Science is not an all-powerful authority which holds the answer to all questions about life. In a general sense, the term, science, refers to organized knowledge. It  is also commonly used in a methodological sense to refer to a systemized inquiry into the nature of  things.  In the intellectual world, it is widely understood as an activity that uses clearly specified rules to produce knowledge in all disciplines.  This general and elementary discussion of the scientific approach highlights several issues from a Christian perspective.

A Product of Worldviews
The worldview that scholars hold determines the scope, direction and methods of their scientific  activities. Their worldview places  a limit on their conception and practice of the scientific approach. What they see  as important subjects for intellectual inquiry and how they go about pursuing these, depend on their worldviews.
The scientific approach is not a worldview; it is a product of worldviews. The scientific approach is not a worldview; it is a product of world-views. Scholars think about reality and attempt to understand it with the scientific approach in the context of their worldview.  Sometimes its products contribute to reshape worldviews, but the scientific approach remains a way of knowing that develops within particular worldviews.

The Dominant Perspective
Whether you are in the natural sciences, humanities, arts or other disciplines, your lecturers usually  introduce your courses with an appeal to the materialist conception of the scientific approach as the intellectual standard. This perspective on the scientific approach  deliberately excludes God and the supernatural.

This is how its protagonists start. They do their best to distinguish science from non-science. On one hand they indicate that the  scientific approach is focussed on what we can taste, hear, touch, smell or see. They advise you to understand these using only human rationality. On the other hand, they insist that whatever doesn’t fit into their narrow materialistic approach is not valid knowledge but  ‘pseudo science’ or ‘junk science.’ They use terms such as superstition, myths and religion in a derogatory manner as examples of non-science, and suggest that respectable intellectuals don’t extent an interest  beyond material reality.

An important point about this perception of the scientific approach is that it is, in fact, a belief. Scholars who contend that ‘science’ should not and cannot extend beyond the physical world don’t have a scientific basis for this assertion. No universal scientific experimentation was implemented specifically to prove that acceptable definitions and scope of the scientific approach must necessarily exclude God and the supernatural. Proponents of this view are simply compelled by their worldview to hold this position.

The danger here is that this belief can easily be stamped on your mind as an inviolable truth for the rest of your learning career and beyond. Unfortunately, this is what has happened to many intellectually complacent Christians. From this very critical beginning, such believers surrender the right for defining the nature, scope, methodology and legitimacy of knowledge to anti-Christian philosophies.

The Role of Assumptions
Scholars start their engagement with knowledge from primary assumptions that precede and could not have been based on the scientific methodology. These primary starting points are  beliefs.  Yes, the scientific approach is rooted in nonscientific beliefs. Two of these beliefs are  uniformity of the natural world and the law of cause and effect.

Uniformity of the material world
One of the most important assumptions of the scientific approach is the  uniformity of the material world. This primary assumption is an article of faith in the intellectual world. If there is a deviation from uniformity, we know it, and we raise questions about abnormalities. Often, a substantive part of a scientific inquiry is to analyze these abnormalities in order to fine-tune our understanding of  regularity.

When we study things descriptively, we attempt to understand complex order and regularity that exist in all creation. When we predict in the scientific sense, we are saying that, based on our careful observation of patterns or trends, things are likely to behave in one or a number of ways.

Every effect has a cause.  This assumption of uniformity is also central to analytical techniques. When researchers encounter a deviation from uniformity in their analysis, they usually do one of several things. They explain it on a probability basis,  blame it on data quality or hope that future methodological developments will fix the problem.

Cause and effect
The law of cause and effect is another primary assumption of the scientific approach. Every effect has a cause. In scholarship as in everyday life, we must take this law for granted in order to make sense of our rationality, analysis and conclusions. Christian scholars recognize the Almighty God as the living, primary and eternal uncaused cause of all things. From Him everything in the universe derive its existence and ultimate meaning.   Predictably,  most intellectuals who claim to reject or ignore the primary assumption of regularity, are in a dilemma about the law of cause and effect. They are aware that this primary assumption has huge implications for methodology. Therefore they simply adopt it for pragmatic reasons, but claim to be  non committed about what or who the cause is.

