Cosmic Chemistry: Why Science and God Mix Well – Prof. John Lennox
Written on behalf of Professor John Lennox, President of the OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.
Atheism vs. Theism: Which Does Science Actually Support?
An Introduction
The contemporary intellectual landscape is dominated by a narrative, often fostered by prominent figures like the late Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, suggesting that science has shown that God is a delusion so that no intellectually respectable person can believe in him.
Consider two contrasting examples from the scientific elite: In 2013, the Nobel Prize in physics was won by Peter Higgs, who was an atheist. Some years earlier, the same prize was won by the American Bill Philips, who is a Christian. Clearly, what divides these two brilliant physicists is not their understanding of physics—they each won the Nobel prize. What divides them is their worldview: Higgs was an atheist and Philips is a Christian. What is clear is that Philips sees no conflict between science and his faith in God.
About Professor John Lennox
This article is taken from the ideas and writings found in John’s book, Cosmic Chemistry, a prominent figure at the interface of mathematics, philosophy, and Christian apologetics.
Professor Lennox is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College. He has an extensive academic background, holding multiple advanced degrees, including a PhD from the University of Cambridge, a DPhil from the University of Oxford, and a DSc in mathematics from Cardiff University. His mathematical research has produced over seventy published mathematical papers.
He is internationally renowned for his work defending the Christian faith and is the President of OCCA, The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. His books, such as Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix?, God and Stephen Hawking, and Can Science Explain Everything?, directly address the perceived conflict between science and God. He has famously engaged in numerous public debates with leading proponents of the New Atheism, including Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Singer, in defence of the intellectual viability of Christianity.
The True Conflict: Worldviews, Not Disciplines
While science and faith do not inherently conflict, there is a very real conflict between the two competing worldviews of atheism and theism:
- Atheism holds that this universe or multiverse is all that exists. Mass-energy is at the fundamental core and there is nothing else.
- Theism holds that there is something else: that there is a God who originally created and continues to uphold the universe.
The critical question for us, then, is this: does science support atheism or theism? Or neither?
The only way I know how to answer such questions is to look at the evidence. Note that I use the word evidence and not proof.
The word ‘proof’ has at least two meanings—firstly proof in the rigorous mathematical sense only occurs in my field, pure mathematics. In every other area of science and indeed in everyday life, you speak of evidence that leads to strong indicators of truth that put the matter beyond reasonable doubt. The lack of mathematical proof does not preclude us from having sufficient certainty to stake our lives on something—like the safe arrival of an aircraft or the love of a spouse. We must avoid the mistake of thinking that because we can only speak of evidence, the conclusions we base on that evidence cannot be firm.
In presenting my conviction that God and science mix very well, the evidence will be drawn from four key areas: the history of science, the limits of science, the nature of explanation, and the nature of faith.
Evidence from History
Modern science is not a development against theism; it is historically rooted in it. Modern science arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under figures like Galileo, Kepler, and Newton—all of whom were believers in God. Most historians and philosophers of science agree there is a strong connection between Christianity and the rise of modern science.
- S. Lewis summarised this foundational concept: “men became scientific [why?] because they expected law in nature… [why?] because they believed in aLegislator (law-giver)“. This is why I, as a scientist and a Christian, am not ashamed of my faith; arguably, Christianity gave me my subject.
Yet, we see a complete reversal from Isaac Newton, who believed in God, to his successor at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking, who insisted we must choose between science and God. This shift is based on a series of persistent misunderstandings.
Three Confusions Obscuring the Truth
1. The Voice of the Scientist vs. the Voice of Science
A major confusion is believing that statements of scientists are necessarily statements of science. When Stephen Hawking was asked his opinion on religion, his reply that it is “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark” was a statement of his atheistic belief, not a scientific conclusion. My counter that “Atheism is a fairy story for people afraid of the light” is similarly a statement of my Christian belief. We need to be critical, asking what evidence supports a belief, as statements are not true simply because a scientist states them. As Richard Feynman once said, outside of science, the scientist is “just as dumb as the next guy”.
Equating belief in God with belief in the tooth fairy is a popular, yet profoundly flawed, assertion. No one in a debate audience would raise their hand to say they came to believe in the tooth fairy as an adult, yet hundreds will say they came to believe in God as adults. Furthermore, many of the brightest people in the world have spent centuries arguing the case for the existence of God, a dedication conspicuously absent for the tooth fairy.
