This piece was written as a reply for Heterodox STEM, where it first appeared.

Randy Wayne of Cornell University has recently presented his arguments for wanting to bring God into a science class, arguing that this is necessary for “the most complete scientific understanding”. He sees the exclusion from science of the idea of “immaterial intelligence” as an unwarranted restriction that impoverishes science and short-changes students. Here I’ll attempt to rebut Wayne, and will argue that omitting gods from science’s worldview follows quite properly from science itself.

One central part of Wayne’s argument is that:

“A foundational assumption such as reality is composed of matter and energy and nothing else, is an assumption — what Euclid calls a postulate. Foundational assumptions are untested, otherwise they would be called facts. Evidence gathering, logic, reason, and analysis are built on the assumptions, and science cannot proceed without faith in the assumptions …”

This view, that science rests on metaphysical assumptions that must be taken on faith, is commonly supposed, but is (I submit) profoundly wrong. At root, science comes from observing the world around us and developing a set of ideas that help us understand, predict and manipulate the world. Observing regularities in the natural world would have helped humans hunt or herd animals or grow crops more successfully. Over time, observing the night sky and the cycles of days, months and seasons led to an understanding of planetary orbits, and from there to Newton’s account of gravity and thence to Einstein’s account. We know that these accounts are true (in the sense of being good models of the world) because they make good predictions.

When Edmond Halley, the second Astronomer Royal, predicted that a solar eclipse would occur over England in 1715, that prediction came true to within a 4-minute accuracy. And when he predicted that a comet would return in 75 years after another orbit, which also came true, he demonstrated that astronomers did have a good understanding of celestial mechanics.

It is important to realise that the successful outcome of his prediction verified not only his understanding of gravity and orbits, but also the mathematics that he used, the logic and reasoning that he used, and any other necessary assumptions underlying his science. Either: (1) making different assumptions would have affected the prediction, in which case the outcome verified them; or (2) they made no difference, in which case he needn’t have assumed them.

Within the inter-woven package of ideas that constitutes science there are none that are so fundamental that they cannot be challenged. All one need do is point to that idea and ask what would be the case if it weren’t true, if we replaced it with its converse? Would that improve or worsen the models? The “improvement” is judged in terms of: (1) explanatory power (making sense of all the facts we currently know about); (2) predictive power (its easy to scheme up ad-hoc explanations for known facts, but much harder to successfully predict things one didn’t already know); and (3) parsimony (excising superfluous stuff that doesn’t improve the explanations).

Einstein’s gravity replaced Newton’s because of its explanatory power (it gave a correct calculation of the precession of the orbit of Mercury, something that Einstein already knew about) but also because of its predictive power (it correctly predicted the warping of space by the sun’s gravity, and hence the change of position of stars during solar eclipse, something for which there was no prior measurement), and indeed its parsimony (in essence it consists of only one equation which states how mass, energy and momentum warp space).

An illuminating metaphor is Neurath’s raft, which compares the ideas of science to the planks of a wooden raft afloat on the sea. One can swap out and replace any of the planks while standing on the others (though one can’t replace all of them at once, having nowhere else to stand). Similarly, we can evaluate any of the ideas underpinning science, by using the rest of the ensemble to do so, and can replace any idea it that would improve the ensemble. No idea is too fundamental to be questioned. Over time, any and all of the ideas could be replaced or improved, as science iterates to an ensemble with more and more explanatory and predictive power.

You may now be tempted to ask, ok then, on what is this account of science that you’ve just given based, how is that verified? I would reply that this account is also arrived at by figuring out what works best in modelling the world. Thus the “scientific method” is itself a product of science, it is itself the result of an iterative bootstrap that is ultimately verified by the fact that science works. Science does not rest on untestable metaphysical assumptions, it rests on the fact that iPhones work, airplanes fly, and NASA’s predictions of eclipse times do come true.

Wayne argues that leaving God and the supernatural out of science is an arbitrary and unwarranted choice. But the history of science shows this not to be so. Early scientists were fully content to invoke God if they needed him to patch up their models. James Clerk Maxwell wrote: “I have looked into most philosophical systems, and I have seen that none will work without a God”.

