God in the light of science

By Fernando Sols
Professor of Physics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Original Spanish version first posted in catolicos-on-line.org on September 6, 2010.

A partial release of the upcoming book by British physicist Stephen Hawking, where God seems to be excluded as a creator, has revived the debate on the capacity of science to affirm or deny the existence of God. The snippets of Hawking’s arguments we have had access to seem rather poor, but I will not analyze them without having read his book. I rather prefer to make some general considerations.

A popular picture portrays religion as based on mystery and thus retreating as science progresses. This myth of the “god of the gaps” seems to be present in those debates on science and religion where a surprising, not yet explained (or apparently very improbable) scientific fact is a point scored by religion, while an explained (or understood as plausible) scientific fact is a point scored by science. This conception of the relation between religion and science as a zero-sum struggle (one party wins only if the other party loses) is erroneous. Christian philosophy is based more on certainties than in mysteries and, when it refers to mysteries, these are of a theological or philosophical, not scientific nature.

In an intellectual debate, it is a symptom of insecurity to resort to the distortion of the adversary’s discourse in order to make it easily refutable. The “gap-filling god” is no doubt easy to refute, but that is not the God of Christian doctrine. If moreover, as often happens, the so-called argumentation is not based on established scientific facts but on speculations driven by philosophical prejudice, then intellectual fragility becomes doubly manifest.

An example would be the claim that a universe with ‘a priori’ very unlikely properties is necessary for God’s existence. This way one arbitrarily introduces the “gap-filling god of the singular initial conditions”. One then goes on to speculate, driven by philosophical prejudice, that, since our universe cannot be that singular, then many universes with widely varying properties must exist, so that our universe is only one among the many possible. With this double fallacy, one claims to prove the inexistence of a god that has previously been invented and, on top of that, the claim is presented as a scientific result. The fact is, the existence of God does not require a universe with a singular start, although it may be suggestive. On the other hand, if many different universes existed, the “multiverse” would be but a bigger universe. If in addition one argues that, by construction, we cannot communicate with those other “universes”, then they are not the object of science but of sheer speculation.

A central question which is important to remember is that the most surprising fact of them all is that something, instead of nothing, exists, and that something includes the laws of physics. This is in essence Saint Thomas’ third proof, which suggests the existence of a creator God. This creator is no doubt powerful, but is he intelligent?

Let us make a thought experiment. Let us assume that we do not know any physics but that we are provided with a powerful computer with which we can simulate a reality with laws of our choice which moreover we can ignore whenever we wish. What would be our creation like? It would probably be a scenario like that of Harry Potter, or Matrix, where absurd things occur, without regularity, fruit of our arbitrary will. The ancients did not know the laws of physics and viewed natural phenomena as whims of the gods. From what we know nowadays, the God who has created the Universe is far subtler.

Science provides us with a sophisticated knowledge of the material reality. Today we know much more about it than one thousand years ago. We know the laws of physics: the four forces, which one day may become one, with their fine symmetries; the non-linear dynamics and quantum mechanics, with its nonlocal correlations and their dose of indeterminism; the irreversibility of time-flow, characterized by the increase of entropy. Although we do not yet understand all the details, we know that those laws permit the development of a portentous universe where complex biological matter emerges and yields a human mind that can in turn discover science, mathematics, philosophy, and art.

In that imaginary experiment, would we have devised those laws which, with a reduced number of equations and rules, permit the generation of a reality as amazing as that described above? A reality which also makes it possible that determinism and indeterminism combine to leave room for, on the one hand, the regularity of many phenomena (regularity which eventually enables an intelligent being to unveil the secrets of nature) and, on the other hand, the action of freedom and providence, and of elusive chance.

Louis Pasteur, founding father of modern medicine, used to say: Un peu de science éloigne de Dieu, beaucoup de science y ramène (a bit of science distances one from God, but much science nears one to Him). Today, more than ever, we can make ours that statement, and remember the text of Saint Paul: “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made” (Rom 1:20).

Christians must not be afraid of scientific research when it is correctly conducted and interpreted. The pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (Second Vatican Council) reminds us: “If methodical investigation within every branch of learning is carried out in a genuinely scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, it never truly conflicts with faith, for earthly matters and the concerns of faith derive from the same God”.