Religion and Science

The words ‘religion’ and ‘science’ have vast connotations. Religion is generally understood to mean the recognition of the existence of a supernatural ruling power, the creator and controller of the universe, who has given to man a spiritual nature, which continues to exist after the death of the body, and of man’s duty to be obedient to this power. As a concept of life, it is all-encompassing. Science, on the other hand, is the study of the perceptible world. Both are extremely broad-ranging subjects, and their respective spheres are in many aspects quite separate from each other. It is not my intention here to go into the details of these two subjects, but to deal only with the clash — real or unreal — which has taken place between science and religion on an academic level, and certain of its consequences. One of the reasons for this clash is the claim that scientific discoveries have proved religion baseless, and it is principally this point on which I wish to focus attention.

The traditional conflict between science and religion made itself felt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was during this period that, in the light of new scientific discoveries, many came to feel that there was no further call to believe in God. One of the most compelling reasons for believing in God, amongst others, was that without this belief, the universe was inexplicable. The antagonists of religion were quick to point out that we no longer required the ‘God’ hypothesis when there was no aspect of the universe which could not be explained quite easily by the findings of scientific research. To them, the idea of God was redundant and, therefore, baseless.

This claim was quite flimsy from the academic or logical point of view even at the time it was made, and now science itself has admitted, directly or indirectly, that it had no satisfactory ground for making such a claim.

Of what nature was this discovery of science, which attempted to convince people that there was no further need for the concept of God? It was no more than the discovery that the universe is bound by certain laws. In ancient times, man had simply believed that all happenings in the world were directly attributable to God. But modern findings revealed that behind every event there was a cause, which was discoverable by observation. For instance, Newton observed that all the stars and planets in the vastness of space are bound by certain immutable laws and move in strict accordance with those laws. Darwin’s research showed that man had not come into existence through an act of special creation but had evolved, in consonance with general material laws, from the lower species and had gradually developed into homo sapiens, i.e. man as we now know him. Similar observational studies showed that all events seemed to occur as part of a known system called the ‘Law of Nature.’ Significantly, this law of nature functioned with such effective regularity that it was considered entirely predictable.

These discoveries were taken to mean that the universe, which we had regarded as God’s domain, was actually subservient to a set of material and physical laws. When these laws were applied, they yielded consistent results, and this further convinced members of the educated elite that they were right in embracing atheism. The German philosopher, Kant, declared: ‘Give me matter and I shall demonstrate how the world is made out of matter.’ Haeckel even went so far as to say that, given water, chemical elements and time, he would be able to create a man. Nietzsche proclaimed with triumphant finality, ‘God is dead.’ Another belief had it that the creator and sustainer of this universe was not an alive, intelligent being possessing power; that the universe, from beginning to end, was material. All movements and all manifestations of the universe, whether related to life or to lifeless matter were nothing but blind material processes. The world discovered by science evinced no signs whatsoever of the hand of God—which is surely the basis of all religions. Then how could it be considered rational to believe in God?

All the heroes who had discovered the laws of nature were believers in God, but, ironically, when their research was brought before the public, it was thought that their discoveries had rendered meaningless the very existence of God. Since, in order to explain events, one had only to have recourse to the causes and laws of the material universe, there seemed to be no need to postulate the existence of a God who was extraneous to that universe. It was said, for example, that the rising and setting of the sun had not been properly understood until telescopes had been made and mathematics developed. The former ascription of these phenomena to the will and power of supernatural beings had been due merely to man’s poor comprehension of these matters. And now that astronomy had proved that there was a universal system of gravitation, which controlled the movements of the sun, moon and stars, there was no further need to believe in God. Gradually, all those happenings in nature, which were supposed in ancient times to have invisible superhuman forces at work behind them, were shown to be the results of the action and reaction of the forces of nature. It was as if, after the natural causes of events had been described in modern scientific terms, belief in God should automatically cease. Julian Huxley, in his book, Man in the Modern World, says:

If the rainbow is generated by the refraction of the sun’s rays on falling rain, it is not set in the sky as a sign by God. If the plague is inevitably generated by the Bacillus pestis and spread by rat-fleas, an outbreak of plague can no longer be looked on as sign of divine wrath. If animals and plants have slowly evolved through hundreds of millions of years, there is no room for a creator of animals and plants, except in a metaphorical sense totally different from that in which the word was originally and is normally used. If hysteria and insanity are the natural results of disordered minds, there is no place remaining in them for possession by devils.

