I Love Science

I love science because it helps me understand the inner workings of what God has created.  Whether it’s physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, or any other branch of science, it has the potential to explain the wonders of God’s creation.

I know I will never understand all God’s secrets, but I find it enlightening to learn the few that I can.

There is a problem, though.  Some people have a funny idea about science.  They seem to be relying on it more heavily than they ought.  They have elevated it to a god-like status, viewing it as the harbinger and prophet of truth.  They accept nothing as fact unless it is “proven” by science.

Their problem is that science “proves” nothing.  The best conclusion science can give us starts with the words, “It is likely…”

Some people will be offended by that last statement, so let me justify it with a partial transcript of a long-ago talk:

“Now you see, of course, that with this method [i.e., the scientific method], we [have the opportunity to] disprove any definite theories.  You have a definite theory, a real guess on which you can really compute consequences, which could be compared to experiments, then in principle we [have the opportunity to] get rid of any theory.

“We [always have the opportunity to] prove any definite theory wrong.  Notice, however, that we never prove it right.  “Suppose that you invent a good guess, calculate the consequences, discover that every consequence that you calculate agrees with experiment.  Your theory is then right?  No, it is simply not proved wrong because in the future there could be a wider range of experiments, you can compute a wider range of consequences, and you may discover then that this thing is wrong.

“That’s why laws like Newton’s laws for the motion of planets last such a long time.  He guessed the Law of Gravitation, calculated all kinds of consequences for the solar system and so on, compared them to experiment, and it took several hundred years before the slight error of the motion of Mercury was developed.  During all that time the theory had been failed to be proved wrong and could be taken to be temporarily right but it can never be proved right because tomorrow’s experiment may succeed in proving what you thought was right wrong.

“So we never are right.  We can only be sure [when] we’re wrong.”

There are other reasons why science can never give us absolute truth.  The one I am best acquainted with is statistics.  Science uses statistics heavily in forming its conclusions.  However, by its definition statistics can never generate conclusions that confirm the truth or falsity of the hypothesis.  There is always the possibility of Type I and Type II errors.  The best it can do is tell us the likelihood.

So given a choice between what man tells me (through science) and what God tells me (through revelation, Bible study, tradition, and the community of believers), I will choose God’s truth over science every day.

Footnotes

¹ The 1964 talk by Dr. Richard Feynman is available on YouTube  More about Dr. Feynman is available at Wikipedia