God and Science

by Josh Moody (November 2002)

Further Reading:
Denis Alexander, Rebuilding The Matrix: Science And Faith In The 21st Century (Lion, 2001)
Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (Touchstone, 1998)

Argument Outline
1. It is a myth to think that Science and Christian faith have a long history of conflict. This ‘Conflict Myth’ is popular and widely repeated on TV as an accepted fact but in reality is not the case. Actually, Christian theism was the culture which gave birth to modern science.
2. Columbus and Galileo are the not the classic examples of the clash between Science and Faith that they are often supposed to be.
3. The ‘Conflict Myth’ originated in two movements one in the eighteenth and the other in the nineteenth century. The eighteenth century movement was based in France and was an anti-clerical attempt by philosophers (such as Voltaire) to use scientists (such as Newton) to undermine the authority of the Catholic church in France. The nineteenth century was a part of science becoming a separate professional discipline distinct from the gentlemanly hobby of clerics and others that it had been in the past. The conflict was really about scientific professionals seeking to establish their reputation as important proponents of intellectual power in modern society.
4. Darwinian evolution is not necessarily atheistic. In fact, many Christians originally accepted Darwin’s theories as supportive of Christian faith.
5. Science itself is not necessarily atheistic. Attempting to demarcate science as principally atheistic is a form of special pleading in an attempt to rule out of play certain uncomfortable facts for the atheistic scientist.
6. There is good evidence within science for the existence of ‘Intelligent Design’. The microbiology of the cell and the cosmological ‘Anthropic Principle’ are cases in point.
7. The real issue is the naturalistic philosophy to which some contemporary science has become presuppositionally committed. This commitment to philosophical naturalism is a mirror image of the mistake of some early natural theologians. Both attempted to claim too much from science for their ideological agendas. Instead science should be left to be science; theology, theology; and science itself, in fact, functions best within a theistic framework.

1. The Birth Place of Modern Science

‘Science’ is a word that originally meant simply ‘knowledge.’ These days it has a special professional meaning indicating those who attempt to gather knowledge by means of a certain procedure. This procedure, known sometimes as ‘empiricism’, was born in the 17th century within a strongly Christian (and Protestant) religious culture. Sir Isaac Newton, founder of the theory of gravity, was himself very interested in religious matters and wrote more commentaries on the Bible than on mathematics. Newtonian physics was rapidly incorporated within Christian preaching as a fine evidence for the remarkable intricacy of God’s design of the universe. Many other of the founding fathers of modern science were similarly ‘theistic’ and all of them lived at a time when society was predominantly Christian. Here are some examples:

• For Isaac Newton a proper Christian view of God as distinct from nature was part of the impetus to study nature accurately, as opposed to the mythological view of nature as having a soul which has been bequeathed to medieval society by pagan ancient civilization: For Newton, then, God, “is not the soul of the world, but Lord over all…”
• R.J.Forbes classification of Newton’s library at time of his death indicates not just the breadth of his learning but his special interest in matters of religion. Newton’s library contained 515 tiles in Theology and Philosophy. He only had 268 titles in Mathematics, physics and astronomy!
• Robert Boyle was so convinced that his research was a kind of worship that he made a point of performing his experiments on Sunday.
• Boyle also learnt Hebrew, Greek, Chaldean and Syriac so that he could understand the Bible better. Such devotion is hardly the habit of a superficial believer in God.
• Boyle said: “When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets…when with excellent microscopes I discern…nature’s curious workmanship; when with the help of anatomical knives and the light chymical furnaces I study the book of nature…I find myself exclaiming with the psalmist, How manifold are thy works, O God, in wisdom has thou made them all.”

So compelling is this personal testimony of the founding fathers of modern science that it suggests an explanatory framework. We have to account for the fact that modern science did not arise in medieval Europe before the Reformation, nor in eastern cultures with different religious beliefs, but in Protestant Christian Europe with a combination of religious convictions: a belief in God as distinct from nature so that nature was a worthy subject of investigation; a belief in the order of nature so that results could be expected; a belief in the importance of seeing things for yourself, and not trusting the supposed-wisdom of the ancients.

