Executive Summary

This white paper examines the foundational presuppositions that make science possible and contrasts them with the epistemological drift that occurs when a culture abandons belief in a fixed and intelligible creation grounded in divine order. It argues that the modern crisis of pseudoscience—manifested in conspiracy theories, arbitrary metaphysics, and self-contradictory “scientific” ideologies—arises from the erosion of the metaphysical realism that historically sustained scientific inquiry. Without belief in a coherent, objective reality designed by God, science decays into instrumentalism, scientism, or magical thinking, each substituting technique or ideology for truth.

1. The Classical Presuppositions of Science

1.1. Objective Reality

The scientific enterprise rests on the presupposition that there exists a real, external world that is not a mere projection of human thought or perception. This premise is historically derived from the Judeo-Christian conviction that creation is distinct from the Creator—contingent yet ordered—and therefore knowable through reason and observation.

1.2. Rational Intelligibility

A second presupposition is that the world operates according to consistent, rational principles. This “rational transparency” of nature presumes an underlying logos. As Johannes Kepler put it, science is “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” This idea provided the intellectual confidence to search for laws of nature rather than submit to mythic chaos or fatalistic determinism.

1.3. Moral and Epistemic Honesty

Science assumes a moral discipline of truth-seeking: that deception, bias, and willful ignorance are wrong. The idea that truth is to be pursued for its own sake flows from the moral realism of a world created by a truthful God. Without this moral framework, empirical rigor collapses into narrative preference or political convenience.

1.4. Stability and Universality of Natural Law

If creation is the product of a faithful and unchanging Creator, then its laws are stable. This assumption enables repeatable experiments, mathematical modeling, and technological application. In contrast, if the universe is self-originating and purposeless, there is no ultimate reason why its regularities should persist, nor why the human mind should be capable of grasping them.

2. The Disintegration of Scientific Rationality in a Post-Theistic Culture

2.1. From Metaphysical Realism to Constructivism

The loss of belief in creation has led to a shift from realism (truth corresponds to reality) to constructivism (truth is socially or linguistically constructed). Once scientific knowledge is redefined as a cultural artifact, its authority becomes political rather than empirical. Competing “narratives” replace the search for objective truth.

2.2. The Rise of Scientism and Instrumentalism

In the absence of metaphysical grounding, science often rebrands itself as scientism—a worldview claiming that only empirical methods yield truth, while denying its own metaphysical assumptions. Alternatively, science is reduced to instrumentalism: the idea that theories need not be true, only useful. This utilitarian approach strips science of its truth-seeking essence and converts it into a tool of control.

2.3. Relativism and the Erosion of Verification

When truth is defined by consensus or “lived experience,” empirical verification becomes secondary to social validation. The boundary between science and pseudoscience blurs, as both appeal to authority, emotional resonance, or community identity rather than correspondence with reality.

2.4. The Cult of “Alternative Knowledge”

In cultures unmoored from objective creation, pseudoscientific movements arise to fill the void: astrology recast as “energy fields,” quantum mysticism used to justify magical thinking, or conspiratorial cosmologies supplanting empirical evidence. Such beliefs mimic scientific form—experiments, data, expert language—without submitting to falsifiability or coherence.

3. The Moral and Theological Dimensions of Truth-Seeking

3.1. The Biblical Grounding of Inquiry

The biblical worldview sees creation as very good (Genesis 1:31) and human beings as image-bearers tasked to “subdue the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Knowledge is thus a stewardship under divine authority, not a self-deifying act. The humility of empirical method mirrors this moral posture of creaturely dependence.

3.2. Pride as the Root of Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience often originates not in ignorance but in pride—the refusal to submit to a reality one did not create. When man becomes the measure of all things, he fashions theories that reinforce desire rather than confront truth. Thus pseudoscience becomes a psychological and moral rebellion, not merely an intellectual error.

3.3. The Ethical Consequences of Epistemic Rebellion

Once knowledge is decoupled from truth, manipulation replaces discovery. Technological prowess without moral realism enables exploitation, propaganda, and nihilism. The same techniques that once revealed God’s handiwork are now employed to simulate, distort, or deny it.

4. The Structure of Pseudoscientific Thinking

Feature

Science (under Theism)

Pseudoscience (under Post-Theism)

Ontology

Creation is real, intelligible, and orderly

Reality is fluid, perception-driven, or socially constructed

Epistemology

Observation and reason aligned with divine order

Authority of emotion, narrative, or ideology

Method

Falsifiable, cumulative, humble before evidence

Unfalsifiable, circular, self-confirming

Aim

Truth and understanding

Control, comfort, or identity validation

Ethic

Honesty, humility, accountability

Assertion, charisma, and persuasion

5. Reintegrating Science with Metaphysical Realism

5.1. Restoring the Concept of Creation

Reasserting creation as the foundation of intelligibility restores science’s confidence in the coherence of nature. This does not demand confessional theology in laboratories, but rather metaphysical humility: recognition that order is given, not invented.

5.2. Rebuilding Moral Discipline in Inquiry

Scientific integrity requires moral realism. Truth-telling, data transparency, and reproducibility are not procedural conveniences but moral imperatives grounded in the divine nature of truth.

5.3. Reorienting Education toward Wisdom

Education must distinguish between technique and wisdom. A scientist who can manipulate nature without understanding its meaning is not enlightened but dangerous. Integrating philosophy and theology with scientific training restores science’s vocation as the pursuit of wisdom, not power.

6. Conclusion: Science as a Theological Vocation

Science arose not in spite of theology but because of it. It was sustained by belief in a rational Creator who endowed creation with order and the human mind with the capacity to discern it. When that belief wanes, the rational scaffolding of science collapses, leaving behind either nihilism or superstition masquerading as empiricism. To preserve genuine science in the postmodern world requires recovering its metaphysical foundation—a renewed confidence that truth is real, that creation is intelligible, and that to study it is to honor the One who made it.