After presenting this piece of ‘reasoning’ with great conviction, he says that the ascription of such events ‘to supernatural beings is merely due to man’s ignorance combined with his passion for some sort of explanation.’ He then sums up with: ‘If events are due to natural causes, they are not due to supernatural causes.’ (pp. 18-19)

There is a serious weakness inherent in such arguments of the anti-religionists, which can be best understood through illustrations. Think of the railway engine speeding along the track. How do its wheels revolve? If we attempt to answer this question by studying the different parts of the engine and their movements, we shall arrive at the conclusion that the movement of the wheels is an extension of the functioning of the locomotive’s mechanism. But would we be justified in believing that the reason for their movement is the engine and its various parts? Obviously, we would not. We should first have to consider the respective roles of the engineer who designed the engine and the engine driver who set it in motion. Without their instrumentality, the engine could neither exist, nor move. The engine and its parts are not then the final reality. The final reality is the mind, which has brought the engine into existence, and runs it at will. A Christian scholar, Cecil Boyce Hamann, has aptly said: “Nature does not explain, she is herself in need of explanation.” This is because, as he puts it, nature is a fact, not an explanation.

Let us consider, for example, how a chick comes into this world. In embryo, it develops inside the smooth, hard shell of an egg, then it emerges when the shell breaks up. How does it come about that the shell breaks up at the right moment and the fledgling, which is no more than a small lump of flesh, finds its way into the outer world? In the past, the obvious answer was: “It is the hand of God.” But now, microscopic studies have shown that on the completion of twenty-one days, when the chick is ready to emerge, there appears on its beak a small, hard horn with which this ‘lump of flesh’ is able to break through the walls of its cell. The horn, having done its job, falls off a few days later. This observation, from the point of view of the anti-religionists, contradicts the old concept that it is God who brings the chick out of the shell, because the microscope has clearly shown that a 21-day law exists which is responsible for creating conditions, which make it possible for the chick to emerge from the shell. This is a mere fallacy. What modern observation has done is to add a few more links to the chain of factors, which lead up to an event. It does not tell us the real cause of the occurrence. It has just shifted the problem of the breaking up of the shell to the development of the horn. The breaking of the shell by the chick is simply an intermediate stage in the occurrence rather than its cause. Will the cause of the event be understood only when we learn what made the horn appear on the chick’s beak? In other words, when we have traced the event back to its primary cause, the cause which ‘knew’ that the chick required some hard instrument to break through the shell and, therefore, in exactly twenty-one days, compelled a hard substance to appear on the beak in the form of a horn and to fall off after having discharged its function?

‘How does the shell break?’ was the question that faced man previously. Now, in the light of recent observations, instead of an answer, we have another question: ‘How does the horn develop?’ In the context of perceived phenomena, there is no difference in the nature of these two questions. At the most, questions of the type that lead us from one link to another in the chain of cause and effect demand an extension of the observation of facts, if they are to be answered at all. On this basis, they do not elicit any valid explanation.

The discoveries held by the atheists to be an explanation of nature and, as such, an alternative to God, can just as easily be thought of as being the way nature works. We can, quite rationally, say that God implements his will through these laws, only parts of which man, with his limited skills, has been able to discover. Let us suppose that religious minded people, who believe that it is God who causes the ebb and flow of the tides, are confronted with the scientific explanation that the tides are actually caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and vary according to the geographical configuration of the seas and land surfaces. There would be no need for them to deny this explanation in order to uphold their belief in God’s instrumentality. They could accept it without causing the slightest harm to their religious beliefs. It is true that tides do occur in consonance with geographical configuration and as a result of gravitational pull. But, after all, what are these things? They too are God’s creations. It is through these phenomena that God acts. As John Wilson observed: ‘This does not destroy my belief. It is still God (working through these things) who is responsible for the tides.’

