Is Science a Belief System?--Professor Brian Cox

"We live on a world of wonders. A place of astonishing beauty and complexity. We have vast oceans and incredible weather. Giant mountains and breath-taking landscapes. If you think that this is all there is, that our planet exists in magnificent isolation, then you're wrong. We're part of a much wider ecosystem, that extends way beyond the top of our atmosphere.

As a physicist I'm fascinated by how the laws of nature that shaped all this, also shaped the worlds beyond our home planet. I think we're living through the greatest age of discovery our civilisation has known. We've voyaged to the farthest reaches of the Solar System. We've photographed strange new worlds, stood in unfamiliar landscapes, tasted alien air."--Professor Brian Cox.

These are the opening lines of the BBC award-winning documentary Wonders of the Solar System with Professor Brian Cox, physicist. It was aired last fall on Discovery Science Channel in five one-hour episodes and was recently re-aired on the same channel. That is how it wound up on my DVR.

I'm a sucker for shows like this because I have a grand curiosity and sense of wonder. I love this stuff. I could sit and watch it all day. Brian Cox comes across as a very likeable guy, someone with whom you could have great conversations in your living room after a polite dinner with the family. He's wonderful. He reminds me of Keanu Reeves--only with a high IQ and a British accent.

In the first episode he discusses the power and influence of the sun. In the opening segment he takes us to India to see a total eclipse of the same. The wonder he expresses in the scenes that follow as he explains what is about to happen and then witnesses it are echoed by the wonder that I feel whenever I have the opportunity to learn, understand, and experience the greatness and complexity of this creation in which we find ourselves. It is this sense of wonder that often lifts my heart and mind toward God in worshipful adoration.

Something Brian Cox says in the first episode, first segment, grabbed my attention. We are in the Indian city of Ayodhya, a city known to ancient Hindus as the Solar City. As Professor Cox introduces us to the locale and sets up the event that will follow he says this,

"Science is different to all the other systems of thought, the belief systems that have been practiced in this city for millennia, because you don't need faith in it. You can check that it works."

What he says affirms what I have thought for a long, long time. Many scientists view science as a "belief system." It is their religion, as it were. Science, to them, is more than just a method of inquiry by which truth is ascertained. Science is a belief system, one which replaces traditional religion and therefore cannot be compatible with it in any real sense.

But there is more than that in what he says. Not only does the statement reveal the inherent atheism in much modern scientific thinking (Cox is an atheist), it exposes a lack of understanding that Professor Cox shares with many Christians about the relationship between faith, science, and ultimate truth.

Science and theology are two perfectly compatible methods of inquiry into the truth about the nature of the universe around us. They are different methods, for sure, but (don't miss this) all truth is God's truth. Both science and theology operate on the bases of reason and logic. Both utilize faith. Both require thinking and education. There is poor science; there is junk science. There is poor theology; there is junk theology. The war between the two disciplines is unfortunate, unnecessary, and a detriment to knowledge and human advancement.

In spite of what Professor Cox asserts in the statement above, it is not exactly true that everything that science posits as truth is testable. There is an entire discipline of physics, for example, known as "theoretical physics." Theoretical physicists are some of my favorite people on Discovery Science. Their purpose, their passion even, is in thinking about and proposing new ideas to challenge old ones, new theories about the nature of our universe. Many, indeed most of these theories are untestable. There is some evidence for them, but as yet no proof. Some of these theories will be rejected immediately by most other physicists. Some will slowly gain acceptance. Some will eventually gain a wide enough acceptance to actually replace older theories, theories that have been proved false by newer facts and data. Belief in any of these theories requires faith.

So I am going to disagree with Professor Cox slightly and state that science is not a belief system, but rather a method of inquiry by which our beliefs may be tested. It is one of several methods of inquiry available to us and by which we may come ever-closer to ascertaining ultimate truth. The truths revealed by science are perfectly compatible with the truths gleaned through theology, philosophy, historical investigation, or any other discipline or method of investigation.

All truth claims, whether they be theological, philosophical, historical, or scientific can and should be tested by whatever means are at our disposal in order that we, as fallible beings, might come closer to knowing ultimate truth. I am convinced that there is nothing in our lives, indeed nothing in this universe more important than that. Certainly as Christians we believe this. It is Paul who said,

"test everything; hold fast what is good."

