Science and religion

This began as a comment to something Huw wrote on Doxos. But it kept getting bigger and bigger. So, here it is.

I read the article on ID. I didn't reach the same conclusion Huw did (e.g. "ID is bunk.") What I saw was hubris on the part of the science industry. (I refuse to call it a 'community') This arrogance is especially revealed in Krauss's comparison of the ID proponents to Holocaust deny-ers. Also in this statement in the last paragraph: "Those that survive decades - centuries - of scientific scrutiny end up in classrooms, and those that don't are discarded." (Centuries? Very little science has been around for centuries.) This bias in favor of "science", especially a "scientific" view of the world that says only matter exists is widespread, idolotrous, and belicose.

Stephen Hawking wrote in "A Brief History of Time" with the assertion that science can ‘know the mind of God’. Stephen Weinberg ends "The First Three Minutes" by pronouncing the universe ‘pointless’ and human life ‘a little above the level of a farce.' John Maddox, former editor of Nature, has hinted darkly that ‘it may not be long before the practice of religion must be regarded as anti-science.’ (Nature, 368 [1994], p. 185). Carl Sagan in a hideous mockery of St. John's Gospel said in "Cosmos", "In the beginning was hydrogen". These four and many others have arrayed themselves against God. Their idols are not of gold or stone but are still works of human thought.

Dawkins said: ‘There is no need to think of design, purpose or directedness. . . . There is no mystery. . . . It had to happen by definition.’ (The Selfish Gene [Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 13).

In my own experience in school I have experienced this hatred of God on the part of scientests. They usually use straw man arguments (the Shroud of Turin and Galileo) which are are easly refuted, but the animosity is palpable. To all of them I would just say, "tell it to Michael Faraday".

The English physicist/chemist/inventor Michael Faraday believed that God made the universe , and that He was serious about the "uni" part of that word. Faraday's knowledge of God lead him to say, "Nothing is too wonderful to be true." My chemistry textbook talks about Farady's contribution to understanding electricity and electromagnetic induction, but does not mention his faith in God that compelled him to study God's work, and to understand the relationships between forces and substances. (In addition to being the father of modern electronics he is also owed a debt by every chemist in the world as he also invented the Bunson Burner.)

There are many such discoverers; many men loved God, believed God, and went out into the world to see how God had made it. Among them Joseph Balmer who believed God designed the universe, and set out to reveal that design. And to a certain degree he was successful. He discovered the spectral lines (they are called 'Balmer Lines' now.) emited by excited hydrogen atoms, and became the father of spectrascopy. Without spectrascopy, Dawkins and Hawking would be unknowns.

But that is just orderliness. Any good mechanic is orderly. But God is also moral. He is Good. And it was the conviction that God is good that led Thomas Edison to say ofter many many failures, ‘Somewhere in God Almighty’s workshop is a dense woody growth, with fibres almost geometrically parallel and with practically no pith, from which we can take the filament the world needs.’ He knew electric light was good and could not imagine God not providing a way for it to be.

We call this conviction of Edison's the anthropic principle: That the universe exists to sustain man. We, Christians belive this, mainly, because God loves man. (He died for us. What other proof do we need?) But this anthropic principle is not something that only Christians such as Edison see. It is seen by athiests, too. In the September 2004 issue of the journal Science (subscribe here) it was stated that the math that explains the universe just doesn't make sense if you take people out of the equations. Granted, it doesn't say there is a God, or a designer, but it comes pretty darn close.