Which Science is Closer to Faith?

At a small conference organized by the Specola Vaticana, the observatory of the Vatican, a select group of scientists, including a few Nobel Prize winners, was brought together in the beautiful setting of Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the Pope on the hills behind Rome, in order to exchange ideas on the theme of ‘Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Singularities in Spacetime’. In the growing, bleak panorama of obscurantism, this small group of scientists represented a point of light, depth and rationality. I remember a previous visit to Castel Gandolfo, several years ago, when George Coyne was the director of the observatory – a profound thinker whose words and writings have left their mark on me. At the time I also met the current director, Guy Consolmagno; in the passion with which he spoke to me about ‘his’ meteorites I recognized my own love of the universe and its mysteries; my love of science.

The conference was dedicated to Georges Lemaître, the great scientist who is still less well known to the public than he deserves to be. Lemaître was a Catholic priest, deeply interested in the relations between religion and science, a subject on which he wrote pages of great current relevance, and which in my modest and inexpert opinion are illuminating. A good friend of mine, who is himself a priest and a scientist at the Specola, drew to my attention a text on Georges Lemaître published in the Commentarii of the Accademia Pontifica by Paul Dirac. That is to say by one of the two greatest physicists of the twentieth century (the other being Einstein).

Dirac was a man of very few words who was probably affected by a kind of mild autism. He was also a complete atheist. His article about Lemaître, published in 1968, is highly technical. Dirac shows with his usual acumen the significance of Lemaître’s contribution to science and gauges its intrinsic merit. It is written in his characteristically dry and factual style. There is, however, a passage that prompted my present thoughts and has given rise to this reflection.

Towards the end of the article, in a somewhat uncharacteristic way, Dirac allows himself to meander into vague speculations about the relation between the cosmos and humanity. Lemaître discovered the fact that the universe evolves. Dirac says that this discovery suggests a great vision: cosmic, biological and social evolution go hand in hand, carrying us to a better and brighter future. It was 1968, and perhaps even the elderly and austere scientist was allowing himself to be influenced by the fevered atmosphere of optimism and anticipated change that could be felt in that remarkable year.

But Dirac cites this consideration in order to then relate a conversation he had with Lemaître on the subject. Moved by the grandeur of the vision that Lemaître had opened up for us, Dirac had told him that cosmology could be ‘the branch of science closest to religion’. Perhaps in the sometimes awkward manner of someone on the autistic spectrum, the atheist Dirac wanted to say something kind to the priest Lemaître.

But to Dirac’s astonishment, Lemaître disagreed. And after a brief reflection responded that, in his opinion, cosmology was not the branch of science that was closest to religion. So which one is? asked a perplexed Dirac. Lemaître had a ready answer: psychology.

Lemaître had been at pains to keep cosmology and religion separate from each other. I believe it was thanks to him that the Catholic Church did not fall into the trap that other denominations have found themselves in by attempting to connect the Big Bang with the creation story told in Genesis. But the idea that the science closest to religion is psychology, coming from a Catholic priest who has thought deeply about the connection between religion and science, is still a surprising one. Surprising, but to my mind also revealing.

A few months ago there was an article in Nature by a representative of the Anglican Church. It was a sincere appeal to put aside the traditional conflict between science and religion and to focus on what they have in common, rather than on their differences. To look for points of convergence instead of conflict is always good advice, and Lemaître’s thoughts on the subject seem to me enlightening for precisely this reason. The similarity of the language used by science and religion (‘universe’, ‘creation’, ‘foundations’, ‘existence’, ‘non-existence’, ‘creator’ …) seems to me to be simply illusory and therefore essentially misleading. The debate between the two camps is like an argument between two people who cannot hear each other. And they are using the same terms to mean different things.

There are some religions that do not find themselves in conflict with the scientific world; others feel distinctly threatened by scientific thought and take up arms against it. Where does this difference come from? It seems to me that Lemaître put his finger on a significant reason. Religions are complex cultural and social structures that have played a significant role in the evolution of civilization. For a long time, they have identified with the exercise of power and with public affairs, and have offered a complex and global framework for thinking about reality, including about such questions as the origin of the universe. When humanity found better ways of dealing with various of these questions – secular democracy, for instance, with its tolerance and pluralism in the conduct of public affairs, or science, with its interrogation of the world at micro and macro levels – some religions were unsettled by their consequent loss of relevance and entered into conflict with what they saw as pernicious innovations. The aggressive diatribes of Pope Pius XII against religious liberty, against the freedom of the press, against liberty of conscience, are examples that I suppose the current Church must find embarrassing. The siege mentality of the Church, its defence to the bitter end of its central role in public life, which we would like to see consigned to history, is a retrograde battle against science, revealing its incapacity to understand the beneficial and positive growth and evolution of morals. All of this has nourished, and still very much feeds into, the discrediting of the Church with many citizens.

But this does not mean that religion and science must always be in conflict. There are great religions that have no difficulty in accepting the fact that the physical history of the universe is not made more intelligible by reading a religious text or taking on trust what has been handed down to us by tradition. They have no difficulty in accepting the secularism of public life, the plurality of opinions, the genuine tolerance of diversity, and the idea that none of us, in or outside of this or that Church, is the custodian of absolute truths. At their best, the Anglican Church and some forms of Buddhism provide examples of this. They do not try to impose their point of view on those who do not share it, or their behaviour on those operating with a different set of morals; they do not have the presumption of teaching what they do not know themselves. But they do know how to offer admirable examples, and to speak in a convincing manner to the condition of men and women; they know how to bring to bear deep reflection on the nature of humanity, on our choices, our relations, our inner being. Reflections that have a real and deep value for millions of men and women. They know how to offer teaching, transcendence, rituals, cohesion, refuge.

They are religions aware of the fact that their real knowledge concerns our inner life, the meaning that we choose to give to our lives, and not the world around us, not the laws governing public affairs, and not our understanding of the physical universe. These are the religions which know that they have nothing to do with cosmology.

In fact, they are eager to learn from quantum mechanics or from cosmology. The Dalai Lama is one such student, as are the scientists attached to the Specola Vaticana. They are religions, too, that know how to usefully engage in dialogue with the science that is closest to religion: psychology. This is what Lemaître was getting at, with a profound sense of the importance and the current limits of science, but also of the proper importance and limits of religion.