Jesus said,

"You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

So I have to further disagree with Professor Cox and say that Christianity is a belief system which can and should be tested also. Because faith is involved does not mean that logic and reason are thrown to the wind. Faith must be reasonable or it is not faith at all, but foolishness. Every truth that science uncovers is compatible with genuine faith. Oftentimes these truths add to our faith and increase our wonder and awe of God.

At one time scientific inquiry was bound by religious orthodoxy and dogma. Certain questions and lines of thinking were taboo. Our potential increase in knowledge was stymied by artificial fences placed by institutions that held power and feared losing control. Today the pendulum has swung the other direction. Now there is a scientific dogma that cannot be questioned, an artificial fence in place that stifles much genuine inquiry. That the dogma itself is not scientific at all, but rather philosophical never seems to occur to the dogmatists who set themselves up to be sure that this fence is maintained. This dogma states that science and religion are incompatible, that faith and reason cannot co-exist, that all genuine scientific inquiry must begin and proceed from an atheistic worldview. Looking at the data from a theistic worldview is simply not allowed. Those who disobey this dictum are ridiculed and marginalized in order to keep any dissent from this scientific orthodoxy minimal.

That is a shame and a crime against truth.

Science Does Not Have All the Answers

Toward the end of the eighteenth century a certain philosophy started coming into vogue known as materialism. Materialism is the belief that the only thing that exists is matter, and that all things can be explained (including life, and consciousness) by the material the universe is made of and its interactions. It is a product (or its popularity at least) of the Age of Reason--though I would argue that it is the product of poor reasoning. As a philosophy, it undergirds most modern scientific thinking and secularist thought. In short, it is the atheist viewpoint.

Let me be clear that I am speaking in general terms and trying to keep things simple for a blog post. The concepts brought up in the first paragraph of this post alone could keep the curious reader occupied for years. I do not wish to over-generalize, I am sure there are exceptions (involving cognitive dissonance, in my opinion), but understand that modern scientific thought is founded on materialism as a philosophy and that materialism at its heart is the rejection of a Christian viewpoint, even a theistic viewpoint.

No, I did not say that all scientists are atheists and, no, I did not say that science is opposed to Christianity or vice versa. What I have pointed out, however, is why there has been so much tension between the scientific and Christian communities for the last 150 years or so. The scientific community as a whole embraced materialism around 150 years ago and that philosophy has been at its base ever since.

Pointing that out, however, is not the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post is to demonstrate that there are questions which science cannot answer, legitimate questions for which the scientific method is inadequate. These questions do not lend themselves to ordinary scientific means of testing and observation. They go beyond science in that sense. But, for all that, they are not illogical or unreasonable, in spite of what the atheist community would have us think.

In fact, it is the opposite. The idea that the only things that are real are things which can be tested and observed through the five senses is absurd on the face of it. It is wholly unreasonable to assert that no other dimension of reality exists beyond the observable simply because we have no means of observing it. In fact, it is arrogant.

Now, let me quote myself from a previous post:

We have a universe. That universe consists of matter and energy. It consists of space and it consists of time. It consists of life. What caused those?

Science cannot answer that, but that does not mean that there are not other means of coming to those answers. Nor should we dismiss any means of inquiry beyond the scientific as purely fanciful thinking . . . as many atheists do.

To me, this is what makes a guy like Richard Dawkins look the most ridiculous, for he is guilty of doing just that.

Radical Theory Change in Science

In light of the recent (November of 2009) revelations about the doctoring of records and data by global warming scientists at East Anglia University for the stated purpose of shaping public opinion for the advancement of a political cause, and in the face of the arrogance of those on the Left who insist that we all believe their global warming theory because of "consensus" and because the evidence is in and the debate is now over, and because making this sentence even longer will probably succeed in annoying every English teacher I ever had, I dredged up this old post from an old blog to present it to you, here and now, still relatively fresh and relevant.

Alister McGrath is a scientist and Christian theologian. He has written several books including at least two answers to noted atheist Richard Dawkins. I found the following quotations in one of those books and used them as a catalyst for the post. Enjoy.

