Science and Religion
Abstract: Many seem to believe that science and religion are at odds. I will make a case that they are not at odds, but are actually complementary. I will first show why I believe I am in a good position to make that case. I will develop four examples of where they need to be complementary: evolution, creation, consciousness, and constants of the universe.
First my credentials in science: When I finished high school, I did not even know anyone whose career was in science except a high school science teacher who was mostly into ham radio. In the Navy, it became clear to me that electronics was the future and when I got out my goal was to become an electrical engineer. After working at Tektronix for a few years, I had found I liked working on processes and so I abandoned the electrical engineer idea and continued for an Applied Science degree at PSU. The curriculum for Applied Science at Portland State was identical to an engineering physics degree at OSU. The engineering physics degree was intended to provide the engineers to develop processes for the new semiconductor industry that was booming. I was influenced at that time by a talk given at Tektronix by Walter Brattain. Brattain was coinventor with Shockley and Bardeen of the transistor in the late 40’s at Bell Labs which ushered in the semiconductor age. Brattain considered himself the process guy of the group and he coalesced for me something I knew but hadn’t put together: It is great to have a concept but it is only theory and speculation until someone builds a model to test. I spent 40 years in developing processes about equally divided between R&D and production.
I have a deep regard for the integrity of science. Science is a continuum but I will describe three different types of science: what I call pure science, research science and development science. Pure research is like Higgs or Hawking who were just trying to push our fundamental knowledge further; research science is focusing in some field with the goal of applying it to create something that will be beneficial or marketable; and development science is what I did which is to take the idea of the research scientist and uncover ways to build a useful product.
I believe the scientific method is sacred. Much of the science these days, at least that makes the news, is not good science. All true scientists are skeptics! That does not mean they doubt, but only that they want proof before they commit. The scientific method has been around since Aristotle taught Alexander the Great and is simple: hypothesis, test, proof. If it fails the test, modify the hypothesis and repeat. Climate change caused by man-made carbon gases is still an unproven hypothesis.
Now my credentials in religion: The only church I attended up through high school was Sunday school at Church of God in North Bend when I was between six and nine. The main thing I got from that was that the teacher operated a road grader for the city and that sounded pretty neat. In my high school years my biggest influences were my Aunt Nadine and Birdie. Birdie had been influenced by her brother Bob who planned to enter the seminary and become a priest and by an experience she had in the church at Bandon. I never doubted the existence of God but like most young people I had never really thought about it in any depth. Birdie and I discussed religion some before we were married but more intensely after we were married. We went through the Baltimore catechism while in Maryland but I was still left with many of the common misconceptions of Catholicism. Archbishop Sheen once said: “There are probably less than two dozen people in the country who don’t believe what Catholics believe; but there are millions who do not believe what they think Catholics believe.” While in Beaverton, Birdie went to a class at the catholic church to learn more and the instructor, Mr. Greger, came to the house to talk to me about my reservations and he was able to clarify all the misconceptions I had. The family, as it existed in December 1962, was baptized Catholic. I had pretty much accepted that there was a God because everyone in those days believed in God but I didn’t really give it much thought. However, the more I studied in science the more convinced I was that the whole thing was designed. It didn’t matter if you looked at things so large you couldn’t comprehend or at things so small you couldn’t see, it was symmetrical, intricate, complex and perfect in function
After this my growth in religion has been from reading and meditating. Saint Thomas Aquinas provides proof of God’s existence. The bible provides a story of God’s interaction with his creation. Saint Paul is my most important influence with respect to belief in Jesus. He was from a wealthy family of the Roman city of Tarsus, was a Roman citizen, a Pharisaic Jew in Jerusalem trained by Rabbi Gamaliel, and an active persecutor of Christians. He had a nice life open for him yet he gave it up to be an itinerant preacher who suffered beatings, imprisonments, ship wrecks and finally death. Such sacrifice takes some type of extraordinary epiphany.
Proposal: The real issue with regard to science vs religion boils down to the question: is there a designer or not? There are two popular views; one is that the story of creation is in the bible as designed by God and all explanation can be extrapolated from that. Second, is that the universe can be explained by science and it occurred by coincidence and evolution with no designer. I believe that both extremes fail to give the acceptable answer. The Bible is about the relationships to man and does not specify the how. Science is only interested in the how and not about relationships to man. I intend to show both are necessary. However, we will not find a definitive answer to our question. There will always be viable alternatives with plausible explanations. Thus, we will have a dilemma and we must choose which makes the most sense. This is called free will. I will present four chosen examples which I believe show design but you must decide.
