Science/Faith

1. Science/Faith Dr. Ard Louis Department of Physics University of Oxford www.faraday-institute.org www.testoffaith.com www.cis.org.uk www.biologos.org

2. Outline • Fun things about science • Defining science/Doctrine of Creation • The Bible and Science • Some history • Some common fallacies • Science & Scientism

3. what makes us different? We share 15% of our genes with E. coli ““ 25% ““““ yeast ““ 50% ““““ flies ““ 70% ““““ frogs ““ 98% ““““ chimps Biologicalnetworks and evolution

4. Biological self-assembly http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/Keiichi Namba, Osaka • Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves) • Can we understand? • Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

5. Self-assembly: how things make themselves Biological objects are self-assembled Can we understand? Can we emulate? (nanotechnology) We study one of the simplest: viruses made of identical capsomer units viruses

6. “computer virus” self-assembly Computer viruses? Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisation http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/

7. Self-assembly with legos?

8. Science is fun :-)

9. Science is fun!

10. Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics) Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity) = Dirac Equation (1928) Electrons Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932 Antimatter Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = antimatter Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve (E. Wigner (1960) See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998); + Paul Dirac 1902-1984

11. Antimatter Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = antimatter Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve (E. Wigner (1960) See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998); + Paul Dirac 1902-1984

12. We are made of stardustHe C through a resonance • “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics .. and biology” • His atheism was “deeply shaken” Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U

13. Fine Tuning and the Anthropic Principle • Fine tuning is not a proof of God, but seems more consistent with theism than atheism • Note the difference with “God of the gaps” • We seem to have three choices'... We can dismiss it as happenstance, we can acclaim it as the workings of providence, or (my preference) we can conjecture that our universe is a specially favoured domain in a still vaster multiverse.’ If this multiverse contained every possible set of laws and conditions, then the existence of our own world with its particular characteristics would be inevitable. • Sir Martin Rees (just 6 numbers) -- • John Leslie firing squad argument

14. Outline • Fun things about science • Defining science • Some history • Some common fallacies • Science & Scientism

15. The scientific method …

16. Tapestry arguments Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few strings, but that doesn’t break the whole cloth In this case: antimatter, hyperfine splitting, etc… The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin, Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996 SCIENCE WARS …. N. David Mermin Cornell U .

17. Science has proven: There is no God An odd Christian reaction: Fear?

18. What is under the surface holding it all up? • Underlying theological presuppositions? • The Gospel changes the way we see things • – A. McGrath (today) Doctrine of Creation

19. In the beginning, God created Genesis 1 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image,        in the image of God he created him;        male and female he created them. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good Genesis 2 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

20. Doctrine of Creation the Environment and Conservation? The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it,    the world, and all who live in it; 2 for he founded it on the seas    and established it on the waters. Psalm 24 • Creation is there to praise its maker and to reflect its glory • Creation is there to be beautiful, for its own sake and own pleasure • Man has a creation mandate For more, see e.g. www.arocha.org

21. If God created…. • Theistic assumptions help ground rationality • For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. • -J.B.S. Haldane, “When I am Dead” J.B.S. Haldane 1882-1964

22. Creator and Sustainer • “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” Gen 1:1 • “For by him [Christ] all things were created … and in him all things hold together” Col 1:16,17 • “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory … sustaining all things by his powerful word” Heb 1:3 • “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created”, Rev 4:11

23. Biblical language about nature • He makes springs pour water into ravines;it flows between the mountains; the wild donkeys quench their thirstPsalm 104: 10,11 (praising God’s creation) • "Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? Job 38:39-41 • For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates (bara’)the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name! Amos 4:13 • “Natural” processes are described both as divine and non-divine actions • 2 perspectives on the same natural world

24. ‘Science’ studies the “Customs of the Creator” • If God were to stop “sustaining all things” the world would stop existing • Donald MacKay, The Clockwork Image, IVP (1974) • “An act of God is so marvelous that only the daily doing takes off the admiration” • John Donne (Eighty Sermons, #22 published in 1640) “Miracles” are not God “intervening in the laws of nature”: they are God working in less customary ways I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. --Johannes Kepler:1571-1630

25. Methodological v.s. Ontological Naturalism Miracles and methodological naturalism? Does epistemology warp into ontology? corrosive cultures? dogmas? What does this mean for the social sciences? What does this mean for the humanities?

