A scientist can be a believer. But professionally, at least, he can’t act like one.
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.
– J.B.S. Haldane
“Fact and Faith” (1934)
Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in several exciting panel discussions at the World Science Festival in New York City. But the most dramatic encounter took place at the panel strangely titled “Science, Faith and Religion.” I had been conscripted to join the panel after telling one of the organizers that I saw no reason to have it. After all, there was no panel on science and astrology, or science and witchcraft. So why one on science and religion?
I ended up being one of two panelists labeled “atheists.” The other was philosopher Colin McGinn. On the other side of the debate were two devoutly Catholic scientists, biologist Kenneth Miller and Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno. Mr. McGinn began by commenting that it was eminently rational to suppose that Santa Claus doesn’t exist even if one cannot definitively prove that he doesn’t. Likewise, he argued, we can apply the same logic to the supposed existence of God. The moderator of the session, Bill Blakemore, a reporter with some religious inclination, surprised me by bursting out in response, “Then I guess you are a rational atheist.”
Our host was presumably responding to all those so-called fundamentalist atheists who have recently borne the brunt of intense attacks following the success of books like Sam Harris’s “The End of Faith,” and Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion.”
These scientists have been castigated by believers for claiming that science is incompatible with a belief in God. On the one hand, this is a claim that appears manifestly false — witness the two Catholic scientists on my panel. And on the other hand, the argument that science suggests God is a delusion only bolsters the view of the of the fundamentalist religious right that science is an atheist enemy that must either be vanquished or assimilated into religion.
Coincidentally, I have appeared numerous times alongside Ken Miller to defend evolutionary biology from the efforts of those on various state school boards who view evolution as the poster child for “science as the enemy.” These fundamentalists are unwilling to risk the possibility that science might undermine their faith, and so they work to shield children from this knowledge at all costs. To these audiences I have argued that one does not have to be an atheist to accept evolutionary biology as a reality. And I have pointed to my friend Ken as an example.
This statement of fact appears to separate me from my other friends, Messrs. Harris and Dawkins. Yet this separation is illusory. It reflects the misperception that the recent crop of vocal atheist-scientist-writers are somehow “atheist absolutists” who remain in a “cultural and historical vacuum” — in the words of a recent Nature magazine editorial.
But this accusation is unfair. Messrs. Harris and Dawkins are simply being honest when they point out the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science.
J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist and a founder of population genetics, understood that science is by necessity an atheistic discipline. As Haldane so aptly described it, one cannot proceed with the process of scientific discovery if one assumes a “god, angel, or devil” will interfere with one’s experiments. God is, of necessity, irrelevant in science.
Faced with the remarkable success of science to explain the workings of the physical world, many, indeed probably most, scientists understandably react as Haldane did. Namely, they extrapolate the atheism of science to a more general atheism.
While such a leap may not be unimpeachable it is certainly rational, as Mr. McGinn pointed out at the World Science Festival. Though the scientific process may be compatible with the vague idea of some relaxed deity who merely established the universe and let it proceed from there, it is in fact rationally incompatible with the detailed tenets of most of the world’s organized religions. As Sam Harris recently wrote in a letter responding to the Nature editorial that called him an “atheist absolutist,” a “reconciliation between science and Christianity would mean squaring physics, chemistry, biology, and a basic understanding of probabilistic reasoning with a raft of patently ridiculous, Iron Age convictions.”
When I confronted my two Catholic colleagues on the panel with the apparent miracle of the virgin birth and asked how they could reconcile this with basic biology, I was ultimately told that perhaps this biblical claim merely meant to emphasize what an important event the birth was. Neither came to the explicit defense of what is undeniably one of the central tenets of Catholic theology.
Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moreover, the true believers in each of these faiths are atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus.
So while scientific rationality does not require atheism, it is by no means irrational to use it as the basis for arguing against the existence of God, and thus to conclude that claimed miracles like the virgin birth are incompatible with our scientific understanding of nature.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that these issues are not purely academic. The current crisis in Iran has laid bare the striking inconsistency between a world built on reason and a world built on religious dogma.
Perhaps the most important contribution an honest assessment of the incompatibility between science and religious doctrine can provide is to make it starkly clear that in human affairs — as well as in the rest of the physical world — reason is the better guide.
Mr. Krauss, a cosmologist, is director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University. His most recent book is “Hiding in the Mirror” (Viking, 2005).
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See also:
At Their Outer Edge, All Systems Are Metaphysical
Regarding Lawrence Krauss’s “God and Science Don’t Mix” (op-ed, June 26): In a postmodern world, the Roman Catholic Church continues to maintain the capacity of the human intellect to attain truth, including scientific truth. However, the church also maintains that scientific truth is not the be-all-and-end-all of human existence. There are many other forms of human intellectual endeavor, including the humanities, whose expressions of human truth and love can be neither confirmed nor denied by scientific methods. Experience also bears persistent witness to the human desire for love, including transcendent longings. These too cannot be adequately dealt with or ruled out by science.
What ought to be ruled out is the view that science, without ethical limits and respectful conversation with other disciplines, including the humanities and theology, can eventually explain all there is to know about human life and the universe in which we live.
Bishop William E. Lori
Roman Catholic Diocese
Bridgeport, Conn.
Atheism provides no foundation whatsoever for science. On what basis can an atheist assume there should or will be order in the universe? And when he sees order, where does he think it came from? And on what basis can he even trust his reason? If in his worldview man is just a highly evolved animal, and our thoughts the result of electro-chemical response to stimuli, how can Mr. Krauss know anything he thinks or believes is real, or just predetermined natural activity? Further, the atheist has no explanation for where the world came from, yet science indicates it had a beginning. And atheists, if honest, will admit they have no basis for objective morals, or the dignity and freedom of man. For all the hype about reason, the atheistic worldview requires more faith than almost any other.
David Cartwright
Lake Zurich, Ill.
If the universe was not ultimately created by an almighty God, then where did it come from? Without an eternal omnipotent being, Mr. Krauss must conclude that the universe, ultimately, came from nothing. I know of no scientific law that proposes that something may come from nothing. Belief in God is not abandonment of the scientific method, it merely acknowledges its limits.
Why is human reason, devoid of divine input, considered superior? This is narcissism in the extreme. According to Mr. Krauss, we are our own ultimate authority. What cannot be understood today (i.e., that which is not “rational”) should not be allowed. If this were so, the truth would always be a moving target and always relative, defined only by the individual or by the society the individual lives in. History clearly shows that relativism is the antithesis of truth and tolerance, and has been the destruction of many societies.
To quote Albert Einstein at a 1941 symposium: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
Martin M. Bednar
North Stonington, Conn.
Before we throw out all “Iron Age convictions,” let us examine our options. It is a religious notion that “all men are created equal.” Far from supporting this assertion, science explains the mechanisms by which differences in physical and cognitive abilities necessarily arise. There is also no right to life or property encoded in our nucleic acid or neural networks. Evolutionary biology seems to grant us the same rights and privileges that are due a fleeting biochemical reaction.
Brett Alder
San Diego
Science came into being and flourished in the West and not within other cultures precisely because of the faith of the curious who believed they were part of a rational universe. Take Isaac Newton who published more theology than science. It is this Western religious belief in a reasoned creator that laid the foundation and became the catalyst for the scientific revolution, ultimately leading to the crowning of the modern priesthood of scientists. Without this fundamental act of faith among scientists throughout history, there would be no science.
Prof. Thomas W. Woolley
Samford University
Birmingham, Ala.
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