Logic of Science

Yesterday a word or phrase in a fiction piece that I was reading set me to thinking about science, the incarnation, and matter. It struck me as newly interesting both that scientists see God as an unnecessary postulate and that Christians are so insecure about the success that science has in doing so. In another way, scientists posit that we are just physical material, while Christians hope for more. But it dawned on me that there is another way to see what is going on, that maybe scientists have unwittingly pointed out an important flaw in the modern Christian's response to the world.

Suppose that I frame the scientist's contention slightly differently. Instead of "We are all only physical things" perhaps the scientist might be saying, in his own way, "We are all fully physical things". That is, perhaps we find the conflict with scientific materialism because we cannot fathom that we are fully and substantially created things. So, contrary to our wish, there is no point in exploring our creatureliness at which we find something that transcends that creaturely physicality (not that all creatures are physical, e.g., angels, but that physicality seems to be intrinsic to our creatureliness). This seems to be suggested in Paul's discourse in 1Cor15. We are, for now, physical bodies.

I'm not sure that this makes any real headway, except to suggest that science, even as we have received it, does point to the fullness of created things, that we cannot get behind that which we are. It is also suggestive, to me, of the mystery of the incarnation. We say that Jesus was fully God, fully man. The latter profession seems to claim that "taking on flesh" for Jesus meant that God took on the physical character of creation, that a scientist would come to the conclusion that Jesus was "just a man" but only because science cannot make a distinction between "just a man" and "fully man". It is very hard to fathom just how we can or should understand something that is not somehow materially present to scientific prodding. But it seems to me that science also cannot distinguish in its logic between "only material" and "fully material". Rather, science confirms for us the fullness of created being, that there is no point at which our inquiry into physical nature runs aground on a sort of Deus ex Machina (Table -> Wood -> Molecule -> Atom -> Electron -> Quark ->... oh, there you are, God!). This, I think, is what the "fullness" of created being is about, that it is complete in its physicality, and that we cannot get behind it through physical inquiry - there is no short circuit to God.

To sum up: Christian insecurity about the claims of scientific materialism seems to hinge on the ability of science to "fill the gaps" in scientific theory, thereby squeezing out God. But this "gaps" mentality rests on the notion that, for God to be at all, at some point the physical must be reduced to something spiritual, that there must be a step in the advance of scientific knowledge of the nature of matter at which we say, "This is made up of these and, oh wait, this is made of spiritual stuff." I suggest only that this notion is unnecessary, and that the world can be fully material without being only material, and further that science has not the tools to distinguish between those options.