Does science make belief in God obsolete?

(continued)
Of course not.
Science itself does not contradict
the hypothesis of God. Rather, it
gives us a window on a dynamic
and creative universe that expands
our appreciation of the Divine in
ways that could not have been
imagined in ages past.
As an outspoken defender of
evolution, I am often challenged by those who
assume that if science can demonstrate the natural
origins of our species, which it surely has, then God
should be abandoned. But the Deity they reject so
easily is not the one I know. To be threatened by
science, God would have to be nothing more than
a placeholder for human ignorance. Tis is the
God of the creationists, of the intelligent design
movement, of those who seek their God in
darkness. What we have not found and do not yet
understand becomes their bestindeed their
onlyevidence for faith. As a Christian, I nd the
ow of this logic particularly depressing. Not only
does it teach us to fear the acquisition of knowledge
(which might at any time disprove belief ), but it
also suggests that God dwells only in the shadows
of our understanding. I suggest that if God is real,
we should be able to nd him somewhere elsein
the bright light of human knowledge, spiritual
and scientic.
And what a light that is. Science places us in an
extraordinary universe, a place where stars and
even galaxies continue to be born, where matter
itself comes alive, evolves, and rises to each new
challenge of its richly changing environment. We
live in a world literally bursting with creative
evolutionary potential, and it is quite reasonable
to ask why that is so. To a person of faith, the
answer to that question is God.
Te English poet Matthew Arnold, at the dawn of
the modern era, once lamented that all he could
hear of the Sea of Faith was its melancholy,
long, withdrawing roar. To some, that melancholy
roar is a sound to be savored because faith is a
delusion, an obstacle, a stumbling block on the
road to progress and enlightenment. It is the
antithesis of science.
In this view, God is an explanation for the weak, a
way out for those who cannot face the terrible
realities revealed by science. Te courageous, the
bold, the brights are those who face that reality
and accept it without the comforting crutch of
faith by declaring God to be obsolete.
But science itself employs a kind of faith, a faith
all scientists share, whether they are religious in
the conventional sense or not. Science is built upon
a faith that the world is understandable, and that
there is a logic to reality that the human mind can
explore and comprehend. It also holds, as an article
of scientic faith, that such exploration is worth
the trouble, because knowledge is always to be
preferred to ignorance.
Te categorical mistake of the atheist is to assume
that God is natural, and therefore within the
realm of science to investigate and test. By making
God an ordinary part of the natural world, and
failing to nd Him there, they conclude that He
does not exist. But God is not and cannot be part
of nature. God is the reason for nature, the
explanation of why things are. He is the answer to
existence, not part of existence itself.
Tere is great naivet in the assumption that our
presence in the universe is self-explanatory, and
does not require an answer. Many who reject God
imply that reasons for the existence of an orderly
natural world are not to be sought. Te laws of
nature exist simply because they are, or because
we nd ourselves in one of countless multiverses
in which ours happens to be hospitable to life. No
need to ask why this should be so, or inquire as to
the mechanism that generates so many worlds.
Te curiosity of the theist who embraces science is
greater, not less, because he seeks an explanation
that is deeper than science can provide, an
explanation that includes science, but then seeks
the ultimate reason why the logic of science
should work so well. Te hypothesis of God comes
Kenneth Miller
THIS IS THE THIRD IN A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS AMONG LEADING SCIENTISTS AND SCHOLARS ABOUT THE BIG QUESTIONS.

For the previous two questions, visit www.templeton.org/bigquestions.
not from a rejection of science, but from a
penetrating curiosity that asks why science is
even possible, and why the laws of nature exist for
us to discover.
It is true, of course, that organized religions do
not point to a single, coherent view of the nature
of God. But to reject God because of the admitted
self-contradictions and logical failings of organized
religion would be like rejecting physics because of
the inherent contradictions of quantum theory
and general relativity. Science, all of science, is
necessarily incompletethis is, in fact, the reason
why so many of us nd science to be such an
invigorating and fullling calling. Why, then,
should we be surprised that religion is incomplete
and contradictory as well? We do not abandon
science because our human eorts to approach the
great truths of nature are occasionally hampered
by error, greed, dishonesty, and even fraud. Why
then should we declare faith a delusion
because belief in God is subject to exactly the
same failings?
Albert Einstein once wrote that the eternal
mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
Today, even as science moves ahead, that mystery
remains. Is there a genuine place for faith in the
world of science? Indeed there is. Far from s
tanding in conict with it, the hypothesis of God
validates not only our faith in science, but our sheer
delight at the gifts of knowledge, love, and life.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Kenneth R. Miller is a professor of biology at Brown
University and the author of Finding Darwins God: A
Scientists Search for Common Ground between God
and Evolution and of Only a Teory: Evolution and
the Battle for Americas Soul.