I’d love to do a Woody Allen and bring Newton, Boyle, and Kepler into the discussion, but I don’t think they’re online. Still, it’s good to know that you have talked to them about it.
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No one can talk to them about it, but I have spent considerable time studying some of their works, as well as those of Galileo and other early modern scientists – and reading a large number of scholarly works by historians and philosophers of science who have studied these writers. My interpretation of them is hardly idiosyncratic, but quite commonly found in the scholarly literature on the relation between religious and scientific thought in the early modern period. The old 19th-century idea of a “warfare between science and religion” is pretty well dead in the serious academic world of the history of science, though it survives in American popular culture, and, I suspect, in the minds of a good number of American scientists, including some who are members of the NAS.
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Yes? And what did they say about how they would have reacted to hypothetical discoveries of future science?
If all those future discoveries did was extend the sphere of lawlike behavior farther, wider, and deeper, there is no reason why they should have changed their view, i.e., that the laws proceed from the mind and will of God. Laplace’s “correction” of Newton regarding the stability of the planetary system doesn’t prove that the laws don’t proceed from the mind and will of God, so Newton could easily surrender his contention about God having to tinker with the solar system without abandoning his view that the solar system shows wise contrivance. Our most modern science, far from making God less likely, from the point of view of Newton etc., shows that God was even wiser, deeper, subtler, cleverer than even they had imagined back in the 17th century.
The doubt that laws proceed from the mind and will of God is not warranted by any particular discovery of modern science; it represents a cultural, philosophical, and theological shift in the frame of mind of practicing scientists. We have here in this group scientists who still believe that nature and its laws spring from the mind and will of God, which shows that intelligent, highly trained scientific specialists can hold this view; the shift toward non-belief among scientists is not logically necessitated by the contents of modern science.
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Can we agree that there is no conceivable evidence that the laws of nature either did or did not proceed from the mind and will of God? It would in fact be non-lawful behavior that would be evidence favoring God. Thus the insistence of IDers that natural processes could not have produced the diversity of life.
I object to your attempt to enlist Newton to your cause. Even if you have correctly understood his hypothetical reaction to modern science, there seems no argument to be made other than proof by name-dropping.
Agreed. But I would suggest that faith precedes this idea rather than science offering evidence for it. Science strengthens faith only if one is determined to look at the world from that perspective.
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Object all you like, but I wasn’t promoting a cause, just making historical statements about what Newton and other great early modern scientists in fact believed, as can be verified by their statements.
Only someone who was not very familiar with the General Scholium, and the scholarship around it, would call my remarks “name-dropping.”
No, God could be behind both lawful and non-lawful behavior, as Aquinas points out, and each in its own way might provide evidence.
Some IDers. Others, like Denton, think differently. There is more than one “design” view.
You realize that exactly the opposite can also be said, i.e., that science weakens faith only if one is determined (as, e.g., Dawkins is and Provine was) to look at the world from a non-faith perspective?
And I’m not trying to get you to concede that science points to God; the question we are talking about is the question raised by Dr. Heddle, i.e., why are so many scientists unbelievers? I’m saying that the contents of science don’t necessitate unbelief. The web of causation we observe is very much compatible with the existence of an extraordinarily wise and powerful being. If the majority of modern scientists, or modern NAS members, don’t believe in God, there are some non-scientific factors operating to tilt things that way. Scientists are human beings, and are not immune to the general cultural ethos of their era, or of the intelligentsia of their era. So the task is tracking down all the subtle causes which cause people to believe what they believe. I don’t think the answer will be a simple one.
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You had no purpose in making those statements other than to inform me of what they believed? We can draw no lesson from them?
Isn’t that more name dropping, this time of “the General Scholium”?
How would lawful behavior provide evidence?
Denton’s beliefs are not entirely clear. But perhaps we could say “almost all IDers” just to accommodate him.
Sure, it could be said. But would it be true?
Agreed. I would suggest that a scientific habit might explain it: a devotion to empiricism, evidence, and a refusal to accept any conclusion not supported by evidence. Scientific thinking is inimical to religion.
Of course. Nothing would be incompatible with such a being. But evidence demands more than mere compatibility, especially if incompatibility is logically impossible.
I’m suspecting that it will. Again, it’s not the data of science but its methods that are foremost here. Perhaps you should ask instead why those scientists think that the methods should be applied to religion and why they reject “other ways of knowing”.
