Does science support a belief in God or undermine it?
Many people believe that science has rendered God, as a hypothesis, at best unnecessary and at worst, untenable. Often the impression is given of science bringing light and freedom from ignorance and superstition and of religions, such as Christianity, opposing it.
Stephen Weinberg told an audience in 1999:
“One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from that accomplishment.”
In 1977, in his book “The First three Minutes”, he wrote
“The more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless.”
This pessimistic view is not justified and, at best, it attributes more explanatory power to science than it is able to provide.
Richard Dawkins, a very influential and militant atheist, lost his Christian faith when he discovered Darwinism and the way in which Darwin explained the evolution of living things.
Such a response is unwarranted and puts far too much faith in science. Moreover, as John Lennox points out, Dawkins makes a category error by saying that because we have discovered a mechanism we can deduce that there is no agent.
There certainly are challenges to Theism in general and Christianity in particular, such as the problem of suffering, which caused Bart Ehrman to lose his faith, and the problem of hiddenness. Science per se, however, does not undermine faith.
As Thomas Kepler said, scientific investigation is “thinking God’s thoughts after Him”.
Many of the impressions that science and faith are incompatible are based of a false idea of religious faith or are simply wrong-headed. For instance, in one of Richard Dawkins’ books, “The God Delusion”, he asserts, amongst other things, the following:
- Faith is blind, science is evidence based.
- Science supports Atheism.
- The argument from design is dead. Who designed the designer?
- Religious belief is dangerous and encourages atrocities.
- People can be moral without there being a god.
- Claims about Jesus are not true.
If we take these one by one we can see that these assertions are either false or unjustified.
Faith is blind, science is evidence based.
The contrast is false. Faith certainly can be blind, whether it is religious faith or faith in anything or anyone else, but it need not be. Christian faith, in particular, is a rational faith based on historical and experiential evidence.
Conversely science, as mentioned above, is founded on unprovable premises which are tacitly taken on faith.
Science supports Atheism.
It does not.
If anything, atheism undermines science because science relies on the Universe being intelligible and ordered. A universe which arose out of unguided random processes has no need to be such.
Applying scientific methods to history and investigating the authenticity of the Gospels, actually leads to science supporting the truth of Christianity.
The argument from design is dead. Who designed the designer?
Neither Physicalism nor Theism can give an explanation of origins and probably can never do so because of the limitations in human capability.
Physicalism has the problem of an infinite regress. Unless it is believed that the Universe is eternal, which the majority of physicists do not believe and is an idea which presents many problems, the Universe must have had a cause.
Theism infers from this that something greater than the physical Universe must exist which is uncreated, eternal and is not constrained by the Laws of Physics.
This is not an explanation but a deduction.
In no way does this kill off the argument from design. Indeed, more recent scientific discoveries, such as the fine tuning of the Universe, would appear to strengthen it.
Religious belief is dangerous and encourages atrocities.
Humans, religious or otherwise, commit atrocities. One difference is that humans who commit atrocities in the name of Christianity are blatantly going against the teachings of Jesus Christ whereas humans who do so in the name of some other ideology may not have that inconsistency.
Far from encouraging atrocities, the teachings of Jesus forbids them.
People can be moral without there being a god.
People certainly can act morally and ethically without a belief in God but, without such a belief, they have no basis upon which to decide what is good and what is evil. In fact calling a human action “evil” would make no more sense than calling a rock “evil” if it fell off a cliff face and killed someone walking underneath.
Dawkins suggests that religious people are motivated to act morally either because they are afraid of divine punishment or want to “suck up” to God. He doesn’t consider the possibility that people might want to do the right thing as a genuine expression of loving their neighbour and loving God whom they want to please.
Claims about Jesus are not true.
There is much evidence to refute that statement. This will be dealt with later.