Science and God

This is an interesting article about scientists and religious belief.  It turns out that Richard Dawkins' claim that most scientists are atheists is not true.  But the author goes even further and challenges the basic premise that scientists are more qualified to opine on the transcendent than mere mortals.  The money graf:

Should we read anything into this? One over-hasty conclusion, a good example of what Sir Sir Humphrey Appleby called "minister's logic", is that it hammers another nail into God's coffin. Thus: 1) Elite scientists know more about the way the world works than other people. 2) A disproportionate number of elite scientists don't believe in God. 3) Therefore God (probably) doesn't exist.

What is interesting about this argument is not so much the questionable inference, as the questionable first premise. Our conviction that scientists, elite or otherwise, are somehow better qualified to discern the nature of reality is dubious. Elite scientists undoubtedly know vastly more about their subject than other people. But to imagine that that makes them somehow better qualified to adjudicate on big-picture questions is like saying because I know my home town like the back of my hand, I am well-equipped to lecture on European geography.

The author goes on to speculate that Christians, in particular are probably 'less intelligent' on average than non-believers because Christ and the religion he founded were resolutely anti-elitist, targeting the least of them.  Yet this contains within it another questionable premise:  that intelligence encompasses the ability to access the physical world but not the metaphysical one.  After all, who is in a better position to understand true reality:  someone who comprehends 1% of physical reality but does not know its source or someone who comprehends 0.8% of that reality but knows its maker and ruler?  Is it better to be clever or have connection to the source of all knowledge?

I also point out that the article is written in the resolutely leftist Guardian of London - it is almost inconceivable that such an intellectually balanced article on Christian faith could be written in one of our main stream media outlets.

Well worth a read.  Hat tip www.realclearreligion.org

My friend Robbie Griggs points out that this has all been said more eloquently before:

1 Corinthians 1:26-31  For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  ²⁷ But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;  ²⁸ God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,  ²⁹ so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.  ³⁰ He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.  ³¹ Therefore, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

Nuf said.