to be concerned with God, the life of the spirit, and morality, so how can it be a
pseudoscience? Has Prof. Sokal discovered a novel fact about religion or only
misunderstood the nature of religion? That is the question I want to pursue in
this paper.

2. The Meaning of “Religion”

First, it is worth asking what Sokal means by “religion.” Unfortunately, he offers
no general account of its meaning but only cites three standard examples—
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all of which are forms of traditional ethical
monotheism (hereafter simply “monotheism”)2 However common it is to think
of religion in those terms, it is simply not true that religion is synonymous with
belief in Almighty God and Holy Scripture. There are religions like Hinduism
that in their popular form believe in many gods, religions like Buddhism that in
their austere form believe in no God or gods, and religions like Taoism and
Confucianism that celebrate tradition and ancestors but make no pretence of be-
lieving in a supernatural God—to mention only a few that have their own stories
to tell. There is even a philosophical religion—Spinoza’s pantheism—that views
God in a wholly immanent form, identifying “him” with an aspect of the world
or nature.
Truly, there are many mansions in religion and, whether we are believers or
not, it is a mistake to identify religion with any one of them. In “Science and Re-
ligion” (Andre, 2020), I call it the “Reverend Thwackum” fallacy, after the comic
character in Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones, who intones “When I mention
religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but
the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion but the Church of
England.” Yes, the latter is a religion, but religion is not the Church of England.
Neither is monotheism the whole of religion. Nevertheless, for the sake of sim-
plicity, it will often be convenient to follow Sokal in speaking of religion as if it
2
According to the Concise Canadian Oxford Dictionary, monotheism is “the doctrine or belief that
there is only one God.” As the term is commonly used, ethical monotheism could be described more
fully as the doctrine that God is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, the Dispenser of Justice and
the Ultimate Source of Morality.

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 S. Andre

were the same thing as monotheism.

That conception of religion is important, for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
are commonly known as examples of “revealed religion.” That is, the faithful re-
gard them as revelations from God, as they are recorded by appointed human
scribes. Whether they are the Torah of Judaism, the Bible of Christianity, or the
Koran of Islam, they are regarded by the faithful as the “word of God.” Broadly
speaking, the believers are of two kinds: those who accept the doctrines of their
religion as being literally true and inerrant—call them “fundamentalists”—and
others who respect them as divinely inspired but also the work of human beings
within a historical and cultural setting, and so subject to modest interpretation
and qualification—call them “moderates.” Sokal is aware of this difference in
approach to belief, and, as we will see later, he sees in it the possibility of hope
for religion.
The role of revelation has two related parts, which can be described in Sokal’s
terms. The first part is to impart the basic truths of cosmology—the creation
story and the fall of man, for instance. The second part is to inculcate a set of
moral teachings, like the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount,
which are deemed to be necessary to follow for salvation and escape from death.
Seen in this familiar light, the goal of religion can briefly be described as the use
of revelation to transmit to sinful humans essential information about the world
and the requirements for salvation—information which can be obtained in no
other way. No doubt this minimal account could be expanded and made to
sound more grandiose, but it seems to fit the three religions we are discussing,
the so-called “children of Abraham.” I haven’t said anything about the role of
faith, but clearly, it takes faith to accept the messages found in one book, rather
than others, as “revelation,” instead of fairy tales.
Thinking of religion in terms of monotheism invites the idea that religion is a
body of doctrine that has no support beyond the dubious claim of divine origin.
Thought of this way, it is easy for critics of religion to compare the methodology
and doctrines of monotheism to those of modern science and find them want-
ing. But it is hollow victory. If you think of fish as anything that lives in the sea,
you are bound to think of whales as big fish. Nevertheless, while Sokal’s concep-
tion of religion is too narrow, what he has to say about monotheistic religions is
perceptive, admirably clear, and right on target.