A.N. Whitehead’s conclusion then as he pondered “the tone of thought” that led to the emergence of modern science in 17thc Europe, and nowhere else was this “It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher…My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.”

Or Joseph Needham, an authority on the history of Chinese science and technology, echoed Whitehead’s view when he commented that one of the reasons that China failed to develop modern science was because it “lacked the idea of (divine) creation.”

The Protestant insistence on the literal sense of texts had profound and unintentioned consequences on interpretation of natural world. EG in Medieval Catholicism long tradition instigated by the Physiologus of seeing the pelican as symbolic of Christ’s sufferings, hence its presence in Norwich Cathedral, and on top of the 16th century sundial in the front quadrangle of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. But from the Refromation on pelican became just a pelican.

It is interesting, then, that Kepler referred to himself as the “Luther of astrology.”

This approach has had far reaching consequences. Even more recently then the great Michael Faraday reflected this traditional understanding within modern science of the importance of ‘reading the book of nature’ yourself, with your own eyes, as well as the book of the Bible. Faraday said that, “The book of nature, which we have to read, is written by the finger of God.”

2. What About Columbus and Galileo?

It is often thought that Columbus and Galileo are examples of the enmity of religion and faith. The reverse is the truth.

a. Columbus. For various strange historical reasons the idea has become propogated that before the rise of modern science people believed in a ‘Flat Earth.’ This mistaken view is usually focused on Columbus’ heroic voyage to America, where, so the story goes, the voyagers were in mortal fear of falling off the edge of the world. This is simply not the case. Nor is it the case that Columbus returned to report that the world was actually spherical and that religious authorities refused to accept the plain facts of this pioneer empiricist. In reality, all learned people even in Medieval society accepted a spherical earth. This had been a valued teaching from ancient Greek times and Aristotle. How did such an idea get around that before modern science people were so ignorant as to believe in a flat earth? It seems as if what occurred was a work of historical fiction was written in the nineteenth century which embellished the voyage of Columbus with the familiar details of people being afraid of falling off the edge of the earth, and a titanic clash between Columbus and religious authorities. This historical fiction was then transported into a text book for schools. The rest, as they say, is history; or in this case, is not.

b. Galileo. To begin with, it is without doubt that Galileo was inspired by and remained to the end of his life committed to his Christian faith.

• “ when I considered what marvelous things and how many of them men have understood… recognize and understand only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God’s and one of the most excellent.”
• God, as the great “mathematician, had made a universe that was intelligible by the human mind so that investigating “ the true constitution of the universe “ was “ the most important most admirable problem that there is.”
• It was his belief in the rationality of God and the coherence of God’s creation that made Galileo so convinced “that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect” could not have intended for us “to forego their use and by some other means give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”
• “I have two sources of perpetual comfort – first, that in my writings there cannot be found the faintest shadow of irreverence towards the Holy Church; and second, the testimony of my own conscience, which only I and God in Heaven thoroughly know. And He knows that in this cause for which I suffer, though many might have spoken with more learning, none, not even the ancient Fathers, have spoken with more piety or with greater zeal for the church than I.”

Nonetheless, Galileo was convicted of ‘heresy’, at least superficially, because of his commitment to the Copernican view that the earth goes around the sun. There are several issues that need to be understood, though, to appreciate the real meaning of this. It was not the ‘church’ worldwide that convicted Galileo it was, in particular, the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, it may have been at least partly because Galileo’s views were common views within the Protestant Reformation church that he was opposed by the Roman church. Galileo’s Copernicanism smacked of the Reformation, and thus was a deep threat to the Roman church. In addition, though, Galileo’s final conviction was only superficially to do with religion at all. While he had been initially mildly opposed by one Pope, the next Pope supported Galileo. And Galileo was only in the end convicted when he published a book which in implicit, but no uncertain terms, painted the current Pope as an imbecile. This removed the Pope’s support and laid Galileo open to the charges of the enemies that he had amassed by similar impolitic behavior among the Jesuits. Father Grienberger, a later head of the Jesuit college, remarked: “If Galileo had not incurred the displeasure of the Company [ie of Jesuits], he could have gone on writing freely about the motion of the Earth to the end of his days.” The charge against Galileo was ‘vehement suspicion of heresy’ and he was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment, but this was interpreted extremely loosely and he stayed in rather nice accomadation with good friends etc. He continued to sort of hold court and receive distinguished visitors till end of his life, among them John Milton in 1638. In other words Galileo’s imprisonment was due to the Roman Catholic church’s convictions arising from commitments to Greek philosophy and to contemporary politics but not religion.

