An unfulfilled scientist

Can science reveal meaning and purpose to us? Can science give a sense of peace, contentment, or fulfillment?

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar  was a famous astrophysicist. He won the Nobel prize in physics in 1983, for work that led to the concept of black holes. The whole December 2010 issue of Physics Today was devoted to Chandrasekhar, marking the centenary of his birth. 
There is a fascinating interview with Chandrasekhar which appears at the back of the biography, Chandra by K. C. Wali. Here are a few extracts:

SC: In fact, I consider myself an atheist. But I have a feeling of disappointment because the hope for contentment and a peaceful outlook on life as the result of pursuing a goal has remained largely unfulfilled.

KW: What? I don't understand. You mean, single–minded pursuit of science, understanding parts of nature and comprehending nature with such enormous success still leaves you with a feeling of discontentment?

SC: I don't really have a sense of fulfillment. All I have done seems to not be very much.

KW: Don't you think that is common to everybody. 

SC: Well that may be, but the fact that other people experience it doesn't change the fact that one is experiencing it. It doesn't become less personal on that account.

SC: What is true in my own personal case is that I simply don't have that sense of harmony which I'd hoped for when I was young. I've persevered in science for over fifty years. The time I've devoted to other things is miniscule.

This contradicts the view of another atheist scientist (and Physics Nobel Laureate) Steven Weinberg who suggested the only meaning that can be found is in doing science. (See this earlier post).

Christ and Culture revisited

The saturday morning reading group I am in finished Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace and has moved on to other readings. Today we looked at a chapter from Christ and Culture Revisited by Don Carson. The book is an assessment of the typology introduced by H. Richard Niebuhr in his influential 1951 book, Christ and Culture.
The chapter gives a nice accessible and succinct summary of the 5-fold typology Niebuhr introduced. According to Wikipedia Niebuhr's typology is,

Christ against Culture. For the exclusive Christian, history is the story of a rising church or Christian culture and a dying pagan civilization.

Christ of Culture. For the cultural Christian, history is the story of the Spirit’s encounter with nature.

Christ above Culture. For the synthesist, history is a period of preparation under law, reason, gospel, and church for an ultimate communion of the soul with God.

Christ and Culture in Paradox. For the dualist, history is the time of struggle between faith and unbelief, a period between the giving of the promise of life and its fulfillment.

Christ Transforming Culture. For the conversionist, history is the story of God’s mighty deeds and humanity’s response to them.

I think one could make a similar typology to characterise different Christians attitude towards science.

Aside: One think I learnt was that Reinhold Niebuhr and H. Richard Niebuhr were different people (albeit brothers). The former's Wikipedia page makes fascinating reading.

The Gospel is bad news to the self-sufficient

Since this week I gave two talks based on Acts 17:16-34, I have followed my wife's honoured practice of seeing what John Piper has to say on the passage! He has a nice sermon Why God Cannot Be Served But Loves to Serve which focuses on verses 24-25

The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 

Piper makes two main points about the fact God is not Served by Human Hands.
1. It is bad news to the self-sufficient (particularly the morally "upright")
2. It is good news to the weak.

1. Was bad news to Saul (before he became Paul) because, "His whole identity hung on serving God with resolve and strength and rigor and accuracy and beyond all his contemporaries. This was his identity. This was his boast and significance."

Piper links the Acts passage to Mark 10:45, "Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Piper states:

God is so great and so self-sufficient that he cannot be served as though he needed anything, and his Son Jesus Christ is so great and so valuable that his death in our place is a sufficient ransom to pay all our debt to God. The question is, will we believe this, and will we receive God's service of us as the most precious gift in the world? Believing. Receiving. Not serving. That's the posture of a person who is right with God. God sets us right through the death of his Son in our place and we receive this right standing, this peace and acceptance and hope not by working for God, but by trusting in his work for us.

Discovering God?

Here is the current version of the slides for a talk, "Is the End of Science the Beginning of Discovering God?" that I will give tonight as part of The God Experiment series.
I first consider John Horgan's book, The End of Science which suggests that science cannot find The Answer. I then consider different possible responses to the successes of science: Hubris, Despair, Wonder, and Worship. I then look at Paul's address in Acts 17 where he proclaimed that the "unknown God" has a purpose and plan for humanity. We cannot claim ignorance but must carefully consider the person of Jesus Christ.
Comments welcome.

Advice to skeptical inquirers

I recommend the book, The Reason for God, by Tim Keller. It is well written, balanced, highlights key issues, and uses a good selection of references.
The chapter, "Science has disproved Christianity" is excellent. I thought the following paragraph was particularly poignant:

“Since Christian believers occupy different positions on both the meaning of Genesis 1 and on the nature of evolution, those who are considering Christianity as a whole should not allow themselves to be distracted by this intramural debate. The skeptical inquirer does not need to accept any one of these positions in order to embrace the Christian faith. Rather, he or she should concentrate on and weigh the central claims of Christianity. Only after drawing conclusions about the person of Christ, the resurrection, and the central tenets of the Christian message should one think through the various options with regard to creation and evolution.” 

Does Science Disprove God?

Here is the current draft version of the slides for my talk in The God Experiment series in Melbourne tomorrow.
Comments welcome.

The End of Science is the Beginning of Theology

In 1996, John Horgan, a journalist with Scientific American, published a book The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age. The book received a lot of attention and was widely criticised, particularly by members of the scientific community. In the book he describes interviews with an impressive cast of scientific leaders, including Roger Penrose, Stephen Jay Gould, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Edward Witten, David Bohm, Philip Anderson, Lyn Margulis, Murray Gell-Mann, ..

Here is the main point of the book (p. 6)

Optimists who think they can overcome all these limits [of scientific knowledge] must face yet another quandary, perhaps the most disturbing of all. What will scientists do if they succeed in knowing what can be known? What, then, would be the purpose of life? What would be the purpose of humanity? ... 

Given these troubling issues, it is no wonder that many scientists whom I interviewed for this book seemed gripped by a profound unease. But their malaise, I will argue has another, much more immediate cause. If one believes in science, one must accept the possibility - even the probability - that the great era of scientific discovery is over. By science I mean not applied science, but science at its purest and grandest, the primordial human quest to understand the universe and our place in it. Future research may yield no more great revelations or revolutions, but only incremental, diminishing returns.

Much is revealed by the chapter titles, Introduction: Searching for The Answer. The last chapter is Scientific Theology, or the End of Machine Science. The Epilogue is The Terror of God. In the latter he describes how his despair led him to his own personal mystical experience. Here are a few extracts:

At the heart of reality lies not an answer, but a question: why is there something rather than nothing? The Answer is that there is no answer, only a question.... The world is a riddle that God has created in order to shield himself from his terrible solitude and fear of death. ....

...everything comes down to God chewing his fingernails. This belief even gives me a strange kind of comfort. Our plight is God's plight. And now that science - true, pure, empirical science- has ended, what else is there to believe in?

I warmly recommend the book. It is well written and fascinating reading. Much of it I do not agree with (especially "The Terror of God" idea). But, it to me it clearly illustrates that Science does not have The Answer that some so desparately seek within it. Science ultimately raises existential questions. Why are we here? But, we must look outside Science to find the answers.