SCIENCE ENHANCES RELIGION

In the autumn of 1957, in Houston, Texas, the Welch Foundation invited the top nuclear physicists and chemists from all over the world to a symposium. At a dinner, twelve of the most distinguished were seated at a table. As one of the scientific advisors to the Welch Foundation, I was privileged to attend. Mr. Malone, as trustee of the foundation, said, "Dr. Eyring, how many of these gentlemen believe in a Supreme Being?" I answered, "I don't know, but I'll ask."

I asked if all were willing to answer the question. All agreed. The question was then formulated precisely: "Which best expresses your point of view: that there is a Supreme Being or that there is not a Supreme Being?"

So I asked these twelve scientists, and every one said, "I believe." All of these students of the exact sciences saw in the universal order about them evidence for a Supreme Being. Two of the twelve had the Nobel Prize, and the other ten felt they should have the Nobel Prize too, so it was a very distinguished group.

The result was interesting to me. To explain this unanimity, the following seems important. Exact scientists are deeply impressed by the precision with which natural laws apply. Any explanation that ignores a Planner leaves this precision unexplained and is therefore unacceptable. I think scientists from other disciplines further removed from the exact sciences might not have voted with such unanimity.

Now, of course, the scientist is not usually a specialist in questions of religion. But that need not mean that he is not a believer in the great principles of Christianity. Many of the noted pioneers in the scientific world were men of faith whose learning in their chosen fields seemed only to strengthen their senses of a great spiritual realm beyond their ken.

For example, Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss are usually ranked first among the great mathematicians.

About Archimedes' religious ideas very little is known, but the other two have revealed their attitudes. Touching on Newton's position, the mathematician E. T. Bell, in his book Men of Mathematics, says, "Newton was an unquestioning believer in an all-wise Creator of the universe."

The great mathematician Gauss indicated his view when he said, "There are problems to whose solution I would attach infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics; for example, touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future."

It would be folly, of course, to maintain that all men who have achieved eminence in the scientific world have been religious men. La Place, one of the very great physicists, when asked by Napoleon why his great book on the origin of the universe failed to mention Deity, said, "Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis." That is another point of view. But I think that most scientists have had the humility and the frankness to acknowledge that there are religious forces in the lives of men that are both real and potent, although they, the scientists, may have had no personal acquaintance with the forces within their own experiences.

Most scientists, I believe, would not presume to say that a thing may not be because they do not understand it, nor would they deny the validity of the spiritual experiences of others because they have been without such experiences themselves.

I am now going to venture to say that science has rendered a service to religion. The scientific spirit is a spirit of inquiry, a spirit of reaching out for truth. In the final analysis, this spirit is the essence of religion. The Savior said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." (Matt. 7:7.) The scientist has, in effect, reaffirmed this great fundamental laid down by the Master, and in doing so has given a new impetus to religion.

Science has also strengthened religion by helping to sift the grain of truth from the chaff of fable. The philosopher William James is reported to have told a story about a woman who came to one of his lectures and explained to him that the earth is flat and rests on the back of a giant turtle. He asked, "What is the turtle standing on?" "On the back of a still bigger turtle," came the reply. He started to ask the obvious question when the woman held up her hand and said, "Never mind, it's turtles, all the way down."

That would have occurred around the turn of the century, and you might think that such ideas have changed, particularly in our age of satellites and space travel, with pictures of a round earth taken from space. But every year or so the newspapers remind us of the continued existence of the Flat Earth Society. Its president was recently reported to have described a flight of the Columbia space shuttle as a "continuing giant ripoff of the taxpayers of America." According to him, the Columbia couldn't have orbited the earth, since the earth is flat. It landed at sea a few minutes after it took off, being kept afloat by "those big tanks." The films purportedly taken from space were done in a studio, and the spectacular landing was accomplished by hauling the shuttle aloft and dropping it over the desert air base.

There was a time when many people thought that the pure understanding of the scriptures required the acceptance of a flat earth. The Bible speaks of the four corners of the earth and of the stars in the firmament, conjuring up the image of lights on the inside of a giant dome covering the earth. In the time of Columbus, many people thought a flat earth was a religious necessity. When it turned out to be round, Christ's teachings were found to be just as consistent with the new view as with the old. In fact, the great underlying principles of faith were brought into bolder relief when the clutter of false notions was removed from around them.

Sometimes science has at first appeared to be at odds with religion, but then new discoveries have come to provide supporting insight. For example, during my lifetime we have been obliged to give up the old determinism of classical mechanics as well as the idea of the indestructibility of matter. Mechanical determinism meant that if a sufficiently expert mathematician were given the state of the universe at any instant of time, he could calculate the state of things at all times to come. This left no place for the great religious principle of free will. Then quantum mechanics brought with it the uncertainty principle. This principle eliminates the possibility of predicting the future exactly, and tends to confirm the fundamental Christian tenet that man enjoys agency as a divine gift.

The atomic bomb dramatically emphasized a fact discovered earlier in relativity theory and in laboratory experiments—matter can disappear only to reappear again as energy. This liberalization in our conceptions regarding matter gives added significance to the doctrine that the spirit is composed of a refined kind of matter.

And so, if you are a man or woman of religion, look to the sciences for insights and methods for uncovering still more truths, realizing that ultimately all truths are in harmony. If you are a young person who may feel inclined to disparage religion as you pursue other studies, you will bring enrichment to your life by cultivating faith and an interest in things of the spirit as you follow your other pursuits. Such faith will never detract from your abilities in other fields, but it will broaden your thinking and give added depth to your character.

It is important that all men of good will use their energies, their talents, and their learning in their chosen fields to help build a better world.