Is Science Atheism?

Physical processes can be identified at work in the natural world. For example, heating, expansion, cooling, forming and breaking of chemical bonds. The mechanism of evolution is based on these physical processes, which have been observed and are well-defined.

That God is not observed in these processes does not mean that God does not exist, but it does require the belief (which cannot be proved) that God designed the universe in which these processes are active (that is, science uncovers the "how" of God's creative activity). As recent scientific discoveries have indicated, the universe “works” all the way down to the quantum foam, and all the way back to the Big Bang. This severely constrains our understanding of the ways in which God has chosen to interact with the universe. This understanding should inform our theology.

Of course, this belief in God is not required to explain the way that the world works, so some people see this as tacit support for atheism.

So what role does faith play in the world? Well, so far, I do not need it to make sense of how the world works, from the perspective of science. And I do not, in fact, seek scientific understanding from faith. I do look to faith to help me understand my place in the universe, a search that includes the dimensions of spirituality, community and personal morality and ethics.

A Dialogue Between Faith & Science

Both sides of the faith / science dialogue (and those who say you don't have to take sides) are talking. I am not sure folks are always getting what is being said. We all re-interpret what we hear in our own terms - in order to make it intelligible. This does not make understanding impossible, but it makes it more difficult - because we often miss what is being said because we change it into something somewhat different in the process of trying to understand it.

Many conservative Christian creationists are trying to defend two things - the authority of the Bible, and a particular worldview that comes out of their interpretation of the Bible.

Because this worldview is understood to be "ultimate reality" (and the physical world we live in a distorted version of that reality), there is a deep distrust of the natural world and the products of our reasoning, emotions and sensory experiences.

Science cuts through the Gordian knot of the "what is reality?" question by taking it as a given that the world we experience is real, and seeks to understand how the natural world works (bypassing the "Why" question). Science has been successful beyond all imaginings at this enterprise. Lasers, digital music, semiconductors, & nano-machines would have been beyond anyone’s wildest speculation even a few hundred years ago.

Precisely because it ignores the supernatural (and because science has not been hampered by this lack), science is suspect - it is part of the "world" that is set against the "Kingdom of Heaven." The world we live in is part of the “present evil age" – and to be resisted - while Christians are called to be part of the age to come (marked by the direct rule of God, and no part of the current political, economic or technological order – referred to as Babylon, and depicted as a whore).

Because science seems to have no need of God, it represents an affront to the worldview that nothing makes sense except in the light of God's creating, sustaining and guiding activity. So on one level, ID is simply an attempt to “place” science in the context of a larger Christian worldview – it becomes an area of theology (learning about God through his creation).

Lessons Creationists Have Taught Me

Lessons learned from dialouges with creationists:

1. There is no evidence for creationism (young-earth, old-earth or ID). For folks predisposed to see design, they see design. For folks who look into the science of nature, they see that explanations for how the world works requires no supernatural intervention (open invitation for any creationist to provide a counter-example – show your work).
2. Creationist sources invariably lie about, distort or omit important facts about how science works, and what scientists themselves say about their work in order to bolster their claims. Naïve creationist supporters roar in to the frey, armed with arguments form creationist web sites, only to be shown over and over again that they have their facts wrong. Invariably, the argument is pared down to how to read the Bible – almost always, they end up saying something like “I have the right interpretation, and those who don’t share it are going to hell.”
3. Truth takes a back seat to strategy. This is obviously a religious issue – creationists want their children to be able to hold on to their creationist beliefs while getting a public education. There are two main approaches here – withdraw from public school, like the Southern Baptists, or get schools to stop teaching science, as laid out in the DI’s Wedge Strategy.
4. The discussion cannot take place on the basis of facts. Creationists have no facts to back up their position (they are not even interpreting Genesis 1 literally, or they would be flat-earthers and geocentrists). They simply “know in their knower” that they are right, and that means that anyone who opposes them are tools of Satan.
5. This is not about materialism, or liberalism, or naturalism. Science makes no claims about the supernatural, and so far, no appeal to the supernatural is required to explain the world we live in. This may mean that the natural principles we’ve discovered are the methods by which God created the universe. It does not mean that science is opposed to religion – just that science does not deal with religion.
6. We do have real problems to deal with – but they are not the fault of evolution, and are not solved by believing that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth together, or that God spends His time poofing tails onto flagella.

We've Got Options

Many creationists seem to want us to choose faith or science.

Actually, these are not the two only options.

Creationists would have us believe that life is unlikely and rare. Is this true? It may be that life is in some sense inevitable, given the universe we live in. It may not be that the exact life as we know it was inevitable (rewind the tape, and perhaps something different would evolve), but some sort of life may be inevitable, all the same. Creationists seem to want this to be impossible - God had to have created a universe that does not work, except God's hand keeps spinning it up - what if he is a better craftsman than that?

And of course, the possibility exists that God used the natural process science discovers to accomplish his purposes. In which case, no conflict. Or that there is some other set of factors involved that we have yet to discover that accounts for the world we experience.

There is no reason to choose between the horns of the creationist dilemma. They seem to want this to be a faith choice – choose between the purposeful creation of God, or the meaningless, random acts of blind nature – it is a false dichotomy.

Science does not ask you to make a choice. Rather, it asks you to accept that there are physical laws and natural processes that account for the world you see around you. That this is true is obvious on the face of it, and the technology that has sprung from scientific discovery demonstrates this fact.

It does not say anything about what the world means, or for whom it was made, or what its ultimate purpose is. Creationists would have us believe that this is a fault - science is lacking because it is not religion, recapitulating the Bible. True, science is not religion - but it is not a fault (after all, that is what religion is for!).