Similarly, in the field of biology, the theory of evolution implies that biological processes no longer demand the existence of metaphysical realities. In other words, in order to understand the nature of life, we do not need to believe in a conscious God, modern studies having ‘proved’ that life automatically patterns itself along certain material lines: reproduction, variation and selective survival. That is, through reproduction, living creatures continue to be born, certain congenital variations go on developing, then after a long and complicated process of mutation, an altogether new species comes into being. Thus, according to the antagonists of religion, the application of Darwin’s principle of natural selection in biology has made it not only possible but imperative to reject outright the concept of God’s hand in life’s development.

The supposition that the various species of living creatures have come into being through a gradual process of evolution has yet to be established as a fact, but even were we to give credence to this theory, it could still be said with equal conviction, that this is God’s chosen way of creation, rather than its being the result of a blind, automatic force. Mechanical evolution can easily be proved to be a creational evolution. This being so, those anti-religionists who refer to science for support have no genuine basis on which to reject this argument of creational evolution.

This is far from being all that there is to the matter. The truth is that twentieth century science has lost its ability to convince. Today, Newton has been replaced by Einstein, and the theories of Planck and Heisenberg have overthrown those of Laplace. Now the anti-religionists, at least on an academic level, can no longer claim that science has arrived at the ultimate truth. Indeed, the theory of relativity and the quantum theory have led scientists to the conclusion that it is impossible in science to separate the observer from the observed. This means that we can see only certain external manifestations of reality; we cannot apprehend it in its essence. The revolution that has occurred in science in the twentieth century has itself proved the importance of religion from the scientific point of view.

In his book, The Limitations of Science, J. W. N. Sullivan states the case thus:

What is called the modern “revolution” in science consists in the fact that the Newtonian outlook, which dominated the scientific world for nearly two hundred years, has been found insufficient. It is in process of being replaced by a different outlook, and, although the reconstruction is by no means complete, it is already apparent that the philosophical implications of the new outlook are very different from those of the old one. We are no longer taught that the scientific method of approach is the only valid method of acquiring knowledge about reality. Eminent men of science are insisting, with what seems a strange enthusiasm, on the fact that science gives us but a partial knowledge of reality.

This change in the scientific outlook seems to have taken place suddenly. It is not yet sixty years since Tyndall, in his Belfast Address, claimed that science alone was competent to deal with all man’s major problems. But, in truth, so far as these remarks sprang from the conviction that the sole reality is ‘matter and motion,’ their foundations had already been undermined. The attempt to represent nature in terms of matter and motion was already breaking down. That attempt was at its most triumphant by the end of the eighteenth century, when Laplace was emboldened to affirm that a sufficiently great mathematician, given the distribution of the particles in the primitive nebula, could predict the whole future history of the world. The fundamental concepts isolated by Newton had proved themselves so adequate in the applications that had been made of them that they were regarded as the key to everything.

The first indication that the Newtonian concepts were not all-sufficient came when men tried to fashion a mechanical theory of light. This endeavour led to the creation of the ether, the most unsatisfactory and wasteful product of human ingenuity that science has to show. For generations this monster was elaborated. Miracles of mathematical ingenuity were performed in the attempt to account for the properties of light in terms of the Newtonian concepts. The difficulties became ever more heartbreaking until, after the publication of Maxwell’s demonstration that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, they seemed to become insuperable. For it had dawned on men of science that there was, after all, nothing sacrosanct about the Newtonian entities. After a certain amount of hesitation, and a few last desperate efforts to make electricity mechanical, electricity was added to the list of irreducible elements.

This may seem to have been a simple step to take, but it was, in reality, of profound significance. For the Newtonian concepts were all of a kind that one seemed to understand intimately. Thus the mass of a body was the quantity of matter in it. Force was a notion derived from our experience of muscular effort. Nevertheless, we supposed that we knew the nature of what we were talking about. But in the case of electricity its nature is precisely what we did not know. Attempts to represent it in familiar terms—as a condition of strain in the ether, or what not—had been given up. All that we knew about electricity was the way it affected our measuring instruments. The precise description of this behaviour gave us the mathematical specification of electricity and this, in truth, was all we knew about it. It is only now, in retrospect, that we can see how very significant a step this was. An entity had been admitted into physics of which we knew nothing but its mathematical structure.

