Tim Radford ponders why quite a few eminent scientists, who know about the Big Bang and evolution, yet retain a belief in God and even goes to church.
In the US, according to a survey published in Nature in 1997, four out of 10 scientists believe in God. Just over 45% said they did not believe, and 14.5% described themselves as doubters or agnostics. This ratio of believers to non-believers had not changed in 80 years. Should anybody be surprised?
No, we should not. Remember that in the US, unlike the rest of the western world, around 90% of the general population believe in God in some way. A significant amount of them believe in a very different way than intellectuals and scientists who profess to have faith. Religion appeals very much to our sentimental feelings, and it does not surprise me that even scientists sometimes find a corner in their mind for a god-of-the-gaps. Moreover, they often redefine "God" as something much more abstract than the God of Moses, maybe to keep in touch with the beliefs of their fathers and mothers. I am quite convinced the number of believers among scientists would be much lower in a society where fewer people were brought up to believe in the first place.
The article also speculates that perhaps rigid unbelief is more common in humanities (where people generally know zilch about the universe, I am sad to agree) than in hard sciences, and though it gives no evidence for this, I just love the way Tom McLeish attributes it to the "postmodern effect":
"Our dear friends in the humanities do get themselves awfully confused about whether the world exists, about whether each other exists, about whether words mean anything. Until they have sorted out whether cats and dogs exist or not, or are only figments in the mind of the reader, let alone the writer, then they are going to have problems talking about God."
Not only about God, I hasten to add.
Yet the article gives the last word to Richard Dawkins, who certainly don't have any sentimental feelings towards religion:
Richard Dawkins, however, remains unmoved. Is there a limit to what science can explain? Very possibly. But in that case, what on earth makes anyone think religion can do any better? "I once reached this point when I asked the then professor of astrophysics at Oxford to explain the origin of the universe to me," he says. "He did so, and I posed my supplementary: 'Where did the laws of physics come from in the first place?' He smiled: 'Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand over to our good friend the chaplain.' My immediate thought was, 'But why the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?' If science itself cannot say where the laws of physics ultimately come from, there is no reason to expect that religion will do any better and rather good reasons to think it will do worse."
Exactly. I wished Christianity generally was as reflective and tolerant as those believing scientists interviewed. However, the quasi-agnostic believing scientists who are able to juggle both gods and molecules comfortably in their minds should be aware that their cherished institutions have a large grassroots component that is deeply hostile to scientific exploration. I cannot help thinking that some naively "give aid and comfort" to the enemy of science.