EVOLUTION
First I want to talk about the process of design. The design of the transistor I mentioned earlier is a good example but I will stick to what I know. I have been on several successful design teams for new products. I will use inkjet to show the design process. The first step is for a research scientist to demonstrate the concept. The research scientist for inkjet was Jon Vaught at HP Labs in Palo Alto. My Mom taught me when cooking pan cakes, one of the ways to test if the pan is hot is to shake droplets of water on the pan. If they just sit and evaporate it is not hot enough. When hot enough, they will bounce or hop several times before evaporating: When the drops hit the hot enough plate, the bottom layer of water that hit the plate is superheated and bursts into a vapor bubble that propels the rest of the drop up and it hops to another spot and repeats until all the drop is used up. This is the mechanism for thermal inkjet. The resistor that the ink drop is sitting on is heated so quickly it superheats a layer of the ink and creates the vapor bubble that drives out the rest of the drop. Once the concept was demonstrated, Jon was done and we move to a development team. For a new product like an inkjet printer, there would be a design team for the overall product. Their team would define the performance requirements and the physical specifications for the product. Then there would be other teams which would develop a component, say the inkjet cartridge. The inkjet cartridge design team would develop specifications for their component that would support the goals of the final product. There would also be design teams for the components of the inkjet cartridge. For example, the first inkjet cartridge developed in Corvallis, we had a design team to do the printhead , the ink, orifice plate, assembly and testing The take away here is that design is complex with a lot of variables to control and it takes a number of talented engineers and a substantial amount of time to complete.
An example I would like to talk about now is the digital camera, like the one on your phone. The design of a digital camera is much like I experienced in inkjet. The components are camera body, lens, shutter and aperture, image sensor, image processor, view finder and display. There would be teams of engineers for each of these components. Each of these teams would have a set of meticulous specifications to ensure their component would satisfy the goals of the overall product. The time to design the camera might be months or a few years depending on how cutting edge; i.e., how much different from earlier designs. All designs build on history. The first camera took humans over 200,000 years to design and he/she had two perfect examples at the base of their nose all the time. The human eye performs better than your digital camera. If we deny a designer we must believe that the atoms of the universe just came together (over a few billion years) and formed the molecules in just the right places and proportions to create all the components of the eye and they all came together and voila: a human eye. It is possible.
Let’s look at it from another way. We can define an organism as being alive if it can feed, grow, survive and reproduce. Using a computer analogy, we can have a printer, display, memory, input and output devices etc. but if we don’t have a central processing unit (CPU) to control and coordinate activities, they will all just sit on the table forever and do nothing. Add the CPU and some software and you have a functioning computer. Similarly, we can have all the elements of a living organism but without the CPU it will not have life. For example, an egg has all the elements needed to become a chicken but if it is not fertilized (i.e., given a complete CPU) it won’t matter how much you heat it or how you treat it, it will just sit on the table or in the incubator and do nothing. So over billions of years it is possible that the atoms in our atmosphere just happened to come together in just the right combinations to form a trilobite, or whatever the first organism was, but to assume it would somehow by chance or natural evolution have the smarts (CPU) to feed, grow, survive and reproduce is unbelievably preposterous.
CREATION
E=mc^2 is Einstein’s famous equation relating mass and energy. It was pretty much confirmed in July 1945 in New Mexico when Oppenheimer et al exploded the first nuclear device and created tremendous energy from a small amount of mass. The reverse however, that is converting energy into mass, has been much more elusive. Higgs et al were doing their research in the 60’s when I went to college and none of it was in the text books and Hawking’s was decades later. In the 1960’s when I was in college, we studied the simple and elegant atom as envisioned by Niels Bohr. It has a nucleus with most of the mass consisting of neutrons and positive charged protons with mysterious, negatively charged electrons swirling around it like a miniature solar system. With incremental changes to the numbers of protons, neutrons and electrons the entire periodic table can be explained as well as the bonds for forming molecules. The confirmation that a Higgs’s boson even existed was not until about 2013. Experiments in a Super collider in Switzerland confirmed the Higgs’s Boson although the lifetime is so short it is only detected by indirect means. As I understand it, which is very little, Hawking proposed an energy field that became mass and then the big bang. Extrapolating the creation of the universe from the creation of a Higgs boson seems as bizarre as the scientist in the lab mixing some chemicals together until he makes something that looks and smells like excrement and claiming he has discovered the path to the creation living organisms.
