Why Science Will Never Accept God

Amidst all the clamour of the science/religion debates, one persistently hears the accusation from the religious camp that scientists do not want to believe in God.

Scientists, claim the believers, are being obdurate – they have decided to shut their minds to God’s existence and would stretch their theories to any length to avoid the possibility of divine involvement. Is there any truth to this ?

On casual inspection, the claim is patently false. There are any number of scientists who have produced excellent work while being devoutly religious. And to my knowledge, there is no stricture against scientists holding religious and/or supernatural beliefs. Humans hold all kinds of personal beliefs and scientists are no exception.

However, the accusation begs a deeper question. Namely, is the scientific method itself incompatible with God? Or, in other words, can God ever be a valid scientific hypothesis?
I think the answer to the latter is No.

To begin my argument, science works by making careful observations of nature and framing hypotheses to explain those observations. The hypotheses are then used to make further predictions which are then tested by observation and experiment.

This is admittedly a gross simplification of the scientific method, and in reality, the scientific enterprise does not proceed in a linear fashion. Guesses, prejudices and misunderstandings abound. Theories are ignored on first publication or dismissed by prominent scientists, only to resurface decades later and gain prominence. However, for the purposes of our argument, the observation- hypothesis-testing model of the scientific method suffices.

Now to begin with, there is no observational evidence for God, of course, or this whole debate would be moot. So we need to ask if God can be a good scientific hypothesis. Indeed most theist-atheist arguments traditionally start with, “What made the universe?”

So: Observation: Universe, Hypothesis: God, Test: ????

This is the point where the problem arises. An unwritten rule in science is Occam’s razor – We choose the simplest possible hypothesis to explain a given fact. In accordance with this, the basic ingredients in scientific models are as elementary as possible.

For example in physics, the typical entities in models are particles and fields, - mathematical constructs whose behaviour is completely described by a handful of numbers. For all the intimidating math in theoretical physics, the models contain nothing remotely as complex as even a virus!

Now let’s take a look at God.

God is the Supreme Being, “omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient” according to the Abrahamic religions, “ the infinite, immanent and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond” according to Hinduism.

Very impressive indeed, but from a scientific viewpoint, extremely problematic!
Such a being is the polar opposite of simple and elementary. In fact, almost by definition, this is the most complex entity that can ever be hypothesized in a model. Thus, by Occam’s razor, every possible alternative should be considered before suggesting God as an explanation. On an infinitely long list of conceivable explanations for a phenomenon, God would be right at the bottom !

So much for Occam’s razor. How about predictive power?

If God is your hypothesis, what’s the prediction? Well, everything - after all, there’s nothing an all-powerful being can’t do. And nothing - because His Omnipotence is certainly not obliged to do anything! Thus, the God hypothesis produces no testable predictions.

Awe inspiring and humbling though the idea of God may be, as a scientific hypothesis it is useless.

So if God is no good as a hypothesis, how about a proof by observation? Once again, trickier than it seems.

Certainly, it is possible that we may observe supernatural phenomena, though none have been documented to date with any credibility. Water turning into wine, or people walking on water, or statues drinking milk for instance. These would be completely contrary to our current understanding of the world, and scientists would be forced to admit that ‘something else’ was at work. But even so, how would we know this was God, the Supreme Being, in action and not some more mundane creature, such as a genie or an asura?
Similarly, even if we had incontrovertible evidence that our universe was intelligently designed, how would we know it is the Mind of God that designed it? Maybe it’s just an alien schoolboy in a metaverse which was itself sneezed out by the great green Arklesnoozer in a meta-metaverse and so on.

In some ways, this is akin to the problem of figuring out if the universe is infinite or just really large. We can keep going and always finding more, but it can still be that the end is just beyond our horizon....

So, where does all this leave us? Not, I think, with the conclusion that science has disproved God, as some may claim. In fact, from what I just said, science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, because the God hypothesis makes no testable predictions. But since science is the best way we know of producing reliable, objective knowledge, it is unclear how we can ever resolve the issue.

For this same reason, God will never be part of an attempted scientific explanation of anything, though people may, and will, of course continue to believe in Her for other reasons.

All I can say is that, to date, we have succeeded in explaining all observed phenomena within the framework of elementary entities behaving according to elegant mathematical laws. It is possible that these laws were designed by a transcendent intelligence beyond the universe. But this is by no means inevitable, or the only possibility.

Furthermore, there is no way to scientifically test claims about beings beyond the universe, since all our observations and experiments are necessarily confined within it.

So, this may be a good time to invoke the eminently sensible proverb, “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we should remain silent.