THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE

I came across a review in the Wall Street Journal (March 13-14, 2021) of Probable Impossibilities by Alan Lightman who is an American physicist, writer and social entrepreneur and currently a Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for exploring the intersection of the sciences and the humanities, especially the dialogue between science, philosophy, religion and spirituality. He maintains that the majority of scientists are atheists but offers no data to back up his assertion. He does cite a Harris poll that found that 74 percent of Americans surveyed believe in God, and 72 percent believe in miracles. The implication seems to be that most Americans aren’t scientifically minded and that something like 3 to 5 percent of all scientists are believers in God. He describes himself as a scientist and a materialist but he considers himself a spiritual person. By spirituality he means a belief in things that are larger than himself, appreciation of beauty, commitment to certain rules of moral behavior, such as the Golden Rule but disbelief in miracles. He believes in what he calls the Central Doctrine of Science: that all properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws hold true at every time and every place in the physical universe, and that they are necessities of nature, rules that nature must obey without exception. What he does not ask is why the universe is so admirably law-abiding.

Science is good at asking and seeking to answer the ‘how’ questions, but not the ‘why’ questions. But how do human beings of bone and tissue become sentient beings? How do we develop a self, an ego, an ‘I’? What is human consciousness that enables us to ask questions of meaning and purpose? The atheist and materialist evades questions of cause and effect. We cannot get outside ourselves or outside the universe to study ourselves objectively. There is a contradiction in being a materialist and spiritual. The logic of atheism is that there are no rules of moral behavior except what we make for ourselves. Why should we follow the Golden Rule to do unto others what we would have them do to us? Natural law leads us to a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct. These principles lead us to inherent rights conferred not by legislation but by our Creator, as the Declaration of Independence states.

Lightman’s book title indicates ‘Impossibilities’. With God nothing is impossible. To believe in possibilities is to have faith to believe in God. The emergence of Life is such a possibility. Birth is a miracle. To reduce everything to what we can observe with the eye and measure is to diminish life.

In 1888 Adam Gifford established the Gifford Lectures in the Scottish Universities to promote the study of Natural Theology, to prove the existence of God and divine purpose through observation of nature and the use of human reason. They have been given by distinguished writers and scholars every year since except through World War II. They demonstrate that science does not have to challenge the Christian faith but complement it. Natural theology provides a worldview within which faith can have an intelligible place. It is to be wished that this perspective could prevail in our secular world. You can access the lectures at www.giffordlectures,org.

A friend has alerted me to Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think by Elaine Howard Ecklund. It fills a void in our knowledge by examining the religious views of elite scientists from top U.S. research universities. Until now, we have known little about scientists’ religious views. Science vs. Religion presents the findings from the first systematic study of what scientists actually think and feel about religion. In the course of Elaine’s research, she surveyed nearly 1,700 scientists and then interviewed 275 of them. It turns out that most of what we believe about the faith lives of scientists at elite universities is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious. Many others are “spiritual entrepreneurs,” seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion. And a number of scientists are searching for “boundary pioneers” to cross the picket lines separating science and religion. Only a small minority are actively hostile to religion.