<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="">Does science disprove God? A great philosopher-priest showed that it couldn’t</h1>
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<div class="">by <strong><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/author/john-beaumont/" title="Posts by John Beaumont" rel="author">John Beaumont</a></strong></div>
<div class="">posted Wednesday, 20 Apr 2016<br><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2016/04/20/does-science-disprove-god-a-great-philosopher-priest-showed-that-it-couldnt/">http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2016/04/20/does-science-disprove-god-a-great-philosopher-priest-showed-that-it-couldnt/</a><br></div>
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<div class=""><img src="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/04/hungary_unknown_14-800x500.jpg" class="" alt="Fr Jaki, probably explaining the way Erathostenes calculated the circumference of the Earth (Antonio Colombo)" height="500" width="800"> <div class="">
Fr Jaki, probably explaining the way Erathostenes calculated the circumference of the Earth (Antonio Colombo) </div>
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<p class="">Fr Stanley Jaki argued that science is
about quantities. Anything immeasurable, including God, it can neither
prove nor disprove. </p>
<p>Seven years have passed since the death, on April 7, 2009, of Fr
Stanley Jaki OSB, a great fighter for Catholic truth and a world-ranking
authority on science and religion.</p>
<p>I had the privilege of working with him for five years. He was the
author of more than 50 books and over 400 articles. He was the recipient
of many honours, most notably as a member of the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences and as a winner (in the company of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) of the Templeton Prize, given for
outstanding progress in religion.</p>
<p>Never was the witness of Fr Jaki more needed than now. The present
time seems to be open season for scientists to attack Christianity. The
media devote much time to promoting programmes featuring Dawkins,
Hawking, Dennett, Harris and Atkins, to name only the usual suspects.
What is needed is a rebuttal of their errors on the relationship between
science and religion, something all the more necessary for good and
faithful Catholics. This is something that Fr Jaki’s works are perfectly
set up to do.</p>
<p>Yet he has been sadly neglected when what is needed in the battle
against the so-called New Atheists is a series of simple and direct
responses for which he was so renowned.</p>
<p>I recall a perfect example of this when Fr Jaki and a philosopher, a
Fellow of one of the Oxford colleges, were having a conversation. The
philosopher announced that he didn’t believe in free will and was a
determinist. Fr Jaki immediately asked of him: “Did you say that
freely?” Result: a series of stutters and the response: “I’ll have to
get back to you on that!”</p>
<p>So here is a short attempt to cover a number of basic principles, all
taken from Fr Jaki’s writings, that are crucial to arguing our corner
in the debate on science and religion. It begins with an appreciation of
the nature of science, by which Fr Jaki means, of course, exact
science, notably physics, astronomy and chemistry.</p>
<p>“Science derives its exactness from measurements which is the
application of quantities, or numbers. Numbers are the specifically
exact notions among all notions the human mind is capable of forming. An
action may be more or less emphatic, goodness admits grades and shades
but, say, the number five cannot be more or less five. Herein lies the
crux of all talks about science and religion, and even about science and
any non-scientific field of inquiry.”</p>
<p>Exact science, then, is about quantities, nothing more and nothing
less than just quantities. So, can the existence of God be proved by
science understood in this sense? Of course not.</p>
<p>“Since a scientific proof must rest on measurements, the proof would
imply that God can be sized up by callipers, weighed in balance,
confined to a test tube, scanned by photon beams, pictured in
holographs, and, for good measure, described in tensor equations.”</p>
<p>But whenever an assertion contains non-quantitative propositions, and
it does so often, science becomes irrelevant. Exact science, then, is
extremely limited in its applicability, although it is applicable
everywhere where there is matter (and we must not forget the massive
role that science plays in this area).</p>
<p>Here is the answer to the New Atheists, who are making the mistake of
dealing with matters outside their field of exact science. It is
essential, then, that they are relentlessly pressed whenever they bring
science into connection with a non-scientific subject, such as God.</p>
<p>“Scientists should be viewed as acting in a most arbitrary manner
when they touch on matters that are not quantitative. If scientists want
to grasp the purpose of anything, they sin against the logic of science
if they try to fathom purpose through science, unless they find a way
to measure purpose. The question of free will is not something for
science to handle. There are no quantitative units in which to measure
free will. There are no two grams of purpose and five nanoseconds of
free will.”</p>
<p>So the most fundamental rule which should govern all reasoned talk
about the relation of science and religion is that quantities form one
