Notes on C. S. Lewis and Science

As I read him, Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), probably the most famous Christian apologist of the 20^th century, presented a four-step apologetic. I want to note in what ways this apologetic engages science with Christian faith. Though the final step argues that Jesus is God—which is not strictly speaking a scientific concern—the first three steps confronted the scientifically based philosophy of his early 20^th century Oxford. I could also argue that they resonate into 21^st century American culture as well. 

But I’ll restrain myself on that last point. Instead, let me outline those first three steps:

1. First of all, there is more to the world than just material stuff. Materialism (that there is just brute matter) is in fact self-defeating because, if we are pure materialists, rational thinking is impossible. Lewis’s book Miracles principally presents this apologetic, but it is scattered throughout his writings, especially in the ‘40s.
2. Human beings seek something that this world cannot satisfy, which points to a God beyond this world. “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”  This argument appears in The Problem of Pain and in “The Weight of Glory.”
3. There is a Law or Rule about Right and Wrong (or the Law of Nature, or even natural law) that exists in all human beings and points to the God created that law within us. Lewis developed this apologetic in his opening Broadcast Talks for BBC, which became the first section or “book” of Mere Christianity, as well as his 1943 Riddell lectures later published as The Abolition of Man.

      

Let’s look at #2 for a moment: Lewis’s argument from Joy or desire. The argument brings to mind the question of whether Albert Einstein’s words about “God” were really about, well, God, such as “everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.” Richard Dawkins argues (not surprisingly as the arch-atheist) that this stuff in Einstien isn’t really about God, it’s about transcendence. In his recent book, scientist Amir D. Aczel, contends (as I understand him) that, no, this is really about the Deity, and in fact, believing in God is profoundly compatible with science.

      

So I'm going to set Lewis in this fray. What is he saying? Is he arguing that this sense of transcendence—or better, this desire for it, which Lewis calls “Joy”—proves God? No, at least not as a deductive proof. Instead Lewis is making a suppositional argument here: We do not fully understand the desire for something beyond (or Joy) itself, but it opens to a wider metaphysical conclusion, one that points to God who created us. Or more systematically, the form of this suppositional argument from desire proceeds as follows: Suppose God created this world, we can imagine that God would leave a desire for more than this world offers. We experience a longing for more than this world offers. It is reasonable to see this as pointer to God.

      

In a certain sense then, the argument cannot be decided on the basis of science or not. Science seeks to understand the interactions of the material world. And yet, many scientists, because they focus their lives on the interactions of the material world, believe that this world is all there is.

      

Like my title says, these are notes. Nothing fully conclusive yet. But I’m interested to know what you think…

The Good News of Creation in Light of Contemporary Science

The icy blue of Lake Tahoe's waters

[This is excerpted from Creation and Last Things. I wrote it over ten years ago. So I've adapted it, and I'm interested to hear any comments about how it needs further updating.]

I have sat many times at the edge of Lake Tahoe under the summer sun, breathing the fresh mountain air and contemplating the beauty and austerity of its icy blue waters surrounded by gorgeously majestic peaks. There I find witnesses to God’s mysterious power and deity. More than once, Paul’s words from Romans 1:20 have come to me: 

Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

Creation as a finished artistic product witnesses to the Master Artist. A stanza from the whimsical twentieth century poet, e.e. cummings (admittedly not without a whiff of pantheism) describes the beauty and joy of creation: 

I thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees 

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything 

which is natural which is infinite which is yes.

        In fact, the entire cosmos is an enormous Yes to God the Creator. From this wide-angle, cosmic perspective, the doctrine of creation affirms first of all that the universe began at an initial point at the command of God. It then says that the world—it all its magnitude and complexity—depends ultimately on God. Most of all, it proclaims that these affirmations are good news.

        We often think that the “good news” begins in the opening chapters of the New Testament. There is, however, probably more blessing pronounced in the first paragraphs of the Bible than anywhere else in the Scripture. Repeatedly in Genesis 1, God declares that creation “good” (verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 25) and even “very good” (verse 31). This makes all the difference for how we understand the doctrine of creation.

