A commonplace objection to the possibility of a constructive relationship between Science and Religion goes something like this.
Science deals with facts.
Religion may be said to have its facts, but these 'facts' are of a different nature to the facts of Science.
Science collects data from extensive experiments, that is, the data is empirically obtained, in an objective, impersonal, dispassionate manner. Such experiments, investigating testable hypotheses about the natural world, will yield repeatable results. And, importantly, it will not matter who does the experimenting and data gathering. Anyone who has been properly trained can do the experiment, as described in the method of the investigation. They will expect to gain similar outcomes with sufficient precision that, it could be safely assumed, their analysis will lead them to draw the same conclusions.
The crucial claims of religion, on the other hand, are not these sorts of facts. The claims of one or more particular witnesses of certain events that occurred at some point in the past are the product of the lives of individuals and communities, and they are more than social history. Religious claims will extend to the meaning and significance of the lives and life events of particular people, and will also include claims about things that are absolutely not open to the methods of Science to investigate, even (most probably) at the time at which they originally occurred. Taking Christianity (or Judaism and some others) in particular, religious claims are made about God's interactions with the world, with Nature, with the cosmos, even if (in some cases) no human involvement is proposed. How could we know about such claims? Through Revelation (the claim that the Divine has communicated by some means that (some) humans could understand), and through Tradition, the collected testimony of a Community, such as the Hebrew Bible or the Christian New Testament. In short, all of these claims of fact, claims to being factual, depend on opinions that are accepted by the keepers of the tradition and passed on as being authoritative. They cannot be investigated in the scientific sense.
Or, to sum up and to be blunt, religion is not about facts but (merely) opinions. The person who claims that Science is superior might well point out that the events, words and deeds in question are not repeatable, and so less valid to be considered in the same terms as the facts of science. They are particular to a person or community, not universally applicable. They would indeed predict that the same circumstances, if somehow repeated to the exact detail, would not generate the same outcomes. Now none of that is particularly problematic if the claims made are just about history. But the important religious claims are more ambitious. Phenomena are claimed that are not the regular results of science. Things happen that are not normal. Violently executed persons come back to life, the local food bank keeps giving out supplies without being restocked, metal axe heads and walking men float on water. (I've translated the claims of the resurrection, the feeding of the 5000, Elisha in 2 Kings 6, and Peter walking with Jesus on Lake Galilee into common language, for emphasis.) The 'facts' of science are therefore argued with: death can be reversed, new materials can be made out of nothing, forces suddenly cease to operate in the fashion with which we have all been familiar through all of human history.
In other words, the claims made by the religious are laughable because they break the laws of science. These unusual events- you might want to call them miracles- are, by definition, anti-scientific, and therefore impossible. Those who hold such beliefs, in spite of all their education and experience in common with everyone else, are being deliberately irrational. We might have some respect for those in the past who took such claims seriously, as they knew no better, but those who persevere with such beliefs today warrant pity rather than respect.
You will notice that I have set out in some detail several other issues related to the question of 'breaking the laws of science' which require further investigation, but I won't do that now. Here I will focus on the concept of law in science, and in the popular imagination, because of the part it plays in the science-religion dialogue.
The point is this. The language being used conjures an analogy with our human rules and laws. We have decided, and so we teach children, and everyone else, that certain things should be done, while others should not be done. Cross when the light is green, stop when it's red. And so on. If you don't pay for the items before you leave the shop, expect to be arrested and fined. If you break the law, which you should not, then you should expect unpleasant consequences, and an insistence that you conform to expectations in the future.
Generally speaking, and quite properly, we accept this sort of reasoning about our life in the world. This idea is extended to the behaviour of things in the natural world, other than that they don't get to choose. If you drop a hammer, or a feather, they will fall to the ground. Bread can be eaten to keep you alive, but there must be sufficient supply for each hungry mouth. Water is also necessary for life, but cholera bacteria cause disease and death. Hammers sink in water, but feathers float on it.
We know these things from experience, the collective experience of generations of observers, and the details and special cases have been tested by scientific investigation and experiment. Dave Scott even went to the moon to check for us.
If you let go of an object that isn't moving, it will fall. This always happens, we agree. And solid objects that are denser than water will sink. Always. The phenomena of nature are consistent, regular, and predictable. If this doesn't happen, we (especially scientists) go looking for the reasons why. Perhaps the wind blew the feather upwards. Even static air slows falling feathers, but not falling hammers (much)- so Dave Scott sorted out that special case for us in the lunar vacuum. If the falcon feather is still attached to the wing of the bird it grew on, then the flapping bird can fly upwards. But when the falcon tucks in its wings in a 'stoop' it plummets to the ground like a stone.
So the behaviour of falling and floating and sinking objects is lawful. We say that when objects are dropped, they behave according to these laws. It's what always happens.
