One thing that I seem to have noticed is that, within the field of science, the recent greatest minds to contribute to our understanding of the universe were believers. Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and many others all don’t believe in God. Many have even taken a hostile approach towards those who do. Even Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest scientist to ever live, had his own theory of God and thought the Bible to be foolish. As someone who is only building up my knowledge of theology and science, I don’t feel like I have any right to try and tell them (figuratively, that is. Again, this is just for how I reconcile it in my mind, not actually hunt these people down to scold them for their beliefs) that they are wrong. How am I to make sense of my faith in their absence of faith. Why do they see science as disproving God, and most of us here at Biologos do not?
Scientists are ordinary people, some believe, some not. As a former academic scientist, I observed that most of my colleagues were agnostics, some even close to atheists. That is the same situation as in the surrounding culture - most are or behave like agnostics, some (a minority) are even atheists.
Many of the believing scientists I know have made a decision to invest in something else in addition to science. As the agnostic/atheist scientists invest more time and energy to advancing their careers, the top positions tend to be manned by such people. Even at the top positions, some are believers. They just tend to be modest persons, not so blatant boasters as some others.
In our country, there have been made occasionally questionaries about who are the most famous scientists in this country. The lists tend to include such active persons who have made much PR - written popular books and articles, given interviews, been in TV shows. Some of them are active atheists. However, if we inspect the real merits and international fame of those people within the academic circles, they tend to be closer to average than top. They have just marketed themselves to the public in a very efficient way.
It’s not really disproving God, it’s more disproving the cosmology, geological history and other testable aspects of the Bible (and other religious texts). If a god does exist, that god is unlike the one portrayed by the Bible and Christianity.
(That’s where the majority of the ‘proofs’ of the existence of God fail the hardest; not in proving that something must (have) exist(ed), but in connecting that something to Yahweh.)
I think you named 5 scientists.
Who have/have had unusual platforms.
It’s not reasonable to assume that they represent all of the most intelligent people. Or even scientists. Or that they are the smartest, or most reasonable. Or that even if they were, they have the answer to every question.
Most really brilliant people are doing their work, focusing on doing their jobs well. Not arguing about the existence of God.
However there are associations of Christians who are scientists. The American Scientific Affiliation, and the Faraday Institute. You might look at their websites.
This question may be considered in depth by reading on natural theology; in this area we would find many highly intelligent people (including scientists and philosophers) provide their understanding of God (and science). A general description is in: “The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology” a collection to consider the full breadth of natural theology from both historical and contemporary perspectives and to bring together leading scholars to offer accessible high-level accounts of the major themes. The volume embodies and develops the recent revival of interest in natural theology as a topic of serious critical engagement. Frequently misunderstood or polemicized, natural theology is an under-studied yet persistent and pervasive presence throughout the history of thought about ultimate reality - from the classical Greek theology of the philosophers to twenty-first century debates in science and religion. Of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this authoritative handbook draws on the very best of contemporary scholarship to present a critical overview of the subject area. Thirty eight new essays trace the transformations of natural theology in different historical and religious contexts, the place of natural theology in different philosophical traditions and diverse scientific disciplines, and the various cultural and aesthetic approaches to natural theology to reveal a rich seam of multi-faceted theological reflection rooted in human nature and the environment.
You mean like, people trying to prove that evolution wasn’t real, Earth is young, and arguing about origin of the universe theory, all in an effort to assure literal Biblical accuracy, while most of the evidence doesn’t come from science it from understanding God’s past and present connections to us in history (especially the fact that Jesus was a real man who walked among us)?
No, I mean people like William Lane Craig and Ed Feser, who present ‘proofs’ of the existence of God based on natural theology that even if they prove some entity exists, fail completely at showing that entity to be related to God as described by the Bible.
They usually look like this:
- Premises
- [lengthy attempt at rigorous logic goes here]
- Therefore some entity exists
- We call that entity God for no reason at all
- Therefore the God of the Bible exists
The RCC defined that with the sole use of human reason human beings can reach the certainty regarding God’s existence, but believing that this God is the Christian one requires something else: Faith.
But I think that the historical reality of Jesus and His life helps us a lot in that regard.
I think most of those you mention wouldn’t put it that way. They might just say (as some atheists here have also put it) - that they just don’t see compelling evidence for such belief. While some of them in their more strident moments go on to say that this perceived absence of compelling evidence is long-standing enough so as to propel them toward atheistic conclusions, a great many are willing to not pretend that science can or has been conclusive in such matters. And so while they don’t believe in God, they nonetheless hold an open mind for any new evidence that might be brought to light.
Just know that “intelligence” (or especially the respect we accord to whatever our version of that is) is a social construct. While respect for science may seem to have eroded significantly here in the U.S. in the last decade, I think it’s fair to say that mathematical/scientific intelligence is still held up on a fairly high pedestal (certainly within educated circles). But that is only one kind of intelligence. Somebody can be a genius enough to teach university level courses and have written their own textbooks and yet still have the emotional intelligence of an especially clueless junior high student. Not to mention all the other arenas within which different forms of intelligence can function. Just because a Richard Dawkins can (and has) attained great heights of explanatory genius about evolutionary biology doesn’t mean he should be considered any sort of respected authority in any/every other realm of human concerns. What he thinks of religion shouldn’t necessarily be given any more weight than any other reasonably educated man-on-the-street. And maybe even considerably less - given some of the embarrassing things he’s written (and I think maybe changed his tone about recently).
