Science Finds God

In 1977 Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas sounded a famous note of despair: the more the universe has become comprehensible through cosmology, he wrote, the more it seems pointless. But now the very science that ""killed'' God is, in the eyes of believers, restoring faith. Physicists have stumbled on signs that the cosmos is custom-made for life and consciousness. It turns out that if the constants of nature--unchanging numbers like the strength of gravity, the charge of an electron and the mass of a proton--were the tiniest bit different, then atoms would not hold together, stars would not burn and life would never have made an appearance. ""When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see,'' says John Polkinghorne, who had a distinguished career as a physicist at Cambridge University before becoming an Anglican priest in 1982, ""that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.'' Charles Townes, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the principles of the laser, goes further: ""Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.''

Although the very rationality of science often feels like an enemy of the spiritual, here, too, a new reading can sustain rather than snuff out belief. Ever since Isaac Newton, science has blared a clear message: the world follows rules, rules that are fundamentally mathematical, rules that humans can figure out. Humans invent abstract mathematics, basically making it up out of their imaginations, yet math magically turns out to describe the world. Greek mathematicians divided the circumference of a circle by its diameter, for example, and got the number pi, 3.14159 . . . . Pi turns up in equations that describe subatomic particles, light and other quantities that have no obvious connections to circles. This points, says Polkinghorne, ""to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe,'' namely, that our minds, which invent mathematics, conform to the reality of the cosmos. We are somehow tuned in to its truths. Since pure thought can penetrate the universe's mysteries, ""this seems to be telling us that something about human consciousness is harmonious with the mind of God,'' says Carl Feit, a cancer biologist at Yeshiva University in New York and Talmudic scholar.

To most worshipers, a sense of the divine as an unseen presence behind the visible world is all well and good, but what they really yearn for is a God who acts in the world. Some scientists see an opening for this sort of God at the level of quantum or subatomic events. In this spooky realm, the behavior of particles is unpredictable. In perhaps the most famous example, a radioactive element might have a half-life of, say, one hour. Half-life means that half of the atoms in a sample will decay in that time; half will not. But what if you have only a single atom? Then, in an hour, it has a 50-50 chance of decaying. And what if the experiment is arranged so that if the atom does decay, it releases poison gas? If you have a cat in the lab, will the cat be alive or dead after the hour is up? Physicists have discovered that there is no way to determine, even in principle, what the atom would do. Some theologian-scientists see that decision point--will the atom decay or not? will the cat live or die?--as one where God can act. ""Quantum mechanics allows us to think of special divine action,'' says Russell. Even better, since few scientists abide miracles, God can act without violating the laws of physics.

An even newer science, chaos theory, describes phenomena like the weather and some chemical reactions whose exact outcomes cannot be predicted. It could be, says Polkinghorne, that God selects which possibility becomes reality. This divine action would not violate physical laws either.

Most scientists still park their faith, if they have it, at the laboratory door. But just as belief can find inspiration in science, so scientists can find inspiration in belief. Physicist Mehdi Golshani of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, drawing from the Koran, believes that natural phenomena are ""God's signs in the universe,'' and that studying them is almost a religious obligation. The Koran asks humans to ""travel in the earth, then see how He initiated the creation.'' Research, Golshani says, ""is a worship act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God's creation.'' The same strain runs through Judaism. Carl Feit cites Maimonides, ""who said that the only pathway to achieve a love of God is by understanding the works of his hand, which is the natural universe. Knowing how the universe functions is crucial to a religious person because this is the world He created.'' Feit is hardly alone. According to a study released last year, 40 percent of American scientists believe in a personal God--not merely an ineffable power and presence in the world, but a deity to whom they can pray.

To Joel Primack, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, ""practicing science [even] has a spiritual goal''--namely, providing inspiration. It turns out, explains Primack, that the largest size imaginable, the entire universe, is 10 with 29 zeros after it (in centimeters). The smallest size describes the subatomic world, and is 10 with 24 zeros (and a decimal) in front of it. Humans are right in the middle. Does this return us to a privileged place? Primack doesn't know, but he describes this as a ""soul-satisfying cosmology.''