No need for scientists to be dogmatic about the existence, or not, of God -

It is always a delight when scientists talk sense. The Guardian quotes the gynaecologist Robert Winston saying last week that science and religion are ‘essentially both the same thing’. He denies that science is ‘about certainty, about absolute knowledge, about facts’. The truth, he adds, ‘is that science really is about uncertainty, and I think that religion is also about uncertainty’. This accords with my view. True religion has an element of mystery — greys, shades, shadows and doubts. Absolute religious certitude, of the kind exhibited by Muslim fanatics, is a sure sign of superstition and paganism. Equally, the arrogant certitude displayed by the Darwinian fundamentalists is a form of bad science. A true scientist, who puts truth before any theory to which he is committed, is ready to re-examine and even abandon his hypothesis if it is seriously challenged. This is the lesson I learnt from Karl Popper who contrasted Einstein, and his special and general theories of relativity, with pseudo-sciences like Marxism and Freudianism, whose theories were sufficiently elastic and imprecise to expand and accommodate fresh evidence which conflicted with their original formulation.

Of the three great systems which emerged in the mid-19th century, Comte’s Positivism began to unravel even before his death in 1857. Marxism was saved by the accident of the Russian revolution in 1917, which gave it another three quarters of a century of precarious existence until it crashed irretrievably in about 1990, but Darwinism has somehow managed to stagger on. Today very few people doubt evolution as such. But then Darwin was by no means the first to argue that species, including man, evolved. He stands or falls by his hypothesis that the main or even sole method of evolution is by natural selection. Why Darwin was so obstinate in making natural selection the dynamic of evolution I have never understood. I find it odd that, although Mendel presented his revolutionary findings about genes to the Natural Science Society in 1865, only six years after the publication of the Origin of Species, Darwin never showed any interest in his books. Mendel’s results were published in detail in 1866, and he sent a copy to Darwin, but the Great Scientist never even opened it. Perhaps he wasn’t such a Great Scientist after all? Mendel’s researches, just as original and brilliant in their own way as Darwin’s, were largely ignored until about 1900, partly at least because the Darwinians were determined to protect their master’s work. By then, they were committed to various forms of atheism or agnosticism, and I often think that what unites the Darwinians, even today, is not so much a love of scientific truth as a blind resistance to the idea of a God or Providence — any form of which operates outside what appear to be the laws of nature.

Personally I take the same view as Newton, whose views on God were set out carefully towards the end of his life when preparing the second edition of the Principia (1713). Newton rejected the idea that God’s true nature lay in his perfection. He insisted that God is ‘utterly void of all body and bodily figure; and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched’. His essential characteristic, Newton wrote, was what he called ‘dominion’ — God was all-powerful, the primal universal force. We know nothing about God except through his works, ‘by his most wise and excellent contrivance of all things’. Hence Newton could have had no difficulty in accommodating what we now know of the origins and history of the universe with his austere theology.

If, as we currently believe, the Big Bang occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, and the future universe was largely determined by that initial event, it poses a serious problem to scientific atheists. First, it was an event without a cause, or an action without an agent. Second, it produced out of nothing not only something but everything. Both go against all the laws of physics. The explanation of the Big Bang thus lies in metaphysics. For Newton this raised no difficulty as he has his God or a force, power or dominion. But for the Darwinians, who have the evolution of Homo sapiens firmly embedded in a process of natural selection which has no ultimate cause or agent and no end or object, the Big Bang is an enigma. They cannot explain it, and they avert their gaze. Moreover, our growing knowledge of the history of the universe and our own planet threatens natural selection itself. It is a slow, blind and almost inconceivably clumsy process, unless it had an element of programming which, if admitted, could destroy the entire theory.

Darwin was no historian, to put it mildly, and never produced a chronology of the evolution of species through natural selection. But the creation of the universe by the Big Bang, and the evolution of living things on earth — and eventually Homo sapiens himself — were historical events, however remote, and therefore the proper province of historians like myself. In analysing events, the historian requires a chronology, and if those endeavouring to explain events cannot provide one, or provide one which does not fit, then their explanation is plainly erroneous. The trouble with natural selection, as advanced by Darwin, and defended and elaborated by his triumphalist followers today, is that it operates too slowly to fit in with the years available in earth-history. When challenged on this point, Darwinians become very slippery, and their answers are those of people defending a dogma or an ideology rather than of scientists looking for truth. There are five other weaknesses in natural selection as an explanation of how species evolve but the historical one is the most important and will eventually prove fatal. Why can’t the Darwinians admit it now, and throw the whole debate open, so that mankind can get at the truth?

