"The present relations of science and religion" versus "We are not going back to that!" Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps) Abstract. Imagine a student who is interested in the relationship between science and religion. "A student of what exactly?" It does not matter greatly here: many of us are students somehow, despite not wanting to be. You direct them to the philosophy department. In the past, they might well have been recommended C.D. Broad's "The Present Relations of Science and Religion." Today one probably directs them to Donald Davidson's clever (or simply strange) arguments against skepticism, which appeal to an omniscient interpreter. I anticipate a number of philosophers thinking: we are not going back to C.D. Broad types - well-worded, well-researched common sense. Perhaps the economist in every professional philosopher leans in this direction: give students a clever argument to chew on, even if it is false; and professional philosophers something to object to; and don't offer them something about which some good scientists rightly think, "I could do something like that. Close enough." Draft version: version 3 (minor revisions; v2, 18th February 2026 - minor revisions; version 1 14th January 2026) With how well I am doing this year Into madness I shall soon peer Introduction "What is the relationship between science and religion? Must science be opposed to religion?" Who does not ask such questions? "I don't." You certainly do! A student is interested in the matter. You direct them to the philosophy department. To address matters such as this: that is what the philosophy department is there for, surely. Various scientists, or admirers of science, are fond of saying that there has been no progress in philosophy. But there is probably a change in what one offers the interested student and many insiders surely regard this as progress. In the not so distant past, I believe a professional philosopher would have offered them C.D. Broad's essay "The Present Relations of Science and Religion," in this country of ours anyway. Now they might well think: how about Donald Davidson, Davidson and the omniscient interpreter? But I myself like some Broad-like material sometimes, even if the position argued for by the material is somewhat different. Below I present what I mean by Broad-like, in the next part of this paper, that is. In the third part I present Davidson and why I think this would be favoured by many. But in the final part, I conclude that this case overvalues Davidson over Broad. C.D. Broad-like Below is how Broad opens his 1939 essay "The Present Relations of Science and Religion": "Fifty or sixty years ago anyone fluttering the pages of one of the the many magazines which then catered for the cultivated and intelligent English reader would have been fairly certain to come upon an article bearing somewhat the same title as that of the present paper. The author would probably be an eminent scientist, such as Huxley or Clifford; a distinguished scholar, such as Frederic Harrison or Edmund Gurney; or a politician of cabinet rank, such as Gladstone or Morley. Whichever side he might take, he would write with the moral fervour of which Englishmen at that time had an inexhaustible supply. Nowadays the so-called 'conflict between Religion and Science', which was then appetizingly hot from the oven, has acquired something of the repulsiveness of half-cold mutton in half-congealed gravy. There seems to be a widespread opinion that Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, with some highly technical and not readily intelligible assistance from Professor Whitehead, have enabled the lion to lie down with the lamb." Half-cold mutton in half-congealed gravy, enabled the lion to lie down with the lamb: what stylish writing, even more stylish than his usual standard, I feel. Was that because he realized that people will turn to this essay for some years hence, to find out what a hard-working sensible intelligent man of his time thought about this topic? Was that because he was aware of the severity of the competition? Not only are there the writers of his past - Huxley, Clifford, Harrison, Gurney', Gladstone and Morley - there are also various others, such as scientist contemporaries wondering, "Can I not do what the philosopher does?" Probably he took into account both factors and upped his literary game. I imagine him very stressed while writing this. (Probably various people compare my writings to that of Broad, but they are unstrained writings of a relatively carefree person in comparison.) Anyway, it is not the flashy stylistic flourishes which I am interested in here: for any students of style, I think much the same paper can survive without these. Broad focuses on Christianity. He tries to specify its central doctrines. Then he sensibly says: "Now it is quite clear that none of the empirical sciences has or could have any logical bearing on a great deal of the Christian doctrine about Jesus. It is absurd to suppose that empirical science could prove or disprove, make probable or improbable, the doctrine of the existence and triune structure of the Godhead and of the uniquely intimate connexion between one of its differentiations and the man Jesus. The fundamental question is whether any part of this doctrine is intelligible, or whether it is nothing but meaningless verbiage masquerading in the grammatical form of intelligible sentences. Obviously that question cannot be answered by appealing to the methods or results of natural science." Central doctrines of Christianity concerning Jesus, God the father and the Holy Spirit are mysterious in nature and the chief question, Broad thinks, is whether the sentences stating these doctrines are even meaningful, a question which you don't turn to a physicist or biologist to answer, or any other empirical researcher it seems. But he does think science is relevant for assessing the truth of Christianity, particularly the miracles it says happened. Later he specifies some assumptions about the world we commonly make, in relation to which an event violating any one of them would probably be regarded as a miracle. He does not think science proves such miracles impossible. But regarding surviving bodily death, he sensibly tells us: "Now, with the doubtful exception of psychical research, none of the sciences tells us anything which lends the least probability to human survival. On the contrary, all that biology teaches of the detailed affinity of ourselves with the other animals, and all that physiology and anatomy tell us of the intimate connexion between lesions of the brain and nervous system and aberrations or obliterations of consciousness, produce an overwhelming impression of the one-sided dependence of mental life on certain very specialized and delicate material structures and processes." It is a judicious, accessible, well-crafted and researched review of this topic of widespread interest: that is what I mean by