But as I've hinted already, there is, potentially at least, a problem here. Does the very well demonstrated fact that these phenomena are what usually takes place prevent exceptions? Just because we say that there is a law that heavier-than-air objects plummet to the ground does not make the phenomenon any more certain. It is simply a statement of the regular case. When we speak of lawful behaviour in science, what we need to be clear about is that we are simply describing what is generally the case. Remember, if we are doing an investigation or experiment and we get an unusual result, an outlier, an anomaly, we would-be scientists disregard it as a matter of principle. Our conclusions are based on repeatable data, from which the exceptions have been deliberately excluded.
This is not to undermine the cause of Science. A good scientist will go back over such anomalous data points and further exercise their curiosity. What's going on here then?! Let's check that we've properly controlled all the other variables. Perhaps we missed one. This is the strength of the peer review process. Other experimenters who repeat the investigations published by others will be on the lookout for confounding factors that might prove to invalidate the claims of the original researcher. Science is robust in this regard, both uncovering the innocent mistakes of some researchers, and even catching out fraudsters and liars - though not always as quickly as we might hope.
Nevertheless, there is still the possibility that the world is not as regular as we have come to accept, and therefore to assume that it is. If our observations, much repeated and thoroughly tested as they may be, then become assumptions about how the world must be, we've stopped being scientists. In Science, a 'law' is no more or less than this: a statement of what is generally the case. Just calling it 'the law of gravity' changes nothing about what happens. If an observer claims that a heavy object rose from the bed of a river and floated, or that a sick person immediately becomes well, or a dead one comes back to life, then we must think carefully about the possible implications. Firstly, we shouldn't be quick to condemn religious claims. The fact they are described as miracles emphasises the rationality of the claimants and of the subsequent reporters. "Yes, of course, we know this is unusual!" By extension, we who hear these claims are not being asked to be gullible. Since this is odd and strange and very much out of the ordinary you will have to use other means of judgement to decide whether to take such claims seriously. Are we being presented with a religious claim with profound meaning that is underlined by the literary use of exaggeration? Is there sleight of hand or magical illusion at play? Is it mere fantasy presented as reality? Or the questionable reporting of visions of a hypothetical invisible realm? These and other possibilities could be explored by the thorough sceptic. Which is what we all should be. But very simply, in regard to our discussion about the nature of scientific law, the attitude of a professional scientist, and of Science as a discipline of knowledge about the world, should be one of openness to the possibility that just because such and such a thing usually happens does not mean that there might not be exceptions.
Does it continue to make sense to speak in the shorthand of certain laws of science? Absolutely, yes, as long as we understand that such language means that we are describing what usually happens, the phenomena as they normally occur. The only danger is in misunderstanding the idea of lawfulness meaning that other scenarios are somehow forbidden. That nature would be broken if something else happened. Or that (a hypothetical) God was breaking God's own universe by making unnatural things happen within it, on a whim. That scenario would then lead some to say that God was unreliable, capriciously changing the rules of the game in an irrational manner. But this betrays the assumptions we might have made about what God being reliable should mean.
We could stop here, but you might be dissatisfied unless I go on to say a bit more about theory as well as law.
It is the very basis of science that the cosmos, our world, our bodies and the stuff of our existence all behave predictably. It is this assumption, that the world behaves in a regular and repeatable manner, that is at the very foundation of the scientific worldview. By using the word assumption, you might think I am suggesting there is something to be suspicious about. Now it may be that, say, 400 years ago, there might have been reasons to be suspicious. Sure, some phenomena are regular enough, but so many others are not so regular. [Darwin had to manage without Mendel's genetics because of this.] Looking back, we might decide that some of the accounts and explanations given for the way the world works were more the stuff of creative speculation, if not outright superstition. [Consider how long it was before the cell theory of disease was accepted.] But the assumption of regularity in the world is now held with a high level of confidence. This is because the discipline of Science has been doing more than simply collecting lots of data, and looking for regular patterns in it, such as the more A you have, the more B is produced.
Having been good empirical investigators, refusing to make assumptions about what the world is really like until investigating it properly, earlier scientists accumulated lots of results on which to then build ideas about how the world works. Slowly but surely, by fits and starts, they worked out which variables were key in causing certain changes, and which were incidental. Having identified the potential cause of a particular change, they were a vital step closer to identifying why changing A results in more B. They were able to move on from simply describing patterns to offering explanations, from law to theory. The pattern and law tells us what happens. To begin with, there were no reasons for these events- to attempt to explain is to put forward a theory. The more data we have that is compatible with the theory- the developing conception of 'how it works' - the stronger the theory becomes.
Not only that, but a developing scientific theory then gives rise to new predictions, and thus to new experiments. The results of those experiments, combined with the earlier data and the ideas which were thus suggested either show the failure of the theory, the need to modify it in some way, or serve to confirm its explanatory power. What began as a regular pattern in a small sample of data thus became a confirmed and general phenomenon- a law. And the production of stronger and stronger theories which logically and rationally explain why the lawlike behaviour occurs then adds further support to our confidence that our claims to know what is going on and why it is going on are well founded.
