Mutual Interaction Model

Like Pannenberg’s hypothetic consonanitst model, Russell’s “Creative Mutual Interaction” model looks at the dialogue both in terms of “consonance” and “dissonance” in pursuit of “coherence” between natural sciences and theology. In such a mutual dialogue, theology should not merely serve as science’s religious interpreter as is normally done in so-called “two-worlds” perspectives. Rather, “theology can indeed offer creative suggestions in the form of questions, topics, or conceptions of nature which scientists might find helpful in their research and as judged by their own professional criteria.” In his CMI research program, Russell’s discourse of natural theodicy hinges on his understanding of the coherence between creatio ex nihilo and the singularity t=0 according to the contemporary Big Bang models, the evolution of life made possible by the anthropic principle and the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and God’s objective action in nature without violating the natural order. Ultimately, “The thermodynamic Anthropic principle” is to be placed in the larger context of God’s eschatological fulfillment of creation that is proleptically revealed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. These elements are intrinsically related in Russell’s natural theodicy. In this section, I explore how these components are interrelated in order to expound clearly the gist of Russell’s natural theodicy. In Part III, I critically compare and evaluate Pannenberg’s and Russell’s natural theodicy. 1. Creative Mutual Interaction For Russell, natural sciences and theology can mutually dialogue since the theological-philosophical notion of contingency is central to both disciplines. Hence, Russell believes it can be useful for creating “consonance” between science and theology, while “dissonance” is not dissolved in compliance with methodological naturalism. In this mutually constructive dialogue, Russell finds it fruitful to employ Lakatos’ idea of a scientific theory as a research program. Herein, Russell understands scientific theories and theological doctrines as a metaphorical relationship. To be more concrete, in Imre Lakatos’ view of “the structure of scientific webs,” or a research program, a hardcore theory that unifies the entire program in coherence, is not easily falsified by simple demonstrations of counter-evidence. Rather, they lead to the addition and modification of auxiliary hypotheses, while holding onto the hardcore thesis of the paradigm. Like Carl Hempel, Lakatos’ idea of a scientific theory as a scientific research program adopts a hypotheico-deductive appeaoch, but presents a broader scheme than Hempel’s scheme. That is, in view of the inherently relativistic, probabilistic, and holistic reality of our universe, Carl Hempel points out that when natural scientists establish hypotheses the process is not only inductive but …show more content…
For Lakatos, within a research program auxiliary hypotheses and their data are “bi-directional” in a hypothetico-deductive manner, while the auxiliary hypotheses are in the reciprocal logical connections with the hardcore theory. In other words, “the data follow (quasi-deductive) form the auxiliary hypotheses, and the auxiliary hypotheses from the core theory. In that sense, the data that support an auxiliary hypothesis is theory-laden within the larger context of the paradigm. However, in virtue of that very fact, they support the auxiliary hypotheses and the core theory in turn.” Moreover, auxiliary hypotheses may reinforce or be buttressed by other auxiliary hypotheses as …show more content…
On the other hand, research program becomes “degenerative” when it fails to predict, corroborate, and incorporate those novel facts. In this case, all or most of the auxiliary hypotheses are “added in an ad hoc