Broad-like here. (Some more detail here or there would be good, I think, on the strange psychic research findings! And this characterization of Broad-like ignores his racism elsewhere. See 1950.) Yet I anticipate many a professional philosopher thinking, "We are not going back to that." I should warn readers that I have not asked them: they probably will not be too forthright on this matter of opinion. Their record of replying to my recent emails, or the record of some employed nearby, is not great! Donald Davidson Today, to the student who comes to a philosophy department interested in science-religion relations, one might recommend Donald Davidson's arguments which appeal to an omniscient interpreter. Davidson aims at a scientifically-respectable account of linguistic meaning, one in which meanings are not supernatural entities. What does a sentence a person utters mean? It does not mean whatever they intend it to mean, as Humpty Dumpty maintained (Talmage 1996). Meaning is something public and observable. It means what a radical interpreter would interpret it as meaning. "A radical interpreter: what is that?" A radical interpreter already knows a language and learns this speaker's language from scratch, observing when sentences are assented to and dissented from. Now a radical interpreter, Davidson thinks, has to interpret charitably, which means roughly or exactly this: interpret the other as expressing true beliefs, by the interpreter's lights, whenever plausible. Otherwise they will never make progress with language learning. For example, if the other uses a certain sentence when and only when in the presence of a rabbit, don't interpret them as hallucinating a squirrel and meaning "There is a squirrel." Charitable interpretation allows for some disagreement still, but only against a background of much shared belief. But at this point, a skeptical voice can be heard. The skeptic says, "Let's grant all this, but could not the shared belief, the vast agreement, all be false." Here Davidson makes a strange move. He asks us to imagine an omniscient interpreter, saying that there is nothing absurd about such a being. The omniscient interpreter interprets us in a way that entails there is much common ground between themselves and us. But since they are omniscient, this common ground is all true! I don't know who responds to Broad but a number of philosophers have engaged with this argument of Davidson, even if we focus on simply the appeal to the omniscient interpreter at the end. I made a handout summarizing some responses just the other day. Some philosophers surely feel it is much better for the official end of professional philosophy - knowledge - to chew on Davidson's clever and unusual line of argument than respond to Broad, which feels like the discussion at any number of discussion clubs polished and inscribed for posterity. "We learn lots of new things from engaging with Davidson's argument," they think. Note: from when Broad wrote, around a forty year wait for such a thing! Overvaluing Davidson? The high value placed on Davidson-like work probably partly has to do with the impression that what Broad does any number of people could do. Perhaps, but regarding some of these people, would they do it? Many a theoretical physicist, etc., probably feels they have better stuff to do! Famous natural scientists who appear in public discussing religion and science appear like metaphorical wrestlers from entertainment wrestling to me, villainous ones even, that they take up a bold, iconic, rhetoric-heavy, imbalanced position. One thinks of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, who famously described religious visions of the afterlife as a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. Assuming they can do what Broad does, "avoid the role of the weakling referee in this dispute at all costs," seems to be their private wisdom. Then there are probably people who would like to play this role but cannot quite do this. The anthropologist Doctor Jeanette Edwards (no relation to me), now Professor, Professor Emeritus actually, writes: "Scientists are understood to have a special kind of knowledge which can be imparted, more or less successfully, to non-scientists ('the public') via education. The traffic is decidedly one-way." (2002: 166) I think Edwards would like to write a judicious essay on science and non-science, if not quite religion - to follow her head of department role by occupying the grown-up position in a room of brattish talented "children" - but I think she would find it difficult, as she probably suggested to me herself near the turn of the century. She risks appearing in the verbal or conceptual costume of her professional tribe, which needs to be stripped down somewhat, if not shed completely. (Maybe she can now, or is getting closer, on this matter of long-term interest to her: who knows? I think many a philosophy department head is not so different.) Even if convinced by this proposal that the Broad role is not at such threat from competition, philosophers are likely to feel that there is enough competition that going for the cut-above-the-rest position is not sensible practice. Come up with a big idea/ingenious argument that produces a boom in interest! But a student surely comes to philosophy for this as much as Davidsonian cleverness. Not everyone has access to the brains of a sensible Oxford or Cambridge club man, or do they? (And from times past, I often wonder what an intelligent observer - no genius probably - thought of the world. Consider the situation if the common sense of given time is never on record, only the ingenious arguments that produce a boom in interest!) From the comfort of my bedroom, I declare: we are not economists; we must not be afraid to impoverish ourselves?!!!!! References Broad, Charlie Dunbar. 1939. The Present Relations of Science and Religion. Philosophy 14: 131-154. Available at: https://www.ditext.com/broad/rsr.html [This ditext does not keep any of my writings. What is the big difference?!] Davidson, Donald. 1977. The method of truth in metaphysics. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2 (1):244-254. Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. Hume's solution to the problem of induction, miracles, and avatars. Available at PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWHST Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. Summary of some responses to Donald Davidson's omniscient interpreter argument against skepticism. Available at academia.edu and PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWSOS-3.pdf Edwards, Jeanette (Edwards, no relation to me). 2002. Bits and Bytes of Information. In Nigel Rapport (ed.), British Subjects. Oxford: Berg. Sample, Ian. 2011. Stephen Hawking: "There is no heaven; it's a fairy story." The Guardian 15th May 2011. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven Talmage, Catherine J. L. (1996). Davidson and humpty dumpty. Noûs 30 (4):537-544.