News & Views item - December 2007

 

Physicist Bob Park Lays Out the Ground Rules for Science vs Religion. (December 1, 2007)

As the first News and Views for December, we reprint in full Bob Park's November 30, 2007 column What's New which deals with The War Between Science and Religion.

 

 

1. FAITH: THE WAR BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

 

It's time we had a little talk. The New York Times on Saturday published an op-ed by Paul Davies that addresses the question: "Is embracing the laws of nature so different from religious belief?" Davies concludes that, "until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus." Davies has confused two meanings of the word "faith." The Oxford Concise English Dictionary on my desk gives the two distinct meanings for faith as: "1) complete trust or confidence, and 2) strong belief in a religion based on spiritual conviction rather than proof." A scientist's "faith" is built on experimental proof. The two meanings of the word "faith," therefore, are not only different, they are exact opposites. Davies, who won the 1995 Templeton Prize is not the only physicist to make that mistake. "Many people don't realize that science basically involves faith" Charles Townes said in his 2005 Templeton statement. On laser physics I would happily defer to Townes, but this is a matter of the English language. Here we defer to the dictionaries. The judges who awarded Townes' the 2005 Templeton Prize cited a single line from his 1966 article The Convergence of Science and Religion: "Understanding the order in the Universe and understanding the purpose of the universe are not identical, but they are also not very far apart." They are a universe apart, (WN 11 Mar 05) . In any case, the "purpose" of the universe is not on the science agenda. Suicide bombers no doubt believe they are part of some divine "purpose."

 

 

 

 

2. THE FAITH WAR: WHAT CONNECTS SCIENTISTS OF FAITH?

 

I count 8 physicists among the 34 recipients of the Templeton Prize, and a couple more had degrees in physics. It was initially the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, and the first winner in 1973 was Mother Teresa. Winners have included Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists. Billy Graham got it in 1982, Charles Colson of Watergate fame in 1993 and Paul Davies in 1995. But in 1999 Ian Barbour, a student of Fermi, was the recipient. A professor of physics and theology at Carleton College, Barbour was credited with initiating a "dialog between science and religion." Templeton admired Barbour, and coveted his dialog. The scientific revolution, after all, led to the fantastic growth in the world economy that made him a billionaire. Templeton believes God has chosen him to show the world that, as he put it, theology and science are two windows on the same landscape. So he changed the name to the Templeton Prize for Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. It is the largest prize for intellectual accomplishment in existence, chosen to be bigger than the Nobel. Since that time, six of the last eight winners of the Templeton Prize have been physicists. They all relied on the anthropic principle in their Templeton Prize statements.

 

 

 

 

3. ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE: SOME THINK IT PROVES THERE IS A GOD.

 

It argues that the universe has been "fine-tuned" to make life possible. In the so-called strong form: "The fundamental parameters of the universe are such as to permit the creation of observers within it." I believe an equivalent wording would be: "If things were different, things would not be the way things are."