3. What Modern scientists believe

Results of surveys among contemporary professional scientists in America at prestigious universities suggest that overall that the level of religious believe among scienties is comparable with that found in the general population.

Eg The1969 Carnegie Commission survey of 60, 000 college professors in the USA, approximately 1/4th of all the college faculty in the USA, showed that 55% of those involved in the physical and life sciences described themselves as being religious, and about 43% as attending church regularly. (Intriguingly, this survey also revealed a clear inverse correlation between the degree of religious commitment and the 'hardness' of the science involved: whereas the 'hard sciences' such as the physical and life sciences scored 55% of 'religious persons', this figure was 33% for psychology and 29% for anthropology (R.Stark and L.Jannaccone, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 1996, 436).

Similarly, Lemert in 1979 reported that in a survey of religious belief among scientists in the USA, 63 % of those in the physical scientists looked favorably upon religion, concluding that any simplistic equation of science with secularization was false. (C.Lemert, Science, “Religion and Secularization”, Sociological Quarterly, 20, 1979, pp 445-61).

At the start of the last century, Leuba sent a questionnaire to ascertain to religious belief among scientists in America. Of the respondents 41.8% agreed with a statement in accord with a traditional Christian understanding of God, 41.5% indicated that they did not believe in God as defined by that statement, and 16.7% said that they had no definite belief about God. Leuba predicted that the level of disbelief would increase with the continued spread of education. To test his prediction, Larson and Witham sent a replica of Leuba’s questionnaire in 1996 to 1,000 randomly picked names from the current edition of 'American Men and Women of Science', this time drawing a 60% response rate. Of these, 39.3% declared themselves to be believers in a personal God who answers prayer, 46.3% expressed disbelief, while 14.5% remained agnostic. What of course is striking about these data are their close similarity to Leuba's results from 1916 suggesting that close to a century of scientific and technological advance has had little effect on the personal religious belief among the American scientific community taken as a whole. Leuba’s prediction not come to pass. (E.J Larson and L.Whitham, “Scientists are still keeping the faith”, Nature, 386, 1997, p 435-36). It should be noted though that Larson and Whitham sent same questionnaire to elite National Academy of Scientists (NAS), published in Nature this time under heading opposite to that previously ‘Leading Scientists Still Reject God'. Of the NAS only 7% expressed belief in a personal God, whereas 72,2% affirmed disbelief and 20.8% agnosticism. This difference between elite and 'average' scientists clearly striking, But in absence of comparable statistics to that of elite groups of doctors, lawyers etc whether this law percentage is the characteristic of successful scientists specifically or successful people in general is impossible to say. The data could mean that very intelligent scientists find that faith is incompatible with science, or it could mean that highly successful people are very busy and have little time for God, or that successful scientists are particularly arrogant subset of people and since arrogant is incompatible with belief in God do not have faith.

