Science of the Gaps

Lately, it reoccurred to me that I am very frustrated with the so-called dialogue between scientists and Catholics. Their attempt to deal with an unnatural disagreement has, partly through its artificiality, come to appear like the squabbling of poorly mated couples who have nothing better to do with their time than to aggravate the one they feel is responsible for their unhappiness and to avoid making up because neither one will admit to being in the wrong. None of this does any good for their children―the general public―who know instinctively that their parents do belong together and should be happy for being so. And even though the children may not fully understand the nature of the disagreement, they know that each parent is, to a certain extent, laying it on a bit thick.

In the course of this disagreement, two things have become clear: first, that both camps lack clarity in presenting their respective cases, and second, that neither side can in fact convince the other as it is currently arguing. 

Clearly, we are in a fog. Bulverism has entered the arena. One can argue without having to engage his reason at all. He can dispel any uncomfortable notions with a category statement about the beliefs and desires of the other side vigourously applied to the peccant part of his own psyche. Rather like the man who, though lost, refuses to ask someone else for directions because, as he puts it, "They have not got my sense of direction." When this attitude is not only generally accepted but also honored, one cannot even blame himself for being lost because in his own mind no one else knows where they are going either.  

Neither science nor religion is to blame for the preeminence of this sophistry. After all, bad philosophy―unlike morality―must be practiced to be preached. That is why this problem is not between science and Catholicism, but between scientists and Catholics. Eradicating one bad philosophy will not settle the question anymore than eradicating one bad philosopher. Nor will bad philosophy end by the destruction of philosophy itself anymore than philosophy will end by the destruction of philosophers. Any man can be a philosopher because every man can think. Those few who think with purpose stand apart as leaders of the rest. The man who does not think is only half alive. He is one of those who, as Benjamin Franklin puts it, "die[s] at twenty-five and [is not] buried until [he is] seventy-five." To destroy philosophy, one must utterly destroy mankind. To practice good philosophy one must allow both for the aforementioned fact that every man can think, and the sad reality that not everyone will agree even with the soundest reasoning. That is the unfortunate failing of fallen human nature, not an unique sickness of this age of science.  

Despite these unfortunate circumstances, Catholics and scientists do have common ground; quite literally in fact, as the observation that this universe is made up of material things simply is quantifiable from a scientific point of view and observable from the fundamental perspective of the human senses. All humans are not only philosophers but scientists, albeit untrained and often sloppy ones. It should be lauded by Catholics that St. Thomas Aquinas began his great treatise Summa Theologica with the simple observation that things around us exist and are in motion. And yet, from this point, however, the divergence of scientistic thought from Catholic thought is almost immediate. Scientists claim that all that is, is observable, while Catholics argue for a broader reality that surpasses sensual observation. Moreover, scientists cling to their methods and Catholics to their beliefs. Seldom do they engage themselves with anything unlike panegyrics for their wisdom and anything like serious critical thought. More often they look on one another with nothing but suspicion and engage in some form of ridicule and derision―derision that forms an unrelated and unempirical argument against the bad history of the other side. Scientists scoff at the" Dark Ages" of slavery to unreason and blind faith, while Catholics balk at the "Enlightenment", the fountainhead of unprecedented progress toward ultimate human misery. Scientists forget (if they ever knew) the debt they owe to the great discoveries made by scientists of deep religious conviction (many of them Churchmen), and Catholics are in no small way to blame for keeping out of sharper relief both the tremendous contributions made by their rich tradition to all forms of learning and the many orthodox improvements to theology that have come from the minds of scientists. But that to one side, it hardly gets to the meat of the case between the two.

Far be it from me to create a program through which every strained nerve in this fight will be healed; however, one thing should be noted as having particular benefit.

It is desirable to neither affirm nor deny too strenuously points made by either side. Each person ought to explain his reasoning, then perhaps many apparent points of conflict will disappear. And one must ask the right preliminary questions in order to reach a point of agreement or disagreement. Beginning as we are with a point of disjuncture, is it any surprise that we have nowhere to go together? Such a point is to an undefined argument as the earth is to the stars around her: a mathematical point, having a position but no appreciable value. Having an infinity of destinations can be just as paralyzing as having none.

So, we must take account of the different theses and question their validity. We must, in the proper sense of the term, be skeptics, that rare breed who take their cue from what is sufficiently proven, not merely what is proposed.

What then is the basic assumption of scientists today? That material existence is the only existence. Any gaps in man's knowledge of the universe are holes merely waiting to be filled. In the context of any debate with religion, these holes have nuisance value quickly expressed by the argument that because science does not yet know everything, "god" must exist. This notion of god is fading away and will dissolve, scientists say, when the book of knowledge is complete. In time, science will explain the universe and all that resides in it or beyond it.