Newton applied his theory of gravity to the solar system and concluded that the whole edifice would be unstable over the long term, and so needed God’s intervention to make it work. “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being” he wrote in Principia, and later: “A continual miracle is needed to prevent the sun and the fixed stars from rushing together through gravity”. Similarly, leading astronomer John Herschel wrote that the laws of nature had been established by the “Divine Author of the universe” and were being maintained by “the constant exercise of His direct power in maintaining the system of nature” while all material causes emanated “from his immediate will, acting in conformity with his own laws”.

But, as decades passed and understanding improved, scientists developed better models that worked fine without divine intervention. Hence Pierre-Simon Laplace’s (possibly apocryphal) remark to Napoleon that he “had no need of that hypothesis”. And in 1859, defending Darwinism, Thomas Henry Huxley wrote: “But what is the history of astronomy … but a narration of the steps by which the human mind has been compelled, often sorely against its will, to recognise the operation of secondary causes in events where ignorance beheld an immediate intervention of a higher power?”.

The change from a science entwined with religion to a science devoid of references to God can be traced to the decades between 1820 and 1880. That was not so much about metaphysical commitment and more a practical matter: models worked fine without gods, and adding gods into them just made the models un-parsimonious while doing nothing to improve the explanations. A similar process had, of course, been going on through history. Many early religions attributed rain, thunder and successful harvests to the whims of nature gods. Even daytime was caused by a sun-god driving his chariot across the sky. Over eons these explanations were gradually replaced by an understanding of natural processes.

Before turning to Wayne’s arguments that invoking a God does improve the explanations available to science, let’s have a brief interlude:

“As I will show you, limiting all discussion in a science class to the material and denying the immaterial is unnecessarily restrictive. […] the First Amendment exists to protect the freedom to think. […] That is, a professor can use his right to freedom of speech to talk about God in a science class …”

I fully support Wayne’s right to think, advocate, write Substacks and seek to persuade others about such matters. But not in a science class! The students are there for an education in science, and that means mainstream science, the stuff in textbooks. Suppose I thought that Einstein was wrong, and instead had my own pet theory of gravity (that had persuaded no-one else). It would be remiss of me to spend time teaching this in science class. I’m there for the students’ benefit, not to advance my own hobby horses. I should not depart from accepted mainstream science to talk about God, any more than I should give my opinions on the War in Gaza or Vladimir Putin. There’s a time and place. If Wayne considers that God should be a part of science then he should first persuade his fellow scientists, not try it out first on students.

After that interlude, let’s return to Wayne’s argument that God should be in science classes because it “helps the scientific enterprise”. He says: “Like any anchor, the anchor of scientific investigation only works when there is something to which the anchor can attach”. Wayne wants that thing to be an immaterial intelligence, God. There’s a long Christian tradition that the world is only intelligible because God made it so, and that science must rest on that commitment.

In contrast, I consider that science attaches to an empirically observed external world, and that science is ultimately bootstrapped from the fact that it works, verified by the fact that we can indeed predict eclipses. That the world is ordered enough to display such regularities is simply an observed fact. We could not have evolved in (and so would not be here to ponder) a chaotic universe with no regularities.

Wayne gives examples of where he thinks that God is needed:

“I conclude that bringing God into science class HELPS explain the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of humans, and the origin and nature of mind, free will, and conscience — materialism’s greatest failures.”

I won’t attempt to do justice to Wayne’s full argument (for which read his piece), nor delve into how well a job materialism does with each of those (else this piece would get way too long; though I don’t agree that materialism fails and would readily defend the materialist account of all of those). I will just outline how I (a scientist with an atheistic bent) would evaluate how well the proposed inclusion of God does as a scientific explanation.