1. Conflict myth originated in professionalization of science and theorizing of anticlerical philosophers

a. Professionalization. There is good evidence to suggest that the idea of a conflict between science and faith in God actually arose at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century as science gradually elbowed its way into being a professional class. In previous generations, scientists had been amateurs, either independently wealthy or with wealthy patrons, or, quite commonly (and as was the case with Darwin) religious clerics whose salary gave the time to pursue scientific endeavors. But, gradually, the power of science began to give various individuals the resources to command far more public attention and establish itself as an intellectual force with its own professional structure. Intregal to this process was the ‘X Club’ made up of a group of scientists with this specific agenda (X Club because they originally intended their to be ten of the club, though they ever managed to have nine). One of the most powerful voices in this X Club was TH Huxley, who in various well planned and well-publicized campaigns helped establish the profession of science. He was known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ and he it was that turned Darwinian Evolution into an attack upon established religion, mainly, it seems, because he wished to wrench intellectual control and place it in the hands of the newly-emerging group called ‘scientists’. Huxley even held meetings in London on Sunday evenings at the same time as the faithful would be going to church, and dressed up in clerical garb to lead these highly popular meetings.

b.Philosophizing. The anti-clerical movement of the French Enlightenment was the work of mainly philosophical writers, such as Voltaire, applying scientific discoveries, such as that by Newton, in anticlerical ways. An important mouthpiece for this anticlerical movement was the Encyclopedie. But In other places Newton’s discoveries were seen to have not such necessary implications.

2. Darwinian evolution

It is hard for us, perhaps, to realize this now but in the early days after Darwin’s theory was first propagated there was wide spread acceptance of his findings, even celebration in some circles of this further evidence of the careful design of the creator. Asa Gray, Professor of Natural History at Harvard, an orthodox Presbyterian in belief, had long been Darwin’s confidante, and one of privileged few to receive advance copies of the ‘Origin’, reviewed it later very favorably for American Journal of Science and Arts, arranged for its publication in America and personally confronted its critics. Even BB Warfield, famous for his defense of the inerrancy of the Bible, declared that, “I do not think that there is any general statement in the Bible or any part of the account of creation, either as given in Genesis 1 and 2 or elsewhere alluded to, that need be opposed to evolution.”

There was a great variety of different opinions about Darwin’s theory; these opinions were not split down religious/secular lines. The humorist magazine Punch, for instance, penned a poem lampooning Darwin’s theory as being bereft of facts and incapable of proof or refutation. In 1871 this lymiric appeared in Punch: “ ‘Hypotheses non fingo,’ \ Sir Isaac Newton said \ And that was true, by Jingo! \ As proof demonstrated \ But Darwin’s speculation \ Is of another sort \ ‘Tis one which demonstration \ In no wise doth support.”

Later, in the 1920s, the so-called Fundamentalist controversy fueled debate about evolution along religious/secular lines. The Christians feared that evolution would inevitably lead to atheism and immorality in society. The evolutionists saw themselves as defenders of science. Nonetheless, that debate has clouded the real issues at stake – issues to do with the accuracy of some of Darwin’s findings, and, even more pertinently, the interpretation which certain scientific data is given. Consider, the following:

• Many scientists do in fact believe in Christianity and see no contradiction between their faith and contemporary scientific theories.
• Darwinian evolution is not itself necessarily atheistic.
• Certain applications from Darwinian evolution have led to immoral and atheistic extremes. A distinctive contribution of the 19th c was the way in which scientific research about the ‘survival of the fittest’ seemed to support the idea of inferior peoples. Shockingly for us today, but nonetheless the case, eminent intellectual and scientific leaders believed in the racist implications of Darwinianism. The horrors of the mid-20th century in this regard probably trace their roots to these intellectual movements. Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher, said, “The Negroes of Africa have received from nature no intelligence that rises above the foolish. Hume invites anyone to quote a single example of a Negro who has exhibited talents.” Much of this approach was caused by one Herbert Spence, a great popularizer of Darwin (whose social theories neither Darwin nor TH Huxley supported). Spencer: “A savage was unable to live with civilized man as an equal, since civilization’s complex associations could not be comprehended by his inferior brain whose capacity was geared to a far simpler framework of association.” Or Charles Lyell: “The brains of the bushman…leads towards the brains of the simiadare (monkeys). This implies a connection between want of intelligence and structural assimilation. Each race of Man has its place, like the inferior animals.” The theoretical justification for these views was evolutionary: Samuel Morton, a distinguished physicist from Philadelphia, made a collection of over a 1,000 skulls to test the hypothesis that races could be ranked by the size of their brains. As a bonus, by obtaining skulls from Egyptian pyramids, Morton showed that whites had always had the advantage over blacks. In fact, as we now know cranial cavity has no relation to intelligence (Louis Pierre Gratiolet found that on average German brains were 100 grams heavier than French brains, and Asians heavier brains than Europeans).
• This kind of abuse of science goes to show that often it is the theoretical mesh which data is given that proves so important in establishing its meaningful significance with relation to ideology and religion.
• The fact that the conclusions of contemporary science are not necessarily atheistic is not only shown by the beliefs of many scientists in God but also by the following two considerations, that science does not necessarily rule out consideration of God methodologically (no.6) and that there is considerable evidence for design in the data of contemporary science (no.7).