This attitude is an important characteristic of non-Christian scholarship which you should train yourself to recognize early in your learning career. Whenever non-Christian scholars  are driven to a dead-end by the logical or methodological implications of their ungodly beliefs, they easily steal biblical assumptions to bail themselves out.

Assumptions and the research process
Primary and working assumptions play important roles in the scientific approach.  Specifically, primary assumptions come to focus here because some fundamental questions that we need to settle decisively before we can engage in other scientific activities, cannot take advantage of the scientific approach. They cannot be subjected to any form of scientific manipulation at all. They retain their primitive character as essential beliefs.

This is not the case with working assumptions. Scholars make robust use of  working assumptions in all fields of study. Researchers frequently run into intellectual dead-ends where they are forced to either abandon a project or bulldoze their way with the help of working assumptions. It is common for experienced researchers to ‘discipline’ or focus methods and analysis with working assumptions.

Some scholars are guided by working assumptions to design studies, collect materials, interpret data and reach conclusions that are consistent with their starting assumptions. Others take an opposite direction. They use methods and techniques that have inbuilt potential to generate types of data that strengthen the plausibility of given sets of working assumptions.Reckless use of working assumptions is common in the intellectual community.  Either way, working assumptions are useful tools in the research process. They are provisional, revisable and fully within the control of the researcher. At the same time, this versatility can be a source of weakness for working assumptions. Reckless use of working assumptions is common in the intellectual community. Some anti-Christian scholars use  ridiculous assumptions in their  attacks on your faith, especially in issues about human origins, cosmology and miracles.

An example of the interactions of assumptions and explanations is in the field of cosmology. How did the universe come into existence? Most non-Christian scholars approach this question with  naturalistic primary and working assumptions.  First, most of them start with the assumption that there is no supernatural. Immediately, this assumption rules out, for them, any reference or thinking outside the natural realm. They become disadvantaged by the epistemic constraints of their naturalistic primary assumptions. With this limitation, they can only provide nature-bound explanations of nature itself.  In effect, they offer descriptions of processes  in the universe as an explanation for the origins of the same universe. They are trapped in this ludicrous cycle because they reject a prori all every possible explanations go beyond the boundaries of nature. The reason for their stunted intellectual imagination is clear. All non-nature bounded alternatives violate their primary beliefs. They prefer materialistic theories that contradict  God’s  account of the universe He created.

The point here is not to cast doubt on all scientific techniques that make use of assumptions. These discussions are simply a way to alert you about the role of primary and working assumptions in the world of knowledge. In many cases, working assumptions are used to steer scientific research to specific preferred directions.

Learn to identify the power of  assumptions in the way people reason, argue and engage in formal research. When next you hear someone say something like  ‘assuming . . . ,’ or  ‘on the assumptions that . . . ,’ don’t take such phrases lightly. Evaluate statements, arguments and perhaps packages of evidence that follow as logical consequences of stated and implicit assumptions.

Production of Knowledge
The scientific approach is really a refinement  of commonsense thinking.  Scholars first presuppose  uniformity of the natural world and the law of cause and effect. They proceed to the sequential processes of identifying research questions, developing  informed guesses, producing measurable definitions of terms, collecting information, data analysis, testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions. The last activity usually involves probabilistic statements about associations of factors or variables. These statements, in turn, generate new research hypotheses. This cycle goes on with minor variations depending on the discipline of knowledge involved.

Explanations
Contrary to popular views, the scientific approach doesn’t produce conclusions that are immune to falsification. Scholarly explanations start with detailed descriptions. They can make probabilistic statements of associations or correlations from observed patterns. Technically speaking, the scientific approach doesn’t really explain anything. Experienced scholars speak more modestly about patterns and strengths of associations or relationships among observable and measurable phenomena. These associations and correlations cannot always be equated to causation.

