Science Might Need More God

Historically, religion and science have not been at odds

Reasons to do pure science all pretty much fall into four categories. Either the activity or the products of pure science are valuable for their consequences or intrinsically. So you might say that doing pure science is, like dancing, an expression of what it means to be human (activity, intrinsic) or that pure science produces knowledge that can lead to unexpected applications (products, consequences). Saying that pure science is valuable because it glorifies God and God expects it of us does not fit into this schema.

Talking about religion as a legitimate motivation for scientists may give us something that’s hard to get in other ways: a deontological argument for doing pure science. What evidence there is (for example this survey of Fellows of the Royal Society) suggests that scientists today are much more likely to be atheists than the general population. What if that’s not because religious folks don’t want to do science, but rather because the culture of science disproportionately turns them away?

We don’t propose to turn all of science into a religious practice, but rather to get out of the way of scientists and potential scientists who want this for themselves. Historically, religion and science have not been at odds (we recommend the works of Lawrence Principe on this point) and by treating religion as taboo we may be doing science a disservice. Who might we have excluded if we had enforced today’s culture earlier¹? Who might we let in if we make science more accepting of religious motivations?

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1. One can easily find 1000 years of quotations from great scientists spanning the Islamic and Christian scientific traditions about how religion was a core motivation for their work, but we find this excerpt from a letter by James Clerk Maxwell* to be particularly emblematic of our view that personal religious belief should be welcome in science.

I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself…

*Quoted in STANLEY M. By design: James Clerk Maxwell and the evangelical unification of science. The British Journal for the History of Science. 2012;45(1):57-73. doi:10.1017/S0007087410001548