Religion vs. Science: Devil Is in the Details

Did the universe have a beginning? Is the universe designed with a specific purpose in mind? Are we alone?

More to the point, are these questions scientific or religious? And is there any common ground between the two? Increasingly, religious groups trying to mend ancient fences have been seeking a dialogue with their colleagues in science.

If last week’s controversial meeting here on Cosmic Questions is any indication, however, religion’s recent love affair with science remains largely unrequited.

Over three days of intense, daylong meetings sponsored by the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), dozens of top scientists and theologians debated the nature of truth, the origin of the universe and the meaning of life.

But while theologians reached out to embrace everything from Big Bang cosmology to quantum mechanics as evidence of religious truths, scientists in general demurred. “I don’t want a constructive dialogue with religion,” said Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas. “I think they should remain at odds with each other.” Weinberg was not alone.

Indeed, the very fact that the association is sponsoring a “dialogue” between science and religion--lavishly funded by the John Templeton Foundation--has many scientists concerned. Science deals with proof, not faith; mixing the two harms both, many scientists fear.

“There been a real controversy within the AAAS over this,” said Robert Parks, physicist at the University of Maryland.

Several highly placed people in the organization “went ballistic” when they learned that the association had accepted millions of dollars to run a series of conferences on the subject, said Parks. “Most physicists I know are appalled.”

Still, many felt there was real value to the dialogue--although it certainly was a strange scene at times: It’s not every day one enjoys the specter of a brown-robed monk assisting with the transparencies at a scientific talk.

Even Weinberg admitted the dialogue forced him to hone his arguments with newly found precision. The fact that science can be proved wrong is exactly what gives the method strength, Weinberg argued. Science is subject to verification. ‘There’s no referring process for theological discoveries, “ he said.

“I’m in a much more vulnerable position than you are,” he said to his old friend, the Rev. John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest and former physicist. “I can be proved wrong.”

For example, if a flaming sword swooped down from heaven and chopped off his head, said Weinberg, there would be no further need to debate the existence of God. “We’d know the answer,” he said.

Polkinghorne, like others at the meeting, argued that science does not provide satisfactory answers to many important questions, however. “Physics may tell us that music is vibrations,” he said, but it does not do justice to the experience of being moved by great music.

Great issues like the meaning of life or the origin of the world will not present themselves in simple form, he said. No scientist is going to stumble upon the Heavenly Construction Co. or find objects stamped “Blind Chance Rules.”

Such questions, said Polkinghorne, are clearly metaphysical as well as physical--”too profound to have simple answers. . . . Human consciousness allows us to look through many windows on reality,” he said.

In Polkinghorne’s view, scientific and religious perspectives play complementary parts.

The movement to unite science and religion results from a relatively recent reversal in the two disciplines’ respective roles, said Anne Case-Winters, theologian at the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. For much of history, religion reigned supreme; science had to accommodate.

These days, however, scientists cloak themselves firmly in the mantle of truth, while theology struggles to find common ground. “There has been a shift in world view,” said Case-Winters. “Science is the authority of the day.”

The pope himself drew parallels between the Big Bang and the creation as described in Genesis: “Let there be light!” As Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics pointed out, Pope Pius XII declared triumphantly in 1951 that the Big Bang proved the universe was created. The pope concluded: “Therefore, there is a creator. Therefore, God exists!” Science does not always mesh quite as nicely with religion, however. Where religions give humans a central place in the cosmic scheme, science showed that the Earth is but a small speck of leftover debris from an exploding star floating at no special place in what may be an infinite vastness of parallel worlds. “Theologically, what does it mean that we’re not the center of the universe?” asked Case-Winters. It’s time for the religious community to consider such questions, she said.

As for scientists, “I hope they’re getting an invitation to consider truth in a larger frame,” she said.

Not likely. Most of the scientists at the meeting stuck strictly to science. And even during “debates,” they tended to agree on most of what they said.

During one session, MIT physicist Alan Guth argued with Cambridge University physicist Neil Turok about the origin of the universe. But they saw things the same all the way back to the Big Bang. Their differences were in the details of how and when the Bang occurred.

According to Turok, who came in the stead of colleague Stephen Hawking, the Big Bang was a “one-off, one-shot event.” Such a single start, he said, seemed the most economical scenario for creation.

Guth countered that nature is often inefficient. His own work suggests that our universe is the progeny of an endless chain of universes continually coming into being.

While Guth and Turok did not concur, they did agree that the answer to the question of our origins will come from science, not faith. “We are fortunate enough to be the result of the ultimate high-energy experiment,” Turok exclaimed. And “we’re at the point where we’re about to take the read-out of the universe,” he said. Turok was referring to a new generation of experiments that will map the leftover glow from the Big Bang with unprecedented detail--enough detail to tell scientists the exact “geometry of the universe” at the first instant of time--in other words, the origin of everything.

If theology turned out to be as useful as science in the search for answers, said Turok, he’d be happy to use it. But first, he’d “reclassify it as science.”

One thing that various scientific cosmologies have in common is their answer to how the universe will end, he said. In a word, “badly.” Either the universe collapses in a catastrophic crunch, or disperses into endless space.

Fermilab astrophysicist Rocky Kolb had a somewhat more optimistic view. After all, the Big Bang paints a universe that was hot and fiery at the outset, and has been cooling down ever since.

“In the Big Bang model,” he said, “hell is in our past, not in our future.”