Two French engineers, Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, have published a best-seller entitled Dieu - la science - les preuves: L'aube d'une revolution (God - Science - The Proofs: The Dawn of a Revolution), where they claim that science has proven the existence of God. The book is interesting, because it contains many anecdotes and quotes from scientists, and some little-known facts. However, I do not agree with their approach, which is apparent in the title of the book.
Can science prove the existence of God? As I have
said in this blog more than once, the answer to this question must be negative.
The object of science is the
study of the material world. But God is not in the material world, He is not part of it.
Therefore, he cannot be an object of study by science. This means that science
will never succeed in proving the existence of God, nor will it succeed in
proving his nonexistence.
As I explained in another post, perhaps Pope Pius XII was tempted to think that science had proved creation, although it is suspected that Georges Lemaître, discoverer of the Hubble-Lemaître law and the Big Bang theory, dissuaded him, for the Pope, in a speech shortly after their interview, said this: science, while progressing by leaps and bounds, will never be able to answer the ultimate questions, such as the origin of everything.
In this context, it is necessary to distinguish
between two different concepts: proofs
and clues
or inklings.
As any reader of detective novels knows, clues induce suspicion, but do not
prove. Before a court, direct evidence is usually needed; it is not usually enough to present clues, which
are also called circumstantial evidence, unless the clues accumulate. As the number
of clues increases, so does the credibility of what they point to.
If we ignore the misuse of the word proofs in the book we are discussing, and read inklings every time that word appears, the book is well
structured and generally convincing. However, the scientific part contains a
few historical and scientific mistakes, which it would be good to avoid or
correct, so as not to give arguments to those who hold the opposite position. I
have detected the following:
 |
| Louis Pasteur |
Historical mistakes:
1. The authors play with the dates regarding the persecution of some scientists in Stalin's USSR.
2.
Pasteur
did not discover microorganisms. It was Van Leeuwenhoek, almost two centuries
earlier.
Scientific mistakes:
1.
The
authors say that the universe is necessarily spherical, in 4 dimensions. This is not true, what is currently said is that
the universe is flat. And the authors of the book do not seem to realize that a
spherical universe necessarily implies a Big Crunch ending. For some atheist
scientists, this was for a long time the most popular option, because it could
lead to a cyclical, infinite-length universe, even though there are arguments
against it. But this theory has been abandoned since 1998, when it was
discovered that the universe is currently expanding at an accelerated rate.
2.
The half-life of an isolated neutron is presented as a case of fine-tuning. I am not
aware of such a case of fine-tuning. I am not saying that it does not exist,
but I have never seen it mentioned.
3.
The fine-tuning of the fine-structure constant is greatly
exaggerated. The book
says that a change in the thirtieth digit would be enough to make life
impossible. As far as I know, its fine-tuning is much less fine than that (if
true, it would really be an overwhelming inkling). What is usually said in this
case of fine-tuning is this: if the value of the constant were 10% higher than
its current value, there would be no hydrogen in the universe, only helium, in
which case there would be no life (without hydrogen, life is not possible). And
if its value were 20% lower than its current value, deuterium would not be
stable, and the nuclear reactions taking place inside stars would not be
possible. But we are talking about a difference in the first significant digit,
not the thirtieth.
4.
It
is absurd to calculate the probability of the existence of a protein based on its amino acid composition in order to
deduce the probability of the origin of life. What matters is not the
probability of the existence of a single protein, but the cumulative sum of the
probabilities of all the proteins that could have played the same, or an
equivalent role. This is the typical mistake of confusing the probability of my
winning a lottery with the probability that someone will win it. It is a case
of the god of the gaps. Although this mistake has been pointed out many times, it
seems impossible to eradicate this erroneous reasoning, which began with
Lecomte de Noüy, was also used by Georges Salet (see this
post in my blog), and as shown in the book we are commenting, never disappears.
To sum up: as an accumulation of inklings about the
existence of God, and for a few other reasons, this book is not bad, although
it would be better if the mistakes it contains were corrected and the term proofs were replaced throughout the text by the word inklings, which is much more appropriate to the content of
the book.
Thematic Thread on Science, Faith and Atheism: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
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