Science & Christianity

Science has disproved Christianity! is a oft made statement which deserves serious analysis [and a little laughter]. It might be said to embody 'the appeal to authority'.

And science rightfully has great authority within in our society. You read these very words only because of the scientific way of thinking and assessing evidence, of experiment and endeavor. Science is based upon coolly judging the validity of a theory by the measurable evidence, by proposing hypotheses and then proving/disproving them by experiment. Only a fool would claim otherwise.

The claim is therefore made that because we cannot detect God, observe him with a telescope, spy His imprint on cells in the microscope, cannot weigh or measure Him in any way, then He cannot be, and that it is unscientific to even propose that he exists.

It should therefore be deeply surprising to find any scientists who hold that God exists and even stranger that some are christians. How is this - are they really schizophrenic, or maybe low-level technicians out of some red-neck college in the backwoods of Alabama?

Actually no - some of the worlds leading scientists are theists or christians [that link is to is a long article, written by a chemist who was nominated for the Nobel prize, on science and christianity].

Given this, it is more accurate, if less snappy, to say that some scientists claim that science disproves christianity, which is not at all the same!

Physicists and Biologists

Robert Winston, the renowned fertility expert was talking on the BBC Radio 4 program, 'Start the Week' [Nov 30th 2005] when he made an interesting statement. He had been doing research for a book on belief, and he found that quite a few physists were believers whereas few biologists were. Why should this be so?

Some physists used to dealing with matters that cannot be measured and maybe never will be - dark energy, dark matter, m-branes, superstrings - nine or maybe ten dimensions. Materialist are often fond of saying that they will not believe in things that they cannot see or touch or measure, well...on the edges of physics, they are doing that all the time.

At the end of the victorian era, physicists thought that they had everything tapped, with just a few little oddities to explain [such as the origin of the sun's power] - they thought they had a nice little clockwork universe. They became rather puffed up with this certainty ['science is either physics or stamp collecting'], until along came Einstein, Plank, Heisenburg et al.

Now they know that the universe is much wilder and more exciting place then they imagined or can imagine, and have learnt somewhat of humility. Perhaps also now the shadow of the atom bomb, the physicist's baby, has etched itself into their collective psyche.

By contrast, biologists are probably at the same stage as physicists were fifty to one hundred years ago. Immersed in a fascinating field, massive advances on every hand, unlimited things to try, old diseases to cure, new plagues to ward off - they bestride the land, without time to think. The biologists are in a 'engineering' stage, when it feels that you can do anything. Such feelings are often linked with, and maybe the root of, non-belief.

Let us hope that it is not too late or too costly to us for biologists to learn the same lessons.

The 'God' gene and other red herrings

Fairly recently, a researcher in genetics [Dr Dean Hamer], came up with a study, which he claimed showed that there is a gene [VMAT2] which is more likely to present in those who are believers. He dubbed it 'The God Gene'.

This has been lept on with glee by some people, as a proof that belief is just a matter of our genes and therefore cannot possibly be true.

Strangely, the converse is never stated, i.e. that unbelief is therefore equally caused by genetics and therefore also cannot possibly be true.

Most serious genetisists would strongly repudiate the head line grabbing story. There is, for example, a delightful demolition job in the October 2004 Scientific American.

Sadly, many people will now have absorped the 'god gene' idea into thinking, without bothering to check it out.

The 'god gene' is one rather good example of the pseudo scientific statements that some people like to throw around:

  • "You only believe because your genes make you"
  • "You only believe because your mummy told you"
  • "You only believe because your society encouraged you to"

Of course in england today, the opposite is much more likely to be true. Most people will be materialists, not because of years of intellectual struggle, but just because their mummies and daddies told them so :-).

These are all examples of attempted 'demolition by determinism', i.e. if you can attribute a hidden cause to some statement, then you can discount that statement, without having to examine it further. For example, a green activist might be debating with some engineer, and then trimuphantly claim "you only say that Nuclear Power [or GM or whatever] is a good thing, because you are paid by X, Y or Z". Instantly, what the engineer might have to say is ignored, not because it is false, but because he is a hireling of the nuclear [biotech etc] industry.

The A.B.C. principle

A.B.C. - anything but christianity. Some people will go to any length, accept any possible hypothesis, use any argument [no matter how self contradictory] rather then accept the possibility of christianity being true. Why is this?