Science and Observations of God

What is the message of this meme?

• Science improves our knowledge over time. We have better images now of things that were previously inaccessible to us.
• Science couldn't then nor can it now observe God.
• Therefore, God must not be real because science cannot see him.

How to respond?

1. Science is a wonderful enterprise that does indeed improve our knowledge, and Christians should embrace, rather than fear, it.
2. The traditional Christian conception of God is that he is not physical, so we should not expect to be able to physically see him.
3. This world is full of things that skeptics, atheists, and scientists in general have good reason to believe exist even though they cannot see them, such as magnetic fields, quarks, a mathematical point or line, past genetic mutations, past transitional forms for which there are no fossils, force carriers in physics like photons or gluons, and past historical events for which there are no records.
4. The epistemology (or way of knowing) of this meme and of the average skeptic is weak sauce. If we limited our knowledge to only that which we could see, then we would know very few things indeed.

If atheists and skeptics want to claim that they can be confident in their lack of belief in God because science hasn't observed him, then to be consistent they must also claim to lack a belief in many other things that are not controversial.

Everything Physical is Physics...

...but not everything is physical.

This is becoming my standard answer to my students when they ask, "What is physics?" You see, in the high school in which I teach, every student must take physics (thanks to this policy, I have a job!). So I initially get a lot of questions about what it is that they will be learning. My answer tries to point out to them that everything in the physical universe must obey the laws of physics, which we will be studying. We live in an orderly universe governed by law. This insight is astonishing in its own right: why is the universe orderly? This can lead to some very interesting conversations about design.

My point is a little different, however, when I respond, "Everything physical is physics, but not everything is physical." We live in a materialistic culture in which we are told in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we are nothing but our bodies. Our minds are reduced to our brains. Our feelings to chemical reactions. Our morality to evolutionary bric-a-brac.

So by saying that not everything is physical, I hope to put a stone in their shoe that there is more to this world than just physical stuff. For example:

• Souls
• Mental states
• God
• Information

None of these are physical, but they are just as real as a rock. I don't bring all of this up unless someone asks, but most students don't take the bait. Every once in a while, however, I get a student genuinely interested, and then we can launch into a meaningful conversation.

Just one more small way to push back the tide...