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I answered that back at the very beginning, or thought I said enough to imply the answer. Newton etc. would be examples (in Bacon’s mind, or in the mind of someone who endorses Bacon’s statement), of people who, having a deeper and fuller knowledge of nature, causation, etc., get beyond the skepticism and atheism of some other students of nature, and affirm the existence of God. Whether Newton etc. were right to draw their conclusion is another question, but surely they are the sort of people Bacon had in mind (not Newton specifically, who came along later, but people of that quality).
The General Scholium is one of the key references for Newton’s ideas about God and their relationship to his science. It’s no more name-dropping to mention it than to mention The Origin of Species as one of the key references for Darwin’s ideas about descent with modification vs. special creation. Translations of it from the Latin are easily available online.
Again, many of the greatest scientists of earlier days exhibited the qualities you speak of, but did not as a result drop belief in God. So there must be other factors involved.
If you mean a crude mythological understanding of religion, perhaps, but the context of this discussion (Bacon, Newton, and modern Christian physicists like Daniel and David Heddle here), we are talking about a more sophisticated version of “religion”, and of “God”, than that.
Perhaps you should ask the same thing, i.e., why so many scientists have adopted not only science, but “scientism” – the doctrine that other ways of knowing are to be rejected. Again this is a recent doctrine, not typical of the founders of modern science. Also, you are assuming that all of the scientists of whom we are speaking (the ones covered in the surveys) have “applied the methods of science” to religion, and ignoring the possibility that many of them have other reasons, personal, or cultural, for rejecting religion. Apparently, or so the legend goes, Jerry Coyne rejected God and religion when he was a teenager, lying on his parents’ rec room couch, listening to Black Sabbath (or some such rock band); he was nowhere near yet an accomplished scientist at that point (even if he was a bright science student in school), so it wasn’t a profound grasp of the details of current science, or any great experience of using the scientific method, that brought about his unbelief. It was something else. And his case is not unique. I know other people who have reported similar moments of decision occurring to them quite young, before they had any significant training in scientific method.
Regarding “evidence”, remember that the question on the table is not “why the majority of scientists surveyed are neutral on the question of God,” i.e., why they don’t see enough evidence for God and therefore agnostically withhold assent, but “why the majority of scientists surveyed think there is no God.” If, for example, there isn’t enough evidence one way or the other regarding the existence of a major planet beyond Pluto, the proper scientific conclusion is that we don’t know, not that there is no such planet. So the question is why we aren’t getting more scientists on these surveys ticking the “don’t know” or “other” box on questionnaires about the existence of God. What is inclining them to a “there is no God” answer? Why not take the give the much more intellectually cautious and responsible answer, i.e., “Unsure” or “Don’t know”? Why isn’t that answer the most common answer among trained scientists? Something “in the air” is apparently working against that caution, and in favor of a negative answer.
Are they, or did they just begin that way and fail to be changed?
The purpose of bringing it up was to assert your superior knowledge, or perhaps my inferior knowledge. If you wanted to show anything, you could have quoted something relevant.
Newton is a fine example. He didn’t apply scientific methods to his religion, only to the natural world. And I have doubts that he was all that scientific in his approach to alchemy, at that.
Ah, sophisticated religion. How do you apply scientific thinking to sophisticated religion?
That’s nothing more than a pejorative label. What other ways of knowing would you suggest should be accepted? Should they be accepted in science or only when investigating religion?
I believe it was the Beatles. Is this story any more useful than the one about Francis Collins becoming a Christian upon seeing a frozen waterfall? And you don’t need a great amount of training in the scientific method to indulge in rational, empirical thinking.
The evidence, of course, or rather the absence of the evidence that ought to be there. There is good evidence that there is no major planet beyond Pluto, because its gravitational effects should have been seen by now.
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I had no such comparative purpose. I was merely indicating the name of a work of Newton which supported my account and contradicted yours. And the section of the Scholium pertaining to God and design is not long. You can easily find an English version online and read the passage, any time you like.
True, but he would have, if he held the belief that only scientific knowledge was reliable way of knowing anything about anything – a belief which you seem to be directly or indirectly endorsing here, though you are free to clarify if I have misread you.
