“Religious knowledge is probably the paradigm of unreliability,” declares scientist Peter Atkins. “It’s based on sentiment, on authority and on wishful thinking. Scientific knowledge is the only way of acquiring reliable knowledge.”
Atkins isn’t alone in this thinking. The perception that science and faith are fundamentally opposed is common. A worldwide survey by Barna in 2019 found that science was one of the main reasons young people doubt and walk away from faith.
Often people are surprised by how comfortable I am being both a priest and a scientist, but I believe science and faith to be a natural combination.
They focus on different dimensions of truth, but they share the common conviction that there is truth to be sought. Sir Francis Bacon, one of the founders of modern science and the scientific method, recognised this when he said:
“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called nature.”
He believed that God can be seen through the study of the natural world. Many of the founding fathers of science were in fact doing science because they wanted to discover more of God. Johannes Kepler, who was thinking initially about becoming a theologian, realised that by doing science and exploring the wonders of God’s world he would be glorifying God, because “The Heavens declare the glory of God.”
A more recent example and closer to home is the New Zealand Professor of Physics, Jeff Tallon, who says that:
“Faith and science are not only compatible but each deeply enriches the other. If science is the study of the universe, and God created the universe, then science or faith on their own will give only a partial view of reality. Science must surely be a window on the mind of God just as much as the parable of the prodigal son or the Good Samaritan, or even the cross of Christ, is a window on the heart of God.”
Science gives us a bigger, fuller picture of God, the world and our purpose within it. So why is it often seen as the antithesis to religion?
One reason is a tendency to compartmentalise the disciplines. Schools and churches rarely facilitate cross-disciplinary thinking. Teachers are specialists in their own particular subject, so young people are shaped to think that in a science classroom they’re allowed to ask science questions, and in a religious studies classroom or in a church setting they’re allowed to ask religious and faith-based questions. Research indicates that young people gradually get to the point that they think, “Well, I can’t ask a science teacher about religious questions or faith questions, and I wouldn’t ask a science question of my religious teacher or my church leader.” And that leaves them in a space with no place for science-faith questions to be asked or explored.
Ironically, the view that science is the only way to discover truth about the universe is not actually scientific. It’s not science, but a philosophy called scientism. Scientism asserts the belief that the scientific method is not just a valuable way, but rather the supreme or exclusive method to discover truths about the world and reality.
But can science explain everything? Allow me to answer with a story involving two people on a beach.
It’s a warm summer evening, and two people are walking along the beach listing to the gentle lapping of the waves and looking at the stars in the sky as the starts appear as the sun goes down. They then spot a light flashing out at sea. One of them was a physicist, a man who loved science and thought of nothing but his work. Science was his life. Being the kind of scientist he was, he rushed to his car where he kept all kinds of scientific equipment. He got out a stop watch and timed the flashes of light. He then took out his photometer and measured the brightness of the flashes. He set up a spectrometer and recorded their spectrum. He noted the position of the light against the background stars. As he drove home across the coastline he stopped two or three times, noting how it had appeared to move against the background stars and did some triangulation calculations on his laptop.
When he got home his wife said, “You look excited, dear. Did you see something interesting tonight?”
“Oh yes,” he said, “I saw what I deduced was a heated tungsten filament enclosed in a silicon envelope emitting a regular pattern of visible radiation, an intensity of 2500 lumens at a distance of 1327 metres offshore.”
The other person on the beach that night was a teenager going home from sea scouts. When she got home her mother said, “You look excited, dear. Did you see something interesting tonight?”
“Oh yes,” she said, “I saw a boat signalling SOS, so I phoned the coastguard and they sent out a lifeboat.”
The story illustrates that the same event can have more than one level of explanation. Science by the very methods it uses is restricted to the study of material things – matter and energy. So its explanations are always expressed in materialistic terms. As a result, it explains the mechanisms of nature, like how the flashing light was produced in the story. It cannot answer questions about meaning and purpose, like why someone was flashing the light. Scientific explanation could describe secondary causes – the flashing of the tungsten lamp. It couldn’t go back to the primary cause: the mind, the person, sending the message. The purpose of their message.
There are questions that science is powerless to answer. Questions such as “Why did the universe come into being?” “What is the meaning of human existence?”
For questions about meaning and purpose we need to look beyond science to things like faith and philosophy.
