GOD AND SCIENCE
There is considerable confusion among people regarding Albert Einstein. Some say that he was an atheist. Some others hold the opposite view. However, by studying various statements by Einstein himself, it is clear that he was not a denier of God. Instead, he had doubts in the matter of the existence of God.
In 1997, Skeptic, a science magazine, published a series of letters that Einstein exchanged in 1945 with an officer in the US Navy named Guy Raner Jr. on the existence of God. Raner wanted to know if it was true that Einstein had converted from atheism to theism when confronted by a Jesuit priest with the following argument: A design requires a designer, and since the universe has a design, it must have a designer.
Einstein wrote back that he had never spoken to a Jesuit priest in his life but that from the viewpoint of such a person, he was and would always be an atheist. He added that it was misleading and childish to use anthropomorphic concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere and that all we could do was to admire, in humility, the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world as far as we can grasp it.
Raner replied, asking for clarification of Einstein’s position, wanting to know if he was an atheist from the viewpoint of the dictionary—someone who disbelieves in the existence of a God or a Supreme Being.
To this, Einstein replied:
“I have repeatedly said that, in my opinion, the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist, whose fervour is primarily due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and our own being.”
Einstein’s position on the concept of God is the same as that of many other scientists. God is not a subject of scientific study. Then, why do many scientists not deny God and, at most, call themselves ‘agnostic’—that is, holding to a position in which they are neither in a position to deny God nor in a position to affirm Him?
The subject matter of science is the material world. But what is the material world? It is a creation of the Creator. That is why the study of science is nothing but the study of the creation of the Creator. A scientist can deny belief in God, but denying the signs of God, the Creator, present in the entire creation is impossible.
Science has discovered that many non-physical or non-material realities exist in the physical world—meaningfulness, design, intelligence, and purposeful planning. This discovery is indirect evidence of the existence of the Creator. A scientific method applicable to forming an opinion about the existence of God is to see which theory the world discovered by science is verifying, either the theory of denial of God or the theory of affirmation of God. This principle of reasoning in science is called verificationism.
There is a principle in science known as the principle of compatibility. This means that a theory that is not observable but is based on the information obtained through observation is then given the status of truth based on this indirect testimony. A theory for such compatibility will be accepted as truth based on indirect verification. If this scientific principle of reasoning is applied to the belief in God, then fundamentally, the belief in God becomes a proven belief.
Scientists who describe their case as agnostic have consciously or unconsciously chosen a way of escape. They cannot deny God according to their knowledge, so they claim their point is agnostic.