conceptual domain, and all other concepts another.</p>
<p>The question of origins can be dealt with in the same way. Coming
into existence and going out of it would become a scientific topic only
when a method of measuring the ‘nothing’ is invented. Thus, it is clear
that science, so fruitful in its own field, can say nothing about many
matters that are most important for man.</p>
<p>It follows, then, that neither can science disprove the existence of
God. What it can do, and this is important in the present context, is to
provide us with ever vaster amounts of quantitative data about specific
things. It is for philosophy alone to provide the reasoning which shows
that the specific nature of things as seen everywhere is tied to a
coherent totality, just as specific, and that it can therefore be
accounted for only by a primordial creative act of God.</p>
<p>Moving in this way from finite, contingent things to an infinite
reality as the ground of the former’s existence is admittedly not a
proof in the sense in which proofs are meant in science. It is rather
something from which an inference may be drawn. Not a knock-down
argument, then, but nevertheless a powerful process of reasoning.</p>
<p>It is inevitable that the topic of Darwin and Darwinism figures
significantly in the media’s portrayal of this subject area. Some
contributors go as far as to say that Darwin’s theory of evolution
disproves the existence of God. It does nothing of the sort.</p>
<p>Again the key to understanding is to appreciate the nature of science
and its relationship with other disciplines. The theory is a scientific
one, because, in principle at least, its two main factors (that the
offspring are always slightly different from the parents, and that the
physical environment has a differential impact on the offspring) can be
evaluated quantitatively. Quantities make a science exact. Anything else
in it is philosophy.</p>
<p>So, this is the reason, according to Fr Jaki, why credit should be
given to Darwin for putting evolutionary speculations on the road toward
the status of exact science. Are there any weaknesses in Darwinism? Fr
Jaki indicates that there are many, far more than can be covered in a
short article of this kind. He instances the fact that Darwin’s theory
leaves no room for the mind, to say nothing of love. He points to the
statement of another Darwinist, JBS Haldane: “If my mental processes are
determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason
to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but
that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for
supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”</p>
<p>The major factor in the present context is that when the New Atheists
use Darwin’s theory as a stick with which to beat the religious
viewpoint, as a means of showing that there is no purpose in the
universe, they are using it not as a science, but as an ideology. Once
again, it is the non-quantitative matters that are being referred to and
these are not amenable to the scientific method.</p>
<p>As Jaki points out, “For all its value as a scientific theory of
evolution, Darwinism, if taken consistently, cannot say anything about
existence, purpose, and mind.” But Darwinists will not grant this,
precisely because for them the theory is also an ideology, and one that
is brazenly materialistic.</p>
<p>It is amusing here to note the remark made by AN Whitehead regarding
the approach taken by Darwinists of the kind referred to here, namely
that “those who devote themselves to the purpose of proving that there
is no purpose constitute an interesting subject for study.” When
Darwinism is taken as ideology, it cannot be reconciled with Christian
belief, whereas the scientific theory can, because it cannot touch on
the basics of that belief.</p>
<p>It is sad that Fr Jaki is not as well known as he should be. He is
not the first great mind not to have been used to the full by the Church
(Newman was another, of course). Whatever the reasons behind this,
there can be no doubt that he has shown that contemporary science is as
much about an anti-religious agenda as about discovery.</p>
<p>To Fr Jaki, the present problems faced by the Church were so serious
that “one has only one choice: to fight”. He worked ardently to give
Catholics the weapons with which to counter secular materialism and
promote the Catholic faith.</p>
<p><em>For more details, see especially Stanley L Jaki’s books,
Questions of Science and Religion (2004) and The Purpose of it All
(2005), plus three of his booklets: Science and Religion: A Primer
(2004), Evolution for Believers (2005) and Intelligent Design? (2006).
All are published by Real View Books (see <a href="http://sljaki.com/">sljaki.com </a>and <a href="http://realviewbooks.com/">realviewbooks.com</a>)</em></p>
<p><em>John Beaumont is a legal consultant and freelance writer on Catholic issues. He is the author of <a href="http://www.staugustine.net/our-books/books/roads-to-rome/">Roads to Rome; A Guide to Notable Converts from Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to the Present Day</a> (2010, St. Augustine’s Press) and <a href="https://www.fidelitypress.org/product/mississipi-flows-into-the-tiber/">The Mississippi Flows Into the Tiber: A Guide to Notable American Converts to the Catholic Church</a> (2014, Fidelity Press).</em></p></div><div id="DDB4FAA8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br> <table style="border-top:1px solid #aaabb6">
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