Even tackling some of the great challenges of our age requires other methods of thinking. Take climate change for example. Science can tell how it is happening, about how burning fossil fuels contributes to a warming climate. But science can’t tell us whether we should act. We need other ways of thinking to address the problem. For example, we need to think about the ethics involved, whether we should be concerned about a planet that is getting warmer. We might want to think about politics, economics or psychology – how we can be motivated to act and change our attitudes. We can even look at how God created humanity to look after this world and our role as stewards.
It’s encouraging that here in New Zealand educators are advocating for a more integrated approach to learning by incorporating mātauranga Māori into the science curriculum. Mātauranga Māori is about Māori knowledge, and how such knowledge is acquired and transmitted through generations. Māori knowledge is vast and varied – some of it has been acquired and utilised in ways that are very much like western science. But mātauranga Māori also has a great deal to teach us about a more integrated and holistic approach to knowledge than the more mechanistic ways of western science.
In mātauranga Māori, there’s a recognition and appreciation for the inter-connectedness of ecosystems and human relationships with the natural world, and the understanding that if the environment suffers, people will suffer. Embracing mātauranga Māori concepts could help us develop an identity of ecological belonging to become better kaitiaki (guardians) of our biodiversity. Mātauranga Māori concepts could also help us better appreciate the interconnectedness of the material and spiritual worlds – that there is a beauty and mystery about this world that points to something beyond ourselves, something that cannot be explained in only materialistic ways.
Science is wonderful. I’m very thankful for the gift of science, and the breadth and depth of understanding that we have gained through science over the centuries. But science is not the same as scientism.
“Scientism’s mistake,” as the philosopher Mary Midgley puts it, “does not lie in over-praising one form of [knowledge], but in cutting that form off from the rest of thought, in treating it as a victor who has put all the rest out of business.”
My passion for both disciplines of science and faith is why I’ve launched a series of talks at the Nelson Cathedral to explore the relationship between them, and how to be true to both. We will be exploring some of the magnificent discoveries that science has made, and some of the challenges they pose to the Christian faith. We’ll learn that by facing these challenges with humility and reason we can grow in faith and understanding, and come to appreciate even more how great God is.
If you’re in Nelson, come along to the Cathedral for our Science & Faith conversations (the next one is on July 10), or if you're further afar, keep an eye out for some videos from the sessions.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
“Religious knowledge is probably the paradigm of unreliability,” declares scientist Peter Atkins. “It’s based on sentiment, on authority and on wishful thinking. Scientific knowledge is the only way of acquiring reliable knowledge.”
Atkins isn’t alone in this thinking. The perception that science and faith are fundamentally opposed is common. A worldwide survey by Barna in 2019 found that science was one of the main reasons young people doubt and walk away from faith.
Often people are surprised by how comfortable I am being both a priest and a scientist, but I believe science and faith to be a natural combination.
They focus on different dimensions of truth, but they share the common conviction that there is truth to be sought. Sir Francis Bacon, one of the founders of modern science and the scientific method, recognised this when he said:
“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called nature.”
He believed that God can be seen through the study of the natural world. Many of the founding fathers of science were in fact doing science because they wanted to discover more of God. Johannes Kepler, who was thinking initially about becoming a theologian, realised that by doing science and exploring the wonders of God’s world he would be glorifying God, because “The Heavens declare the glory of God.”
A more recent example and closer to home is the New Zealand Professor of Physics, Jeff Tallon, who says that:
“Faith and science are not only compatible but each deeply enriches the other. If science is the study of the universe, and God created the universe, then science or faith on their own will give only a partial view of reality. Science must surely be a window on the mind of God just as much as the parable of the prodigal son or the Good Samaritan, or even the cross of Christ, is a window on the heart of God.”
Science gives us a bigger, fuller picture of God, the world and our purpose within it. So why is it often seen as the antithesis to religion?
One reason is a tendency to compartmentalise the disciplines. Schools and churches rarely facilitate cross-disciplinary thinking. Teachers are specialists in their own particular subject, so young people are shaped to think that in a science classroom they’re allowed to ask science questions, and in a religious studies classroom or in a church setting they’re allowed to ask religious and faith-based questions. Research indicates that young people gradually get to the point that they think, “Well, I can’t ask a science teacher about religious questions or faith questions, and I wouldn’t ask a science question of my religious teacher or my church leader.” And that leaves them in a space with no place for science-faith questions to be asked or explored.