The other huge area of incertitude, for both religion and science, is what happens after death. If Newton was right, and there is a power or force exercising ‘dominion’, then it seems highly unlikely that the end of earthly life is the end of everything. I have been reading a lot recently about Alfred Tennyson, who for the last 30 years of his life was obsessed by this problem — hence, among other things, his beautiful little late poem ‘Crossing the Bar’. Some scientists, unable to cope with uncertainty about an afterlife, take refuge in poetry. Tennyson related that he found himself sitting at an all-male dinner with Gladstone and Tyndall, a greater all-round scientist than either Darwin or his fugleman, Huxley. Tyndall talked ‘in his loose way’ about ‘this Poem or Poetic Idea — God’. Gladstone was furious and said ‘with severity’, ‘Professor Tyndall, leave God to the Poets and Philosophers and attend to your own business.’ Tyndall was stunned into complete silence. However, human nature being what it is, Tyndall was soon publicly denouncing Gladstone as the ‘wickedest man of our day and generation’.

This analysis stinks.

A better description that's used to explain the big bang is to ask- what's north of the North pole? Nothing. Much like asking what came before the first moment.

As for throwing out natural selection, his justification is a non sequitur. One defines this logic, but its truth is pure opinion, and that "growing knowledge" (examples? none.) "threatens" some schools of either science or religion is his own selfish projection. Doubtful that he consulted with any such field experts - scientists or priests - on the subject; likely he simply dismissed them all from the start.

This still leaves the problem of what caused the first event, what changed? Before that... well, no events, no physics.

But there's no "before".

As an aside, I'm not especially sold on the big bang nor any other theory. Imagine being naive in some ideal sense, then meticulously collecting data at a magic show to understand how things work. From your seat in the audience, you'd naturally derive a set of false conclusions but could also say with certainty that you followed science closely and therefore your observations can't be refuted.

Given the vastness of the universe and the absurdity of living for ~70 years only to die and become an eternal nonentity.... I'd guess our total knowledge is scant and there's no fallacy in making ourselves comfortable with supplementary truths ("lies", though they are not) while pursuing pure science that benefits humanity in fast cars and nuclear bombs.

Everything is contrived anyway. So why not?

I think that you missed the essential point of the piece, that science and religion are both riddled with uncertainty and assertions of faith. Religion cannot offer scientific proof in the form of experimental confirmation; and science cannot resolve the enduring issues and questions that religion addresses, such as the origin of the universe and human life and the existence and nature of God and the afterlife.

To the discredit of religion, clerics and faithful often try to contradict scientists on scientific matters; and to the discredit of science, scientists commonly assert that their inability to provide scientific proof for the central propositions of religious faith means that those propositions are false.

Good science restricts itself to testable propositions and changes as scientific understanding and evidence change. Despite today's reflexive hostility to religion and the personal atheism or agnosticism of so many scientists, great scientific minds can nevertheless hold to sincere religious faith and be no less a scientist for it.

Newton's religious faith led him to see God and his dominion in all things, including his own extraordinary scientific discoveries. Modern science though seems utterly confident that there is and can be nothing beyond the present state of science, its current discoveries, and what it project will be discovered in the future.

Oddly, that attitude is not even good science because scientists are correctly taught that in science, absence of evidence is not absolute and conclusive proof of absence. Yet scientists are prone to believe the contrary as to religion and assert with ferocity that the lack of scientific evidence in matters of religion is conclusive proof against religious faith. Science sees no God, so God cannot be.

If, by some extraordinary stroke, a group of scientists with impeccable credentials came forward with utterly convincing proof of the existence of human afterlife, most people would be exhilarated. But many scientists would adamantly refuse to accept any such proof and some would be deeply distressed that scientific materialism and atheism had been discredited. Any cleric would instantly recognize the distress of such scientists for what it was: a crisis of faith.

Pure science can be boiled down to 3 or 4 fundamental forces, no? If I recall- strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagentic, and gravity. Religion, in essence, either denies their effects or claims that there's "more" (that being God, perhaps, or whatever is revealed in bible text). Science says those same matters of faith are demonstrably false, based on its small set of fundamentals.

