Paul in Athens - Science's Altars to an Unknown God

Meeting them in their own ground

Paul went to the meeting of the Aeropagus, where the philosophers of the Athens discussed the latest ideas. Now in Acts 17:16 we read that Paul was greatly troubled by the number of idols he saw. So we might expect him to have condemned them for their idol worship, but instead he complements them on their religiosity, and points to one altar with the inscription “To an Unknown God”. Paul met them on their own ground, and took that as a starting point for what he was going to teach them.
Science has its own “altars to unknown Gods”. Let me give you three of them: one from quantum mechanics, one from cosmology, and  one from mathematics.

Quantum Mechanics

Quantum Mechanics is an amazing and complex subject. The Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman said no one understands quantum mechanics, so we can count ourselves in good company. Indeed, one can summarise quantum mechanics in three words: “life is weird”.

One of the better known aspects of quantum physics is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle. This states that it is impossible to know both the position and momentum of a fundamental particle with perfect accuracy. So you can know where a particle is, but not what its doing. Or you can know what it is doing, but not where it is doing it.

Cosmology

We have very complex and sophisticated models of the universe. However, there is a big problem. In order for them to work there has to be more energy and mass in the universe than we can detect. In the wordx of Nasa, “more is unknown than is known”. In fact, it is reckoned that 70% of the universe is dark energy and 25% dark matter. This dark matter and dark energy cannot be directly detected.

Mathematics

In the 1930’s the Austrian mathematician Kurt Godel proved his “incompleteness theorems”. These say that in any logically consistent system there will be some things that are true, but that cannot be proved to be true. This came as a great shock, as it had been expected that we could develop mathematical systems that could explain everything, Godel annoyingly demonstrated that this would never be possible!

So we see that science keeps coming up with limits to knowledge. Now this is not just things that we do not know yet. It could be argued, and I would expect this to be the case, that eventually we will either work out exactly what dark matter and energy are, or we will advance our theories so that the concepts are no longer needed. However, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a solid fact, or at least as solid as anything can be in quantum mechanics, and the laws of logic are not likely to change anytime soon.

You see, men are always trying to run away from God, but every attempt is doomed to failure, because the fundamental fact is that there is a God. Far from doing away with the need for God, God is in fact the foundation of all science. It is because the universe is the creation of an intelligent being that science can make sense of it. And it is because we were made in the image of God that we are able to be good scientists.

If you want to read more about God and Science, can I recommend  the book God’s Undertaker by John Lennox.