But can science alone ever achieve that aim? Certainly not. It would require scientists to accept certain principles that are beyond scientific proof. It is fundamentally misleading for a scientist to claim that "god cannot exist because he is not scientifically measurable" and to conclude as a proven fact from that scientifically unverifiable claim that "the notion of god will disappear with the advent of new scientific discoveries." Scientists the world over stress that science deals only with the material universe by examining material facts and events and experimenting with limited links of cause and effect. That is what makes it reliable: every aspect of its inquiry can be researched, verified and either duplicated or amended. Scientists have further observed that the material in the universe is not endless. That there is a limited amount of matter means that the chain of cause and effect must be cyclically repetitive if it does not reach a point of first motion. That limits the scope of scientific inquiry significantly.

For it is a curious reality that to fill a hole in one place, one needs material taken from another place. Cut down a hill to fill a hole, or grind stone to get gravel, or divert a stream to flood a lake, one may do a great many different things to achieve these and other similar ends, but one things is certain: no material from beyond this universe is a plausible help. Recycling is the only strategy in a world without infinite fecundity. Until recently, the late Stephen Hawking had admitted this basic proposition; however, Hawking revealed the new axiom: something can come from nothing, as long as "nothing" means "the law of gravitation". This new axiom only reinvigorates the import of the old one that something cannot come from nothing; therefore, it is up to the scientist to explain this universe without referring to anything beyond it, to fill the gaps with data, not theories; with physics, not metaphysics; to note with scientific rigour the incompleteness of their own observations and the limits of their sphere.

Anyone seeking a complete look at the material world must step outside it, and in doing so, he must acknowledge the existence of immaterial things like reason, which alone can capture the essence of material things because of its higher nature. The very act of reasoning defies scientific explanation because it deals with the immaterial abstraction of material things. If scientists are ever to prove anything in this material world, they must rely on the material that is available to them. That material as we have seen is limited, and scientists know it well. The well-documented limit of material existence limits the extent of material investigation. The changes and challenges to prevailing theories, the incompleteness of every experiment, even those that are successful, and the consistent unveiling of new technologies that only reveal a deeper and unlooked-for complexity to the universe indicate a level of uncertainty that scientists must accept.

We are left with a "science of the gaps" which cannot prevent the flood of infinity from surrounding and penetrating the universe, one which cannot create but can only re-purpose, one which is doomed to mad frustration without the help of other branches dedicated to the search for knowledge.

In truth, the more the scientific community puzzles together the fabric of the universe, the more evident the reality of a Designer essentially distinct from the universe becomes. Every piece properly placed reveals a little more of the grandiose picture that in no way could have accounted for its own existence. Either the puzzle is a real object created by an artist or it is a product of one's epistemological imagination and void of all real meaning.

Let us turn then to the arguments posed by the theological fellows.

It is a common error, at least it is an error that I myself commonly make, to believe that faith is a provable phenomenon. Let me be clear. I do not mean that there are no proofs for the reasonability of faith, nor that faith is never proved true by our own experience or the experiences of others. But these two things, the reasons for having faith and the fulfillment of one's faith in concrete ways, are separate from the issue. There is a real difference between what drives us to profess our faith and what our faith can prove. Further, there are different levels of proof, with the level corresponding to science having some of the narrowest standards, and here I do use proof in that narrow scientific sense. To bear the name, a proof must be repeatable and verifiable. From this springs one important conclusion: the existence of God cannot be proven through science in the way that modern scientists demand and modern Catholics want. As an aside, conversely, this means that science cannot disprove the existence of God, or even the existence of Jesus. Those questions are entirely out of the realm of scientific inquiry. And if scientists quibble about the existence of Jesus and the veracity of what He claimed, one might do well to ask them by what standard they admit to the existence of Newton and the veracity of what he claimed.

Of course, this is a bitter pill to swallow. Those who believe in the superiority of Revelation to rational inquiry find little comfort in the fact that their faith has limited use here below. And those who profess the efficacy of reason naturally defy any power which imposes a limit upon their knowledge. And what limit could surpass that of an impenetrable mystery? What greater magnet for the mind, indeed, but what a blow to our pride in great accomplishments! How truly it is said that the Gospel will be a stumbling block to the wise: a truth so real and so vast as to be incomprehensible dropped right into the path of those seeking only comprehensible answers.

Yet here is a powerful tool for spreading the Gospel: knowing the frustration that accompanies the failure to understand any number of mundane realities, should we not become even more sympathetic to those who, like us, cannot fathom the supernatural mysteries before them, but unlike us have not been given reason to accept them anyway?

Would not the most efficacious argument admit that we are all of us seeking answers, and incapable of finding them on our own?