        When we think of the cosmic level, we do well to think beyond the tangible of space and time, and of the world that our senses describe. The most ancient church-wide statement of faith, the fourth-century Nicene Creed, speaks of God’s creating things “seen and unseen.” God creates not only the world that science discovers and measures, but the world of spiritual beings or angels. Since I usually focus on the relation of theology and science—and thus the tangible world (more or less)—I rarely comment extensively on the angelic (and demonic) realm of creation. Still the angelic world keeps us reminded of the full depth of creation and the limits of even our greatest scientific discoveries.

        Within the bounds of space and time, we will do well also to remember the scope of the cosmos. We need to think big. Let us never forget that our God is the Creator of the universe, and natural science can point us to the grandeur of God’s creation. Contemporary astrophysics portrays the enormous scale of the universe, which began 13.7 billion years ago. This fact cures us of self-centeredness. If the age universe were reduced to twenty-four hours, human beings would only appear just two or three seconds before midnight.

        Furthermore, big bang cosmology describes an “initial point of singularity” where time began, which scientists call t=0. At this singularity, all laws of physics break down. The Belgian priest and mathematician, George Lemaître spoke of t=0 as a “ day without yesterday,” where space was infinitely curved and all energy and all matter was concentrated into a single quantum. The big bang is derived from Albert Einstein’s 1916 theory of general relativity, which pointed to an expanding universe. Einstein initially resisted this implication, preferring a universe that remained relatively static. So he fudged his equations with the “cosmological constant,” which removed expansion in the universe, keeping it in relatively constant stasis. It took two powerful minds to persuade Einstein that an expanding universe—and therefore one with a beginning point—could be empirically and mathematically verified. Lemaître, who was fond of saying, “There is no conflict between science and religion,” offered the theoretical structure for this expansion. The unparalleled master of astronomical observation, Edwin Hubble, provided the observational data. Their work eventually convinced Einstein that the universe was expanding. (Einstein later fumed: “If Hubble’s expansion had been discovered at the time of the creation of the general theory of relativity, the [cosmological constant] would never have been introduced.”) Extrapolating backward, this expansion implied an initial singularity.

        But Einstein would not be the only scientist in need of persuasion. The reigning view of the time was Cambridge professor Fred Hoyle’s “steady state” cosmology, which he and two colleagues, Herman Bondi and Thomas Gold, presented in 1948. This theory stated that the universe was virtually unchanging and of infinite age. The cosmos always was, and always will be, the same. Hoyle did not like the implications of creation out of nothing for theological and philosophical reasons:

Unlike the modern school of cosmologists, who in conformity with Judaeo-Christian theologians believe the whole universe to have been created out of nothing, my beliefs accord with those of Democritus who remarked "Nothing is created out of nothing."

Hoyle argued forcefully for the steady state theory and disparagingly described its alternative as the “big bang.”

        In the 1950s and ‘60s, these two theories vied for scientific approval. It was not until 1965 that Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias at the Bell Laboratories detected background static radiation in the cosmos. This static was so unexpected that Wilson and Penzias believed pigeons had roosted in their huge instruments. In fact they had, but once they were removed, the background static remained as “echoes” of that initial moment of explosive creation. The COBE satellite probed outer space in 1989 and found further confirmation of this background radiation (technically, through its Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotemeter). The COBE homepage puts it this way.

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectrum is that of a nearly perfect blackbody with a temperature of 2.725 +/- 0.002 K. This observation matches the predictions of the hot Big Bang theory extraordinarily well, and indicates that nearly all of the radiant energy of the Universe was released within the first year after the Big Bang. 

        These discoveries seem to provide an amazing consonance with the concept of creation out of nothing by God’s command. Robert Jastrow, an astrophysicist formerly at the Mount Wilson Observatory and a self-described agnostic, has penned these rather striking comments on the Big Bang cosmologist who looks at the first chapters of Genesis:

A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is. The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth…. At the moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of 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.

     Theologians have long held that creation happened “at once,” and can be flattered by Jastrow’s conclusions about big bang cosmology, but will be wise to continue listening to scientists’ developing theories about the nature of our universe. There are even some questions theologians need to ask: What about new theories (such as the Hartle-Hawking model or Lawrence Krauss's more challenge) that impugn the big bang scientifically? Are creation out of nothing and the moment of the big bang the same thing? I will leave responses for another post, but I'd be interested in your comments on the way there.

Making Something out of Nothing: The Good Creation

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.

Albert Einstein

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.

Genesis 1:31

I continue with a few more general reflections on science and theology. This entry centers on nature as God's creation. I excerpted it from my book, Creation and Last Things.