It becomes a simple battle for definitions, or who gets to author the english dictionary... and since all elements of an amalgam (ie, words into language) have zero substantiation when considered individually, I see nothing invalid about re-writing the universe in ever more absurd terms that suit you. "Apple" isn't what we've accepted for centuries, it's "xxxUUUjjUI", or whatever abstract nonsense I slowly convince you to accept over time.

So when Catholics say 'bread-to-body' or 'wine-to-blood', I'm not about to argue with them.

If, by some extraordinary stroke, a group of scientists with impeccable credentials came forward with utterly convincing proof of the existence of human afterlife, most people would be exhilarated. But many scientists would adamantly refuse to accept any such proof and some would be deeply distressed that scientific materialism and atheism had been discredited. Any cleric would instantly recognize the distress of such scientists for what it was: a crisis of faith.

Suppose it was proven that the Hindus had it right. Wouldn't non-Hindu clerics suffer a crisis of faith as well?

Actually, no, science is not even close to explaining the world in four forces and a handful of equations and constants.

You may think there are four dimensions, but the current bet is that there are eleven.

Astronomy has provided evidence for dark matter and dark energy as being more abundant than ordinary matter and energy. Yet no one can explain what they are.

Gravity and several other key constants vary from predicted values. No one has been able to explain why Pioneer is moving slower than predicted -- except that something is wrong with our understanding of gravity.

Quantum mechanics has so many odd effects that "spooky action at a distance" is a common catch phrase coined by a perplexed Einstein for the faster than light, seeming self-aware behavior of entangled particles in quantum mechanics. Ask a physicist to explain the EPR paradox and other oddities of quantum mechanics. If he is honest, he will have to admit that he is baffled by them and that they defy ordinary human sense.

In time, it may hit you just how significant that is: we are composed of material stuff that operates according to rules of quantum mechanics that prescribe "spooky" behavior. Tell most scientists that you have seen a ghost and they will snicker at you credulity, but the physicists in the room will admit that everything is spooky because everything is quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics is spooky.

Some physicists insist that the most extraordinary thing about the universe is that the equations and constants of physics are balanced so as to make life possible. Was that pure chance? Some scientists insist that it is -- and project a "multiverse" of an infinite number of universes, with almost all of them hostile to life. Yet somehow, life exists.

I do not mean to suggest that there is or ever can be a scientific case that proves religion to be true. But science cannot and will not ever be able to prove that God, an afterlife, and matters of the spirit do not exist.

Suppose it was proven that the Hindus had it right. Wouldn't non-Hindu clerics suffer a crisis of faith as well?

That would depend on whose version of an afterlife was determined to be true and if it was proved to be exclusively true.

Ok, suppose the Hindu version of the afterlife was proven to be exclusively true. Wouldn't non-Hindu clerics suffer a crisis of faith as well?

It is always a delight when scientists talk sense. The Guardian quotes the gynaecologist Robert Winston saying last week that science and religion are ‘essentially both the same thing’.

Most of the people I see who believe this are creationists. It would seem to be the idea behind attempts to discredit Darwin the man. ("Kill the man, the theory will fall.") It could be part of why creationists think lists of quotes mined out of context are somehow "damning" of a theory with 150 years of evidence for it and none against. Arguments in religion are advanced if not settled by such means. Arguments in science are settled by more research. The other tactics in the context of science questions look simply dishonest.

Rockingham wrote:

If, by some extraordinary stroke, a group of scientists with impeccable credentials came forward with utterly convincing proof of the existence of human afterlife, most people would be exhilarated.

True enough. -- But I would wager that millions of both religious & nonreligious people would simply refuse to be convinced.

But many scientists would adamantly refuse to accept any such proof and some would be deeply distressed that scientific materialism and atheism had been discredited.<.I>

You assume proof of an 'afterlife' would prove theism & disprove science. Isn't it possible that once self conscientious, a being could transfer conscientiousness at death "by some extraordinary stroke", -- some natural process, explainable to science?

Any cleric would instantly recognize the distress of such scientists for what it was: a crisis of faith.

Yep, and I could envision many clerics having a 'crisis of faith' upon finding that an afterlife was a provable natural process.

No doubt that would happen.

And would the following also be true:

Many non-Hindu clerics would adamantly refuse to accept any such proof and some would be deeply distressed that their religious doctrine had been discredited.

And there would likely be adverse consequences to their employment, whereas the scientists who made this discovery would likely get the Nobel Prize.

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