Adapting to the Loss of Racism: A Case Study in Failed Predictions of Anti-Supernaturalism

In the discourse over the relationship between religion and science, there is a division between those who see naturalism as a necessary assumption for science, one that cannot be empirically scrutinized and therefore cannot be falsified or verified, and those who see both naturalism and belief in the supernatural as competing hypotheses that can be criticized, and potentially falsified. Those who take the latter perspective more often than not believe that mainstream science, where its findings are relevant to the question, has always confirmed the predictions of naturalism. Here I suggest that this view of the historical data is overly simple. As a counterexample, I consider the history of the shifting predictions in naturalistic theories of human origins, particularly the now-debunked belief in racial differences in human morality and intelligence. The centuries-long process of hypothesis formation, testing, falsification, and subsequent hypothesis adjustment is placed in the Popperian framework of the “conventionalist stratagem,” and it is argued that this case study provides useful insights for the dialogue between science and religion today.