I didn’t suggest one should. I said that there is nothing in modern science which necessarily should drive modern scientists not to believe in God, yet unbelief in God, according to the surveys David Heddle was discussing, is much more common among scientists than among the general public. So the question is, what is the source of the inclination to disbelieve?
The point is that the way the story is told, it doesn’t sound as if Jerry had just scientifically formulated a Grand Theory of the Universe which showed the non-existence of God; the way the story is told, it’s more like he, stimulated somehow by the music he was listening to, had a sort of religious or philosophical epiphany – a subjective intuition of the non-existence of God. That’s how it sounded to me. But if you have an accurate rendition of the story, you can present it, and we can try to figure out whether Jerry’s basis was scientific or not. In any case, whatever Jerry’s private journey, I would still maintain that there is nothing in the substance of modern science that should make belief in God difficult. At worst, the discoveries of modern science are neutral on the question.
I’m quite aware of that; I was aware of it from reading my All About the Planets book when I was about 10 years old. I made clear that I was speaking hypothetically: if the evidence did not incline either way, it would be wrong for scientists to say, “Well, since there is no clear evidence for large planets beyond Pluto, we can safely say there aren’t any.” Similarly, if science does not speak clearly for or against the existence of a God, it would be wrong for scientists to say, “Well, since there is no clear evidence for God, we can safely say there isn’t one.” And it appears to me that some people here, even some of the atheists, are saying that science can’t speak to the question of God, so that still leaves unanswered why scientists on the whole are less inclined to believe in God than the general population. What do they know, or what do they think they know, that the masses don’t know, pertinent to the reality of God?
Hi Eddie and @John_Harshman
I am enjoying your discussion. I thought I would add a story about Newton and one of his “scientific” arguments for God.
Who Made It?
Sir Isaac Newton had a friend who, like himself was a scientist. Newton was a Christian and loved the Lord Jesus Christ. However, his friend was not a Christian. He didn’t even believe that there was a God! Newton had spoken to his friend many times about how God had created a wonderful universe. Each time, though, his friend would shake his head saying, “No,” and reply that the universe “just happened.”
Newton had finished the design of a scale model of our solar system. A very skilled craftsman then built it from Newton’s plans. In the center was a large ball made of brass which represented the sun. Revolving around this sun were smaller balls attached to spokes of different lengths. These balls represented the planets, and the spokes placed them at the proper distances from the sun. All of these balls, representing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, were in their proper order. (Today we know that the planet Pluto is also in our solar system, but Newton did not know this.) These balls were all geared together so that when a crank on the front was turned, they all moved in their orbits around the sun.
One day Newton was in his study reading when his friend came to visit him. His friend saw the model and instantly recognized what it was. As he slowly cranked the model he studied it closely. He said to Newton, “This is tremendous! Who made it?”
“Nobody,” Newton answered without looking up from his book.
His friend turned to him with a confused look and said, “You must not have heard me. I asked, ‘Who made this wonderful model?’”
Looking up, Newton said with a perfectly straight face, “Nobody made it. Those balls and gears just appeared and put themselves together!”
His friend, now quite upset, said, “You must think I’m a fool! Of course somebody made this! He’s a genius, and I’d like to meet him!”
Newton set his book aside and slowly walked across the room to his friend. As they stood in front of the model, Newton explained to his friend, “This model is just a poor imitation of our wonderful universe. You know the laws and the precise order which govern our universe. I can’t seem to convince you that this model, this toy, does not have a designer or a maker. However, you have said many times that the solar system, which this model represents, ‘just happened.’ Now tell me, is that the logical conclusion of a scientist?”
Permit me to doubt that this little story is true. I see it comes from the “Children’s Corner” of a Christian web site. Definitely a story for children. Note that this supposed friend isn’t even named.
Another example of Bill’s selective credulity.
Hi John
I have seen it in several places and different forms. It may or may not be true but it is a very cleaver argument non the less. My guess is that Newton would be capable of an argument and delivery of an argument as interesting as this one.
Why do you doubt it is true?
Perhaps you could cite and quote the sort section that you find relevant.
Your complaint was that scientists were looking only at unsophisticated religion. That implies that one should direct one’s examinations to the sophisticated version.
My suggestion that it arises from the need for empirical examination. Absence of evidence, contrary to popular believe, can be evidence of absence under the proper conditions.
I have no interest. The point about the waterfall is that these epiphanies can be preceded or followed by more extensive reasoning.
