Science and religion.
Faith and reason.
The age-old dualism of faith and science ? conflict or convergence ? is reflected in the design of the U.S. dollar and in the temper of the times of the nation it represents.
In this modern era of hypervigilance against mixing religion with the res publica, of the banning of creches and Ten Commandments tablets in public places, the dollar bill proclaims “In God We Trust” and features God?s providential eye.
It?s more convergence than conflict, some scientists now say ? just pick up “The God Particle,” “The Tao of Physics,” “God: The Evidence,” or the Human Genome Project?s Francis Collins? “The Language of God.” On the other hand, there is the putative pure rationalism of Darwin, Freud, and, more recently, Richard Dawkins? “The God Delusion.”
“The [conflict between science and religion] is a myth that?s been circulating, perpetrated by those who had a vested interest in a ?warfare model? between science and religion,” said Randy Isaac, former IBM lead physicist and current director of the 2,000-member American Scientific Affiliation, a fellowship of Christians in science.
“Science and faith are very complementary,” Isaac said.
Turning to the current debate, Isaac noted the so-called anthropic principle, cosmology?s big-bang theory and the universe?s very comprehensibility suggest some guiding intent behind creation ? but it is still a leap scientifically to call this intent God. That is where Isaac?s Christian faith comes in.
The “anthropic principle,” Isaac said, is the holding there is a host of “fundamental constants” in physics, such as the electron and other particles? mass, that seem intricately ? and inexplicably in terms of random generation ? to have foreordained human life. As for widely accepted, explosive explanation for the universe?s beginning, this theory, Isaac stated, still cannot account for “the singularity” itself ? the trigger for the primordial explosion, creating something from nothing.
But of all the touted scientific “proofs” for the existence of God, Isaac best likes one of Einstein?s: “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
“Anybody who claims to be scientific without being religious is simply [faking it],” said Dwight Schwartz, Ph.D., a Baltimore City resident and former scientist with Montana State University, “assumptions that go beyond physics into metaphysics … and are inherently religious in nature.”