3. The Meaning of “Science”

“Science,” as Sokal (Andre, 2020) points out, has four distinct but interrelated
senses: an intellectual endeavor aimed at a rational understanding of the natural
and social world; a corpus of currently accepted knowledge [of that kind]; the
community of scientists, with its mores and its social and economic structure;
and finally applied science and its technology. In his own view, he says, science is

a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation and a methodology

aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of the natural and social world. This

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methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: namely,

the commitment to the incessant testing of assertions through observations
and/or experiments—the more stringent the tests, the better—and to revis-
ing or discarding those theories that fail the test.
He adds that “fallibilism” is a corollary of the critical spirit. The scientist can
make mistakes, but ongoing scientific investigation is able to correct those mis-
takes. Given his account of science, the goal of science can perhaps be described
as discovering what is true (or at least approximately true)3 of the natural and
social world, and imparting it to those people who are prepared to accept it.
Science is part of the social world, made up of its practitioners and shared with
technologists and the public at large.
A page later Sokal adds another qualification to his use of the term. “I stress
that my use of the term “science” is not limited to the natural sciences, but in-
cludes investigations aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of factual matters
relating to any aspect of the world by using rational empirical methods analog-
ous to those employed in the natural sciences.” This criterion of scientific status
is too broad, for, as we shall see, there are other kinds of truth and ways of estab-
lishing them than those of scientific method.
The goals of religion and science are not the same, but each of them can be
said to have a goal and alternative ways of achieving those goals. The goal of
science can be said to be the discovery of facts about the natural and social
world, and the use of scientific methods to do so; and the goal of religion to im-
part the content of revelation and the need for faith in God and morality. Both
science and religion take for granted that the achievement of their respective
goals is of value to the general public and worthy of their support.
One of the differences between the goals of religion and science, as I argued in
my article, is that religion is more concerned with morality and post mortem
survival than science is. That may be one reason why many people have more
interest in religion than in science, for the prospect of death is frightening to al-
most everybody. It would be a great thing if religion could teach us how to sur-
vive as souls when our bodies perish. On the other hand, science is not without
appeal either, for it has become closely associated with technology today, and
technology serves immediate needs and interests more effectively than does reli-
gion. For a price, you can buy a smart phone and communicate with your
friends or access information you need at virtually any time, thanks to applied
science. You could pray to God for the same convenience, of course, but you
might have to wait a long time for the answer.
Sokal rejects Stephen Jay Gould’s “NOMA principle,” (Gould, 1999) according
to which science and religion have different roles to play in human life and
should never overlap or interfere with each other. For science is concerned with
the discovery of facts about the world, and religion with the maintenance of val-
ues and the meaning of life. Sokal insists, as I have done, that the NOMA prin-

The qualification is Sokal’s own.

3

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 S. Andre

ciple makes no sense. Values imply a context of facts. If we lived in a world

where every good deed was punished, it would be senseless to admonish people
to follow the golden rule. On the contrary, the admonition to treat others as one
wants to be treated oneself is a good rule to follow because of the fact, as the
saying goes, that what goes around generally comes around.
As Pascal4 was the first to note, rationality requires more than the assessment
of evidence: if the evidence for theism and atheism were approximately equal but
people knew that believers go to heaven, whereas their rivals go to hell, it would
only be rational to be, or pretend to be, a believer. Facts make a difference to our
goals and our choice of means to achieve them, and our values arise from those
goals and means. If I want to be respected by my neighbors, achieving and
maintaining their respect is one of my values, and it calls on me to be friendly,
cooperative, responsible, sincere, and in short respectful of them. That doesn’t
mean that the things we value are easy to achieve, for often achieving one deeply
held value may conflict, or seem to conflict, with others, as when personal liberty
seems to be at odds with one’s own health and safety concerns, or with responsi-
bility for the welfare of others.

4. Are Science and Religion Compatible?

The disparity between their goals and methods invites us to ask whether science
and religion (conceived of in monotheistic terms) are mutually compatible. Sok-
al thinks not, for the worldview of science is incompatible with the tenets of
monotheism. For example, the creation story of Genesis is incompatible, taken
literally, with the well-established theories of geology, paleontology, and biology.
How could it be true that the earth (let alone the universe) was created in seven
days, less than ten thousand years ago, when these sciences require hundreds of
millions of years, if not billions, to explain the evidence of ancient rocks, fossils,
and the diversity of life? If the creation story is true, it must be so in some other
sense than literal truth.
The significance of incompatibility is often lost on laypeople, so let me give an
example. Suppose I tell my listeners that I am an only child, and later I tell them
that I have a sister living in Montreal. Naturally, they will be confused. While
either of these claims is possible by itself, in conjunction they are impossible. If I
am an only child, I can’t have any siblings, and if I have a sister, I can’t be an on-
ly child. If one of these claims is true, the other must be false. That doesn’t tell us
which is false, but it does tell us that they can’t both be true. To determine that
further question we have no alternative but to consult the records and look for
historical evidence.
But what is it for a message to be literally true? It can best illustrated by an
example. Suppose the police receive a message from a phone caller who claims
that a bomb is hidden in the political science building and will go off in half an
hour. The police don’t know whether the message is true or false but they can’t
Pascal, Blaise. The “Wager” in many editions of his Pensees.
4