While it’s true that “not many of us” will have risen to the tops of all our various fields of profession or endeavor (and there may be good biblically-acknowledged reasons for this!) - it’s also not true to say that non-believers have any sort of monopoly on intelligence (or anything else, good or bad). So you can just let those winds blow where they may. Whoever all it is you respect as “the smartest people” still have their blind spots (especially about things that interest us most deeply as social creatures). You can safely bracket whatever things they loudly proclaim as certainties and hold those at arm’s length for later inspection at your convenience, if ever.
Proverbs 18:17: “The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.”
… there will always be more questioners to be had. So it’s good to be aware of how influenced we all are.
And finally - I like this G.K. Chesterton thought: (my paraphrase) - The mouth, like the mind, is meant to open so that it can finally close and chew on something nutritious.
And I would answer Chesterton’s thought by adding that the mouth (mind) that has closed permanently would signal the imminent end of any active (mental) life to come.
Oh, that’s what you mean.
Can you substantiate that the most intelligent minds do not believe in God?
A 5 year old Spanish child runs circles around me in regards to intelligently communicating in Spanish. Someone who spends their life studying one issue or learning something should be better at it than the majority of people who do not.
So I’ll be honest from my personal experience and it goes both ways. Yeah a lot of dumb people believe in god. They believe in young earth creationism, they believe in all kinds of pretty ridiculous stuff. They don’t understand science and they reject it.
But with that said I’ve met a bunch of atheists who don’t know the first thing about basic scientific concepts. They blindly accept random tweets that sounds scientific or are gullible to any meme with a picture of someone like Degrasse and some quote that he never said.
I can ask them to place these in the correct order, “Jurassic, Triassic and Cretaceous” and they can’t.
I can ask them what does this statement mean “ a superimposed geological layer.”
I can ask them what is an example or a climate feedback system or what was to the west of the western interior seaway or how did the Rocky Mountains form and how did the Himalayans form and what’s a tetrapod and so on.
Most atheists I meet also have about 10th grasp of science. They just accept the big picture. But they often can’t tell me anything specific. They can’t even tell me how the major scientific clades go in taxonomy.
So we have uneducated people on both sides.
We also have very educated people on sides. But we also have very intelligent people on both sides.
We also have entire social systems in place that can negatively affect millions. A kid in a broken home with working two jobs and this kid goes to school hungry every single day in a district where there is no real minimum requirement to teach and then teachers leave in the middle of the school year to become a waiter instead and so on. That kid will have a lot of stuff stacked against them regardless of their mom raising them believes in god or not. When a kid basically is 8 and has to be trusted to get onto the school bus on their own, and had to come home and still be alone. With a mom who’s working 7am to 7pm 5-6 days a week they probably never get to the public library to check out books.
Thank you for the analysis. I had never thought about their being both smart and uneducated people on both sides of the debate.
One of the things that Dawkins pushed was something called the Selfish Gene. I don’t know too much about it but I keep hearing it get brought up. Does anyone have any knowledge on it?
I do actually have this one video I plan on watching as soon as I can:
If you search for it within the in forum search there should be many posts on it. Maybe even a thread.
Yes - I’ve read his book.
I’ve also watched[1] that video. Almost none of it is about selfish genes; it’s almost all background, annoying plugging of technology and tangential topics. Selfish genes get lost in the noise.
I recommend you read the book instead.
Admittedly while doing something else as well. ↩︎
Max, the “selfish gene” idea comes from a book by Richard Dawkins titled “The Selfish Gene”. The phrase is often misunderstood because it sounds moral or psychological, but it is really just a way of describing natural selection from the perspective of genes rather than organisms.
The basic idea is this: in evolution, genes that are good at replicating themselves through generations tend to spread in populations. Organisms—plants, animals, humans—can be thought of as the vehicles that genes use to survive and reproduce. When Dawkins calls genes “selfish,” he does not mean they have intentions or motives. He means that genes which promote their own replication will become more common, while genes that fail to do so will disappear.
One reason the idea became influential is that it helps explain behaviors that seem puzzling at first glance. For example, why do animals sometimes sacrifice themselves for relatives? From the gene’s perspective, helping close relatives can still spread the same genes, because relatives share a significant portion of their DNA. This reasoning helped clarify ideas such as “kin selection” and “inclusive fitness”.
It is also important to note what the idea does not mean. It does not claim that organisms—or people—must behave selfishly. In fact, the book explicitly explains how cooperation and altruism can arise through evolutionary processes. “Selfish gene” is really a metaphor for gene-level selection, not a claim about human ethics or morality.
So in short: the “selfish gene” concept is simply a way of saying that natural selection ultimately favors genes that successfully replicate themselves, and organisms are the biological systems through which that replication occurs.
It also has relevance to organisms that get eaten by their offspring or their mates, to organisms that don’t survive past reproduction, to animal suffering in general - genes don’t care whether the animals they are in are in pain - to horizontal gene transfer and to various aspects of non-coding and unnecessary DNA and inefficient DNA copying.
I’m going to sound a bit like Vinnie . . .
Science is just one branch of knowledge of which Theology is Queen.
I get here via the path that science points towards there being a Designer, and that the best candidate for that office is the one in the Hebrew scriptures, and those point to a Messiah, and the case that the Messiah is strong enough that (as a myriad of authors have written) there is sufficient evidence to “convict” Jesus in a court of law of having risen from the dead and thus of being the Messiah.
So science can’t do anything but point to God. If that’s not where it’s pointing, someone is doing something wrong and I don’t sweat it.
Exactly: any court of law not bound by the prefactual, axiomatic dogma of materialism would, in effect, indict Jesus for the “crime” of having conquered death through His Resurrection.
Hence my nickname. 1 Cor 15,54: “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”