According to Science
One of my favorite podcasts, Radiolab, is—as lovers of the show hear nearly every episode—"supported, in part, by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world." While Radiolab has shifted its format and focus over the years1, the hosts' relentless curiosity has guided explorations about science, philosophy, and human nature through episodes about cities, surveillance, colors, immorality, death, pregnancy, animals, nukes, beauty, disease, and more.
Those who love Radiolab may initially describe it as a "science podcast," but ultimately many find the show hard to describe. They've put out pieces about Guantanamo Bay, Helen Keller, and George Saunders that have essentially no connection to science. Other episodes—like a beloved episode about a sudden allergy to red meat—have a scientific foundation, but in the end focus more on people and their inner lives. Then there are stories which address questions of morality—of goodness and badness and the complicated mixture of both that resides in each of us.
Radiolab is a good show precisely because it understands the place science occupies among other disciplines and in our lives. That is, the show respects that science has no harsh boundaries separating it from psychology or statistics or philosophy or ethics. And the show's writers understand why we seek so fervently to understand the world—namely that we'd like to better understand our place in it. They're also quick to notice and admit what they don't know, what no one knows.
In recent years, I've noticed a tendency for popular understandings of science to ignore its place among other fields and its uncertainty about fundamental questions. Furthermore, news articles about science now speak as if it were a person—or even a deity—offering a proclamations on nearly everything, even those things which seem immune to scientific inquiry.
Take a moment to search Google for the phrase "according to science," and you'll be amazed to know how much science has settled that people seem to have no clue about. Here's how to be happy according to science. According to science, there are also proper ways to hug, rules for gift giving, approaches to a rewarding social life, and explanations for why we love Wordle. Don't forget that—according to science—you can know what your dreams mean, how to end arguments, how to create a sense of purpose, and the secret to creativity.
During my first year of teaching in San Francisco, I noticed a pernicious problem among my students, most of whom were non-Catholics at a Catholic school. Somehow, my students had acquired the notion that one cannot believe in both science and religion. To believe in science, they said, was to understand that truth comes from empirical investigations that leads to observable facts. Meanwhile, belief in religion was just that: belief. Religious claims can't be tested or observed, so they can't be sensibly held.
One day, I asked all of the students to stand up at their desks. I explained that I was going to ask them a series of questions. After each question, the students moved to one side of the room if science offered a better answer or the other side of the room if religion did. They were also welcome to stand anywhere between the two sides.
What are lungs for? led to a predictable migration of students toward the territory of science, and Who is God? pulled students back in the direction of religion. Some other questions left students split: Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? Is there a soul? With some questions, though, only a few committed atheists remained steadfast to science: What does it mean to live a good life? What is justice? How should we treat other people?
The point, of course, is quite simple: We can't easily find the truths of one field using the tools of another. While truth spans disciplines, we quickly notice how foolish it would be to plot morality on a Cartesian plane or to search for quarks in the crevices of a soul. This is not to say, of course, that science and God have nothing to do with each other—truth does not differ simply because we look at it from a different perspective. Instead, the fact of the matter is that it’s nonsense to investigate God with the scientific method—as absurd as it would be to prove a hypothesis about the natural world by appealing to magic.2
Unfortunately, most people are not as well exposed to theology as they are to science. Thus, when they come across arguments for the existence of God, they dismiss them quickly as silly and non-scientific—or otherwise arcane and indecipherable. Of course, one wouldn’t expect to understand complicated science about the origin of the universe without a lot of context and background—but this same grace is rarely extended to theological arguments, which likewise make little sense at all without study and serious investigation.
So, for example, someone will come across a cosmological argument that goes something like this:
It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality.
And so on. Of course, it is nearly impenetrable—and even theologians aren't so foolish as to think that a well-crafted argument has ever been the first step in leading anyone toward the conviction that Christ is King.
If someone has settled on the view that science has all the answers—or all the answers that are possible, or the only tools that can uncover truth—they'll never consider how God could fit into the picture. And that's quite sensible, even if mistaken.
However, I was listening to Radiolab's recent episode "Life in a Barrel," and I was once again struck by the intellectual humility of the hosts and the scientists they spoke with. On the subject of the origin of life, one scientist after another humbly admitted: We don't know. Did life begin in deep sea vents? Was it caused by a spark? Could life have traveled here from space? This last theory, incidentally, was held by Francis Crick, one of the men who discovered DNA.
It strikes me that modern atheists have an exaggerated estimation of science and a complete misunderstanding of God. In the end, most of the questions that science can answer start with "what" and "how." What remains, of course, is why. The universe may well have started with a Big Bang—there is, after all, an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of this argument. But a question lingers: Why did it happen? We can explain what a Big Bang is, how it happens, and even its observable consequences—but science by its very nature of inquiry cannot explain what unobservable cause led to an observable effect.
The view that my middle school students held—that science and God are incompatible—is not only untrue, but incoherent. There is no proper account of God that is at odds with any scientific truth. How could it be that the existence of a first cause would invalidate the cause and effect chain that is science's proper object of study?
Upon hearing this sort of argument, the modern atheist may offer this sort of protest: "But there's no evidence for God." Of course, what they mean is that there is no scientific evidence for God, which shows that they're confused—either about what science is, who God is, or both.
Most modern atheists are fanatical proponents of scientific truth and vociferous critics of the ignorant masses who hold dear to blind faith. Of course, it's also true that the average Catholic sitting in on Sunday mass has a much more clear idea of what she believes and why than the average atheist, who hasn't a clue at all about science and simply assumes that the truth has been handed down to them.
To that end, perhaps we ought to stop reading headlines that begin with "according to science," preferring instead to echo the motto of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge: nullius in verba, or take nobody's word for it.
If you're convinced about the foolishness of faith and the preeminence of scientific truth, be certain that you can articulate the reasons for that yourself. And if you're certain that there's no evidence for the existence of God, make sure you know what it would mean for Him to be real—and take a look yourself.
A recent re-broadcast of the first episode of Radiolab shows just how much the show has changed over its 20-year run.
Of course, scientists have a long history of presupposing a necessary substance, even if they don't know what it is. See, e.g., dark matter and dark energy.