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afford to take chances, so they clear the building. Now imagine two scenarios
half an hour later. In the first there is no explosion and afterwards inspection of
the premises fails to turn up any evidence of a bomb, even a dummy one. In the
second, there is a violent explosion that rocks the building, shatters the windows,
and starts a fire. Verdicts: in the first scenario the message is a hoax; it is false. In
the second scenario the message is true: the caller said there would be an explo-
sion and there was, in fact, an explosion. By the same token, the religious mes-
sage “God is everywhere” will be true if and only if God is everywhere. Truth in
religion is thus no different from everyday truth or truth in science, though the
evidence for it or against it may take many different forms.
These are examples of the realist theory or, as it is also known, the correspon-
dence theory, of truth: a message is true if and only if what it says turns out to be
the case. There are, of course, other theories of truth, such as the intersubjective
theory, which holds that a message is true if individuals or cultures agree to ac-
cept it, or the utility theory, which holds that a message is true if it is useful in
practice. Sokal rejects these alternative theories of truth, and I think he is right to
do so. A message can be accepted by countless people, or turn out to be useful in
practice, without being true in the realist sense.
Truth for established science is not just what is true for me or what is true for
my culture, but what is true for everybody, whether they are able to recognize it
or not. That is why the heliocentric theory is true and rival theories about the
motion of the planets are false. In other words, science makes a claim to univer-
sality and objectivity, despite the fact that it also admits to fallibility. Is this com-
bination of claims a possible one? Yes, in my opinion it is, provided that the bulk
of scientific claims meets the demands of rational inquiry and are true, or at least
approximately true, and those that don’t meet these standards can, through the
prolonged process of scientific investigation, be identified and amended or dis-
carded. That is why we can speak of the corpus of scientific knowledge as having
transcultural validity and being more than received or local opinion.
The friction between science and the creation story is well-known, but it is not
the only source of trouble for monotheism. Less well-known but just as signifi-
cant is the friction between such religions themselves. A striking example of this,
as I pointed out in my earlier article, is the status of Jesus Christ. While Chris-
tians revere him either as God in human form or as the Son of God, he enjoys no
such status in the other two Abrahamic religions. For Islam, Jesus is one of the
prophets or messengers of God, but neither the first nor the greatest—that role
was reserved for Muhamad—and the account of his virgin birth and resurrection
is simply absent. While Jesus was of Jewish ethnicity, he occupies no special
place in Judaism, unless possibly as someone who for a time was falsely regarded
as the “Messiah.” These different views suggest the limitations of faith-based re-
ligions: they offer no non-question-begging way to deal with the issue of con-
flicting religious claims. They leave us with a set of incompatible claims like this
one: “Either the traditional Christian story of Jesus is true in all major respects,
or it is not.” Not surprisingly, most Christians accept the first alternative, and

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most Moslems and Jews the second. But nobody, as far as I know, accepts the
view that both alternatives are literally true, in the realist sense of the term, for
their incompatibility is only too obvious. You might as well say that, in literal
truth, Jesus both is and isn’t God.
Truth of the empirical variety has to match up with reality, just as an accurate
and up-to-date map of the city must represent the current physical layout of the
city. That is why the heliocentric theory is true and rival theories about the mo-
tion of the planets are false. In other words, science makes a claim to universality
and objectivity, despite the fact that it also admits to fallibility. Is this combina-
tion of claims a possible one? Yes, in my opinion it is, provided that the bulk of
scientific work meets the demands of rational inquiry and are true (or, as Sokal
concedes, at least approximately true), and those that don’t meet these standards
can, through the prolonged process of scientific investigation, be identified and
amended or discarded. Science is truth in the making, not truth in its final form.

