‘God is not waiting to be discovered’

“IN the common quest for knowledge, science and religion are friends, not foes.” These are the words of the theoretical physicist, theologian and Anglican priest, John Polkinghorne. He adds: “Some people may find this surprising, for there’s a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don’t agree. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if people in this so-called ‘scientific age’ knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they’d find it easier to share my views.” John Polkinghorne is better qualified than me to express this opinion, but, for what it is worth, I agree with him wholeheartedly.

There are too many people who have read just enough science to be dangerously unaware of what they don’t know. The airport bookshops abound with quick reads about the genesis of the universe, the origins of life and the nature of consciousness and there is enough in these books to leave people thinking that it’s only a matter time before every question under the sun will be answered. God seems to have been left in the slow lane, no longer a player in the real world.

The crux of the matter, however, is that God is not to be found at the end of a mathematical equation, in a formula developed in a laboratory or at the end of microscope which sees deeper than ever before into the nature of the atom. In that sense God is not waiting to be discovered.

So, it’s hardly surprising to find that scientists, dedicated to their trade, don’t use God to fill the gaps in their carefully developed hypotheses. It is, however, disingenuous of the scientist who does not find God in the course of their experimentation to dismiss the divine, the spiritual and the mysterious as non-rational and unreasonable.

The Russian theoretical physicist, Lev Landau, once said that his cosmologist friends were ‘often in error but never in doubt’ and those who may be on a quest to discover an authentic experience of God should hold very lightly to the theological conclusions reached by cosmologists postulating on what happened in Planck time, a fraction of a second before the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

The search for God is another discipline and it begins and ends in another place. It is not a search for a prime mover so much as it is a search for the One who continually creates and who holds all things in being.

There are too many people who have read just enough science to be dangerously unaware of what they don’t know

Our experience of God is to be found in aspects of life which do not readily lend themselves to scientific method. The nature of trust, goodness and love; the problem of evil and selfishness are hard to examine in a laboratory, but they may hold the key to a better understanding of our place in the world, our relationships with one another and our relationship with God.

The search for God is not incompatible with holding a deep respect for science and its success in helping us to understand our place in the physical universe. The cynic may describe the scientist who holds a living faith as a vegetarian butcher but for me they are simply people searching in two different places for meaning and purpose. It is not helpful, then, when theological insight flies in the face of common knowledge and too often my theological friends are in error, even when they are in no doubt, and that is not good enough.

Check out the work of Grasping the Nettle, www.graspingthenettle.org and get signed up for one of the many events being organised later this year with Brother Guy J Consolmagno, the American research astronomer and Jesuit religious brother. He is better known as the Pope’s Astronomer – this man is a serious scientist who will also share deep insights into the nature of God.