Rationalism – the religion scientists pretend they don’t have

In trying to solve a problem, science proceeds by making observations, classifying the observations, imagining a theory that explains the observations and testing that theory.  But what if the subject can’t even be observed?

We’ve already noted that the origin of the universe is something that humans couldn’t observe.  So what do scientists do?  Renowned scientist Professor Robert Jastrow has written on that subject.

Jastrow is not a Christian.  He is an agnostic who was Chief of the Theoretical Division of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States.  He was also Founder/Director of NASA’s Goddard Research Institute, Professor of Geophysics at ColumbiaUniversity and Professor of Space Studies-Earth Sciences at DartmouthCollege.

In his book “God and the Astronomers,”[1] Professor Jastrow explains the initial response of many scientists to the ‘Big Bang’ theory of origins:

“There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe.  Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause.  Einstein wrote, ‘The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.’  This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover.  When that happens, the scientist has lost control.  If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatised.  As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications – in science this is known as ‘refusing to speculate’ – or trivialising the origin of the world by calling it the Big-Bang, as if the universe were a firecracker.”

“Consider the enormity of the problem.  Science has proved that the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment.  It asks, What cause produced this effect?  Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe?  Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials?  And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination.  The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion.  An entire world, rich in structure and history, may have existed before our Universe appeared; but if it did, science cannot tell what kind of world it was.  A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is.  The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation.

“This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians.  They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth.  To which St. Augustine added, ‘Who can understand this mystery or explain it to others?’  The development was unexpected because science has had such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. …

“Now we would like to pursue that inquiry farther back in time, but the barrier to progress seems insurmountable.  It is not just a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation.  For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

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