Question Scientists often say (rather diplomatically, I think) that science cannot rule on the question of whether God exists. But is this really true? I suppose that some people might hold God's existence to be evident a priori; but I don't think that most religious people actually think this way.

Accepted:
September 4, 2008

Comments

I agree with the scientists. Very crudely, science provides explanations of how the world works, and bases its theories on matters that are open to regular observation by anyone (using the appropriate equipment, of course). Unless and until God decided to provide us with regular and inter-subjectively available observations of him/her/it, God's existence will not be a matter for scientific discovery. Moreover, if God does not exist, science can certainly not establish that. It is not possible to prove non-existence on the basis of empirical evidence, because all empirical evidence can supply is that there are no scientifically reliable observations of God (yet).

Science can establish things that are contrary to religious teachings in other ways, of course. Despite the nonsense that has been recently stirred up on the topic of "intelligent design," science has more than adequately shown that the creation myth in Genesis cannot be literally true. But as for the existence of God, I don't think science will provide the answer. It does provide a different way of looking at and understanding the world than traditional religions have provided, however.

Discussions of the status of theological claims can suffer from a restricted diet of examples. It is worth remembering that lots of theological claims are in fact uncontroversially true or uncontroversially false, and their epistemic status (and their relation to science) is pretty clear.

Take, for example, the claim that Zeus exists. I take it that no one now reading this site believes that that theological claim is literally true! But why? Not, I'm sure, on the basis of fancy philosophical arguments. Yet rejecting the existence of Zeus surely isn't irrational prejudice either. For the existence claim is bound up with a range of stories about how the world works; and we now know the world just doesn't work that way. Mount Olympus is not populated with gods; bolts of lightning are naturally caused discharges of electricity; clouds and rain are not gathered by supernatural agency; burnt sacrifices to Zeus do not increase the chances of better crops or victory in battle; and so it goes. Science -- in the broadest sense of our empirically disciplined enquiries into how things work -- has shown we have no need of the Olympian gods to explain anything. To put it in a dramatic idiom, science has disenchanted the world. Of course, that doesn't mean that the Greek myths aren't full of insights into the secrets of the human heart! But in so far as they essentially embody creation stories and stories about the origin of natural phenomena like storms and tempests, science -- in the broad sense -- uncontroversially shows that they are literally false.

So if scientists were to say that science cannot in general impact on the questions about the existence of various gods they'd be wrong. Which raises a nice question: why should the question of the existence of the Judeo-Christian God be different in this respect from the question of the existence of Zeus?

Well, as Nicholas Smith reminds us, the questions won't have a different status if we take the God-story also to be essentially bound up with e.g. certain biblical creation stories. Science, as he says, has more than adequately shown that those stories aren't literally true. And again, petitionary prayer to God is no more effective in bringing about worldly goods than sacrifice to Zeus (it does no better in helping you recover from illness, say, than can be explained as a placebo effect). In so far as claims about the existence of God are bound up with specific such claims about how the world works, science can impact. And indeed, does impact strongly negatively.

But of course, sophisticated, scientifically knowledgeable, believers can and do react to that point in (at least) two different ways. One way is to disentangle God-talk from the creation myths, and other stories about how the world works: though you might well begin to wonder, as God becomes more abstract, more remote from the quotidian world, why we should care. Another way (characteristic I think of one strand of English Anglicanism1) is to agree that in so far as talk of God is bound up with stories about how the world works, it would be literally false. However, that doesn't mean that the Christian myth, say, isn't a very good myth to live ones life by, or that shared Christian ritual practice isn't a sustaining prop to living a good life in a community.

1. Thus Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, has recently written "The difference between the self-aware believer ... and the conscious and deliberate atheists is not a disagreement over whether or not to add one item [God] to the sum total of really existing things. It is a conflict about the policies and possibilities for a human life."