So the concept of scientific laws turns out to be significant and valid because the cosmos really is a regular place, where what happens today is very much like what happened yesterday, and will very likely be repeated tomorrow.
Our general confidence in Science as a way of knowing about the world is also validated as we now have good explanations for very many of the regular patterns and phenomena we have studied, from the sub-microscopic scale to the cosmic scale, and everywhere in between. As discussed in earlier posts, generations of scientists have now collected data on which to base their informed guesses about what the underlying mechanisms of nature might be at the relevant scales. Those speculations gave rise to new predictions, which after further rounds of testing have left a secure body of ideas that continue to pass scrutiny. Their explanatory ideas- what we now call theories- have so far proved adequate to not only explain the initial data but also prove fruitful at suggesting new experiments which generate further outcomes that are compatible with what came beforehand.
And you may well see where this is taking us. The discipline of Science has been developing for such a significant period of time now that it has diversified and divided into several branches. But this division is not at all a separation: the theories developed in Physics are now seen to be extremely fruitful in Chemistry, and Cell Biology and Genetics now also are seen to depend on both the findings of Physics and Chemistry.
So the assumption of regularity in the cosmos has been tested and scrutinised in all these ways. Repeated observations and the collection of very large data sets continue to confirm that many phenomena occur with predictable regularity in many different settings, even to the far reaches of the visible universe, and down to molecular and atomic levels. Explanatory theories have been developed, some or perhaps many of which proved inadequate to cover the majority of cases, but those that remain are fruitful in giving a rational account of events and phenomena across the full spectrum of subdisciplines in Science, from nuclear physics to palaeontology. The cosmos is indeed lawful and those laws are seen to interconnect with consistency - as seen through the lens of Science.
This Venn diagram of the relationship between data, description and explanation offers an important perspective. The central portion where the two sets overlap identifies the data which empirical science seeks and collects. The scientific method requires the proposal of testable predictions, which must generate repeatable data. If such data is obtained, then firstly a 'law' may be formulated. Secondly, an explanation can be suggested from which further predictions can be proposed.
But this does not exhaust the possibilities of what may be real; the entire set of phenomena that might take place in the cosmos. On the right are some descriptions of events that do not lead to repeated confirmatory measurements. But they still happen and any of us might observe them. They are not in the realm of happenings suitable for scientific investigation.
And on the left is another region of the 'theories' set which is outside of the region where repeated testing of a scientifically valid prediction could be carried out. Ideas about how the world works could be proposed, that are compatible with what we know from empirical science, but are not, in fact, scientifically testable. Now strictly speaking, that ought to mean that such ideas are not scientific in any meaningful sense of the term, but as mentioned elsewhere, this is also normal for Science. Theories are accepted as being scientific even if they are underdetermined. Such steps of... imagination might later be proved right when methods are developed to test them, but until then, they are simply speculation. As scientists, or as observers of practitioners of Science, we can be comfortable with this.
What I hope to have shown therefore is that we can live with contentment in this age that is very much shaped by Science and Technology, operating according to rational principles that are very much informed by the Scientific worldview. We know a great deal about the world because of the Sciences, and, importantly, we understand a great deal about how it works. Some of those theoretical ideas will doubtless change again in the future, as new discoveries require some theories to be changed beyond recognition. Science does not offer the hope of complete knowing and understanding.
But we should not be fooled by those who assert that our ambition should be for knowledge and explanation that is only obtained by means of doing Science. "There is nothing but what our senses and measuring instruments give us the means to discover." That is a hypothesis, and it may be true. It may or may not be possible to test (aspects of it) scientifically. But there could also be more to the cosmos than we can perceive by sense perception, whether enhanced or not by our scientific technologies. Some might hope in vain for miracles that are, in fact, never going to take place because the cosmos/God does not behave that way. Or perhaps such events are happening right in front of us, and we aren't paying attention. Whichever of these possibilities is in fact the case, I hope to have shown that Science does not provide us the complete means to know about everything that there might be in the cosmos or about ourselves, or what any putative divinity might be up to. And if there are any such phenomena, it is simply wrong to suggest that so-called laws of science are necessarily violated or broken.
Postscript: This in today's news, giving a dramatic example of the process of updating 'laws of physics': Scientists say they may have challenged one of Newton's fundamental laws of physics - the conservation of momentum "Ultimately, the principles of how a space's curvature can be harnessed for locomotion may allow spacecraft to navigate the highly curved space around a black hole," say the researchers. Tuesday 9 August 2022 13:55, UK
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/scientists-inner-solar-system-laws-physics-b2128460.html
Stained Glass "Science" in the lobby of NSU 0528.JPG Stained-glass windows in Novosibirsk State University CC-BY-SA-4.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scientific_law_versus_Scientific_theories.png
5. #Scotty:"I Can't Change The Laws of Physics" Star Trek: The Naked Time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xD9qEdHFIE
