The Question of Science and God

Einstein once said in an interview in G.S. Viereck’s book “Glimpses of the Great”, in response to a question about whether or not he believed in God.

“Your question [about God] is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. He does not know who or how. He does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which he does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”

Indeed, where did the universe begin? How did life on Earth originate? These have been humanity’s most pressing questions for centuries. Over the last century, we have learned more about science and the creation of the universe than was known before the twentieth century. Even more remarkably, recent decades have uncovered new discoveries leading to new theories that provide us with unique hypotheses about the presence of God and the nature of the universe.

One writer who has brought sophistication to this contentious topic is John Polkinghorne. Since leaving his position as a professor of physics at Cambridge in 1979 to become an Anglican priest, he has written some two dozen books on science and religion. In one such book, Science and Theology (1998), Polkinghorne offers a classification (based on the work of the scholar Ian G. Barbour) of the various ways in which science and religion can relate. The most familiar is the conflictual position in which science and religion are irreconcilably opposed, each challenging the legitimacy of the other. Sometimes, however, science and religion can be seen as independent, two separate spheres of inquiry. Sometimes they are seen as in dialogue (or agreement), intersecting but not necessarily in conflict, especially with regard to the deepest mysteries, such as creation and consciousness. And sometimes the two are integrated (or one assimilates the other), united in a common quest to understand the universe and our place in it.

“All the matter of the world must have been present in the beginning, but the story it has to tell can be written step by step,” as Father Georges Lemaitre put it in 1931’s Nature.

Humanity’s attempts to understand nature are a fascinating story that spans centuries. From the basic ideas of natural philosophy to the computational models of neural networks, the human mind has been hard at work.

Scientists’ efforts to uncover these steps, and the faith in God that gave them confidence in their pursuit of scientific truth, are part of this intriguing story of discovery—of mapping reality.

Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, who helped make the key discovery supporting the Big Bang theory, has noted the obvious connection between its claim of a cosmic beginning and the concept of divine creation. “The best data we have are exactly what I would predict if I had nothing but the five books of Moses… [and] the Bible as a whole,” Penzias writes.

All of this highlights the growing gap between the public’s perception of science’s message and what the scientific evidence actually shows. The great discoveries of the past century point not to “blind, pitiless indifference,” but to an exquisite design for life and the universe, and perhaps an intelligent creator behind it all.