"Is Science & God Exclusive?"
By Samuel S Vaiphei 

One question that has persistently dogged the human mind in this postmodern era is whether Science and God are mutually exclusive? Has the progress in Science & Technology rendered obsolete any belief in an all powerful and almighty God? This question has assumed importance of unprecedented significance for the scientifically informed, because on it will hinge the choices one makes. For the uninitiated there is no way one can avoid this question given the nature of how information or knowledge is being disseminated. One has to arrive at a framework with which one will govern his/her life, just as at one time the renaissance gave birth to the beginnings of the scientific age.

When one thinks of a scientific genius, the usual imagination is that of a man with thick glasses, unkempt hair...proclaiming God as his greatest personal enemy (G.H.Hardy). Of course the public perception is right in that most scientists profess atheism or its cousin- agnosticism as their belief. It all began with Darwin who expounded the possibility of life coming out of a primordial soup or in other words a self-contained universe with no room for a Creator. Soon others followed and today he has a cult following among the scientifically trained more than Jesus or Buddha... has. My aim here in this short article is not to get into this evolution or creation controversy but rather, a more humble one i.e. whether science contradicts belief in a personal God. 

The Bible or for that matter, most religious texts begin with the assumption that God exists. It neither proves nor tries to prove. On the other hand Science does not admit God in its explanation of the phenomena of the physical world. It does not because it expresses itself in equations or putting it in other words, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences (Eugene Wigner).The scientific description of the material world is a mathematical one. 

Of great interest is the attempt by scientists of the likes of Hawking, Witten etal to unify all the basic laws of science into one body - the so called "Grand Unification Theory"- a theory which will explain all the phenomena of the material world. Granted that this has been achieved, what then? Hawking put it this way: "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science for constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?" 

Let me paraphrase it this way: "who determines that this particular equation will govern this heavenly body or cause that or this effect?" Unfortunately science does not provide any answers. At this point it is apt to quote Ramachandra: "A physicist may legitimately explain a Beethoven symphony as longitudinal patterns of molecular vibrations in the air, but this is of no interest to any non-physicist and especially to a musician or musicologist. Indeed the later will remind the physicist that he/she has simply quite missed the point of the work as a whole. 

This is not; however, a fault of the physicist, for the appreciation of music is beyond the scope of physics. The concept of symphony is not found in any physics textbook. But, granted that the physics-level description is true, there is a higher level description which requires new concepts to do justice to all that is happening in the room. If however, the physicist was to deny the musicologist's account simply on the ground that musical concept cannot be expressed in terms of physics, he/she will be committing the error of nothing-buttery."

In fact Darwinian Evolution is hard expressed to explain normal human experiences such as love, emotion....How can a bunch of atoms feel? So much so that, Jacques Monod, the Nobel winning French Biologist and atheist give this incredulous remark: "Chance alone is at the source of all innovation, of all creation in the Biosphere. Pure Chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the root of the stupendous edifice of evolution...." A man is more than a cluster of atoms or molecules. He is an individual. To club Science and Religion together is to make, in the words of philosophers, a categorical mistake. Both describes the same truth but at different levels.

It comes as no surprise then that there are Nobel winning scientists like Daniel Tsui, Schawlow, Townes, and Penzias who has effectively combined their faith with their profession. Of course they are in the minority....It's a fact of modern history that the beginnings of present day science have its roots in the rediscovery of the Bible in the western world. A unique worldview which insist that there is a real world outside which is not a figment of one's imagination, a created world whose secrets has to be unlocked. 

No wonder at the entrance to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge University, where path breaking discovery in nuclear physics were made, are inscribed the words of Psalm 111:2:"Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who takes pleasure in them."

(The writer is a Second Year BTech Student at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi)