False Gods 2: Science

By the 16^th century the development of empirical science, especially the mounting evidence that the earth circled the sun and not the other way round, threatened the traditional view that the world was created and directed by God. The two pillars of the medieval world –scripture and Aristotle –both stated that the earth was the center of the universe and everything moved around it. After all, didn’t God’s word (Psalm 104:5) say “You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken.” But the very careful observations by 16^th century astronomers Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo demonstrated that this geocentric view could not explain the movement of the planets. Galileo was famously tried for defending Copernicus and his books were banned. It was not until 1835 that Copernicus’ and Galileo’s writings no longer appeared on the Church’s list of forbidden books.

In the late 17^th century Newton’s discoveries of the laws of gravity and motion had the opposite effect on theologians.  Newton’s laws demonstrated that the heavenlies that we could see every night revealed a breathtaking creation, complex and yet comprehensible. The creation, as the Apostle Paul said in Romans 1, demanded a creator. Over the 17^th and 18^th century scientists and theologians alike saw God as a great clockmaker.

This creator-God was the central idea of deism, which rejected the God of the scriptures in favor of a god who started things in motion and then stood aside and let history unfold.  Once things got started, the deist god did not intervene in the world in particular ways; prayer and miracles were dismissed as superstition. By the middle of the 19^th century, Darwin, arguing that man arose, not by design but by natural selection, seemed by many to put the final nail in the coffin of the dead body of religion. Science emerged not as an explanation for how the world works, but as the truth, while revealed religion was mere superstition. For many, modern science has made the supernatural not only irrelevant but mere superstition. As Joseph Stiglitz said, “From the search for answers to these questions [how do we know the truth?] arose a new epistemology, based on the empiricism and skepticism of science, which came to prevail over the forces of religion, tradition, and superstition.”

But there are three important myths about science that those who elevate science to the status of a religion fail to acknowledge.

Myth 1. Science is always true.  In fact, the science by its nature is always learning more and its conclusions are always tentative. For example, medical advice about which foods are good for you is constantly being rethought.

Myth 2. Science disproves religious beliefs.  Science and religion are separate realms of thought and cannot be used to contradict each other. Science attempts to understand how the universe works; religion tries to understand why things are the way they are. The twain never meet. Science cannot disprove the existence of a soul or an afterlife.  Spiritual matters are not the subject of scientific investigation. Nor can religion disprove widely accepted scientific discoveries.

Myth 3. Religious beliefs are more incredible than scientific ones. This one is easy. My desk appears solid but physics says it is actually mostly space; I think I exist in the present, but the block universe theory asserts that I can actually live in past, present and future at the same time; logic says to me that a cat can’t be alive and dead at the same time but Schrödinger created a quantum physics cat which can be simultaneously dead and alive depending on the observer. The existence of the Trinity is no more fantastic than the paradoxes of modern physics.

Nevertheless, Christians need to be careful in confronting science. The danger that worship of science presents to belief, cannot lead to a thoroughgoing skepticism of science itself. It is foolishness to deny that the world is billions of years old or that the Genesis account of creation is more allegorical than literal.

But science cannot prove that there is no supernatural world, that there is no heaven nor hell, no immortal soul, no miracles, no God. Science offers no explanation for why we are here in this miraculous universe, of which science provides an ever-unfolding understanding. It is clearly true that the Age of Science has spawned an Age of Unbelief, but that is because of our misunderstanding of the very different natures of scientific and metaphysical thought. What one believes in the scientific realm can be tested (at least theoretically) by observation. What one believes in the metaphysical realm (of which religion is a sub-category) is in the end a matter of preference, just as some may choose vanilla over chocolate as difficult as that may be to understand. Metaphysical beliefs cannot be proved or disproved, they can only be liked or disliked.