3. Science and Demarcation

Sometimes scientists argue that science should methodologically be atheistic. This seems to arise from historical concerns that science if captured by religious feelings would become unmotivated to do serious experimental work (‘God’ would be introduced to explain everything). Historically, though, as we have shown, science was in fact rooted in profound religious beliefs and it was these beliefs that gave confidence to science and liberty to science to perform its work. The ‘teleological’ restrictions (a phrase sometimes banded around in the literature) were really ancient Greek philosophical ideology, about the ‘soul’ of the world and its ‘empathies’ and ‘sympathies’; it was the implications of Christian Protestant thinking that caused people to reject this restrictive view and gave scientists liberty to investigate matters for themselves.

What’s more it seems a clear example of special pleading to argue that science must, in principle, rule out possible conclusions from its evidence. If the existence of God appears likely due to the scientific evidence gathered then such a conclusion must be allowed room to vent within the scientific literature. Science is about ‘what is true’ not only about a certain methodology to find that truth. Of course particularly methodologies have proved their weight in gold down through the years (the empirical method etc) but these are not necessarily atheistic. See Stephen Meyer, “The Methodological Equivalence of Design and Descent: Can There Be A Scientific Theory of Creation?” The Creation Hypothesis, ed JP Moreland.

4. Evidence for Intelligent Design

Two recent discoveries in science have produced new approaches to establishing the credibility of belief in God. The first was brought forward by Michael Behe in his book: Darwin’s Black Box. In it, Behe argued that certain microbiological processes at the cellular level are ‘irreducibly complex’ and thus cannot be explained by a long succession of Darwinian evolutionary steps, even with the help of Mendelian genetical mutations. This argument has raised a lot of discussion. Some have attempted to show that Behe’s work is really the same as that produced by Paley, who a long time ago argued that natural theology showed that there must be a divine ‘watchmaker’ running the world. In fact, though, it seems clear that Behe’s argument is distinctly original in certain respects and cannot be swept under the carpet. Some find his arguments convincing, others do not; they are at the very least arguments which make it difficult to claim that to be a scientist and an orthodox Christian at the same time is irrational.

The second is what is known as the ‘Anthropic principle’ or the ‘cosmological Anthropic principle.’ This is the principle that contemporary cosmology has established that the universe as we know it shows remarkable evidence of having been designed for the specific purpose of fostering human life. The slightest difference in atomical weight, or the size of the universe, etc etc, would have made life impossible. This is strong evidence for ‘intelligent design’, so strong that Fred Hoyle said about the anthropic principle that, “Nothing has shaken my atheism as much as this discovery.” Some scientists are using the word ‘God’ as an explanatory mesh for their cosmology (though it should be noted that often this word ‘God’ is evoked not out of a commitment to a personal God of the Bible but to a more impersonal ordering entity). The two atheistic or agnostic responses to the implications of the anthropic principle are that a. we actually live in a multiple world universe and b. that things only look like they’re designed (they are ‘dezignoid’). The multiple universe explanation is popular among some (if there are multiple universes then the extraordinarily fine-tuned evidence for design is less remarkable). The problem with that is that there is no evidence for it whatsoever; it appears more like a kind of pre-modern science philosophical speculation than something worthy of the inheritors of Newton and Einstein. The ‘dezignoid’ explanation effectively says that things only look like they’re designed for us because if they weren’t designed for us then we wouldn’t be here. But as philosopher William Craig has shown that won’t wash as a piece of rational argument: the oddity of the facts still remain to be explained and we can’t just say ‘this is the way it is because this is the way it is’.

