Science v. Religion
I read a post on Pharyngula (famous scientist PZ Myers’ blog) about the debate over whether science and religion (specifically Christianity) are compatible. I recommend reading it.
He cites a quote by J.B.S. Haldane which I think makes sense.
"My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world."
So after reading PZ Myers’ blog and this quote, here’s what I take out of it:
• Scientists have to assume a natural world to find truth.
• Scientists, in their role as scientists, can’t be religious by definition.
• Believers in religion assume a supernatural world to find truth.
• Since we live in a natural world, believers either must deny proofs in the natural world (such as fossils, etc.) to hold onto their religious beliefs, or else try to use science to confirm parts of their religious beliefs.
• If a scientist is a believer, they basically have to hang up their science hat to believe in the supernatural.
So if some scientists go out and try to claim religion and science are compatible, they are not being completely forthcoming, or at least aren’t being honest with themselves.
At best, you can say they are both valid but completely separate things (as Steven Jay Gould did). PZ Myers says for example that science doesn’t cover morality, although he says and I agree that religion doesn’t do that good of a job a this as well. You can be a scientist as a profession, but personally or morally a Christian. But you can’t use religion as a scientist, you can only use science as a religionist. You could argue that when you use science as a religionist, you actually are hanging up your religion hat. You are looking away from your religion and looking at the natural natural world to confirm it, which is what science is about.
Towards the end of his post, PZ Myers says:
"Accommodationists are a problem not because accommodation is bad, but because they are pushing for the wrong kind of accommodation. Science doesn’t need to conform, religion does. Religion demands a special kind of privilege in these discussions because if we actually get down to assessing views fairly and objectively, on the basis of what works, it fails."
Some interesting things to consider.
Comments
It’s interesting that some of the earliest scientists (in the modern sense of the word), people like Robert Maxwell and Henry Cavendish, actually relied on their belief in God to come to the exact same conclusions:
Haldane says “when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course”, whereas they said “when I set up an experiment I assume that the God who sustains the world minute by minute will make things behave consistently and with predictability, hence the experiment will run some meaningful course that I may study”. For them, the absence of God would have made it unlikely that things would be sufficiently well ordered to be worth studying.
Thanks for the comment. You do raise a good point. Just because there is not what we would view as an overtly supernatural intervention making scientific phenomena work doesn’t prove that there isn’t a God.
God may be the one who put the natural order in place, or may be the one still holding it in place. I can understand some scientists (both early and current) believing this.
The problem is that there would be no way to prove that God is the one who is keeping the natural world in order. Scientifically speaking, there would be no difference between a world where God always keeps the natural world working the same way, and a world where the natural world keeps working the same way without a God.
Maybe Haldane was too strong in using “atheist” (at least as it’s normally used today) to describe the work of a scientist; “agnostic” might be better. It’s unknown whether God has a role or not.
God would have to let us know he’s here by doing something out of the ordinary, a miracle basically. There are lots of miracles in the Bible, but the sorts of things that happen there don’t happen nowadays, or at least have never been observed scientifically.
Your point is definitely taken. I don’t think though that most scientists think “X will happen in my experiment unless God decides differently”, so operationally I would argue they are atheistic or at least agnostic.