God and Science

http://tinyurl.com/mjd2ff
God and Science Don't Mix A scientist can be a believer. But professionally, at least, he can't act like one. By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. -- J.B.S. Haldane "Fact and Faith" (1934)...World Science Festival in New York City...the panel strangely titled "Science, Faith and Religion." ...there was no panel on science and astrology, or science and witchcraft. So why one on science and religion?
I ended up being one of two panelists labeled "atheists." The other was philosopher Colin McGinn....two devoutly Catholic scientists, biologist Kenneth Miller and Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno....surprised me... "Then I guess you are a rational atheist."...responding to all those so-called fundamentalist atheists... atheists...following the success of books like Sam Harris's "The End of Faith," and Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion."...castigated by believers for claiming that science is incompatible with a belief in God...a claim that appears manifestly false -- witness the two Catholic scientists on my panel. And on the other hand, the argument that science suggests God is a delusion only bolsters the view of the of the fundamentalist religious right that science is an atheist enemy...I have appeared numerous times alongside Ken Miller to defend evolutionary biology from the efforts of those on various state school boards who view evolution as the poster child for "science as the enemy." These fundamentalists are unwilling to risk the possibility that science might undermine their faith, and so they work to shield children from this knowledge at all costs. ...one does not have to be an atheist to accept evolutionary biology as a reality...my friend Ken as an example....the misperception that the recent crop of vocal atheist-scientist-writers are somehow "atheist absolutists"...Messrs. Harris and Dawkins are simply being honest when they point out the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science. J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist and a founder of population genetics, understood that science is by necessity an atheistic discipline...God is, of necessity, irrelevant in science. Faced with the remarkable success of science to explain the workings of the physical world,...scientists understandably react as Haldane did. Namely, they extrapolate the atheism of science to a more general atheism....Though the scientific process may be compatible with the vague idea of some relaxed deity who merely established the universe and let it proceed from there, it is in fact rationally incompatible with the detailed tenets of most of the world's organized religions....Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam....in each of these faiths are atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus....these issues are not purely academic. ...Iran has laid bare the striking inconsistency between a world built on reason and a world built on religious dogma....in human affairs -- as well as in the rest of the physical world -- reason is the better guide.
****I must submit that both Krauss and Haldane have left something out. Not only does an experimental scientist have to assume that no malevolent or benign "god, angel or devil is going to interfere" theistically with his experiments; he must also assume that there is not such acausal randomness as to preclude there being laws, such that his results on Monday will be understandably replicated on Tuesday.
I have long claimed that experimental scientists have more fervent faith than most religious people. That is, it is a matter of faith that there are laws of Nature, if not necessarily about the nature of Nature's God. Rather than believing in a "relaxed deity", one must really postulate a sort that set quite rigorous laws in motion and thereafter leaves them alone, such that science can proceed. I suggest that most scientists practice, if not explicitly profess, a kind of Deism that was "rational" to even the founding fathers of the United States.****