When ordinary people who know I'm a scientist find out that I'm also a Christian, they sometimes ask me this question. It goes like this: "What about Science?" I'm tempted to reply "What about Science?" Apparently, the potential conflict is so well-known that the questioner doesn't need to elaborate what the problem is. Either that, or they expect me to construct for them some sort of devastating sounding argument against my own religion, based on Science---which if they have any patience remaining afterwards, I can then proceed to deconstruct.
It's extremely common for intelligent people to fall away from their parents' faith somewhere on the cusp of adulthood. They frequently cite Science as a motivating cause. Sometimes they come from a fundamentalist background where opposition to say, Darwinian evolution is taken as an essential doctrine. In that case the conflict with Science is obvious. In other cases, the reasons seem much more difficult for them to articulate. (I have known a person who said he stopped being a Christian because of "Reason" although he wasn't able to articulate even a single specific reason why.) Nevertheless, there seems to be an intuitive sense of a problem which I don't think is entirely bogus. At least, I can remember having had moods in which it seemed like there was an issue to overcome.
Richard Feynman is an example of a brilliant person who said he was led away from his religion (Judaism) at a young age due to his scientific outlook. You can read about that in What Do You Care What Other People Think? Later in his life, however, he had this to say:
I don't feel that I could give three lectures on on the subject of the impact of scientific ideas on other ideas without frankly and completely discussing the relation of science and religion. I don't know why I should even have to start to make an excuse for doing this, so I won't continue to try to make such an excuse.
Oops! I guess this post is basically an excuse for bringing up the subject, which Feynman says I don't need to do. Well it's too late now, we have to continue...
But I would like to begin a discussion of the question of a conflict, if any, between science and religion....in the discussion that I want to talk about here, I mean the everyday, ordinary, church-going kind of religion, not the elegant theology that goes along with it, but the way ordinary people believe, in a more or less conventional way, about their religious beliefs.
I do believe there is a conflict between science and religion, religion more or less defined that way....
A young man of a religious family goes to the university, say, and studies science. As a consequence of his study of science, he begins, naturally, to doubt as it is necessary in his studies. So first he begins to doubt, and then he begins to disbelieve, perhaps, in his father's God. By "God" I mean the kind of personal God, to which one prays, who has something to do with creation, as one prays for moral values, perhaps. This phenomenon happens often. It is not an isolated or an imaginary case. In fact, I believe, although I have no direct statistics, that more than half of these scientists do not believe in their father's God, or God in a conventional sense. Most scientists do not believe in it. Why? What happens? By answering this question, I think that we will point up most clearly the problems of the relation of religion and science....
[skipping two explanations for this that Feynman rejects]
The third possibility of the explanation of this phenomenon is that the young man perhaps doesn't understand science correctly, that science cannot disprove God, and that a belief in science and religion is consistent. I agree that science cannot disprove the existence of God. I absolutely agree. I also agree that a belief in science and religion is consistent. I know many scientists who believe in God. It is not my purpose to disprove anything. There are many scientists who believe in God, in a conventional way, perhaps, I do not know exactly how they believe in God. But their belief in God and their action in science are totally consistent. It is consistent, but it is difficult....
There are two sources of difficulty that the young man we are discussing would have, I think, when he studies science. The first is that he learns to doubt, that it is necessary to doubt, that it is valuable to doubt. So he begins to question everything. The question that might have been before "Is there a God or isn't there a God" changes to the question "How sure am I that there is a God?" He now has a new and subtle question that is different than it was before....
Now the second source of difficulty that the student has when he studies science, and which is, in a measure, a kind of conflict between science and religion, because it is a human difficulty that happens when you are educated two ways. Although we may argue theologically and on a high-class philosophical level that there is no conflict, it is still true that the young man who comes from a religious family gets into some kind of argument with himself and his friends when he studies science, so there is some kind of a conflict.
Well, the second origin of a type of conflict is associated with the facts, or, more carefully, the partial facts that he learns in the science. For example, he learns about the size of the universe.... And again, he learns about the close biological relationship of man to the animals and of one form of life to another and that man is just a latecomer in a long and vast, evolving drama. Can the rest be just a scaffolding for His creation? And yet again there are the atoms, of which all appears to be constructed following immutable laws. Nothing can escape it....
When this objective view is finally obtained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are finally appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing---atoms with curiosity---that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these scientific views end with awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate....
I am not trying to disprove the existence of God. I am only trying to give you some understanding of the origin of the difficulties that people have who are educated from two different points of view. It is not possible to disprove the existence of God, so far as I know. But it is true that it is difficult to take two different points of view that come from different directions.
That is the reason for this blog: to look at things from two different points of view simultaneously, in an undivided way. I'd like to explain the wonder and facts of physics (my science) in an accessible way. I'll also try to construct the clearest arguments from science against my religion that I possibly can (I don't think that atheists have done a terribly good job of this), and then have fun shooting them down. You are welcome to help me with your comments, at any of these tasks.