God designed creation, and it takes our breaths away. The glow of a full moon, the splendor of a smile, the elegant beauty of nature’s laws can astound us in their witness to God’s master artistry in creation. They are signs that we are always in the presence of the divine. The most natural response is to praise the Creator. The doctrine of creation is about the goodness of the God of life—the God who brings things that did not exist into existence with one simple word. It is about the God who continues to create a “new thing” throughout cosmic and human history. It even points to the God who will fulfill creation at the end of time. 

        Poetry and music express—with a greater accuracy than philosophical or scientific language—the wonder and glory of creation. The hymn of ancient Israel says it so well:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;     
And the firmament proclaims his handiwork
Day to day pours forth speak
And night to night declares knowledge. (Psalm 19:1-2)

       William Shakespeare, living at least two millennia later than the psalmists. Nevertheless, during the great flowering of modern science in the seventeenth century, Shakespeare found similar insight from the Book of Nature:

And this our life,
Exempt from public hands,
Finds tongues in trees,
Books in the running brook,
Sermons in stones,
And good in everything.

        Finally, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the late nineteenth century Jesuit, produced poetry far ahead of his Victorian age. In “God’s Grandeur,” he expressed the surprise and power of God’s glory in creation in even in spite of the havoc wrought upon the world by our action:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
      It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;      It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;      And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;      And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent;
      There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;And though the last lights off the black West went      Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—Because the Holy Ghost over the bent      World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

        I write now as a Christian convinced by these truths. But this has not always been the case. I grew up in the beautiful, self-sufficient Silicon Valley that was secular in the truest sense of the word: God simply did not play a part in our life. When we factored in the various components of our existence, there was no God, no church. The wider culture of Menlo Park, California mirrored this casual secularity. I can certainly believe what I hear Newsweek once reported: only four percent of the culture of the San Francisco Peninsula can be found in church on any given Sunday. Nature in this world is certainly an object of great beauty, but is not filled with God’s presence.

        In college, one of the forces that drove me first to consider the world’s religions, and ultimately the Christian faith, was the lack of meaning inherent in a God-less world. It took some hard-fought reflection, but I learned this: joy and fulfillment come from knowing the One who made us and what our purpose is on earth. A Stradivarius works perfectly as a violin, but does not help when the floors need sweeping. Not to know the design yields frustration and futility. Living with purpose brings fulfillment. God’s design for us provides the right “usage” for human life.

        Mark Twain once quipped, “There are two types of people—those who divide people into two types and everyone else.” With Twain in mind, I am still willing to say that there are two basic approaches to our existence: life either bursts with meaning or is meaningless.

        And yet, on certain days which of us does not resonate with certain scientists who, having cut themselves off from the Designer, find an ultimately purposeless creation? Harvard astronomer Margaret Geller believes that it is pointless to mention purpose: “why should [the universe] have a point? What point? It’s just a physical system, what point is there?”

       Certainly, not all scientists express similar nihilism. I remember a graduate seminar with on the ethics of the Human Genome Initiative with David Cole, biochemist (at the time) at U.C. Berkeley. He showed pictures of polymers and exclaimed with utter excitement: "Aren't these beautiful! Look at the wonder of God's creation!" I'd never thought of polymers that way (or much). Like David Cole, many scientists, in discovering God's design, find ample reason to praise the Designer. 

        God has brought this world into existence. Both the act of doing so and the product are creation. Like a writer, God invented and created the world, and in doing so, stepped back to the let the characters “speak for themselves.” The created order remains different from God. On the other hand, the work bears the imprint of its Artist. Speaking the world into existence has been used as an image for creation since the Hebrew Scriptures. As Psalm 33:9 declares, “He spoke and it came to be.” Words require no pre-existing material and point to the sovereignty of the Writer of the drama. Thankfully, we know the ending, and it is all good. From an undergraduate education in French literature, I recall that a comedy is defined, not by its use of humor (although there may be some), but by its ending. A comedy ends with resolution, with good ultimately in triumph over evil. And so in God’s comedy, good wins out. In the meantime, the real joy will be discovering our part in this cosmic comedy.

Relating Science and Theology: The Essence of Scientists in Congregations

The Scientists in Congregations (SinC) grantees

As we launch this new blog to support and describe the work of Scientists in Congregations, I needed to start with ways to relate theology and science and why we think it can be done. (This is adapted from my book, Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Theology and Science.)

