Well, thank you, Dr. Polkinghorne. I am sure there are people here who have questions. I am sure I know some of them personally. If anyone has a question or comments, as long as they end in a question mark and are very brief, get in line. So, go ahead.
Q: You started your speech stating that a common denominator of science and religion is the search for truth. When I was in school, I learned that the basis of science is the search for proof, not truth. So, I was waiting in your speech for some kind of sentence to the question about how you can prove that there is God. You know that this is the core question, and I am kind of missing that.
A: I think that is a very interesting comment to make. I think that we have learned that all forms of rational inquiry are a little bit more subtle than concluding with knockdown proof, knockdown argument. Even in mathematics, Kurt Gödel taught us that any mathematical system of sufficient complexity to include arithmetic, which means the whole numbers, will contain statements that can be made which can neither be proved nor disproved within that system. So, there is all openness, even in mathematics. In fact, a little act of faith is involved in committing myself to the consistency of a mathematical system. It cannot be demonstrated.
Not many people lie awake at night worrying about the consistency of arithmetic, but nevertheless, that is the case. So, I think we have learned that the proof in the knockdown rationale of the clear and certain ideas of the Enlightenment program which Descartes put on the agenda is a glorious, magnificent program, but it is a failure. No form of human life has that kind [of proof]. Science, though it certainly produces convincing theories, does not, I think, produce proof.
In my view, the greatest philosopher of science was Michael Polanyi, who was a very distinguished physical chemist before he became a philosopher and knew science really from the inside. In the preface to his famous book called Personal Knowledge, he says, “I am writing this book”— and he is writing about science, remember— “to show how I may commit myself to what I believe to be true, knowing that it might be false.” I think that is, actually, the human situation.
What I think we are looking for— and what I am looking for in my scientific searches and in my religious searches— is motivated belief. I believe that the success of science and also the illuminating power of religion encourage the idea that motivated belief is sufficiently close to truth for us to commit ourselves to it. But, I think, proof is actually not the category that we might think it is.
Q: I had the fortune to meet Stephen Hawking at Caltech, and I had a question for him about the coded information that is in the biological world (and he wouldn’t answer): did he believe in God? I was wondering, with your having been at Cambridge, what your thoughts were about his thoughts on that.
A: Stephen and I were colleagues in the same department for many years. It’s not easy to have a conversation with Stephen, because it is so laborious for Stephen to produce things. When he does give an answer, he tends to say, “Yes,” or “No.” While the rest of us say, “We think of it this way, or maybe that way,” he just can’t do that with the handicap he has fought against so remarkably.
It is a very interesting question of why God keeps on popping up in the text of A Brief History of Time. God is not in the index. God is certainly there in the text, and it is a book about quantum cosmology, which does not require one to mention God from the start to finish for its prime purpose. I wouldn’t try to presume to say what Stephen thinks.
A lot of people, a lot of my friends in the scientific world, are both wistful and wary about religion. They are wistful because they can see that science doesn’t tell you everything. They wished there to be a mystique— a broader, deeper story of science that they can tell— but they are wary of religion because they know that religion is based upon faith and they think that faith is shutting your eyes, gritting your teeth, and believing six impossible things before breakfast, because some unquestionable authority tells you that is what you’ve got to do. They don’t want to do that, and I don’t want to do that. I guess that you don’t want to do that.
What I am always trying to explain to my friends, and to you if I can, in a way, is that I have motivations for my religious beliefs. They are not just here in the Nicene Creed: “So, don’t ask me questions, sayonara.” I have motivations for my religious beliefs, just as I have motivations for my scientific beliefs. Of course, those two sets of motivations are somewhat different, because the types of truth dimensions of reality that are being investigated are somewhat different, but they have that in common. That is all that I mean by the search for truth.
Eric, Metaxas: Can everyone in this area hear?
Polkinghorne: I am sorry. What should I do?
Eric, Metaxas: You should berate one of the sound people.
Polkinghorne: That is cathartic but not very useful. I will try to stand closer to this [microphone]. I am sorry; forgive me. Look, nothing is more irritating on an occasion like this than for somebody to come up to you afterward and say, “I couldn’t hear a word.” If you can’t hear what I’m saying, just wave, and I will do what I can.
Q: I believe you just missed the idea of many different universes operating with separate laws of engagement, instead of thinking of a universe that is finely tuned. I have read several studies, New York Times articles, and friends have told me about the possibility of alternative dimensions, more intriguing dimensions— four, five, six, seven. So, I am wondering how that idea, that reality, would coincide with what you were saying about the existence of many universes or one.
A: Many theories in modern physics have become very speculative. Take string theory. There was a program I saw on television about that the other night; it was a very interesting exploration of possible ideas, trying to guess what the world is like at sixteen orders of magnitude. That means sixteen powers of ten based on what we know from direct empirical or observational encounter. The lessons of history are against even the cleverest people being able to do that. So, I would be cautious about that.
Even if you did that, string theory is based upon a certain way of putting these things together. The existence of quantum mechanics, the existence of general relativity, of gravitational theory— where do they come from? They are indispensable items in a fruitful world. You need gravity to make stars and everything to produce structures. You need quantum mechanics because it is both orderly and open. It fixes some things; it doesn’t fix everything, and you need a certain flexibility for the development of complex systems.
The universe would still have very remarkable properties to it, which would still demand some sort of explanation and would not be explained just by saying, “It is just our luck.” So, I think there is something left to think about. I could have done a more nuanced discussion about that, but I didn’t have time.
Q: In your presentation of the anthropic principle and theistic evolution, you presented us with a God who was clever enough to allow us to be involved in the creation. With the current state of genetic research and potential manipulation, what are the limits, if any, of our involvement in that creation?
A: That is a very important question and obviously a pressing question. I just finished all of this now, but for about ten years I was involved with various United Kingdom government advisory committees connected with genetic advances. What happens is that science gives you knowledge, and I think that knowledge is always a good thing. It is a better basis for decision than ignorance, but technology takes knowledge and turns it into power, and not everything that you can do, you should do. So, you need to add to knowledge and power; you need to add wisdom, which is the ability to choose the good and refuse the bad. There are obviously quite difficult things to decide there.
First of all, things have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. There is no simple rule that says, “If you take five boxes out of seven, it is okay.” You have to look at these things case by case, and you can’t leave the judgments simply to the experts, because