Science and Atheism Don't Mix

It's commonly assumed that most scientists are atheists and that in order to be a scientist one must banish from one's thinking the idea that there may be supernatural influences that have acted in the universe. This assumption would sound very strange, however, to the men who actually began the modern scientific enterprise.

According to historian Rodney Stark in his book For the Glory of God, 50 of the 52 men who were most influential in the development of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries were Christians, and over 60 percent of these were devoutly so, including some of the greatest names in the scientific pantheon: Boyle, Brahe, Descartes, Gassendi, Hooke, Huygens, Kepler, Leibniz, Newton, Pascal, Vesalius, et al.

Nevertheless, the notion became widespread in the 19th century that science and theism are incompatible and the practice of science, particularly biology, became increasingly the domain of atheists throughout the twentieth century.

This is ironic because as that century moved toward its end philosophers become increasingly aware that the real incompatibility is between science and atheism (or naturalism), at least on the philosophical level.

An article at Evolution News by the brilliant Oxford mathematician John Lennox, excerpted from his new book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, explains why.

Lennox quotes several philosophers and scientists and then writes:

[N]aturalism, and therefore atheism, undermines the foundations of the very rationality that is needed to construct or understand or believe in any kind of argument whatsoever, let alone a scientific one. In short, it leads to the abolition of reason — a kind of “abolition of man,” since reason is an essential part of what it means to be human. 

Why does naturalism lead to the abolition of reason? If naturalism is true then what we call rational thinking is simply a series of mindless chemical reactions in the brain, they bear no necessary connection to reality or to truth. Chemical reactions have no truth value, they are neither right nor wrong. 

Lennox quotes philosopher Thomas Nagel from his book Mind and Cosmos who writes that,

Evolutionary naturalism implies that we should not take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism depends.

He also cites Charles Darwin's fear that the conclusions of his reason are unreliable:

Charles Darwin saw the problem. He wrote: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.”

Lennox doesn't quote the following but he could have. They certainly support his argument:

• "Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive sometimes not." Naturalist neuroscientist Steven Pinker
• Evolution selects for survival and “Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.” Naturalist philosopher Patricia Churchland
• "Modern [naturalism] is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth and so be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth." Atheist philosopher John Gray
• "Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive." Atheist biologist and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA Francis Crick in The Astonishing Hypothesis.

On the other hand science, which is based upon rationality, is very compatible with the notion that an intelligent rational Mind created the universe and imbued it with a logical structure, and that this Mind also created our minds to be able to apprehend that structure.

Lennox again:

Not surprisingly, I reject atheism because I believe Christianity to be true. But that is not my only reason. I also reject it because I am a mathematician interested in science and rational thought. How could I espouse a worldview that arguably abolishes the very rationality I need to do mathematics? By contrast, the biblical worldview that traces the origin of human rationality to the fact that we are created in the image of a rational God makes real sense as an explanation of why we can do science.

C,S. Lewis puts it like this in his book On Miracles:

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no Creative Mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true?.... Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.

As Lennox says in conclusion, Science and God mix very well. It's science and atheism that don't mix.