April 25, 2004
Beauty of universe strengthens physicist’s faith

University of Delaware Professor Stephen M. Barr, 49, has seen his most recent book most often reviewed in the religious press, but he’s no theologian. Rather, Barr, a professor of theoretical particle physics, uses “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith” (Notre Dame Press, 2003) to argue that far from being in conflict, religion and science can coexist and even support one another.

Barr has published more than 100 scientific papers and he reviews books on science for First Things. He talked by telephone with staff writer Michelle Martin from his Delaware office.

 

The Catholic New World: You seem to be saying that science can be used to support the idea that there is a God.

Stephen M. Barr: I would say that what science has shown about the world strengthens the reasons for believing in God. The reasons for believing in God don’t require that one have science; the reasons for believing in God have been there all along. It only strengthens the reasons to believe in God.

 

TCNW: How does it do that for you?

SMB: One of the reasons people gave for believing in God even in ancient times is that the universe is orderly, it’s lawful. If there’s a law, there must be a lawgiver. This argument is found back in earliest Christianity. It’s found in the Bible, in fact. What science has shown us is that the world is far more orderly and far more lawful than people had ever imagined.

There’s a quote I love, that I find very beautiful, from a Christian writer of the early third century, Minucius Felix. He said:

“If upon entering some home you saw that everything there was well-tended, neat and decorative, you would believe that some master was in charge of it, and that he was himself much superior to those good things. So too in the home of this world. When you see providence, order and law in the heavens and on earth, believe that there is a lord and author of the universe more beautiful than the stars themselves and the various parts of the whole world.”

Science has shown us that the universe has a much more magnificent, profound order than anyone has ever dreamt.

 

TCNW: Have scientific discoveries of recent years, especially in your own field, reinforced your impression of the universe as an orderly place?

SMB: One of the things that I talk about in my book is the beauty of the laws of nature. It’s a kind of beauty that is not necessarily accessible to people who are not highly trained, because it’s a mathematical sort of beauty. It’s like if you’re a chess player, you can appreciate the beauty of a chess match where an ordinary person can’t. The laws of physics are seen by physicists as being tremendously beautiful mathematically. There’s a richness, a subtlety that is very impressive.

Not everyone appreciates this from a theological standpoint. People who already believe in God find it strengthens their faith. People who are hostile to faith are impervious.

 

TCNW: We have this impression of a hostile relationship between faith and science. What kind of response did you get to your book from fellow scientists?

SMB: I haven’t got much response from scientists. Most of the physicists I know or scientists who have read it (are) already believers. … The world of science is divided. There is sort of a prevailing atmosphere of either indifference to religion or hostility. But there are a large number of scientists who are religious. The majority, perhaps, are indifferent to religion. They set the tone, I think.

 

TCNW: Where does that attitude come from?

SMB: There are a number of factors. Part of it is because there is an occupational hazard to being in the physical sciences, in that you tend to think of everything as physical. It’s the same way that a psychologist would tend to explain everything in psychological terms or a political scientist might explain everything in terms of political forces. It’s an occupational hazard that inclines scientists, or many of them, to see physical reality as all that there is.

There’s also a myth that has been propagated by people who are hostile to religion that has two parts. First, it says religion, particularly Christianity, has historically been hostile to science, and they always invoke the name of Galileo. Another side of the myth says that the discoveries of science since the time of Copernicus and Galileo have actually debunked religious belief. That’s the claim.

In my book, I try to show that the discoveries of the 20th century, if anything, tend to point toward the religious view. That’s what the book is primarily about. But I also talk about the first part, that religion has been hostile to science. That’s bunk.

There are a remarkable number of important scientific discoveries made by people who were priests. This is a story that has not been told. Even more, most of the great scientists up until about 100 or 150 years ago were people of faith. Very few were atheists or hostile. Galileo himself was religious until the day he died. It’s only in the last 150 years that atheism made inroads into the world of science.

 

TCNW: Why is that?

SMB: Why that is gets complicated. It’s not only scientists. You find a lot of atheism and hostility to religion in other academic fields. You go to a college faculty, you’ll probably find as much atheism in the English department as in the science departments. For that matter, there are polls that show that journalists are far less likely to be churchgoers than the public. It’s certain professions, not just science.

I think the myth that there’s a war between science and religion has had a lot to do with this. Many scientists grow up with this ideology inculcated that religion is something superstitious, primitive, and that the role of science is to free people from superstition. For some scientists, part of what gives them satisfaction or makes them feel that they are engaged in some important enterprise is that they feel that they are trying to rid the world of irrational beliefs. It gives them a sense of mission and purpose. Even if what they’re working on might be something very esoteric, they can tell themselves that they’re part of this grand enterprise.

 

TCNW: That fits in with a phrase I heard (recently), saying that many people believe in a “God of the gaps,” meaning that we use God to explain what we don’t understand, and that as we understand more and more, we need God less and less.

SMB: Many people who are not religious, they don’t understand what religion is all about. They have this view that religion is there to explain natural phenomena. They would say, in ancient times people thought lightning was the thunderbolts of Zeus or that volcanoes were the underground workshops of the god Vulcan, or that storms in the ocean were due to the wrath of Poseidon or something—that religion was trying to explain the forces of nature in some superstitious way. Now science has come along and shown that there’s a natural, rational explanation.

But that’s not what the biblical religion is about. Anyone who reads the Bible sees that the Bible is not terribly concerned with natural phenomena and why they occur. It’s a distortion of what religion is all about.

There are things that science has a hard time explaining, and one of those things is the human being. There is more to human beings than can be explained by physics and chance. It’s things we all know about and experience. It’s not magical or occult. It’s powers that we have, that we know about and experience every day, and they are the powers of intellect and free will. Those are what theology has always identified as the aspects of human beings that make us spiritual.

When the Bible says we are made in the image of God, where it says that we have a spiritual soul, theologians have said for the last 2,000 years that the way in which we are like God is that we have reason, or intellect, and free will. That’s what’s spiritual about us. People say, what about love? Well, love is an act of will. You will what is good for others.

 

TCNW: If science and religion aren’t at war, where does the conflict come in?

SMB: There’s not a war between science and religion; that’s a complete myth. But there is a war between religion and materialism. Materialism is a philosophy that says there is no reality except matter. Matter governed by the laws of physics and chance: that’s all there ultimately is. Materialism is a philosophical viewpoint. It is not science. So we’re at war not with science itself but with this philosophical viewpoint. The trouble is that the materialists often wrap themselves in the mantle of science. They claim to speak for science. They say “This is what science is telling us,” and people are taken in by that. What I try to do in my book is show that is not what science is telling us.

 

TCNW: How does your faith inform what you do as a scientist?

SMB: I guess I, as many scientists, have a sort of insatiable curiosity, a passion for the truth about certain things. We want to know the answer. That dovetails completely with my attitude towards the world as a believer. The believer believes that there is an answer with a capital A, that everything can be made sense of ultimately. It can’t necessarily be made sense of by a human being because our minds are finite. But it can be made sense of by someone. There is a mind big enough, there is a mind that does make sense of it, and that’s our God. It’s the opposite of what many atheists think. Many atheists think of religion as being substitute for rational answers; that’s the opposite of the truth. We believe in a God who is a rational being, an infinite being, but a rational being. It is God who made this world orderly, it is God who gave us reason. We worship the Truth. Jesus called himself the truth—“the Way, the Truth the and Life.”

 

“Modern Physics and Ancient Faith” is available through online booksellers such as amazon.com and bn.com.

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