The universe is not dumbly there but intelligibly there. Everywhere it is marked with reasonability; i.e., symmetry, complexity, predictability. If it were not, we would not be having this discussion because there would be no science.
CONSTANTS OF THE UNIVERSE
There are over a hundred known constants of the universe that are precisely the value required to create the conditions necessary for life. These constants are at arbitrary values and could just as easily be set at something else. For example, the gravitation constant. We don’t know its value from first principles; we know it empirically from many experiments and measurements. It could easily be some other value. But if it were infinitesimally larger or slightly smaller, the universe would not sustain life. Some other examples are the ratio of electron to proton mass, oxygen level in the atmosphere, and rate of the universe’s expansion. These could just as easily be different values than they are but, if only slightly different, life would not be possible. If the electron to proton mass were different, bonding and molecule building would be impossible. If the rotation of the earth were slightly slower, temperatures would be too extreme. The universe is fine tuned to a razor’s edge to sustain life. The probability that every one of the more than 100 values would coincidentally be set at just the right value to sustain life is too low to be considered reasonable.
Consciousness
I call this consciousness for want of a better word but it is more than the opposite of unconscious. Perhaps we should call it hyper consciousness. This is the unique ability of humans to anticipate, plan, build on history and ideas of the past, and to love in a special way. The fact that we are exploring the concept of science vs religion is an example of our consciousness and it is reasonably easy to come up with many more for each of the attributes of hyper consciousness but I want to only elaborate on one, love. Animals have some ability to love. Dogs love us. Why do they love us? They love us because we supply their needs. We feed them, give them boundaries, walk them, cuddle them, play with them and provide shelter. They are capable of giving back also to the someone who will give them what they want or need to be happy. The love between humans is unique in that the love is not for what we can get but what we can give. When we truly love someone, we want the best for them. We want them to receive what they want or need to make them happy. Our love is a giving not a receiving love. Of course, in a sincere relationship both parties receive as well as give; it is the intent that distinguishes. Too often in human relationships there is not mutual love and one gives and one receives and it doesn’t work out too well. Better to have just loved your dog.
Where did humankind get this hyperconsciousness? With a large amount of work and a huge stretch we might see this coming through evolution. But this is not evolutionary in the sense that there is not a chain or link that leads to this hyperconsciousness. Humankind have it totally and no other living creature has it at all. Nothing else anticipates the future and plans for it. Animals do build nests etc. but this is instinctive and not because they realize or anticipate what the future might bring. Nothing else builds concepts and ideas. Nothing else explores the universe. Nothing else discusses science and religion.
Conclusion:
Every one of these discussions puts you on the horns of the dilemma. You must consider the evidence and choose which suits you best. The bible story is not a science book. It can never provide the specifics that science demands. But it is clear to me, and should be to you from the examples above, that science is also limited in explanation. I choose the path that through science mankind is gradually unlocking the secrets of the universe and those secrets are best understood as being totally rational with amazing symmetry and complexity that can only come from an intelligent design. If the universe was not rational and predictable, the physical sciences would not be possible. But there will never be enough proof to convince the determined doubter.
Parting thought: Regardless of whether you believe the universe was fashioned by a master designer or you believe it just popped into existence, I would like you to consider this: To build a wholesome, happy and thriving society, all members must be interested in and willing to help their neighbors in their pursuit of happiness. They cannot envy or try to bring down or stay one step ahead of their neighbors. And who are our neighbors? Everyone we come in contact with. And our society as a whole, or our country, must be striving for all people of the world to have prosperity and peace. However, this helping our neighbor is counter to our basic survival instinct. We need a strong motivation to rise above that. Some have the self-motivation and theoretically it is possible for those in a Godless society to achieve it. However, it has never been achieved because a large fraction lack the desire, let alone the motivation. The only societies that have even made significant progress have been Christian countries. This is because Jesus demanded that we love one another and for many that is motivation enough. It is very sad for me to see this country that has been so great in my lifetime being destroyed from within. It may survive but it will never thrive again unless it returns to the basic values of loving one another.
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