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03/07/2002 Entry: "Science & faith incompatible?"

Many people misunderstand the nature of science . It is still somehow assumed that science reveals the "truth" about the world and that as the knowledge of science expands so our need for God will decrease. If you take this view, science is a threat to Christian life. But the truth is, science does not work this way. It is becoming more and more clear that what science does is construct a series of "models" of reality which are useful in predicting the outcome of experiments and in making technological progress. This does not make the models 'true' in any absolute sense. In fact, scientists are more than capable of having 2 mutually incompatible models on the go at the same time. They use them because they work. It's hard to illustrate this without resorting to a technical discussion, but I suppose the classic case in point is the nature of light. Is it a wave? A particle? Both? Or neither? Perhaps a few words from someone else would be in order.

"All models are deliberately simplified ... and all models of the world beyond the reach of our immediate senses are fictions, free inventions of the human mind. You are free to choose whichever of the quantum interpretations most appeals to you, or to reject all of them, or to purchase the entire package and use a different interpretation according to convenience, or the day of the week, or whim. Reality is in very large measure what you want it to be. ... all we can ever hope to find is a self-consistent myth for our times."[John Gribben, Schrödinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality, London 1995, p221]