from today’s new york times: the seemingly unexpected question of whether one can be a good scientist and believe in god, asked by a student at a recent conference at NY’s city college, draw a quick and rather strong response:
Reaction from one of the panelists, all Nobel laureates, was quick and sharp. “No!” declared Herbert A. Hauptman, who shared the chemistry prize in 1985 for his work on the structure of crystals.
Belief in the supernatural, especially belief in God, is not only incompatible with good science, Dr. Hauptman declared, “this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race.” (NYT)
pretty strong words. where does that leave me? well, according to hauptman i’m not a good scientist and, to top it off, am damaging the human race.
hmm.
actually, i’m surprised that a scientist can forget his scientific training to such an extent that he forgets the difference between theory and fact: evolution is still a theory, admittedly one that helps to explain quite a lot quite well (and, as theories go, is, thus, a pretty good theory) — as is the idea of a big bang. but, all this is pretty much beside the point. the point is that we can (and do all the time) chase down the alley of one theory or the other and keep on asking “why?” — finding an answer to these recursive descents is what keeps us, as man-kind, plodding on. belief in god would only be damaging if we take god as a stopgap, as a last resort to our unsolved questions: god as the answer to our unsolved or unsolvable questions. personally, i prefer to believe in god as the creator of the universe who through his son jesus christ takes an interest in our personal lives — god not as a boundary god, god not as a stopgap god, but rather god in the midst of our lives, as bonhoeffer writes in ethik and in gemeinsames leben. that i find more interesting and challenging than fighting over the first view seconds of the universe or whether it really was word for word as it’s written in genesis…
— sorry, got to answer the door: a representative for a bunch of monkeys wants to discuss publishing something resembling the collected works of shakespeare…