And so I dont feel that I could give three lectures on the subject of the impact of scientific ideas on other ideas without frankly and completely discussing the relation of science and religion. I dont know why I should even have to start to make an excuse for doing this, so I wont continue to try to make such an excuse. But I would like to begin a discussion of the question of a conflict, if any, between science and religion. I described more or less what I meant by science, and I have to tell you what I mean by religion, which is extremely difficult, because different people mean different things. But in the discussion that I want to talk about here I mean the everyday, ordinary, church-going kind of religion, not the elegant theology that belongs to it, but the way ordinary people believe, in a more or less conventional way, about their religious beliefs.
I do believe that there is a conflict between science and religion, religion more or less defined that way. And in order to bring the question to a position that is easy to discuss, by making the thing very definite, instead of trying to make a very difficult theological study, I would present a problem which I see happens from time to time.
A young man of a religious family goes to the university, say, and studies science. As a consequence of his study of science, he begins, naturally, to doubt as it is necessary in his studies. So first he begins to doubt, and then he begins to disbelieve, perhaps, in his fathers God. By God I mean the kind of personal God, to which one prays, who has something to do with creation, as one prays for moral values, perhaps. This phenomenon happens often. It is not an isolated or an imaginary case. In fact, I believe, although I have no direct statistics, that more than half of the scientists do not believe in their fathers God, or in God in a conventional sense. Most scientists do not believe in it. Why? What happens? By answering this question I think that we will point up most clearly the problems of the relation of religion and science.
Well, why is it? There are three possibilities. The first is that the young man is taught by the scientists, and I have already pointed out, they are atheists, and so their evil is spread from the teacher to the student, perpetually Thank you for the laughter. If you take this point of view, I believe it shows that you know less of science than I know of religion.
The second possibility is to suggest that because a little knowledge is dangerous, that the young man just learning a little science thinks he knows it all, and to suggest that when he becomes a little more mature he will understand better all these things. But I dont think so. I think that there are many mature scientists, or men who consider themselves matureand if you didnt know about their religious beliefs ahead of time you would decide that they are maturewho do not believe in God. As a matter of fact, I think that the answer is the exact reverse. It isnt that he knows it all, but he suddenly realizes that he doesnt know it all.
The third possibility of explanation of the phenomenon is that the young man perhaps doesnt understand science correctly, that science cannot disprove God, and that a belief in science and religion is consistent. I agree that science cannot disprove the existence of God. I absolutely agree. I also agree that a belief in science and religion is consistent. I know many scientists who believe in God. It is not my purpose to disprove anything. There are very many scientists who do believe in God, in a conventional way too, perhaps, I do not know exactly how they believe in God. But their belief in God and their action in science is thoroughly consistent. It is consistent, but it is difficult. And what I would like to discuss here is why it is hard to attain this consistency and perhaps whether it is worthwhile to attempt to attain the consistency
There are two sources of difficulty that the young man we are imagining would have, I think, when he studies science. The first is that he
Then the doubting machinery, his doubts, are turned on ethical problems. Because, as he was educated, his religious views had it that the ethical and moral values were the word of God. Now if God maybe isnt there, maybe the ethical and moral values are wrong. And what is very inter- esting is that they have survived almost intact. There may have been a period when a few of the moral views and the ethical positions of his religion seemed wrong, he had to think about them, and many of them he returned to.
But my atheistic scientific colleagues, which does not include all scientistsI cannot tell by their behavior, because of course I am on the same side, that they are particularly different from the religious ones, and it seems that their moral feelings and their understandings of other people and their humanity and so on apply to the believers as well as the disbelievers. It seems to me that there is a kind of independence between the ethical and moral views and the theory of the machinery of the universe.