Science and Scientists -- Don't ask them to be something they aren't

Intelligent Designers and other non-evolutionists: If you want to criticize science, please make sure of two things: 1) you don't ask science to do something its not set up to do, and 2) you don't confuse science with scientist .



Science does not take a position on God. Science is not designed to take a position on God. Science deals in things, mostly from the natural world, that can be proven. It has a methodology (the so-called scientific method) and a limit below which proof is still considered wanting. Scientific speculation generally involves staking out new paths to follow as part of the process of proving something.



That science does not take a position on God does not make it atheistic. If you look down the list of academic subjects offered at any university you'll find that almost none of them take a position on God. The arts, engineering, mathematics, the various business disciplines, law, political science, economics, foreign languages: none of them take a position on God. Only philosophy and theology have a God component. (Anthropology and psychology have God components, too, but they're different: in both cases they report on God as a human construct.) With so many other fields to pick on, why pick on science?



I suspect part of the reason is my second point. Scientists are probably not more likely to be atheistic than those in other academic disciplines, at least on the there-is-no-God side of the coin, they get to use science to their advantage. Science may not be able to prove there is a God -- which, as I suggested, is not science's intention, anyway -- but this lack of proof is often taken as proof in and of itself -- proof that there is NO God, that is. Not that this is legitimate: if you don't set out to prove something you can't claim that not proving it proves anything.



Furthermore, other disciplines are at least more open to the concept of God. Music, for example, is often practiced in a religious setting by those with a religious bent. The law often makes moral arguments that have religious overtones. (Although if anyone has more of a claim to the stereotype of an atheistic professional, its the attorney!) Mathematics is too sterile to be mixed up with any claims of God. Science's rather rigid neutrality on the subject too often casts an atheistic patina on the scientist.



Finally, science directly contradicts some religious teachings. In some cases it does this by explaining things that once upon a time were considered something else. Because of science we don't consider someone to be demon-possessed; we classify them as mentally ill and we even have ways to treat them.



In other cases, science no room for alternate explanations. Did God create heaven and earth in six days, or was there a Big Bang? Did Jesus perform miracle healings or were the then-unknown properties of certain herbal medicines responsible? There's nothing in an anatomist's text called a soul.



But all this is trading on stereotypes. Scientists know the value of unanswered questions, and there are plenty of scientists who know that God is the answer to many of them. Was the Big Bang just God's way of creating heaven and earth in six days? (And what was there before the Big Bang, anyway?) We still have cases where a disease is mysteriously cured. Did those prayers help? (And don't doubt that among those praying were doctors and nurses.) A psychopath might be classified as mentally ill and also treatable, but what exactly IS the true source and nature of evil?



We can explain alot about death and dying, but there are just as many doctors and nurses hoping for an afterlife as there are engineers and musicians.