Has Science Found God? by Victor J. Stenger

Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 19, Number 1.

When the results of the Cosmic Microwave Background Explorer (COBE) satellite first became public in 1992, mission scientist George Smoot remarked, "If you're religious, it's like looking at God." The media loved it. One tabloid front page showed the face of Jesus (as interpreted by medieval artists, of course) outlined on a blurry picture of the cosmos. Reporting on the conference "Science and the Spiritual Quest" held at the Center for Theology and Science in Berkeley this summer, the July 20 cover of Newsweek announced: "Science Finds God." The several hundred scientists and theologians at the meeting were virtually unanimous in agreeing that science and religion are now converging, and what they are converging on is God. South African cosmologist and Quaker George Ellis expressed the consensus: "There is a huge amount of data supporting the existence of God. The question is how to evaluate it."

The Newsweek story noted that, "The achievements of modern science seem to contradict religion and undermine faith." However, "for a growing number of scientists, the same discoveries offer support for spirituality and hints at the very nature of God." We learn that, "Physicists have stumbled on signs that the cosmos is custom-made for life and consciousness." Big-bang cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory all are interpreted as "opening a door for God to act on the world." Surveys, however, do not confirm the contention that "a growing number of scientists" are finding support for spirituality in their scientific studies. A recent poll of U.S. National Academy of Science members indicated only 7% believe in a personal creator, down from 15% in 1933 and 29% in 1914. If anything, most scientists seem to be moving away from spirituality rather than toward it.

Apparently, what we are hearing is not the voice of a growing majority of scientists, but the well-funded, growing voice of a decreasing minority. The Berkeley meeting was a kind of "Premise-Keepers" rally for academics seeking to keep alive their premise that God exists, while science continues to operate successfully with no need for that premise. In a commentary on the Berkeley meeting, George Johnson of the New York Times noted that "religious believers seem more eager than ever to step over the line, trying to interpret scientific data to support the revealed truths of their own theology." To most theistic believers, human life has no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely and with understandable yearning for a purpose to existence, they reject that possibility. Thus only a created universe is possible, and the data can do nothing else but support this "truth."

However, good science practice demands that everything be open to question, including the premises that are used when interpreting data. While some assumptions are always present in the scientific process, all are subject to change as more powerful and economical assumptions become evident. The Premise-Keepers, pure as their motives may be, practice bad science when they confine their interpretation of scientific observations to a designer universe. To the Premise-Keeper, the big bang provides "evidence" that creation took place in time - just as in the biblical (that is, Babylonian) myth. Something cannot come from nothing, and so the universe needs a creator. That the creator must have come from nothing is finessed away. God is a different "logical type" than the universe - a type that does not require creation. Theologians do not make clear why the universe itself cannot be of this logical type.

The Premise-Keepers recognize that they cannot prove the existence of God. They simply express the strong feeling that intelligent design is demonstrated by the very order of the universe. Unfortunately, science has little sympathy for feelings and desires no matter how sincere their intent. The universe is the way it is, regardless of what anyone might want it to be. If humanity is in fact a grain of sand in an infinite Sahara, as our telescopes increasingly indicate, then we cannot wish it otherwise. We should accept the fact and learn to live with it. Nonbelievers recognize that they cannot prove the nonexistence of God. They simply argue that a universe without a creator is the most economical premise consistent with all the data. An uncaused, undesigned emergence of the universe from nothing violates no principle of physics. The total energy of the universe appears to be zero, so no miracle of energy created "from nothing" was required to produce it. Similarly, no miracle was needed for the appearance of order. Order can and does occur spontaneously in physical systems.