(1) Invoking God — an infinitely powerful, infinitely capable, infinitely knowledgeable being with purposes that we cannot understand — is an explanatory sledgehammer to crack a few small nuts. Obviously if you start with such a being one can then explain anything at all via “God did it”. It’s about the least parsimonious explanation possible, and so does the opposite of what a good explanation does, which is to explain more out of less. For example, Einstein’s general relativity posits one equation about how matter warps space, but from there can explain an astonishingly wide array of phenomena, including the detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes that are half-way across the visible universe. Darwinian evolution posits the neat idea of natural selection (statable in a few lines) and from there explains the amazing proliferation of life on Earth.

(2) Starting with the thing one is trying to explain is not an explanation. If I were trying to explain the existence of mice, you would not be impressed if I said “let’s start by having some mice”. Similarly, if one is trying to explain the existence of humans, starting the explanation with a God that is conceived in the image of humans does not impress. And if one is trying to explain the existence of human minds that are intelligent and have a will, then starting with a super-intelligence that has a mind and a will is underwhelming. In contrast, a materialist explains these things as the end products of an evolutionary process, and thus explains them out of simpler and more mundane origins. Even if you disagree that this succeeds, at least it attempts to be an explanation.

(3) Explaining the origin of the universe by invoking a god just leaves you needing to explain the god. And if you’re going to argue that God: always existed/made itself/is necessary/just is, then one could just as well say the same about the universe and excise the god. That would be a simpler explanation, especially as all the attributes of God have been souped up to infinity. Indeed, if we want something that might just pop into existence, uncaused and for no reason, then elementary particles would be our best bet; they seem to do that as far as we can tell, intelligences don’t. The only intelligences we know of are fragile, dependent and contingent products of a long evolutionary process. If anything needs an explanation, they certainly do. Just starting with an intelligence (nay, a super-intelligence) is about as far from an “explanation” as one can get.

(4) Invoking God doesn’t explain anything that the idea was not designed to explain. And that is the hallmark of an ad-hoc hypothesis, constructed to arrive at a desired conclusion. It also exhibits parochial thinking (God being envisaged in the image of an idealised tribal leader, and then abstracted and made apophatic from there) along with a large dollop of wishful thinking (What does a human most want? To be loved and live forever. What does a god provide? Being loved and living forever).

(5) The idea of God makes no predictions and so is unfalsifiable. Consider a child dying of brain cancer. If we gave the mother the ability to cure her child then she would do so without hesitation. God loves the child even more than the mother, and has the power to cure him as easily as lifting a little finger, so he cures the child, right? Well, … maybe not.

I’ve no doubt that theologians have schemed up lots of good reasons why that might not happen and why the God hypothesis is compatible with any and all outcomes, but the cost is to strip the idea of any possibility of doing what any good explanation should do: predicting things we didn’t already know, but can then verify. By adding in lots of ineffability and “God has his reasons” the theologians ensure that the hypothesis is vague and enigmatic, and complex and unwieldy, and also devoid of any actual explanatory or predictive power. This is the exact opposite of what a good scientific explanation is like.

Theologians know that if they made some concrete predictions that could potentially be falsified then they’d quickly get their fingers burned, so instead they carefully construct a God hypothesis that makes no testable difference in the observable world. But if it makes no difference then it is dispensable, and thus science picks up Occam’s razor and excises it.

It was for such reasons that invocations of God within science gradually died out as science progressed, summed up by Huxley’s remark that “Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science”. The notion of The Divine is not omitted from science out of prejudice or as an arbitrary fiat, instead it gradually lost its place in science for the quite proper and scientific reason that it fails to improve any of science’s explanations.

Of course our knowledge of the world is incomplete, so one can always point to gaps in our understanding and fill them with a “God of the gaps”, but as our understanding progresses, and the gaps get filled with knowledge, this leads to a Cheshire Cat god who gradually does less and less and then disappears, leaving only a hankering from those who want to believe. Science has moved on from a sun-god driving a chariot across the sky, and from other superseded explanations such as phlogiston or élan vital. I submit that the God that Randy Wayne points to similarly fails to improve any of science’s explanations, and so should not be brought into today’s science classes.