Then you shouldn’t have brought it up. It is in fact a case in which absence of evidence is exactly evidence of absence, and it makes a good analogy for the case under discussion.
I don’t think it’s what they know; it’s about one’s approach to the evidence, and the evidence in question is not necessarily or primarily the content of science.
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Because I’m not as credulous as you are. The story is distinctly lacking in details that could be checked. Why do you believe it?
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First, it’s well known that Newton was an Arian, which Christians consider to be a heretical view. So it’s false and odd to present him as a “Christian who loved the Lord Jesus Christ”.
Second, the story is anachronistic. Uranus was not discovered until 1781, whereas Newton died in 1727. (This also applies to Neptune.)
Third, in the story Newton seems to be supporting a Paleyan design argument which didn’t become popular until several decades after his death (as far as I know).
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Why? Arians are Christians and they love the Lord Jesus Christ. They just don’t believe that he was identical with God.
Also, the word “scientist” was invented in 1833.
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The latter belief definitely disqualifies you from orthodoxy. Even more pertinent is that evangelical Christians would never present someone who is not an orthodox Trinitarian as a Christian without significant qualification (this also applies to Mormons, for example). This is only further evidence that the story was completely made up and could even have originally been applied to someone else (e.g. Maxwell, Faraday or some other Christian scientist of the 19th century).
If you’d paid attention to the “if”, it would never have been a problem.
Those conditions don’t obtain regarding the matter we are discussing.
I don’t deny it, but they aren’t always. And in any case, it’s quite evident to me that “big beliefs” are quite often arrived at by people without anything even resembling knock-down, drag-out argumentation. Not just about God but about politics and other things. Most people of a leftist political orientation, for example, did not arrive there after reading the entire history of political thought, weighing and balancing the arguments of Locke, Rousseau, Marx, etc., and then deciding that the leftist theorists were closer to the truth. Usually sympathies of a leftward kind are already well in place before a person starts doing any theorizing, often absorbed from family life or the workplace or other sources of influence. The same is true of the right-wing orientation in most cases. And I studied capital punishment for years, and debated it with many people, and found that strong convictions in most cases preceded any detailed investigation into arguments; the tendency was to try to dig up arguments that supported the position one took – often very early in life – on emotional grounds. Factors other than argument and evidence are at work in people’s convictions on “the big questions.” And surely whether or not God exists is one of those “big questions.” The way people handle such questions springs from their whole being, not just logic or evidence in the narrow sense that you mean them.
Scientists have special features that distinguish them from other thinkers, but still, in many respects, they are part of the modern middle-class intelligentsia, and it seems to me indubitably true that since the Enlightenment the middle-class intelligentsia, has, on the whole, moved gradually away from belief in God, with some kinks and bumps, but in a clear overall trend. This trend has been particularly pronounced in the 20th and 21st centuries, and especially since the end of WW II. It was largely disguised by the fact that at the popular level religion was very big at some points, e.g., in the 1950s, when virtually every American family had some nominal association with organized religion and there were still prayers in the schools. But the movement of the intelligentsia has been, overall, against religion lately, and since it is a trend that goes beyond natural scientists, but includes sociologists and economists and philosophers and historians and political scientists and literary critics etc., who have different knowledge bases and often quite different intellectual methods from the natural scientists, it is obviously not merely the contents of science, or even the methods of science, that are the cause of the decline in belief; there is something else going on.
Regarding Newton (and he is only one among many early modern scientists who make my point), I am not going to engage in a “quote war” with you. If you really want to know what Newton said in the General Scholium, you should read it yourself, not ask me to provide highlights for you so that you can then try to shoot down my interpretations on a case-by-case basis. That’s not how one comes to an understanding of any significant author, by arguing about out-of-context statements. One understands only when one digests connected chunks of the author’s thought. Certainly I would not have made any public statements about what Darwin thought before carefully reading Darwin, and that should be the procedure for other thinkers as well. It appears that you want to be able to tell me I’m wrong about Newton without having first read one of the most basic documents of Newton’s thought. I’m not interested in that kind of uninformed debate.
Academia likes to argue what other people think as proof…you’re all smart enough, argue what you personally believe, not what others may or may not have said…
I believe science is man’s way of proving God’s existence, but it’s a trick question, we will never fully understand until we meet Him.