Objectivity in the scientific approach
You probably have heard people say that ‘conclusions’ derived from the scientific approach are unbiased. Again,  this is technically incorrect. The scientific approach and scholarship in general are never completely free of biases. The scientific approach is influenced by many factors. Decisions about choice of research questions, research methods, analytical techniques, conclusions and recommendations are tainted by values, passions and allegiances in various political, religious,  economic and cultural settings.

Limitations of the Scientific Approach
There are several limitations of the scientific approach that call for caution in its use as an instrument for understanding reality.  Three of these limitations are highlighted here. In its current state of development, the scientific approach is best able to describe what is seen in the created order.    First, the scientific approach is limited as a criterion for validation of knowledge. It cannot explain or approve itself. Secondly, the scientific approach is limited in scope. There is a limit to what can  be usefully pursued by the scientific approach. Naturalist-oriented scholars misrepresent this limitedness by  deliberately restricting their scientific imagination. At every point that questions of  cause or final authority arise, they routinely avoid the issues claiming that  the scientific approach should not go beyond the realms of nature.

Christians accept the limitation of the scientific approach on an entirely different ground. As an activity conducted by created beings, the scientific approach is not able to handle questions that go beyond the created order without submitting to the supernatural authority of divine revelation. This is to say that the scientific approach is not able to deal with the “why” questions in the created order with only nature-bounded methodology. In its current state of development, the scientific approach is best able to describe what is seen in the created order. In every stage of research, the scientific approach must recognize the supernatural and allow for God’s absolute control and full activity in nature. Unfortunately, many of your non-Christian lecturers don’t accept this position.

Thirdly, the scientific approach is limited in certainty. Its conclusions are at best provisional. There is always ample room for further revisions, expansions and sometimes outright rejection of existing insights from the scientific approach. Only truth is so supremely confident and inerrant that it cannot be falsified.

It is important that you don’t, at any point in your intellectual career, confuse the tentative evidence from the scientific approach with the certainty of the revelation knowledge that is in the Bible. A fruitful Christian attitude to the scientific approach is neither to minimize its limitations nor exaggerate its potential as an instrument for progress of knowledge.

Professional Abuses
Many intellectuals understand the scientific approach in ways that exclude God and the supernatural. They demand that you must presuppose disbelief in God, claiming that the scientific approach can only deal with what is in the nature around us.

Such intellectuals don’t draw your attention to the fact that a refusal to presuppose belief in God is simply a presupposition of non belief in God. They know that to put things in such clear terms would make reasonable thinkers see the weakness of their claims. Therefore they start by drawing you into their predominantly naturalistic starting point. Once they get you to agree with their primary assumptions, they proceed to show you the ‘illogic’ of bringing God and the supernatural into the scientific approach. This is the arrogance of scientism that is evident in every branch of learning. These non-Christian scholars use professional and financial powers at their disposal to resist and suppress alternative conceptions and methodologies that derive from the Christian worldview. In some countries, ungodly scholars coopt the court, the media and powerful private sector institutions into the task of enforcing their preferred scientific approach. Thus, what is merely an approach to knowledge is formalized as academic orthodoxy, and  policed  with extreme authoritarianism that mocks every concept of intellectual freedom.

Implications for Your Studies
Satan confronts you at various points in the learning process.  One is at the introductory stage of courses when worldviews pose as undisputed authorities in knowledge.  How do you know when this is happening? When your lecturers suggest that your Christian beliefs are inferior to what you are taught in class, when you are pressured  to keep your ‘religious’ beliefs aside, you can be sure that worldview interests have displaced objective intellectual tradition.

There is no conflict between the scientific approach and belief in God. The real conflict is between ungodly worldviews and the scientific approach. The correct use of the  scientific approach is to begin from  God’s revealed truth in your effort to understand the dimensions of reality in specific disciplines of  study.  In this way, you don’t make the mistake of elevating the authority of the scientific approach above divine revelation.