Published in The Skeptic, September 2007
Although the rate of Christian belief among Western scientists is lower than that in the general population, there are still many people working in scientific fields who claim to believe in a traditional Christian god, with attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. I hope to show that such a belief – no matter how ‘compartmentalised’ – is incompatible with the beliefs necessary to work effectively in science. In particular, science relies on an underlying assumption we can call the Axiom of Consistency, with which any supernatural beliefs are more or less incompatible.
What can a Christian experimenter say?
All science is based on observation and experimentation. Imagine that two scientists, Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, repeat Galileo’s famous experiment, dropping several bodies of different sizes and weights in a vacuum and measuring the time it takes them to fall a specified distance. Both report on the experiment as follows:
Tarr/Fether: We recorded that the time taken for these bodies to fall was the same, regardless of their size and weight.
So far, so good. But so what? Science is not about single observations. The fact that particular bodies fell in a particular way on a particular occasion is of no value to anyone. If Tarr and Fether want to keep their grants and publish their papers they need to generalize. For the atheist Doctor Tarr this is no problem. She can go on to say:
Tarr: Therefore, bodies in a vacuum will fall at the same rate regardless of their size and weight.
But the traditionalist Christian Professor Fether cannot say this, because Professor Fether lacks important information. She has no way of knowing whether her objects fell at the rate they did because of some underlying force of physics, or because God made them fall at that rate. Professor Fether, in fact, has to choose between two hypotheses, with no reason to favour either one:
Fether 1: Bodies in a vacuum will fall at the same rate regardless of their size and weight unless God intervenes.
Fether 2: Bodies in a vacuum will not fall at the same rate regardless of their size and weight unless God intervenes, and God intervened in this case.
Fether’s God, remember, is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. It requires no more trouble or effort for this God to adjust the speed of any number of falling bodies, any time, anywhere, than it does to leave them alone.
Most Christian scientific workers would, I take it, opt for hypothesis 1 rather than 2, but why? There is no clear evidence (or doctrine) indicating whether or not God takes a day-to-day interest in the workings of physics and chemistry, and there are many occasions on which God or God’s representatives have been reported to alter what would otherwise have been the outcome of physical or chemical events. Perhaps God is an interventionist, intimately involved in running every process that atheists mistakenly regard as natural; or perhaps God only handles, say, thermodynamics, and leaves the other branches of physics to manage themselves. But this is certainly not something which a practicing scientist can claim to know for a fact. So Fether’s choice between hypothesis 1 and 2 is an arbitrary choice, presumably based on her prospects for grant funding and a continued career, rather than on any factual principle.
But this doesn’t help her in the long run. Science is not just about discovering facts, it is about applying them. Unapplied facts are just interesting curiosities.
Can Christians apply science?
A ski resorts wants to build a toboggan run. It calls in Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether as consultants to ensure that the run will operate properly. They see the designs and are asked for their comments.
Doctor Tarr has an easy job responding:
Tarr: From my knowledge of physics I can state honestly and reliably that this run will work.
But what can Professor Fether, as an honest traditionalist Christian, say in these circumstances? Since all physics depends on God’s will:
Fether: This toboggan run design will work if God either makes it work or chooses not to let it fail.
The resort manager – another traditionalist Christian – is not impressed. Professor Fether has said nothing that he didn’t know already. Of course the run will work if God makes (or lets) it work. What he wants to know is whether God will make (or let) this particular run work or not.
At this point Fether can tell the truth and say:
Fether: Why are you asking me? I’m not a priest or theologian. I have no idea what God’s plans are for this particular run.
or she can lie and pretend, despite her Christian beliefs, to have reliable knowledge about what will happen in the future:
Fether: Physics says this run will work, so it will work. [Please make it work, God!]
Most traditionalist Christians who are scientists – and want to stay in work – will choose to lie.
In observational sciences like zoology the prospects are no better. The atheist scientist can say:
Tarr: I observed five bell frogs in this pond.
But the scientist who is Christian can only say
Fether: God has allowed me to believe that I observed five bell frogs in this pond.
But nothing at all can be deduced from this without making assumptions about God for which there is no evidence.
The Axiom of Consistency
Doctor Tarr can generalize with impunity because he believes the universe is consistent. Other things being equal, the speed of light on Tuesday will be the same as it was on Monday; an object weighing 50 grams in Nairobi will weigh 50 grams in Boston; a thrush’s egg will hatch out a thrush rather than a dragon. This Axiom of Consistency is seldom formally acknowledged, but it lies behind all science. Sometimes, of course, other things aren’t equal, and catastrophes occur or interesting discoveries are made, but all scientific work relies on the principle that tomorrow’s laws of physics and chemistry will be essentially the same as today’s.
But Professor Fether has no reason to believe in the Axiom of Consistency, and every reason to doubt it. If God’s fingers are on all the levers all the time, then there is simply no way of knowing what will happen in the future. It would be highly impious for her to assume God will make (or let) the future be consistent with the past. Where is the evidence for this assumption? Arguments which attempt to apply the Axiom of Consistency to God, like this:
God has always behaved this way up till now, therefore God is likely to behave this way in future.
are not valid, since she has no way of knowing what God – who is often claimed to exist outside time – has ‘always’ done, or what might motivate a change in God’s behaviour. And if she believes that God has intervened in the operation of physics in the past, during Biblical times if not at the moment of Creation, she has every reason to believe that God may continue to do so.
In fact the only thing Professor Fether can honestly say on completing any experiment or observation is:
Fether: God either made this happen or prevented it from not happening, and may choose to either make it happen or prevent it from not happening in the future.
But this is a statement of Christian faith which has nothing to do with science, or with the experiment or observation from which it is supposed to derive.
Conclusion
Science is betting on the future from what’s been observed in the past or present. Atheist scientists believe they have evidence on which to base their bets, but this evidence is not compatible with belief in a traditional Christian God. No traditionalist Christian – scientist or otherwise – can honestly generalize from a particular instance to a prediction or rule. Their stated beliefs about God’s all-encompassing powers turn their bets about the future into sheer guesswork.
Thus any scientist who claims to believe in God’s omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience cannot at the same time sincerely claim to be doing science, unless they are deliberately disseminating information that they believe to be untrue. A traditionalist Christian ‘scientist’ is either lying or misled.
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