26. Relationship between Science & Faith : Doctrine of Creation Faith faith science science faith science NOMA

27. Outline • Fun things about science • Defining science • Some history • Some common fallacies • Science & Scientism

28. Science and worldview plurality uniformity regularity Intelligibility Science has deeply Christian roots

29. Science has deep Christian roots • “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.” • Sir Isaac Newton

30. Science has deep Christian roots • Wrote “The Wisdom of God Manifested in Works of Creation”, • Was governor of the “Corporation for the Spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England” • Sir Robert Boyle (1627-1691)

31. Science-Religion conflict metaphor Those who argue for the incompatibility of science and religion will draw little comfort from history…… the myth of a perennial conflict between science and religion is one to which no historian of science would subscribe. -- Peter Harrison, Christianity and the rise of western science (2008) Peter Harrison, Oxford

32. Science-Religion conflict metaphor Galieogoes to jail and 25 othermythsaboutscience and religion Ed. R. Numbers (Harvard U Press 2009)

33. The fall and the methods of science “what we find people like Boyle advocating is that we manipulate the natural world, that under special conditions we observe what’s going on, and it’s only under these contrived conditions that we actually see, or get insight into, the various processes. This involves communal observation, it involves accumulation of all sorts of observations under different conditions. Eventually, we come to some conditional conclusions on the basis of this long complicated experimental process. This is a radically new approach to observation.” “... there is a fundamental difference between the Aristotelian assumption that our sensory and cognitive apparatus are designed in such a way that they’ll give us a veridical account of nature, and a Calvinist view that says our cognitive apparatus and our faculties of observation are fallen, imperfect, that they give us the wrong knowledge, they persistently mislead us, ... Peter Harrison (Cambridge 2005) http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/Harrison/Peter%20Harrison%20-%20index.htm We see through a glass darkly (I Cor 13)

34. The fall and communal methods of science • We are fallen and finite and easily “fool ourselves” • Scientific method(s) contain mechanisms to minimise this • Many of these mechanisms arecommunal • Peer review • Traditions • Often “caught” not “taught” … a Calvinist view that says our cognitive apparatus and our faculties of observation are fallen, imperfect, that they give us the wrong knowledge, they persistently mislead us, ... (Peter Harrison)

35. Outline • Fun things about science • Defining science • Some history • Some common fallacies • Science & Scientism

36. God of the gaps?/ Atheism of the gaps? that couldn’t have happened by “natural means” --> God into the gap “When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because we have found God; it is to become better scientists” Prof. Charles Coulson, Oxford U

37. God of the gaps • This is a fatal step to take. For it is to assert that you can plant some sort of hedge in the country of the mind to mark the boundary where a transfer of authority takes place. ….. Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He’s not there at all. Charles Coulson (1910-1974) First Oxford professor of theoretical chemistry

38. Nothing Buttery enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough fat to make 10 bars of soap enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool humans are collections of chemicals:

39. Nothing Buttery enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough fat to make 10 bars of soap enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool humans are collections of chemicals:

40. Nothing Buttery enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough fat to make 0.1 bars of soap enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool humans are collections of chemicals:

41. Mechanism does not exhaust meaning why is the water boiling?

42. Dawkins’ natural theology • "The individual organism ... is not fundamental to life, but something that emerges when genes, which at the beginning of evolution were separate, warring entities, gang together in co-operative groups as `selfish co-operators’. The individual organism is not exactly an illusion. It is too concrete for that. But it is a secondary, derived phenomenon, cobbled together as a consequence of the actions of fundamentally separate, even warring agents.” • Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, (Penguin, London, 1998) p 308. Prof. Richard Dawkins (Oxford)

43. [Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. [Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence. Gene language & natural theology? vs. Denis Noble -- The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006) Richard Dawkins -- The Selfish Gene (1976)

44. Natural Theology? “I believe in design because I believe in God; not in God because I see design.” John Henry Newman 1801-1890

45. Natural Theology? Nein! I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son our Lord, in order to perceive and to understand that God Almighty, the Father, is Creator of heaven and earth. If I did not believe the former, I could not perceive and understand the latter Response to Emil Brunner Karl Barth 1868-1968

46. Natural Theology? Natural Theology as a “way of seeing” Alister McGrath Oxford/Kings London

47. Is science the only way to reliable knowledge? Bill Newsome Stanford U. Monument to irrationality? “The most important questions in life are not susceptible to solution by the scientific method”

48. Science and questions of value • What is the value of a human life? • chemist – value of the elements? • physiologist – size of your brain • psychologist – how smart you are • anthropologist – how the community values you • economist – how much economic value you produce

49. Common fallacies in science/faith • God of the gaps • Nothing Buttery • Mechanism and Meaning • Only alternative to science is irrationality • Deriving an ought from an is

50. Outline • Fun things about science • Defining science • Some history • Some common fallacies • Science & Scientism