Science and theology certainly continued to tussle in a variety of forms in the following centuries, but it never was a simple conflict. The commentator on science, Margaret Wertheim, has concluded, “The idea of a long-standing war between science and religion is a historical fiction invented in the late nineteenth century.” 

Isaac Newton, the key figure in formulating the “modern” scientific worldview combined a rigorous Christian faith with the most penetrating mind to come along for centuries. Admittedly, Newton strayed from orthodoxy on certain theological points—especially the Trinity—but remained committed to the Bible throughout his distinguished career. As he remarked, “No sciences are better attested than the religion of the Bible.”

Still, the contemporary Nobel laureate Stephen Weinberg—like many other scientists—propagates the common notion of the incompatibility between religion and science with force: “One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.” But this conflict model oversimplifies a more varied historical interaction between these two disciplines. Consider another example: the nineteenth-century scientist and Christian, Clerk Maxwell, whose theories gave inspiration to Einstein’s special relativity, “Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of today a connected portion of life, and an embodiment of the work of Eternity.”

In this spectrum between outright oil-and-water and a chummy friendship, a number of points exist. The doyen of the study of science and theology, Ian Barbour, has set out a clear typology for four ways that religion and science have interacted.

1. Conflict—each sees the other as an enemy and attacks its adversary. Many conservative theologians understand that science is “godless” (as some in fact is) and set their attack accordingly. On the other side, scientism defines all reality by what can be discovered scientifically. That approach obviously does not leave much room for faith.
2. Independence remains perhaps the most popular approach. Galileo is sometimes quoted in this regard: “Religion tells us how to go to heaven. Science tells us how the heavens go.” (Galileo had more to say as I will note below.) The independence model has the virtue of maintaining a proper freedom for both science and theology. It may, however, lead to the conclusion that science deals with “the real world” and religious faith can be placed on the same level as belief in Santa Claus or unicorns—comforting, but deluded.
3.  Dialogue, where the two disciplines sit down and calmly discuss their respective insights. This is polite coffee talk—quite enjoyable, but no one is brought to changed opinions after the conversation. Many science-theology specialists find this to be the dominant, and often frustrating, pinnacle of interactions at most conferences. It ultimately splits the one world God has made into air-tight microworlds.
4. Integration has as its goal a real learning on both sides. In this case, there is a give and take, where real transformation of thought can occur. Curiously, Galileo offers an excellent example of this approach. He understood his work as necessary for maintaining the truth of Christianity so that faith would not be wedded to bad science. For this reason, Galileo looked to God as his final Arbiter after his infamous trial: “He knows that in this cause for which I suffer, though many might have spoken with more learning, none, not even the ancient Fathers, have spoken with more piety or with greater zeal for the Church than I.”

        

As a rule, I seek to move toward the integration of theology and science. Nonetheless, in order for the two disciplines really to integrate, one needs to admit the similarities and differences in their approaches. Sometimes, as their respective research programs develop, dialogue may be the apex of their interaction at any moment and integration remains a goal on the horizon.

        

How then to move toward integration? First of all, both disciplines prize humility—the fact that we do not know everything. There is an incompleteness to our knowledge, but a confidence that we can learn something. Einstein definitely knew this virtue, “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality is primitive and childlike and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” The Bible says it another way, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Unfortunately both Christianity and science have often proceeded without humility.

        

Secondly, there is a strong historical relation between the growth of science and monotheistic religion. Put simply, science has grown historically in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic countries. Why? All traditions—and I will speak primarily as a Christian—speak of God’s rationality and prize the intelligibility of God design universe. Copernicus stated simply, “ The universe has been wrought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator.” Scientific research relies on the order, coherence, and comprehensibility in nature. In fact, the development of modern science is related to the idea that nature has a pattern or “laws,” which can be discerned through observation. The Nobel laureate, Charles Towne, in a lecture on the relationship between the Christian faith and modern science, summarizes this connection: “For successful science of the type we know, we must have faith that the universe is governed by reliable laws and, further, that these laws can be discovered by human inquiry.” Conversely, to believe in the intelligibility of the universe without this basis is an amazing leap of faith.

        

In this respect, science and theology have much to learn from one another.  Albert Einstein provided one brilliant summary:  “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Pope John Paul II formulated another: “ Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”