Since then other entities have been admitted on the same terms, and it is found that they play precisely the same role in the formation of scientific theories as do the old entities. It has become evident that, so far as the science of physics is concerned, we do not require to know the nature of the entities we discuss, but only their mathematical structure. And, in truth, that is all we do know. It is now realized that this is all the scientific knowledge we have even of the familiar Newtonian entities. Our persuasion that we knew them in some exceptionally intimate manner was an illusion.

With this realization it is no long step to Eddington’s position that a knowledge of mathematical structure is the only knowledge that the science of physics can give us. Leaving out all aesthetic, ethical, or spiritual aspects of our environment, we are faced with qualities such as massiveness, substantiality, extension, duration, which are supposed to belong to the domain of physics. In a sense they do belong; but physics is not in a position to handle them directly. The essence of their nature is inscrutable; we may use mental pictures to aid calculations, but no image in the mind can be a replica of that which is not in the mind. And so in its actual procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities, but pointer-readings which we can observe. The readings, it is true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber.

The fact that science is confined to a knowledge of structure is obviously of great “humanistic” importance. For it means that the problem of the nature of reality is not prejudged. We are no longer required to believe that our response to beauty, or the mystic’s sense of communion with God, have no objective counterpart. It is perfectly possible that they are, what they have so often been taken to be, clues to the nature of reality. Thus our various experiences are put on a more equal footing, as it were. Our religious aspirations, our perceptions of beauty, may not be the essentially illusory phenomena they were supposed to be. In this new scientific universe even mystics have a right to exist. (pp. 138-42)

Such explanations from scientific philosophers now abound. Morton White in his book The Age of Analysis, points out that ‘the philosophically-minded scientists of the 20th century have started a new crusade, the names of Whitehead, Eddington and James Jeans are the most prominent among them.’ He then bears out this notion of a ‘crusade’ with highly pertinent quotations from each of them.

‘Nature is alive’ (p. 84). Such was the interpretation of modern information by the English mathematician and philosopher, A.N. Whitehead (1861-1947).

‘The stuff of the world is mind stuff’ (p. 134). So said the English astronomer, Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), deriving this conclusion from his studies in science.

The English mathematical physicist, Sir James Jeans (1877-1946), interprets modern research thus: ‘The universe is a universe of thought.’ (p. 134)

The views of the most perceptive scientists can be summed up in J.W.N. Sullivan’s words: ‘The ultimate nature of the universe is mental.’ (p. 145)

The thoughts of these scholars clearly negate any material interpretation of the universe, their special virtue being that they have been advanced in the context of modern findings in the field of physics and mathematics. That the proponents of such ideas have had to make courageous, herculean efforts to overcome the materialistic outlook is aptly expressed by Morton White with reference to Whitehead: ‘He is a heroic thinker who tries to beard the lions of Intellectualism, Materialism and Positivism in their own bristling den’ (p. 84). Morton White may have said this only about Whitehead, but this applies to all the scientists mentioned above.

This philosophical question as to the final reality being mind or matter is actually concerned with the question of whether the universe has developed independently and spontaneously through some material process, or whether there is a non-material being who has created it at will. If we accepted the former proposition, it would be just like saying that, in the last analysis, a machine is simply a fortuitous compound of iron and petrol. That is to say, that the machine started off as iron and petrol, but owing to some blind, automatic process, it took on the form of a machine. All a pure accident! A machine, as we all know, is the product of an engineer’s mind. That mind, quite distinct from the matter, existed before the machine. It conceived it, designed it, and brought it into being. The machine’s existence was clearly consequent upon the exercise of mind and will.

In determining the nature of the mind, differences can be found among those who believe the mind to be the final reality, just as believers in God have diverse concepts of God. Even so, the conclusion arrived at by academic study that the final underlying reality of the universe is mind, testifies by its very nature to the truth of religion and amounts to a rejection of atheism. ‘The truly significant change in modern science is not to be found in its increased powers to aid man’s progress, but in the change in its metaphysical foundations.’

The best exposition of this viewpoint is to be found in The Mysterious Universe, by Sir James Jeans. By pure scientific argument, the writer has come to the conclusion that in the light of modern physics, ‘The universe cannot admit of material representation, and the reason, I think, is that it has become a mere mental concept.’

