From: pope@physics.su.OZ.AU (The Nightstalker)
Subject: God and Science: Are they incompatible?
Organization: School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia
Distribution: aus
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 02:57:45 GMT

The following article appeared in The Physics Society of Sydneys
journal "Jeremy", this year.

God and Science: are they incompatible?

Science traditionally has not always had the highest regard for any being that
might be called God.  From the times of Newton and his laws, physicists have
sought to understand the universe in such a way that there is no need for a
personal being in the created order.  Johannes Kepler, who worked for more
than 20 years on his planetary laws of motion, once said ``My goal is to 
show the celestial machine is not a divine being but like a clock."



An admirable task, for there were some who thought that angels pushed the
planets along in their paths, and for them the universe was a place where God
did things in a less than subtle way.  If Johannes thought that God was
the one who wound up the `celestial clock', it is not for me to speculate.  It
was an analogy also used in what was called `arguement from design', where
the orderedness of creation was used to infer Gods' existance.  For those who 
have read the book of Romans, they will see that this is a perfectly biblical
thing to do, to appreciate God's creative nature from nature itself, but is
that enough to discover who this God is?



The great man of science, Albert Einstein, had a nebulous concept of God.  When
refuting Quantum Theory he said, ``God does not play dice."  His remarks about
God reflect a deep respect for nature rather than knowledge of a personal being.
Einstein sent a telegram to a Jewish newspaper saying ``I believe in Spinoza's
God who revels himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not a God who
concerns himself with the fate and action of men."  Why should he not believe
in a personal God, and indeed if he does not believe, does that mean that God
does not exist?



The man he spoke of, Baruch Spinoza, was the Jewish lensmaker and philosopher
who reasoned that God and the material world were indistinguishable.  Human
minds were part of God's mind, and the better you understood the universe,
the closer you came to God.  This 17th century writing foreshadowed modern
cosmology, and the names of Paul Davies and Stephen Hawking come to mind.
While Paul Davies may be fence sitter, Stephen Hwaking is more like the 18th
century mathematician-philosopher Pierre Simon Laplace.  When asked by
Napoleon where was God in his theories, he simply replied ``I have no need of
that hypothesis."  Was he correct in stating this, or is it the standard
arrogance of the scientific mind?  Laplace was a Newtonian to the extreme, in
that he felt that an equation could be written down to desribe everything
with precise accuracy.  We know now that his basis, Newton's theory has been
somewhat disrupted by Relativity, Quantum Theory and Chaos.  But the 
question remains, can the scientist exclude God from the big picture?  Think
of the painter painting the room in which he is in, does he ever paint
himself, thus painting himself, painting himself...?  Can the cosmologist think of the universe in which he is sitting?
 


The church has never been too kind to the scientific mind, and any challenge
to the authority of the church has generally led to the perpetrator being
branded a heretic.  Copernicus, when he proposed that the Earth revolved around
the Sun kept it to himself until close to his death to avoid being burnt at
the stake, which was the lot of `heretics' at that stage in history.
Giordano Bruno was not so lucky.  Galilieo had to recant his views on the
solar system or face certain death.  The track record is not good, but there
are two points to make.  One is that a view held by the church may not always
reflect the God which it represents, for does the Bible say that the earth is
flat or that it is at the centre of the universe.  Even the poorest scholar
can see that it does not, yet these are views that the church has held in
the past and persecuted physicists for rightly showing these views to be wrong.
Then there is the case more to do with genetics and so on, where the moral
issues become greater.  Does the scientist have the right to make decisions
over the genetic makeup of the human species, or is that purely the ground of
a God that created?  



There is a new view these days called ``scientism", which seems to think that
science is the panacea for all woes and that ``how" and ``why" questions are
now blurred because since science has relieved the need to seek some great
cosmic purpose, there is no ``why".  Thus science claiming through its'
understanding of the way the universe works that there is no God, then the
questions of every day are just ``how" questions, and science can deal with any
of the moral issues that we face.  Thus, by understanding all of the ''how's, we can then formulate a ''why" which encapsulates all of these.  This is the new religion of science.  To 
them, ``cosmic purpose" is an invention of the theologian, and thus is
something that holds science back.  In the words of Peter Atkins in his New
Scientist article (8 Aug 1992) ``Religion claims total understanding, but fails
to deliver anything but sweet words; science claims cautious progress, and is
able to deliver success at every stage."  There are three things wrong with this.



The Christian faith is one where some of the answers must simply be taken
on faith or admitted to not being known.  It explains the human situation as
a rebellion against God and that God reveals Himself through history, but
leaves some of the great questions of ``why" unanswered.  In the book of
Romans, there is a quote ``who are you O man to talk back to the God that
made you?"  This is hardly giving all the answers.  Christianity gives
purpose but not all the answers.  


Secondly, on a simple level, what relevance are the great discoveries of
science on a day to day personal level.  When a woman is being pack raped,
does it matter that elctrons repel one another?   Does the starving Somalian
really care that black holes may be the power source for quasars?  If science
can prove that God does not exist, then mankind is liberated from something, but
to what?  Indeed science has not proven such a thing.  Where is the comfort of
science to the needy and poor?

Thirdly, what is the success of science?
It either looks for something that it supposes is already there and thus has
achieved nothing, or it looks blindly until it finds something.  It tells
us ``how", but can we really convolute all our ``why" questions into ``how"
questions?  Science does not tell us ``why", nor can it.  If there is a God
then surely that God must reveal his nature himself, and science is incapable
of understanding him but only what has been done by him.  If we can throw
away God, then there is no ``why", only ``how".  The question then remains,
does science do away with God?


The answer must in the end be no.  This answer lies in the claims of the Bible
versus the claims of science.  The evolution vs creation debate is an old one,
but unnecessary.  The main point of the beginning to Genesis is to show
how order arose out of chaos, and thus since evolution is exactly that sort
of process, the two accounts agree.  The difference is in ideology, did God
intiate the process or was it random, ``why" is there life?  The ``how" is
not under major dispute for the generalities, although the specifics are
still open to conjecture.  The Bible claims that the human situation is
a result of a rebellion against God.  Can science dispute this?  It can
neither support nor contest such a claim, for human behaviour and emotions
have not been reduced to mere chemical reactions.  This question must be
debated theologically or philosophically.  Why society is the way it is cannot
be formularised for it is a ``why" question, although there are ``how"
aspects.  Thus, claims by Christianity must be dealt with on its own ground.
No all pervading theory of what is out there is sufficient to discover the
answers of ``why", lest we be painting ourselves into the room.

--

Mick Pope,                                            I      "On Christ the
Sir Frank Packer Dept of Theoretical Physics,     ----+----   solid rock I
School of Physics, University of Sydney,              I       stand, all other
Sydney, Australia, 2006.  (02) 692 3241               I       ground is sinking
                                                      I       sand." - C. Wesley
                                                      I 

And the comment for today is:  

          
Didling (participial vb.)
The process of trying to work out who did it when reading a whodunnit,
and keeping your options open so that when you find out you can allow
yourself to think that you knew perfectly well who it was all along.

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