Are Science and Religion Incompatible?

The relationship of science and religion has been the subject of countless books, articles, debates, which show no signs of diminishing in quantity.  The relationship between the two fields is often presented, by champions of both sides, as one of enmity and opposition.  War, in fact, is often the most common metaphor.  But this need not be the case. 

Many (though far from all) scientists suppose that science has replaced – or should replace! – religion as the source of understanding of the world.  Many religious believers take this view of certain well-known scientists at face value and suppose that they, in turn, should reject science in the name of religion.  The truth is that science and religion are so different that it is difficult to say that they conflict.  Does it make any sense to say, for example, that apples and oranges conflict?  Or (to take an absurd example) oranges and submarines?  No, they are simply different objects, with more differences than similarities.  Similarly, religion and science are very distinct ways of trying to understand the world. 

Whence then arises the conflict?  There is a centuries-long history behind this clash, which I don’t have space to go into here (though doubtless I will get into it in a future blog).  For the moment, though, it’s enough to say that science deliberately excludes God from its parameters.  This is not because science is inherently atheistic – science per se is neither atheistic nor theistic – but simply because God has no place in the scientific method.  Science focuses laser-like on the sensible world – the world of our five senses, the things we can touch, taste, see, hear, and smell – and it takes a purely objective approach, excluding (to the extent possible) all subjective experience.

Edwin Schroedinger, the physicist of “Schroedinger’s cat” fame (a well-known thought experiment relating to quantum physics), understood this distinction when he stated, “No personal god can form part of a world-model that has only become accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it.”  In other words, the scientific method, developed over many centuries, focuses single-mindedly on the physical world and excludes – or rather, attempts to exclude – all subjectivity from its parameters, so as to focus on specific aspects of the world.  Subjectivity – one’s personal experiences and feelings, including such things as love, hate, duty, obligation, and friendship – have no significance in the physics or chemistry lab.  Is this because they don’t exist?  Not at all – it’s simply because science has chosen to ignore them in order to focus on the material, objective aspects of the universe.

It’s a little bit like Cleopatra.  Most people assume that the famous Egyptian queen must have looked like Elizabeth Taylor or Sophia Loren.  But she didn’t.  We know from historical sources that she was quite lacking in physical beauty.  Yet she was nevertheless a highly charismatic and captivating woman, and highly desired by men.  (It reminds me of the classic opening line of the novel “Gone With the Wind”:  “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”  In other words, Scarlett did not look like Vivien Leigh!)  Of course Cleopatra’s riches and queenly status were part of the equation, but more importantly it seems as though she had a seductive charm that men found irresistible, despite her superficial plainness.  Scientists have studied physical attractiveness (in men and women) and determined that certain facial proportions and symmetries are considered the most beautiful.   Suppose we decided to draw up a top-ten list of the most beautiful women of all time, focusing on those particular measurements and ignoring everything else – Cleopatra would never make it on to our list.  Would that mean that she was not attractive – in real-world terms?  Obviously not, because we know that men were attracted to her.  All it would mean is that she was lacking in one measurement of overall attractiveness.

How then could we attempt to grasp the nature of her appeal to men – in objective terms?  We could go on and measure other aspects of her outer appearance.  We could even attempt to measure her actions and how she interacted with men – such things as how many times a minute she touched her companions on the arm or looked into their eyes or smiled at them.  We could then sum up all these objective measurements and analyze them and then draw our conclusions about why men were attracted to her.  The question is, would the results of our analysis be very satisfying?  Probably not.  Why not? 

Because charisma and charm are, in great part, subjective characteristics.  We know them when we see them, we can sense them – often subconsciously – but they’re nearly impossible to measure.  But does the fact that something is subjective or difficult to measure mean that it doesn’t exist? 

The point is that science by its very nature, focuses narrowly on certain aspects of our world which are easily measured, and excludes those things which are not.  Love and friendship, by their highly subjective nature, are difficult to measure and therefore difficult to study scientifically.  Does that mean love and friendship don’t exist?  Let us hope not.  If by its very nature science excludes subjective personality from its purview, does that mean personality doesn’t exist?  God, also, by his very nature, is not scientifically measurable.  Does that mean he doesn’t exist? 

There are many well-known authors, many of them scientists, who insist that God cannot exist because he is not detectable by the scientific method.  Perhaps the best known of these is Richard Dawkins, the author of “The God Delusion.”  He mocks the idea that there could be any knowledge of philosophy or religion that is outside the competence of science.  Therefore, he suggests, anyone who believes in realities outside the realm of science – in particular, God – is a deluded fool. 