He later goes on to say, “If the universe is a universe of thought, then its creation must have been an act of thought.” (pp. 133-134)

He holds that the modern concept, which interprets matter in terms of waves of electrons, is quite unconceivable to human thought, because these ‘waves’ could be only the ‘waves of probabilities’ without having any material existence. Such reasons have compelled Jeans to conclude that the substance of the universe is thought, not matter. Now where is this thought situated? His answer is that it exists in the mind of a great ‘mathematical thinker’.  Because the structure of this thought that comes to our mind is a completely mathematical structure. The ‘great Architect of the Universe thus begins to appear as a pure mathematician.’

Sir James Jeans then states the entire case with great precision:

It seems at least safe to say that the river of knowledge has made a sharp bend in the last few years. Thirty years ago, we thought, or assumed, that we were heading towards an ultimate reality of a mechanical kind. It seemed to consist of fortuitous jumble of atoms, which was destined to perform meaningless dances for a time under the action of blind purposeless forces, and then fall back to form a dead world. Into this wholly mechanical world, through the play of the same blind forces, life had stumbled by accident. One tiny corner at least, and possibly several tiny corners of this universe of atoms had chanced to become conscious for a time, but was destined in the end, still under the action of blind mechanical forces, to be frozen out and again leave a lifeless world.

Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter—not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown exist as thoughts.

The new knowledge compels us to revise our hasty first impressions that we had stumbled into a universe, which either did not concern itself with life or was actively hostile to life. The old dualism of mind and matter, which was mainly responsible for the supposed hostility, seems likely to disappear, not through matter becoming in any way more shadowy or insubstantial than heretofore, or through mind becoming resolved into a function of the working of matter, but through substantial matter resolving itself into a creation and manifestation of mind. We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has something in common with our own individual minds not, so far as we have discovered, emotion, morality, or aesthetic appreciation, but the tendency to think in the way, which, for want of a better word, we describe as mathematical.

In spite of this complete about-face in science from the academic point of view, it is a fact that, in practice, there have been no noticeable changes in the attitudes of anti-religionists. On the contrary, they are engaged in seeking new arguments to support their theory. The reason for this is not to be found within any academic framework. No, the reason is to be traced, alas, to a biased mentality. How often have we seen educated people refuse to accept the truth when ample proofs have been offered to them, simply because of deeply rooted preconceived ideas. It was just such a prejudiced attitude, in the seventeenth century, which had prevented Italian scholars from accepting Galileo’s theory as an alternative to Aristotle’s, although a ball thrown from the Leaning Tower had demonstrated quite conclusively that Galileo was right. Again, it was this bias which caused scholars at the end of the nineteenth century to ridicule Berlin Professor Max Planck when he gave a physical explanation of light— the quantum theory — which proved the Newtonian concept wrong. Planck’s theory was not accepted for many years, but today it is considered one of the most important principles in physics. 

There is a common belief that it is only laymen who are guilty of prejudice and not scientists; we should do well, therefore, to mark the words of A.V. Hills, himself a scientist: ‘I should be the last to claim that we, scientific men, are less liable to prejudice than other educated men.’5

Sir James Jeans underscores this when he says, ‘Our modern minds have, I think, a bias towards mechanical interpretation.’6

Now, in a world where prejudice holds sway, how can we hope that a concept will be accepted only because it has been proved academically? The often-repeated experiences of history show that man has all along been governed by his emotions rather than by his intellect, in spite of the fact that academically and logically, reason occupies the higher position. More often than not, reason has played into the hands of emotion. It has seldom happened that it has gained a positive control over the emotions. Indeed, the intellect has always coined arguments to support the emotional and thus tried to prove that emotional attitudes were rational. Man finds it a psychological necessity to cling to his emotional being, even at the cost of remaining blind to reality. We must remember, therefore, that we are not dealing with machines, which ought to respond to the mere flicking of a switch. What we have to address ourselves to is man, and man accepts something only when he himself is willing to do so. If he is not, no argument, however sound it may be, will convince him. Arguments are not, sad to say, electric switches. That man, with all his capacity for reasoning, should so seldom, himself, be amenable to reasoning, is perhaps the greatest tragedy of human history.