5. Science and Pseudoscience

Science is often contrasted, not just with religion, but with pseudoscience. The
philosopher Karl Popper (Popper, 1934) brought this issue to a head in his battle
with logical positivism in the 1930s. The positivists were prone to claim that, in
order to be cognitively meaningful, a proposition had to be either analytic or
empirically verifiable. This criterion worked well enough for examples like “God
is love” but stumbled on ordinary ones like “All humans are mortal,” which in
their generality refer not just to past and present but also to future humans, and
so extend beyond the range of logical verifiability but are perfectly meaningful.
To deal with this problem, Popper proposed to substitute the criterion of falsi-
fiability. “All humans are mortal” is meaningful because it is logically falsifiable:
it is open to the discovery of a single human who cheats death of its inevitability.
Popper was concerned to demarcate scientific discourse from the unscientific
kind, and the criterion of falsifiability seemed to him to serve this goal and also
to show that theological and metaphysical claims are unscientific.
On Popper’s view, only the conjectures of science have passed the test of falsi-
fiability—they have been tried and not found guilty—whereas the conjectures of
pseudoscience cannot even be brought to trial to assess their innocence or guilt,
for they make no predictions which can be observed to be true or false. Not sur-
prisingly, the criterion of falsifiability has been widely adopted by scientists and
public intellectuals to distinguish between scientific and unscientific discourse,
or even more generally between respectable and unrespectable discourse. But
Sokal is wary of its complications. An hypothesis which fails the falsifiability test
may fail to do so, not because it is false, but because it involves one or more false
but untested assumptions. For instance, the theory that matter is composed of
atoms is not falsified by naïve realism, which presupposes the false assumption
that if something looks solid, then it is solid.
Instead of imposing a single criterion to distinguish between science and pseu-

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doscience, Sokal proposes to use a continuum, ranging from well-established

science at one end to pseudoscience at the other end. He places the atomic
theory of matter at the former end, but he might just as well have cited the laws
of motion, the periodic table of the elements, the theory of natural selection, or
many other firmly entrenched scientific theories as examples. Not all science is
well-established, of course. Near the science end but placed at increasing dis-
tances from it are cutting-edge science (neutrino collisions), speculative science
(string theory), and shoddy science (N rays, cold fusion). While they are part of
the periphery of science, they owe their status to their distance from meeting the
high standards of successful science. We need not fear, then, that he treats the
whole of science as a sacred cow.
Pseudoscience, at the other end of the continuum, is another story. That is
where Sokal places the secular and religious ideologies mentioned earlier. Near-
by but a short distance from them is homeopathy. I take it that this is by no
means an exhaustive list of pseudosciences but just enough to illustrate the ap-
plication of the concept. What the examples seem to have in common is two
major features: 1) They ignore the demands of rational inquiry and proceed by
alternative methods, such as the appeal to authority, revelation, a priori supposi-
tions, intuitions, traditions, folklore, naïve reliance on testimony or reception of
facts, and so on; and 2) By and large, these methods are generally inadequate, as
compared with those of rational inquiry, and the results delivered by them are
unreliable and subject to error. (I have ignored “faith” because it can hardly be
counted as a method.) In short, pseudoscience fails to satisfy the demands of ra-
tional inquiry and so, at the very least, it cannot be relied on as a source of truth.
In Sokal’s view, there are two salient differences between genuine science and
pseudoscience. The first has to do with truth. Science aims at the truth whereas
pseudoscience aims only at the semblance of truth, something that claims to be
true but, lacking sufficient warrant, cannot be trusted. The second has to do with
methodology. Well-established science satisfies the demands of rational inquiry:
the rigorous testing of hypotheses by means of observation and experiment, the
insistence on the role of prediction in confirming or disconfirming an hypothe-
sis, the presence of a professional community sharing a common concern for the
truth in their area of jurisdiction, and the importance of the “critical spirit” and
ongoing peer review.
What is curious about pseudoscience in general is that, unrealistic and im-
practical as its theories often are, in comparison with those of science and tech-
nology, the people who embrace them tend to live their everyday lives in a far
more realistic and practical manner. The devout Christian leaps out of the way
of speeding vehicles, no less than the religious skeptic, and the tyro astrologist is
as careful to get his birthday date and time exactly right as is his prospective bi-
ographer. A fanatical terrorist may master the controls of a jet airplane and use it
as a flying bomb, facing certain death, all for the sake of his God and the promise
of enjoying the favors of seventy virgins afterwards. If this gap between theory
and practice is correct, it suggests that the advocate of pseudoscience operates

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with a kind of double standard: a lax one at the theoretical level, and a more cau-
tious one for everyday affairs.

