Science and Theology

In the words of American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist, Robert Jastrow, “for the scientist who has lived by his faith in reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

The great prophets have been reminding us for centuries that the universe we can observe is not the whole story. More recently, scientists are making startling new discoveries that are causing both scientists and theologians to ask new questions, which when answered might begin to explain what have been age-old mysteries. The bad news: some of our oldest beliefs are crumbling. The good news: science and religion can have a new dialog.

It’s been about 400 years since science branched off from philosophy and theology. Before that there were deeply religious philosopher-scientists, like Galileo, Copernicus, Descartes, et al. This split left a vacuum and many of our mysteries have remained unexamined.

Fast forward to the early 20^th century and German physicist Max Planck discovered the deepest known level of our universe. Until his discovery we considered an atom to be the building block of the cosmos.  He discovered a level where particles are smaller than atoms. From this discovery emerged what is now known as quantum mechanics or QM. QM is the study and analysis of the interactions of atoms and elementary particles based on quantum theory. The study evolved in an effort to explain the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles, which do not obey the laws of classical Newtonian mechanics; meaning at the most basic level of our universe, things don’t follow the same rules we do. And the rules there seem more mystical than scientific.

Not only has this new level of knowledge opened up opportunities for science but it also sheds new light on the questions of who we are and how important humanity is in the ongoing unfolding of the universe.

I’ve recently published a book titled, Faith, Stirred not Shaken, (available online at www.faithstirrednotshaken.com, and Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com) that goes into a great deal of detail on the above topics. What I’ve come to suspect in the process of writing this book is that there is a deep logic and intelligence in the universe that we cannot even apprehend let alone comprehend. That all of our efforts to describe it are insufficient because all of our knowledge is theory-dependent based on human theories. And all human theories are based on our experience at our level of the universe. As I wrote above, we now know that our experience of the universe is not the way it works.

Chris Hedges, American journalist, gave us this to consider,  “God – and different cultures have given God many names and many attributes – is that which works upon us and through us to find meaning and relevance in a morally neutral universe. Religion is our finite, flawed and imperfect expression of the infinite.”

In my words, my faith is in the infinite and unknowable that we call God. It is not in the iconic God described in human terms. Our arguments about the existence and nature of God are as futile as the argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In other words, neither theists nor atheists can ground their arguments.

If you have absolute faith in your beliefs, I wouldn’t recommend my book. But if you believe, like me, that non-fiction can be stranger than fiction, you’ll enjoy it.  But to be clear. I don’t offer any answers. I offer questions because I propose that the goal of all philosophical inquiry should be new questions, not new beliefs. This is the only path to human progress.

Robert DeFilippis

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