One often hears scientists say that they don’t “need” to postulate the existence of God to explain anything. The “God hypothesis,” they say, is useless. This, I think, is the key to understanding the animosity of atheistic scientists (such as Richard Dawkins) toward religion, which they view as a threat to science. They fail to appreciate that there are two conceptions of science, not just one.

In the broad sense, science (from the Latin scientia, knowledge) is the attempt to understand the world. It makes no assumptions about which methods will or will not prove useful in doing so. Let us call this activity “broad science,” which is short for “science broadly construed.” In the narrow sense, science is the attempt to understand the world in purely naturalistic terms. Any reference to the supernatural is therefore excluded by fiat. Let us call this activity “narrow science,” which is short for “science narrowly construed.” Narrow science is a specialized game. It’s as if a group of people got together and said, “Let’s see how much of the world we can explain without postulating any supernatural entities; perhaps many of the things that were long thought to require supernatural explanations do not in fact require them.” It would be like saying, “Let’s see whether we can build a functioning automobile without using any metal.” It’s a challenge—an attempt to accomplish something with only certain methods, assumptions, or materials.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with narrow science. Indeed, it has been surprisingly successful in expanding human knowledge. The problem is that many narrow scientists have forgotten that their conception of science is not the only one. It is simply the one they have chosen. When they confront individuals (such as Richard Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga) who conceive of science broadly, or engage in broad science, they accuse them of not doing science at all, or of misunderstanding science, or of trying to corrupt science. In fact, these other individuals are doing science, just not the narrow science that excludes reference to certain entities.

Science, like baseball, presidential politics, and chess, is a rule-governed, goal-directed activity. The rules of narrow science are not the same as the rules of broad science, even if they overlap to a considerable extent and even if the goal (understanding, knowledge) is the same. If we fail to keep the two conceptions of science distinct, we will never progress beyond where we are, which is the stage of name-calling, acrimony, and misunderstanding. What Richard Dawkins should be saying (and would be saying, if he had philosophical training and aptitude) is that he’s not interested in doing broad science, i.e., playing the game of broad science. He likes the challenge of trying to explain everything in purely naturalistic terms. In other words, he likes to play the game of narrow science. This is fine. Some people like baseball; some like cricket. The games are similar but not identical. Wouldn’t it be silly for baseball fans to attack cricket fans for not being “true” baseball fans, or for misunderstanding baseball, or for trying to corrupt baseball?