Interview with Manuel Alfonseca. Originally published in Spanish in La NuevaRazón
Questioner: Carlos Sordo de la Rubiera
I Part
A: I think this is not true. Since God is obviously not an object of study by science, many scientists, relying solely on science, hold that the correct position is agnosticism. But there are other ways, apart from science, that can make us know something. In general, there are three forms of knowledge: authority, experience, and reasoning. Scientific research is just one type of reasoning; apart from it, we also have, for instance, philosophical or artistic reasoning.
Let me quote an author who is frequently said to have been an atheist,
but perhaps was not. I mean Carl Sagan. He was famous by the end of the 20th
century, and had a reputation of being an unbeliever. Some time ago I found a
quote of his that surprised me. What he said was: An atheist is someone
who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has convincing evidence
against the existence of God. And he added: I do not know such convincing
evidence (Broca's
Brain, chap. 25).
Q: You are well known for your position in favor of
the compatibility between faith and science. I would like to know what was the
origin of your scientific vocation and of your religious faith, and how both
have coexisted along your life. I mean, has it been a more or less easy coexistence,
or, on the contrary, did you make real efforts to make both facets compatible.
A: As the English-speaking say, I am a cradle Catholic. I
was brought up in the Catholic religion, and have never lost it. As for my
scientific vocation, I always liked science a lot. As a child, I was very
interested in animals. When I was 15-16 years old, I wrote a two-volume book on
zoology, which of course was never published. Later on, I did not study biology,
but telecommunications engineering, which was considered better for me.
I never had to make an effort to make compatible my professional scientific
activity, with my religious faith, as the fields where I have worked (computer
science and communications) do not have points of friction with religion. But
if we talk about my scientific knowledge in general, yes, sometimes I had to
make an effort, although I always found a reasonable solution. I do not mean
that the solutions I found are the only possible ones, or even that they are the
right ones. But the fact that I did find a solution to a problem implies that a
solution exists, although it may not be the only one or the right one.
Q: You have argued that, although science cannot and
will never prove the existence of God (because the object of study of science
is the material world), it does currently provide inklings that point to the
existence of God. For example, you say that the universe seems specifically designed
to support life (“fine tuning"). Could it be said that, paradoxically for
many, we have more reasons today to believe than they had in the times of Thomas
Aquinas or Teresa of Jesus?
A: We may have today more scientific reasons, but at that
time they had many philosophical reasons. Just now philosophy is downcast. Some,
like Stephen Hawking, say that it is dead. In fact, it’s Hawking who is dead,
not philosophy.
Today we have scientific inklings about the existence of God, but we
must distinguish inklings from proof. In court, that distinction is clear: you
can't prove anything with inklings, you can suspect what probably happened, but
to prosecute and convict a person one needs proof, not inklings. What science gives
us about God are inklings, not proof.
One of these inklings is fine tuning. Some time ago, Fred Hoyle (one of
the creators of the steady-state theory of cosmology, which was abandoned),
usually considered an atheist, says that the origin of life is so rare
that one has to think of design. He said this in 1981. He can be
considered one of the first to mention fine tuning, although he did not use
that name.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of discoveries made fine-tuning seem evident.
Of course, there are people now who try to explain fine-tuning in ways that
have nothing to do with design. I use to offer my artificial life experiments
as a parallel example: they appear to be the result of chance, but actually are
designed. They are a combination of chance and design. This usually surprises people.
If I can use chance in my experiments, why can't God do the same?
Some people say that chance does not exist. The mathematician Gregory
Chaitin proved a randomness undecidability theorem according to which it is
impossible, given a string of numbers, to prove that these numbers are random. For
example, it is well known that the digits of π satisfy all the requirements of
randomness. But it is obvious that they are not random, because π is a well-defined
number. Its digits are what they are. The theorem is much more general, and was
published in Scientific American. It looks strange that such a
discovery was published in that magazine. Chaitin's conclusion could be taken
as far as this: if chance is undecidable, perhaps it doesn't exist. Some go in
that direction, but I prefer to think that, if I can use chance, why can’t God
use it? Is he less powerful than we are?
Q: Can fine tuning be considered
as indisputable science, or could some finding or set of scientific findings throw
it down?
A: As I have said in several books and posts, faith
should not be based on science. It's the other way around: one first believes, then
sees science from the point of view of faith. One should not base faith on
science, for science is, by nature, variable. So, a faith based on science could
be in danger, if science changed.
Q: With this you have answered my
next question: To what extent would it be convenient for a person who doubts
about the existence of God to use these inklings provided by science to decide
on the affirmative?
A: I can give you a concrete example: Georges
Lemaître, a Belgian priest, was the first, in 1931, to propose the Big
Bang theory (although he did not call it by that name, which was later given
by Fred Hoyle). That theory was not established until Gamow, Alpher and Herman
made two predictions resulting from the theory: the average composition of the
universe and the existence of the cosmic background radiation. These
predictions were verified during the sixties. In the early 1950s, when the Big
Bang theory began to be considered seriously, Pope Pius XII gave a speech, suggesting
that the Big Bang theory could be a scientific proof of Creation. Shortly
after, there was a meeting between Lemaître and the Pope, where Lemaître is
suspected of having said something like this: Don't say that the Big Bang
theory proves Creation, because religion should not be supported by science. We do not know whether
these words were spoken or not, because no one was present at their meeting.
What we do know is that, shortly after, Pius XII said in another conference
that science will never be able to prove the existence of God. So, if the
suspicions are true, Pius XII backed out from considering the Big Bang theory
as proof, and perhaps Lemaître was the person who convinced him.
In other words, faith should not
be based on science. And science, of course, should not be based on faith. The
proof of this is, there are many scientists who are not believers. Not as many
as is sometimes thought, but there are many.
Q: Since the beginning of your scientific
career to the present date, how has the proportion of atheist, agnostic and
believer scientists changed (if it has changed)?
A: Perhaps right
now the proportion of believing scientists is decreasing. I don't have current
data, but I know that in 1914 a survey was conducted in the United States, and
it came out that about half scientists were believers, and the other half were
not. In 2009 they repeated the same survey, with the same questions, to a
population of American scientists, and the result was approximately the same.
In other words, things hadn't changed much in almost a century. However, I think
that atheism is now rising, not just in science, but everywhere. From 2009 to
now, I think the number of non-believing scientists has increased, but I have
no actual data.
(To be continued)
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