6. Pseudoscience and Religion

Should religion be regarded as a pseudoscience? This may sound like a purely
academic question but it is not, for two reasons. First, caution is required in dis-
cussing a topic on which people tend to have strong feelings and to make hasty
judgements. Once a subject-matter is denounced as pseudoscience, the tempta-
tion is to ignore its claims and the people who accept them. That is what has
happened, for example, with astrology. But there are hundreds of millions, if not
billions, of people who take their religion very seriously, and some of them are
fundamentalists, who are prepared to use intimidation or violence, if necessary,
to protect their faith. Calling their faith pseudoscience will not only antagonize
them, but it will also alienate religious “moderates,” who may be prepared to en-
ter into dispassionate discussion of religion and science if religion is not dis-
missed at the outset by a pejorative label. In a world where some nations are
both nuclear-armed and religion enjoys broad public support, it is not helpful to
lump religion into the same class as astrology.
The second reason for broaching this topic is that, as the comparative study of
religion shows, there are many religions and not all of them are monotheistic or
even theistic. And while some forms of monotheism are incompatible with the
worldview of modern science, we find many people today who see no need to
choose between science and belief in God. Whether we are believers or nonbe-
lievers, religion can hardly be dismissed as “pseudoscience.” As the O.E.D. de-
fines the term, pseudoscience is “a pretended or spurious science, a collection of
related beliefs about the world mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific
method or as having the status that scientific truths now have.” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy5 offers an extensive and scholarly study of the con-
cepts of science and pseudoscience, without mentioning religion. Other dictio-
naries I have consulted also associate pseudoscience, as the very term suggests,
with science. To associate it with religion is a step too far.
Sokal seems to take for granted that the cosmology and methodology of mo-
notheism are inferior to those of established science or even of those areas of
science which fall short of its exacting standards, but that may only be because
religion is not in the same line of business as science. While I am sympathetic to
this kind of critique, I don’t find it compelling. Yes, monotheists are concerned,
amongst other things, with the world we live in, but only in a general sort of
way, where their primary concern is with God. Unlike scientists, who struggle to
understand the world in more and more detail, monotheists are interested in the
big picture, not the fussy details. That is why the laws of motion and the periodic
table of the elements are part of science and not part of religion.
5
If a natural being is one subject to the laws of nature, we could think of a supernatural being as one
not subject to the laws of nature but sometimes claimed to be the “author” of those laws.

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Many people think that, if God exists, he must be a supernatural being6, and
that there are good reasons to believe in his existence, apart from science. That is
a large set of claims, to be sure, but it may help to explain why science has found
little or no evidence for this outlook. Western science tends to take methodolog-
ical naturalism for granted: the domain of science is limited to those things that
can be investigated by scientific method. Since the hypothesis of the existence of
one or more supernatural beings cannot be investigated by scientific method, it
is no surprise that, if they exist, their existence cannot be confirmed or discon-
firmed by science. They are outside its jurisdiction. While that is a possible reply
to critics of monotheism, I leave it to others to assess its tenability, for I know of
no decisive reason to accept it or reject it.
In any case, there are forms of religion other than monotheism. For example,
Unitarianism is widely considered to be a liberal religion, but its members in-
clude theists, agnostics, and atheists. Buddhism counts as a religion, but in its
austere form, based on the sayings attributed to the Buddha, it directs its follow-
ers to focus, not on distracting metaphysical questions, but on how best to live.
As such, Buddhism is more a way of life than an orthodox set of doctrines.
While Christianity and Islam attach for more importance to orthodoxy, they too
have an orthopraxy aspect. The good Christian is not just someone who pro-
fesses belief in Christian doctrines, but someone who regularly follows the most
cherished ideals of Christianity. He may even be an agnostic or an atheist. When
I asked a friend whom I admired about his religion, he answered “I am a Jewish
atheist.” In other words, he did not subscribe to the religion of Judaism but
identified himself with an ethnicity having its roots in that religion. Almost cer-
tainly, he would have been offended by the suggestion that he was not really a
Jew. There are religions, then, whose members are quite comfortable, as he was,
with the worldview of modern science.

