Does Science Disprove God?

Natural phenomena can be explained without resort to God. Human beings once could not imagine how lots of things happened, but we -- well, not me personally -- have made a lot of progress explaining things in the last few hundred years. That in itself should inform anyone who is tempted to say, "I can't imagine how X happens naturally, so God must be how." That's a colossal failure of the imagination in light of what science has delivered.

But do scientific explanations add up to a proof that God does not exist? You might think so, but let's take another look. I draw here on George H. Smith's highly recommended Why Atheism?

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the great Catholic philosopher, anticipating William of Occam (1285-1347) of razor fame, wrote:

What can be accomplished by a few principles is not effected by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature, and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.

That's in Aquinas's magnum opus, Summa Theologica! You'd hardly expect a medieval theologian to acknowledge such a thing. What was Aquinas up to? He was doing what other religious scholars did at the time: coming up with the strongest arguments against the existence of God in order to refute them.

About all of this, Smith writes: 

Against this a counterargument immediately suggests itself -- namely, that failure to justify the need for God as an explanatory principle cannot prove his nonexistence. Even if we concede that God is epistemologically superfluous, that what needs to be explained can be explained entirely by naturalistic methods, we are not entitled to conclude that God does not exist. The real existence of a being, after all, does not depend on whether our concept of that being is necessary for explanatory purposes. [Emphasis added.]

That's a point that atheists can easily overlook. Just because God is not needed to explain something does not in itself demonstrate that God does not exist. If that's what you want to prove, you will have to do more. (That's what this blog is about.) For example, many religious authorities accept that the origin of species is explained by evolution -- Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey! Those authorities still believe in God; but they also believe that evolution is how God produces new species. The same could be said for any scientific explanation: "Well, I guess that's how God chooses to do stuff." So? (Actually, this was rebutted by Ludwig von Mises. See his refutation here. But we'll ignore that today.)

Smith goes on to note that St. Thomas "does not take this way out, even though it must have been as obvious to him as it is to us."

From there, Smith moves on to Santa Claus. (You read that right.) We certainly don't need Santa Claus to explain how presents appear under Christmas trees and in stockings each December. But does that prove Santa does not exist? No. We have to make other arguments. Even if we assume that Santa is not a supernatural being (and hence not logically impossible), we can still be confident that Santa does not exist; that is, we can be positive a-Santists and not just negative a-Santists. 

But how? Here's how: using a distinction drawn by Kant, even if Santa is logically possible, he nevertheless is materially impossible; that is, the Santa story is highly implausible -- it is obviously unlikely -- plus no good evidence is offered. (Presents under the tree are not good evidence.) Therefore, believing that Santa does not exist is reasonable. ("Absolute certainty," apart from logic, is a red herring; don't chase it.) Would any atheist disagree? Or must we be merely negative a-Santists or agnostics? If the answer is no, then by the same reasoning, all negative atheists should "convert" to positive atheism. (Besides, apart from materially impossible, God is also logically impossible.) 

To bring this back to the beginning, if you're looking for proof that God does not exist, don't look to science because you can't get there from here. Look to philosophy. That's where the action is.