5. The Importance of the Correct Framework

Without appropriate theistic frameworks for science, science is in danger of becoming dehumanized and of losing its impetus. Two examples will suffice.

a. Ethics. Peter Singer, contemporary ethicist, argues on atheistic scientific grounds, for the morality of infanticide. Killing babies makes rational sense when children are genetically impoverished. It helps towards the survival of the species as a whole. Peter Singer: “We should put aside feelings based on the small, helpless, and – sometimes – cute appearance of human infants…laboratory rats are ‘innocent’ in exactly the same sense as the human infant…killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.” Or Richard Dawkins, defender of atheistic science on its ethical implications: “Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.”

b. Epistemology (=how we know things). Postmodernism attacks the foundation of science by claiming that science is merely a form of constructed knowledge valid only for a particular linguistic community and bearing no universal claim to assent. If this the case then scientists are clearly deceiving themselves.

A theistic framework for science, instead, gives good reason for the process of scientific endeavor and prevents science from becoming ethically dehumanizing. Within such a framework of interpretation it would be impossible to support infanticide; in fact infanticide in the ancient world was defeated by the emergence of Christianity. After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 313AD, it was made a punishable offence for fathers to kill their children. By the end of the 4th c AD Christian hospitals were being established in which there was a section called the brethotropheion set aside for orphaned children. The infanticide of the ancient world was prevented by the emergence of Christianity. And today the same concept of us being made in the image of God has far reaching human rights implications. So Lee Khan Yew, Senior Minister of Singapore, (in response to the outcry in the West over the sentence of flogging of a certain Michael Fay for vandalism in 1994) “To us in Asia, an individual is an ant. To you, he’s a child of God. It is an amazing concept.”

6. The importance of understanding ‘accommodation’ and ‘compatibility’

Accommodation is the historic Christian commitment to understanding that the language of the Bible is ‘accommodated’ to the needs of the normal human being. It is not written in scientific jargon (nor philosophical jargon for that matter). It talks of the sun rising and the sun setting, not because it is making a scientific commitment to that cosmology but because that is the way that we daily experience the sun and its language is accommodated to the language of everyday. This goes along with a correct understanding of the purpose of the Bible: the Bible was written to teach us what we cannot grasp by the empirical method (the nature of God and salvation) not what we can find out by using our own eyes and brains.

Compatibility is the right way to look at the different kinds of knowledge expressed by the Bible and science. While of course Christian faith has implications for science (it has motivated science) and implications for how we do science (as for any other task – ethically, responsibly, etc) the teaching of the Bible is not working within the same field as that of the laboratory. Nor vice versa. Dr Denis Alexander, head professor of the T-Cell Lab at Cambridge University, concludes: “Science has been so successful that there is a constant temptation to utilize its intellectual kudos to support ideological positions that are not intrinsic to science itself. Theologians were guilty of such strategies during the heyday of natural theology and, like a mirror image of the natural theologians, a subset of scientists committed to naturalism are repeating the same mistake in our own day.”

Final Thought: If science is divested of naturalistic philosophy what is there in its conclusions that is inimical to Christian faith? Answer: nothing. Rather, science itself is the child of Protestant Christian faith and will be best served by a fruitful dialogue with theism, and best inspired by the faith of its founding fathers

John Ray, whose classifications of animals and plants lay the foundation for modern biology, wrote in his The Wisdom of God Manifested in Creation (1691):

“The treasuries of nature are inexhaustible…Some reproach methinks it is to learned men that there should be so many animals still in the world whose outward shape is not yet taken notice of or described…if man ought to reflect upon his Creator the glory of all his works, then ought he take notice of them all.”

A good manifesto for contemporary science.