Modern science is in a state of confusion. Since this is not a sentiment shared by everyone, I will attempt to give some evidence for that statement. The real reason I see things that way, however, is related to the implications of the antithesis for science. A good case can be made for the fact that science flourished in Western culture primarily because of the Christian worldview of that culture. I won’t try to argue that case here, other than to say that it only makes sense to look for order in a world governed by a covenant-keeping Creator. The deeper issue, however, is that any scientific advancement can only be regarded as a gift from God. Not only does He sustain the world He created, not only do we live and move and have our being in Him, it is also His glory to conceal a matter, and if He so desired to He could make every scientist go mad and eat grass like a cow. His common grace is certainly evident in the scientific advancements of pagan cultures, including ours, but we should expect to see a significant difference in a culture that has been impacted by the gospel. All the promises of God are yes in Christ, and everything else in comparison is eating scraps under the table. To put it another way, If science is done in the context of a God-honoring culture, we should not be surprised to see the blessing of God upon it in an unusual way. And when that culture turns its back on Him, we should expect to see His blessing gradually removed. From this perspective, there are very clear signs that the blessing of God is no longer upon the scientific enterprise of Western culture. Modern science (by which I mean science since the early 20th century) is in a state of confusion that Newtonian science never was.
By the 19th century, Newtonian science had been developed into a very coherent system, and one of the prominent scientists of that time (I can’t recall who, perhaps Laplace) expressed the view that pretty much all that was left to do in science was to extend measurements out to more decimal places. Talk about setting yourself up to be humbled. The most notable theories of modern science, which upset the billiard ball worldview of Newton, are quantum mechanics and relativity. One cannot read even an introductory discussion of the theory of quantum mechanics, the theory for describing phenomena on a microscopic level, without mention being made of its weirdness. And the weirdness does not go away as one delves deeper into the theory; if anything, it gets worse. The weirdness is usually couched in terms of the probabilistic interpretation of the theory (which is not the only possible interpretation, but the generally accepted one), but this isn’t even the strangest aspect of the theory. The current mainstream scientific belief is that the electron is a structureless point particle that has the properties of mass, charge and spin. If you’re wondering exactly how a structureless point can have measurable properties, your confusion at this juncture is not due to any lack of understanding you may have about the theory. It’s not that the theory doesn’t work - there is excellent agreement between theory and experiment - it’s that it doesn’t really make sense. Of course one can interpret this in various ways, and emphasize how well the theory works, but it doesn’t take much of an imagination to come to the conclusion that God is making fools out of us.
Other signs that God is making fools out of modern scientists:
– The theory of quantum electrodynamics (a merger between relativity and quantum mechanics) has these pesky infinities in it that can be managed with but make most scientists uncomfortable. An introductory text will usually indicate that the theory is incomplete or lacking in self-consistency (while at the same time emphasizing the excellent agreement with experiment).
– There is no theory that unifies quantum mechanics with the theory of gravity, and all attempts to do so are bizarre in the extreme.
– The standard model for elementary particles (which is based on quantum theory) has around 20 quantities that aren’t predicted by the theory but have to be taken from experiment. What this means is that, as far as the theory is concerned, these are free parameters; and the more free parameters you have, the easier it is to get a match between theory and experiment.
– Experiments based upon the standard Big-Bang cosmology indicate that the universe is made up of about 74% dark energy, 22% dark matter, and 4% regular matter. Dark matter is stuff that is thought to be out there because we can see gravitational effects that can’t be accounted for by the gas and stars that we can see. We don’t really know what it is in terms of things we’re familiar with (although there are plenty of ideas about what it might be). Dark energy was invoked to account for observations that indicate that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. Again, scientists don’t really know what dark energy is, i.e., what is causing the acceleration (but again, plenty of ideas). So when it comes to 96% of the universe, we’re pretty much in the dark.
– Quantum electrodynamics predicts that there should be energy in the vacuum of outer space, and the theoretical estimate of the amount of that energy is 120 orders of magnitude larger than what is observed. That’s 10 raised to the 120th power, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000.
Let me emphasize here that what I am arguing for has nothing to with the intelligence of scientists. It is a spiritual problem, not an intellectual one. In addition, it is not even primarily the spiritual problem of scientists. The way out of this scientific confusion is by the return of Western culture to the faith of its fathers, not the conversion of a few prominent scientists to Christianity. I want to encourage the involvement of Christians in science, but it is important for us (especially as individualistic Americans) to see the big picture. What we need is a reformation in the Church; God is not going to remove the confusion just because I had my devotions this week. And if God is not pleased to send us one, perhaps the next great scientific advance will come out of Africa.