In contrast to the Dawkinses of the world, many reputable top scientists – even eminent scientists – have not only been open to the possibility of God but even highly religious.  The best known of these today is Francis Collins, one of the world’s most distinguished geneticists.  Collins was formerly the head of the Human Genome Project, which completed the sequencing of the human genome in 2003.  Since 2009 he has been the director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland – one of the most prestigious scientific research institutions in the world.  He has also been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.

Francis Collins is also a devout evangelical Christian. 

In 2007 he founded the BioLogos Foundation, which invites the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutional understanding of God’s creation.”  [See their website here.]  He has written two books on the relationship of science and religion.  In The Language of God: A ScientistPresents Evidence for Belief (2006), he relates his own conversion to Christianity.  His parents were nominal Christians and freethinkers.  In college, as he became interested in science, he drifted into agnosticism and then atheism.  He “became convinced that everything in the universe could be explained on the basis of equations and physical principles” and that “no thinking scientist could seriously entertain the possibility of God without committing some sort of intellectual suicide.”  Eventually he decided to go to medical school, and as he began to interact with patients – with real people, as it were – he began noticing how many of them had

a strong reassurance of ultimate peace, be it in this world or the next, despite terrible suffering that in most instances they had done nothing to bring on themselves.  If faith was a psychological crutch, I concluded, it must be a very powerful one.

One patient challenged him to reconsider his lack of faith and belief, and he quickly realized how he had never seriously considered (as a good scientist should) the evidence for and against the existence of God. 

There I found myself, with a combination of willful blindness and something that could only properly be described as arrogance, having avoided any serious consideration that God might be a real possibility.  Suddenly all my arguments seemed very thin, and I had the sensation that the ice under my feet was cracking.  The realization was a thoroughly terrifying experience.  After all, if I could no longer rely on the robustness of my atheistic position, would I have to take responsibility for actions that I would prefer to keep unscrutinized?  Was I answerable to someone other than myself?  The question was now too pressing to avoid.

On the advice of a Methodist minister, he began reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.  He was impressed by the fact that Lewis himself, an Oxford scholar, had begun as an atheist and had made an attempt to disprove faith on the basis of logical argument, only to end up the most well-known defender of Christianity in the 20^th century.

I don’t have room to give justice to Collin’s discussion of how he changed his mind.  But one of the bases for his decision to convert was his realization of the reality of the foundation of morality in human society.  Morality, like friendship, like love, like God, is a subjective reality.  It has no place in the laboratory (though one hopes that scientists, especially biologists, take it into account in their actions!  There is a entire field known as bioethics).  Collins began to realize (to collapse a rather complex discussion in his book) just how basic the concepts of morality, justice, and fairness are to human society.  This realization became the basis for his growing conviction about the existence of God.

Why is it that Dawkins and others of his ilk insist that science has superseded religion?  In essence, it’s because they refuse to distinguish between science and philosophy.  Science as a method of studying the world, as we’ve already said, simply ignores God and focuses on the physical world.  And because it ignores God, (along with many other beliefs that cannot be proven in the laboratory), it is an easy (but false) leap to suppose that it opposes the very concept of God.  And because science and its sibling field of technology (applied science) have been so successful in the last two centuries in transforming civilization, it is easy to conclude – if one is not careful – that science is all that we need, that its view of the world is superior to all others.

In other words, it is important for us to distinguish between science, which is a method of studying the world, and the philosophy of naturalism or materialism, which is a way of viewing the world.  Materialism posits that there is nothing outside the material world – i.e., the world which science studies.  It is opposed not only to Christianity and other religions, but also Platonism and many other philosophies.  (Plato believed that there was a world of being, apart from the material world, which was accessible only with the mind.)

But it is important to stress that materialism is a philosophy, not a science.  In other words, it does not rest on scientific evidence.  Instead, it rests on a supposition that there is nothing outside the physical, material world which science studies.  There is no scientific evidence for this conclusion, apart from science’s inability to detect any other reality apart from the material world.  But how could science be expected to detect subjective realities that it has deliberately excluded from its purview?

I intend in future posts to look more closely at arguments made by materialist / atheist thinkers to show how weak they are.  I will not attempt to disprove them per se, but merely to show that they are far, far, from certain.  Stay tuned!