Transcription
Why was Hawking so enthusiastic about saying to us all, "You must choose between God and science"? To me, that is a category mistake for various reasons. But why that choice? Then I realized he had problems in two separate directions. One was the question of what science is as a category, but the second was that he placed God in the wrong category.
He thought that people like me, and you, believed in an ancient type of Greek god—what is commonly referred to as a "god of the gaps." This means, "I can't explain it, therefore God did it." So, as knowledge advances, it pushes God out. God becomes the god of the gaps.
Suddenly, it dawned on me, and it should have dawned on me years ago, that if you define God as the god of the gaps, then of course you have to choose between God and science because of your definition of God. Sometimes I say to people, "You know, the first statement in the Bible is, 'In the beginning, God created the vastness of the universe we don't yet understand.'" That brings a smile.
But I say, "No, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." That is a merism in technical grammatical language; he created everything—the bits we do understand and the bits we don't.
The interesting thing is that serious scientists who are believers in God—there are many of them—find their evidence for God coming from science, not from the bits they don't understand, but from the bits they do. Isaac Newton is a classic case. When he discovered, among other things, his law of gravity and published his famous book, "Principia Mathematica," which is probably the most famous book of science ever written, he didn't say, "I now understand how it works; I've got a law of gravity; I don't need God." No, he said, "What a wonderful God that did it this way." He dedicated this book hoping that people would read it and come to believe in the deity.
So, that's such a serious category mistake. There's another one, which we can talk about, related to the definition of science. But the first one you mentioned—getting God in the wrong category—reminds me of the absurd knockdown that Richard Dawkins thought was staggering. I used to make this argument in Russia when I first began to go there: "Who created God?" The argument is that if you say, "Well, I believe God created the universe," you must ask, "Who created the Creator?" It never goes back forever, and it's nonsense.
I was amazed that Dawkins couldn't see through that. As you say, you're placing God in the created category, but nobody believes—at least, nobody senses—God that way. Yes, absolutely. If we look at this from this perspective, I don't believe in the god that Dawkins doesn't believe in either. He didn't like that when I said it to him.
But there is a philosophical point that lies at a slightly deeper level, Samuel, and that's this: Do the arguments go back forever anyway? I don't believe they do. The atheist will stop asking the questions with mass energy, or the most popular these days is "nothing." You have to redefine nothing to get there. The Christians, like me, or theists will stop with God. That's where it stops because God, by definition, if he's worthy of the name, is eternal.
So, when people raise that question, what I say to them—this used to be very interesting in the Russian context because there was strong materialism—is, "Your problem is that you cannot believe in anything eternal." They would tell me they believed in the eternity of matter, and I'd say, "Oh, if you believe in the eternity of matter, then the eternal is conceivable." So, I'm telling you that the only sensible kind of God to talk about is an eternal one.
What about evidence? Can we talk a bit about evidence? Of course. What role does evidence play in establishing truth? I want to quote you. You mentioned Richard Dawkins in your book "God's Undertaker." Richard Dawkins says, "Next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them, 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' If they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say."
I wish he would take his own advice because when it came to the evidence for the resurrection, I actually asked him whether he had any friends he talked to about it, and he just shrugged it off. I think the number of very high-profile atheists who aren't really interested in evidence beyond the narrow kind is significant. It seems to me that you have to open up your mind to various levels of evidence when it comes to the God question because of the nature of science as a category of investigation.
The idea that science can answer every question is false. Sir Peter Medawar got it exactly right. He said, "It's obvious that science has its limits. It can't even answer the basic Popperian questions of a child: Where do I come from? Where am I going? What's the meaning of life?" It can't answer the "why" question. It can't answer the "why" question of purpose, the teleological question.
It does have a "why" question that it can answer, and that's the way of function. Sometimes, you can ask, "What is that bit doing here? Why is it there?" That's a genuine scientific question, but not the "why" question of purpose.
I think this is hugely important, Samuel, and I place a lot of emphasis on it in my little book, "Can Science Explain Everything?" What many people don't realize is that science is even limited within itself. What I mean by that is this: When I was at school, I was badly taught physics, and I thought that the law of gravity explained gravity. It wasn't until a number of years later that I realized that the law of gravity is a brilliant mathematical equation that enables one to do very precise calculations—good enough to land someone on the moon.
But the one thing it doesn't do is tell you what gravity is; it just describes it. Yes, it just describes its effect, and Newton realized that. So, it was limited. No one knows, even today, what gravity is. Now, that's interesting—that's a "what" question. I like to tell people that I'm passionate about science, but it doesn't even deal with the "what" questions that you think it deals with.
To take a very simple analogy, here is water boiling. We can ask, "What's going on here?" Well, why is the water boiling? "Because the molecules are being agitated by the heat conductor through the kettle base, and that's why it's boiling." Okay, I can equally well say, "It's boiling because I want a cup of tea."
Now, the interesting thing is that what Dawkins and Hawking—more so, actually—seem to be saying is that you've got to choose between those two explanations, which are ridiculous. They lie in different categories.
I feel like a huge amount of the so-called opposition between science and faith in God—and I'll come to that addendum in a moment—is because of this category difference. It's a different class of questions being answered. I put it to school kids, and I say, "Please choose between those two explanations of the water boiling," and they say, "But sir, you need both!"
Why can't some brilliant scientists see that? By the way, if I might just add, I'm frequently asked to speak on science and faith. I say to people, "Do you want me to talk about God?" They say yes. I said, "Where is it in the title?" Faith. I said, "But look, I can give you a lecture on science and faith without mentioning God because faith is essential to science."
Do you realize that your title is, in itself, an atheistic formulation? What they've cleverly done is get across the idea that faith is a religious concept, and it means believing where there's no evidence. Whereas faith is a normal concept, and I only would take it seriously if it is based on evidence.
Einstein's wonderful quotation: "I cannot imagine a genuine scientist without that faith." Not faith in God, but faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe. All scientists are people of faith, and they bring that faith to science because you cannot do science unless you believe that it can be done, unless you believe that the human brain has some access to what we believe to be the real world out there.
So, I'm always very careful. If you want to talk about science and faith, well, faith in God—but still, that's not a balanced thing because it gives the impression that faith is all in the realm of religion. That is a category mistake of the worst kind, in my mind.