Is science atheistic – does it promote atheism?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Question is science atheistic? Does science promote atheism? Answer, science is a body for acquiring knowledge.
And mostly science functions by a methodology that is called as methodological naturalism. Science looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena. That means that science whenever anything happens, it tries to look for what is a material cause, what is a material mechanism.
So, when Newton saw the apple falling, an event that is inaugurated the scientific revolution, his interest was in asking the question, what made the apple fall? And he accepted the existence of God. But in that situation, his question was not looking for the answer, God made the apple fall. He was looking for the material mechanism by which it happened.
So, that mechanism was what science looked for. And thus, science is functionally non-theistic. That means, science doesn’t look for God as an explanation.
It looks for some material causes. Now, we could say the material mechanisms have been arranged by God. And that is what the clear understanding of the pioneers of science, the founders of science say Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and even further down to Pascal, all of them did accept God.
And so the two could be complementary. The there is the material mechanism is the immediate cause or we could say the secondary cause. So, gravity is the cause of the apple falling.
And God is the ultimate cause of everything, including the existence of the earth and existence of the cosmos, existence of gravity within the cosmos. So, in that sense, now for Newton himself, science pointed to God. He famously said, oh father, I think that thoughts after me, he saw his scientific discoveries as spiritual insights into the way in which God has created the universe.
So, science is a methodology and for the founders of this methodology, it was largely, it reinforced their theism. Now, over the years, as this methodology started working more and more, science tried to explain more and more things. So, Newton’s vision of the universe was theistic.
But as science discovered laws governing all of the cosmos, then that vision started becoming theistic. That theism is God is the creator and the controller. Deism is God is the creator but not the controller.
Just like there is a clock manufacturer, the clock is definitely manufactured but it’s not automatically made. But that manufacturer doesn’t have any control. There are simply mechanisms by which the clock functions now.
So, the universe as laws were discovered that seemed to pervade all of the universe. Then, the vision of the universe became theistic. That God is the creator but not the controller.
And then, eventually, Alfred Darwin proposed his theory of evolution which seemed to explain how various species came about. So, even God was not needed within science as a creator. So, the mainstream science vision of the universe moved towards atheism.
However, now whether it is theism or deism or atheism, it is not a scientifically established thesis. It is a you could say either a presumption that some scientists start with or it is a it is a functional feature that science operates with. Now, just because there are laws governing the universe doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no God.
And just because there could be material mechanism to create something doesn’t mean that again there is no God. So, even if there are material mechanisms for explaining how things function and how things came about to be the way they are, still, that could be compatible with the existence of a God because God, the world’s theistic traditions are clear to say God is not material. So, changes in our material nature happen by the system of material nature, by the laws governing material nature and God oversees them.
So, God is never the primary, God is very rarely the primary cause of things in the material world. He usually acts in the world through secondary causes. So, the secondary causes are the mechanisms and God acts through those mechanisms.
So, for science to be functionally non-theistic is fine but then it depends on the ideological orientations of that particular age as well as the ideological orientations of the particular scientists who are doing the research. So, in modern times, of course, science has been used to justify theism far more than it has been used to justify theism. So, that’s because the mainstream cultural ethos has been atheistic and scientific theories have claimed to explain everything that God was previously at least by some people, God was previously invoked to explain.
So, at a naive level we may say that God causes rains but now we know it’s clouds, it’s evaporation, condensation, all these cause rains. So, of course, the material mechanism and the divine supervision can go together but it’s not science is functionally non-theistic but depending on the ideological orientation of those doing science, science can be used to either enhance one’s theism or it can be used to enhance to propagate atheism and yes, because science has increasingly claimed to answer all questions, including questions of origins, so, God has apparently become redundant and thus the mainstream idea is that God doesn’t exist. However, there are a significant number of scientists who do accept the existence of God even now and some of them were born into theistic families and they continued their belief but several of them actually turned toward theism because of their study of science.
Perhaps, the most famous in modern times is, not necessarily in terms of fame, is Anthony Flew, who was a prominent atheist for most of his life and based on the scientific study, he eventually started accepting the existence of God. So, he moved from atheism to some kind of theistic conception. So, he wrote a book titled, There Exists No God and No is slashed out and a is brought in front of it.
So, there are Francis Collins, who was the head of the Human Genome Project. He accepts God. There are prominent mathematicians, there are significant mathematicians like John Lennox who also accept the existence of God.
Prominently, in today’s times, science has been used by atheists to propagate atheism and because it is claimed that science has all the answers, including answers about answers to the questions of origins, so most people feel that God is no longer needed. However, science questions about origins are very speculative and there is no clarity about or certainty about these answers because the more something is immediate and perceivable, the more science can experiment and repeat and confirm. But the more something is remote and non-repeatable as it comes to the origin of life, the origin of the universe, then science can’t actually repeat and it becomes speculative.
So most scientific theories about origins are even about vast fields like cosmology or archaeology are basically based on extremely small samples which have been extrapolated very largely. So they are non-scientific extrapolations of scientific data and that’s why they are nowhere as strong in terms of their scientific rigor or validity as say theories which have been repeatedly observed and confirmed like the laws of motion or the laws of thermodynamics. They are nowhere as well grounded as any theory about the origin of the universe or the origin of life.
So if we understand that science is functionally non-theistic but historically it was it began as a means to reinforce theism but as I started explaining more and more I started feeling there is no need for God. It started becoming more and more atheistic and now science is used to propagate atheism but functionally science is non-theistic and if it is understood properly then science and God address different levels of explanations and science explains the mechanisms by which things happen and God talks about what is the principle underlying all mechanisms. Then science doesn’t in itself in any way promote atheism at all but it is presented in that way and therefore if the scope and jurisdiction of science are properly explained then people won’t think that because I am scientific I have to be atheistic.
You will understand that science is a tool for understanding certain features of reality and science is not capable of giving any definitive answer about the ultimate source of what exists. and that gives abundant room for people to use scientific reasoning and other philosophical reasonings to discuss about the existence of God and come to appropriate conclusions.