7. Conclusion
To judge from his examples of religion, Sokal’s conception of religion is that of
traditional monotheism. While that form of religion is, as he claims, incompati-
ble with the worldview and methodology of modern science, monotheism is only
one of many forms of religion. As a result, his critique of monotheism is not
necessarily true of other religions. They must be judged on their own merits. It is
also worthy of note that many monotheists today see no conflict between belief
in God and belief in science, and they try to live their lives in the light of the
cherished ideals of religion, without demanding orthodox belief.
Judged by the standards of established science, traditional monotheism falls
short of these standards, but it doesn’t follow that it is a pseudoscience, for it
doesn’t claim to be a science or to meet the same standards as science. To the
extent monotheism rests on divine revelation, it follows that, if there is no God,
then it is based on a faulty premise. In that case it would be better to call it a
6
If a natural being is one subject to the laws of nature, we could think of a supernatural being as one
not subject to the laws of nature but sometimes claimed to be the “author” of those laws.

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 S. Andre

pseudo-revelation than a pseudo-science, for it is clear that monotheism is not a

science nor is it based on scientific methodology.
Important as it is to understand the natural and social world, it would be
folly to insist that this kind of investigation should be the goal of any public-
supported discipline, and that if it is not, then that discipline must be a pseudos-
cience. Consider mathematics, technology, and history. Math—the darling of
physics and applied science or technology—is not conducted with that goal in
mind, for it is a formal or a priori science, developed largely by abstract thinking,
independent of physical observation and experiment. We know that there is an
infinity of numbers, not because we have scoured the universe and found no
highest number, but because of the thought that any number whatever can be
increased by the addition of one. Without math and the tools of measurement,
natural science could not be developed beyond a primitive stage. To dub math a
pseudoscience would be ludicrous.
Technology or applied science has a double role to play. On one hand, it is the
use of scientific information to serve human needs and desires, leading to the
invention and production of countless devices and services, from airplanes to the
Internet, that improve the safety and ease of human life. Since the peoples of the
world are often in conflict, however, note that technology also provides tools for
the killing of humans and destruction of property on a vast scale. While modern
medicine saves countless lives, nuclear and biological weapons threaten to de-
stroy them. On the other hand, technology can be used to carry out the goal of
science itself. The Supercollider Cyclotron in Geneva is used to enlarge our un-
derstanding of the nature and working of subatomic particles, and spacecraft like
the James Webb Telescope allow astronomers to peer into the universe as never
before. Technology is thus not merely the popular servant of science but also one
of the tools of science itself, like the telescope and the microscope. In neither
case can it be regarded as a pseudoscience.
History is another domain where knowledge of people and events in the past
is reconstructed from records, documents, photographic images and other arte-
facts. Science undoubtedly plays a role in this process. Historians would scoff at
someone who maintained that President Lincoln flew by airplane from Wash-
ington, D. C., to Gettysburg, and would be right to do so. But it would be extra-
vagant to call history a science. For, while it makes liberal use of observation and
inference, it does not pursue the goal of understanding the laws of nature. Just as
science uses math and logic to extend its knowledge of the natural and social
world, and just as technology uses science to serve human needs and interests,
history can be said to use science and technology to understand the past. As this
sketch suggests, science does not stand alone in its attempt to understand the
world in all its diversity and significance for humankind. While the notion of
pseudoscience has some application, its use is limited and should not be applied
to anything that falls outside the sphere of natural science.
I have not tried to address the question whether there are, in fact, one or more
supernatural beings responsible for the existence of the universe. While it seems

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S. Andre

unlikely, I know of no compelling evidence one way or the other. Perhaps, as the
Buddha suggests, we should endeavor to lead good lives and not be distracted by
questions that may lie beyond our natural powers.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this pa-
per.

References
Andre, S. (2020). Science and Religion: An Alternative View of an Ancient Rivalry. Open
Journal of Philosophy, 10, 494-510. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2020.104035
Gould, S. J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. Ballantine
Publishing Group.
Popper, K. (1934). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge Classics.
Sokal, A. (2008). Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy, and Culture. Oxford University
Press, p. 347.

DOI: 10.4236/ojpp.2023.132011 182 Open Journal of Philosophy