You do not have to choose between Science and faith, and you should not choose fantasy over reality, just because you’ve been told your faith requires it (faith does not).

A False Controversy

We are being driven into a false conflict between faith and religion, simply because some people want to insist that the Bible is science. This is both harmful and wrong.

1. It is no more improbable that God made a universe where His will could be expressed thorough evolution and other natural causes than that he created a universe where all the hard parts have to be done through supernatural intervention (i.e. creationism).

2. Science no more promotes an ideology of materialism than does any other way of explaining how the world works – it is simply describing what is, and how what is works. No evidence for design has been found, and no observation of design in progress has ever been observed. This is not the case for various natural causes, which abound in every field, and can be observed whenever you bake a cake or drive your car (or for that matter, eat your breakfast or blink your eyes).

3. To insist that public school science class consider non-material causes introduces philosophy and religion into science class. Science is not improved in the process. A further danger is that there are many, many competing philosophies and religions – shall they take turns in science class? Shall they be voted in by the local religious majority at the time?

4. Scientists can study the idea of supernatural design anytime they want. There are hundreds, if not thousands of privately-funded research institutions. There has never been a barrier to such research, and in fact there have been Christian creationist research organizations founded. They simply have not been able to demonstrate the creationist hypothesis.

All this furor over creationism only serves to alienate many Christians from the discoveries of science, and create the false notion that you have to choose between thee Bible and the discoveries of science. It is time for more Christians to be willing to think, rather than just take the word of their youth leader, pastor or radio preacher.

Beyond Faith and Science

While science cannot answer questions about the existence of God, it can answer questions about the impact of God on the natural world.

Several scientific studies have concluded that so far, that impact has not been detectable. Surely this a significant and unexpected mystery. Why is God’s impact on the world not measurable – if not in a specific instance, in aggregate (for example, in hundreds of patients in a hospital, or in the life outcomes of the British royal family).

This lack of tangible effect has led some to suggest that if God exists, then s/he has no effect on the natural world. Others affirm that God does make a difference in the natural world (beyond the inner state of the believer), just not one that can be studied scientifically. It is not clear what this statement might mean

I think that this boundary is one of the important frontiers of religious thought. Some centuries ago, there would have been overwhelming certainty that God was a potent force in the world. Yet everywhere that science has looked, that potency has receded in the presence of testable laws governing the workings of the natural world. Is this a failure of science? Of perspective? Does this tell us something about God, or ourselves?

If religion is going to play a role among modern, technological, scientifically literate people, these questions are going to have to be raised and, if not answered, at least wrestled with.

Ultimate Truth From Science?

Brian Greene (author of “The Elegant Universe”) was in town recently to give a science lecture. During the lecture, he noted that Newton’s equations describing gravity have been experimentally verified and are still used today, but are in some instances wrong. Special Relativity either agrees with Newton or more accurately describes what happens, and corrects the idea that the effect of gravity exceeds the speed of light. Quantum Mechanics describes the effects of gravity at the level of the very small, but is in conflict with Special Relativity. We tend to think either QM or SR is right, and the other wrong. The Superstring theory he champions suggests that they are both right, but must be understood in the context of extra dimensions to account for their differences.

There are critics of string theory, and it may be that there is some other explanation that will account for the differences - or that we will never figure it out. The point is that we continue to make better and better sense of the world we see around us. Since I am not trying to make a religion of science - I don't need science to be true in some sort of ultimate sense - I am looking for it to be an accurate tool for understanding the natural world.

The reason that I continue to return to certain central themes is because the "science is provisional" argument is regularly employed to imply that may one day become the perspective of science. I am offering the counter-argument that science for the most part builds on what we know. There is no reason to expect, for example, that the TOE will alter the interpretation of known facts that will lead to a conclusion that the earth is 6,000 years old .

I see the concerted efforts of conservative Christians to mislead their constituents into believing that science is lying to them, misleading their constituents into believing that there is now (or is every likely to be) evidence that the earth is young, evolution did not happen, or that we are NOT all descended from common ancestors is a direct threat to the health and well-being of the human race. It threatens to return us to superstition and ignorance, at a time when we face unprecedented challenges that require us to think about the world in clear-eyed and accurate ways.

The difficulty with the objections to the provisional nature of science is that they also apply to whatever it is that the objectors believe. We have no access to ultimate truth, except by faith. You can’t know that your confidence in a revelation, scripture or the inner workings of your own mind are getting you any closer to ultimate truth than does science. So whatever fault you find with methodological naturalism (or philosophical naturalism) is just as true of whatever you replace it with. The one advantage that science has over faith is that science can demonstrate its conclusions. As a result, in the limited arena in which science operates, we can actually have broader agreement that it reflects truth than any faith - because faith is a subjective experience, and varies widely from time-to-time and culture-to-culture.

For example, compare the Genesis 1 account of creation with the Pythagorean Theorem. Rabbis, early church leaders and various modern-day theologians have a wide variety of approaches to what Genesis 1 means. On the other hand, the Pythagorean Theorem remains clear, unambiguous and universally affirmed to this day. None of the discoveries of science threaten it, and there is no reason to expect anything different in the future, the provisional nature of science not withstanding. Do you (or anyone else) know the Ultimate Truth with respect to Genesis 1? Maybe. But we have no way of verifying who that group or individual might be. Can you independently verify the Pythagorean Theorem? Yes.

So faith and science are very different, and in its realm, science is a reliable guide to knowledge about the world.