Ironically, the view that science is the only way to discover truth about the universe is not actually scientific. It’s not science, but a philosophy called scientism. Scientism asserts the belief that the scientific method is not just a valuable way, but rather the supreme or exclusive method to discover truths about the world and reality.
But can science explain everything? Allow me to answer with a story involving two people on a beach.
It’s a warm summer evening, and two people are walking along the beach listing to the gentle lapping of the waves and looking at the stars in the sky as the starts appear as the sun goes down. They then spot a light flashing out at sea. One of them was a physicist, a man who loved science and thought of nothing but his work. Science was his life. Being the kind of scientist he was, he rushed to his car where he kept all kinds of scientific equipment. He got out a stop watch and timed the flashes of light. He then took out his photometer and measured the brightness of the flashes. He set up a spectrometer and recorded their spectrum. He noted the position of the light against the background stars. As he drove home across the coastline he stopped two or three times, noting how it had appeared to move against the background stars and did some triangulation calculations on his laptop.
When he got home his wife said, “You look excited, dear. Did you see something interesting tonight?”
“Oh yes,” he said, “I saw what I deduced was a heated tungsten filament enclosed in a silicon envelope emitting a regular pattern of visible radiation, an intensity of 2500 lumens at a distance of 1327 metres offshore.”
The other person on the beach that night was a teenager going home from sea scouts. When she got home her mother said, “You look excited, dear. Did you see something interesting tonight?”
“Oh yes,” she said, “I saw a boat signalling SOS, so I phoned the coastguard and they sent out a lifeboat.”
The story illustrates that the same event can have more than one level of explanation. Science by the very methods it uses is restricted to the study of material things – matter and energy. So its explanations are always expressed in materialistic terms. As a result, it explains the mechanisms of nature, like how the flashing light was produced in the story. It cannot answer questions about meaning and purpose, like why someone was flashing the light. Scientific explanation could describe secondary causes – the flashing of the tungsten lamp. It couldn’t go back to the primary cause: the mind, the person, sending the message. The purpose of their message.
There are questions that science is powerless to answer. Questions such as “Why did the universe come into being?” “What is the meaning of human existence?”
For questions about meaning and purpose we need to look beyond science to things like faith and philosophy.
Even tackling some of the great challenges of our age requires other methods of thinking. Take climate change for example. Science can tell how it is happening, about how burning fossil fuels contributes to a warming climate. But science can’t tell us whether we should act. We need other ways of thinking to address the problem. For example, we need to think about the ethics involved, whether we should be concerned about a planet that is getting warmer. We might want to think about politics, economics or psychology – how we can be motivated to act and change our attitudes. We can even look at how God created humanity to look after this world and our role as stewards.
It’s encouraging that here in New Zealand educators are advocating for a more integrated approach to learning by incorporating mātauranga Māori into the science curriculum. Mātauranga Māori is about Māori knowledge, and how such knowledge is acquired and transmitted through generations. Māori knowledge is vast and varied – some of it has been acquired and utilised in ways that are very much like western science. But mātauranga Māori also has a great deal to teach us about a more integrated and holistic approach to knowledge than the more mechanistic ways of western science.
In mātauranga Māori, there’s a recognition and appreciation for the inter-connectedness of ecosystems and human relationships with the natural world, and the understanding that if the environment suffers, people will suffer. Embracing mātauranga Māori concepts could help us develop an identity of ecological belonging to become better kaitiaki (guardians) of our biodiversity. Mātauranga Māori concepts could also help us better appreciate the interconnectedness of the material and spiritual worlds – that there is a beauty and mystery about this world that points to something beyond ourselves, something that cannot be explained in only materialistic ways.
Science is wonderful. I’m very thankful for the gift of science, and the breadth and depth of understanding that we have gained through science over the centuries. But science is not the same as scientism.
“Scientism’s mistake,” as the philosopher Mary Midgley puts it, “does not lie in over-praising one form of [knowledge], but in cutting that form off from the rest of thought, in treating it as a victor who has put all the rest out of business.”
My passion for both disciplines of science and faith is why I’ve launched a series of talks at the Nelson Cathedral to explore the relationship between them, and how to be true to both. We will be exploring some of the magnificent discoveries that science has made, and some of the challenges they pose to the Christian faith. We’ll learn that by facing these challenges with humility and reason we can grow in faith and understanding, and come to appreciate even more how great God is.
If you’re in Nelson, come along to the Cathedral for our Science & Faith conversations (the next one is on July 10), or if you're further afar, keep an eye out for some videos from the sessions.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
