Science and God

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More and more it is possible to find articles in both popular and scholarly literature proclaiming the reunification of science and religion. According to these reports, ongoing research in all scientific fields continually produce mounting evidence that religion - by which it is usually meant traditional Judaism and Christianity - had it right all along and science is only just catching up. But are these reports true or at all justified?

According to Victor J. Stenger, author of the recently published "Has Science Found God?" the answer to that is a resounding no. Stenger, emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii and visiting fellow in philosophy at the University of Colorado, has made something of a second career writing and speaking on topics where his decades of experience in physics and astronomy could be useful - often this has involved providing a skeptical and critical perspective on claims about how those and other scientific fields allegedly support religious and paranormal beliefs.

Whereas previous books of his have focused on narrow topics, this latest work is a broad salvo against a wide variety of attempts to misuse science and scientific discoveries in the defense of theistic, religious, and mystical beliefs. Stenger doesn't even focus solely on those issues where his scientific specialization is most relevant, for example providing a detailed chapter addressing the attempts by creationists to pervert science via Intelligent Design theory.

Stenger is, however, best when he does speak directly on matters pertaining to physics and astronomy. These are often very difficult subjects, especially for the average reader who has little or no experience with them; while Stenger cannot avoid technical sections, he does endeavor to add at the end of them a summary which explains matters in more familiar terminology. Many religious believers may be under the impression that modern science definitely proves that their god exists, but such an impression would be hard for them to maintain after reading this book.

Of course, one interesting question which such a religious position raises is: what ever happened to faith? In many religions, particularly Christianity, a great virtue is made out of the ability to believe through faith despite the lack of objective evidence. One can dispute whether that really is a virtue or not, but the fact remains that it has historically been a defining principle of orthodox Christian doctrine. How, then, can someone continue to claim to adhere to traditional Christianity while also claiming that they can prove that God exists, dispensing with the need for faith?

That's an interesting question, and many Christians will surely object to claims about having proof of God, agreeing that science cannot provide any such proof and insisting that faith continues to be necessary. Stenger, however, does not involve himself in this particular theological dispute. Indeed, he is willing to accept the premise that the existence of a personal God as proposed by believers can (in theory) be established to a high degree of certainty by scientific means. Although this may seem to be an unusual concession, it isn't - because it entails an important corollary: that the same God can be ruled out by the same science. And, according to Stenger, that's exactly what science does:

A God who created the universe would be expected to leave some unambiguous imprint of that creation behind. Otherwise, how would anyone know about it, including believers? A God who has hidden his creation from us is not the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. If a supernatural creation happened, then we should seen signs of it in our study of the content and structure of the universe. We do not. ...A god who does not intervene in the world in any significant way cannot be disproved, but that is also not the God of most Christians, Jews, and Muslims.