2. The Trap of Scientism
A more serious confusion is the view that science is the only way to truth. This view, scientism or scientific fundamentalism, is found in Hawking and Mlodinow’s The Grand Design, where they claim that “philosophy is dead, and it is now left to scientists to bear the torch of truth in our generation”.
This claim is illogical. The statement “science is the only way to truth” is not a statement of science, but a statement about science. If it were true, the statement itself would be false, making it self-contradictory. Scientism also confuses science with rationality. History, literature, philosophy, theology, art, and music are all rational disciplines.
Nobel Laureate Sir Peter Medawar exposed this claim as unworthy of science itself. He pointed out the existence of a limit to science, made clear by its inability to answer “childlike elementary questions” regarding first and last things—such as: “How did everything begin?”; “What are we all here for?”; and “What is the point of living?”.
3. Confusion about the Nature of Explanation
Science deals with what and how, but it is fundamentally unable to deal with the why of purpose.
Consider the kettle:
- How is it boiling? Heat energy from a flame is agitating the water molecules. This is the scientific explanation.
- Why is it boiling? Because I want a cup of tea. This is the agent or personal explanation—the purpose.
These two kinds of explanations belong to different categories; they don’t conflict or compete, they complement each other. God no more competes with science as an explanation for the universe than Henry Ford competes with the law of internal combustion as an explanation for the motor car.
Crucially, the God of the Bible is not a ‘god of the gaps’—a concept where God fills a gap in scientific knowledge. The God of the Bible is the God of the whole show—He created all that we do understand and all that we don’t.
This is why Isaac Newton, when he discovered the law of gravitation, didn’t dismiss God. Instead, he wrote the Principia Mathematica hoping it would persuade people to believe in a deity. It was what he understood of the universe that convinced him of God’s existence, not what he didn’t. Just as understanding painting increases admiration for Rembrandt, the more Newton saw of the universe’s glory, the more he admired the genius of the God who created it.
The Intellectual Self-Defeat of Atheism
This brings us to the final, and perhaps most critical, confusion: the nature of faith. Many atheists equate faith with blind faith—“believing where there is no evidence”. This is inaccurate. The word faith comes from the Latin fides, meaning trust and loyalty. The Christian faith is evidence-based, written so that readers “might believe that Jesus is the Messiah… and that believing in him you might have life in his name”.
Atheists fail to appreciate that faith is also essential in science. Einstein said he couldn’t imagine a genuine scientist without faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe. If I didn’t share the faith that the human mind is capable of understanding nature, I wouldn’t be a scientist.
I contend that while faith in God is compatible with faith in science, faith in atheism is not compatible with faith in science. Atheism and science do not make comfortable bed fellows.
Charles Darwin himself expressed the “horrid doubt”:
“with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.” [1]
Philosopher Alvin Plantinga updated this to what is known as the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN): If the atheist’s naturalism is true (that we are the product of mindless unguided natural processes), then we have strong reason to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculties. Therefore, we have reason to doubt the validity of any belief they produce, including atheism and science itself. This means that naturalism and the truth of science are at war with each other, a conflict that has nothing to do with God.
Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel agrees, writing that Evolutionary naturalism implies that “we shouldn’t take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism depends.”
I often ask scientists: “If you knew that your computer was the end product of a mindless unguided process, would you trust it tomorrow?” The answer is invariably, “No, I would not.” Yet, the atheist scientist is asking us to do exactly that with the human mind. My biggest difficulty with the atheist worldview is not that I am a Christian, it is that I am a scientist, and I am not impressed with a worldview that doesn’t simply shoot itself in the foot, but shoots itself in the brain.
Conclusion
The evidence presented—from the history of science and its Christian origins, to the limits of science in addressing purpose, the nature of explanation (where God complements rather than competes with mechanism), and the philosophical grounds for faith—powerfully supports the conviction that God and science mix very well.
Conversely, and contrary to the popular, yet superficial, cultural belief, atheism and science do not mix well at all. The intellectual foundations of atheism undermine the very rationality required to do science.
References
- Charles Darwin to W. Graham. Down, 3rd July, 1881, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I, p137
Thank you for reading. If you would like to take your understanding further, download our free sample apologetics courses here.
John Lennox