Professor McGrath brings up an interesting observation in chapter three of his Dawkins' God--Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. In that chapter he has a section entitled "The Problem of Radical Theory Change in Science." Here is a quotation:

When I was learning physics at school, I gradually became aware of an awkward contradiction within what I was being taught. On the one hand, I was being assured that the theories of modern physics were completely reliable, the most secure form of knowledge that humanity could ever hope to possess. Yet every now and then, we would venture into a strange, twilight region in which it would be explained to us, in hushed, conspiratorial tones, that "physicists once used to believe this, but don't now." . . . At first, I thought that these old-fashioned views dated back to the sixteenth century. But the awful truth soon became clear. The acceptance of these new ideas dated from about forty years earlier. "Once" turned out to mean "quite recently."--Alister McGrath, Dawkins' God, p.102, paperback, Blackwell Publishing.

Yep. I've noticed that sort of thing myself. No, I'm no scientist, but I am a television nerd--which means I watch all the nerd channels. You know what they are--the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, NatGeo, Discovery Science, History International, etc. I watch shows dealing with astronomy, cosmology, dinosaurs, you name it. One cannot watch many of these programs without coming across statements like the one McGrath notes above. Scientific theories are always changing, always being revised, many being completely discarded and replaced. They are always getting it wrong.

Now is that a bad thing? Of course, not. Scientific discovery is a road paved with wrong ideas, but as we learn and discover further, we grow. Isn't that wonderful?

There's something else I've noted in the scientific community from watching those nifty little nerd channels. Scientists are always arguing with each other. They seldom all agree on their theories and some are even ridiculed for their ideas by their colleagues. Sometimes even, the ones who are ridiculed turn out to be right. Sometimes a scientist comes along who challenges the prevailing opinions, is ridiculed, but in the end, through his diligent experimentation and research, it turns out that he was right and he changes the face of science for a few decades (until the next guy comes along doing the same thing).

All of this is easily evident to the untutored layman like me. Yet at the same time it is astounding how arrogant the scientific community is. Imagine, for instance, a guy like Richard Dawkins. An intelligent man by all accounts, well-learned, articulate, funny, thorough, logical, Dawkins is also arrogant--arrogant to the point of expecting people to radically change their worldview because of a scientific theory. Of course, as McGrath points out, even if one were to accept the theory of evolution as genuine it does not then necessarily follow that one's theism or Christianity be discarded.

Nevertheless, here is Dawkins--who cannot prove his theory. He may be able to point to a mound of scientific evidence, yet the necessary proof is as of yet un-produced. But Dawkins ridicules those who do not accept the theory as fact, even though scientific theories have a way of being found wanting and, after being replaced by new and better ones, being cast upon the forgotten heaps of antiquated errors that litter the landscape of scientific history.

Please, guys. Keep studying, keep learning, keep discovering. I shall watch with an interested eye. But, at the same time, how about adding in a dash of humility to that theoretical cauldron? The stew you are offering will go down much better if you do.

A little more from McGrath:

Historians and philosophers of science have produced long lists of scientific theories, each of which was believed by one generation to be the best possible representation of reality, yet which were abandoned by later generations, in the light of new discoveries and increasingly precise measurements of what was already known. Some theories have proved remarkably stable; many have been radically modified, and others abandoned altogether.--Alister McGrath, Dawkins' God, p.104, paperback, Blackwell Publishing.

And:

Scientific theorizing is thus provisional. In other words, it offers what is believed to be the best account of the experimental observations currently available. Radical theory change takes place either when it is believed that there is a better explanation of what is currently known, or when new information comes to light which forces us to see what is presently known in a new light. Unless we know the future, it is impossible to take an absolute position on the question of whether any given theory is "right." What can be said--and, indeed, must be said--is that this is believed to be the best explanation currently available. History simply makes fools of those who argue that every aspect of the current theoretical situation is true for all time. The problem is that we don't know which of today's theories will be discarded as interesting failures by future generations.

If theories are thus subject to erosion, what of worldviews that are based upon them? . . .Alister McGrath, Dawkins' God, p.104,5, paperback, Blackwell Publishing.