Cease-Fire in the Laboratory

It is 6 P.M. and Dr. Robert Messing is ready to leave his laboratory in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Messing is unusually happy: three days of careful laboratory work have yielded his best crop yet of an enzyme called Protein Kinase C. He began with 2.5 billion PC12 cells, developed from a rat’s adrenal tumor. He ended up, after a series of elaborate chemical maneuvers, with two micrograms of purified material—a mere drop, which the scintillation counter found to have the most active concentration of the enzyme yet. Messing will use this purified sample to test how Protein Kinase C may modulate the electrical signals sent through calcium channels in nerve cells.

A young, curly-headed assistant professor, Messing spends most of his working hours in the laboratory. He is trying to put a small piece into the puzzle of how nerve cells communicate with each other—an electro-chemical process that he says “grows more and more complicated the more we learn. That’s what makes it so interesting—trying to figure out how God put it together.”

As Messing drives his Toyota Camry south toward Foster City on a jammed Highway 101, his mind gradually moves from one set of problems to another. Behind him is a quiet, gleaming laboratory where he unravels the mysteries of biochemistry. Ahead is home, where his wife, Kathy, is having difficulty breastfeeding their third son, Michael. The two older boys, David and Steven, will be clamoring for his attention. A couple whom they know from the Central Peninsula Church have invited them to dinner. By the time Messing pulls into his driveway, he has reoriented himself. Biochemistry may dart into his brain during the evening. But it will almost certainly not enter the dinner conversation.

“It’s real hard to describe my work,” Messing says. “People ask me what I’m doing, and I don’t want to go through a 25-minute explanation. I tell them as much as they want to hear.

“I say I’m interested in how nerve cells communicate, and I’m studying one facet of that which involves calcium channels. And people will say, ‘Oh yeah, you’re supposed to take a lot of calcium to keep your bones strong.’ I say, ‘Yeah, but it’s a little bit different from that.’ The conversation usually ends there.”

Two-Worldism

Living in two worlds, as scientists like Messing do, is common enough in our specialized, technical society. Insurance actuaries or commodities traders don’t discuss their work much with the neighbors, either. But their work is hardly so central to modern society as scientists’ is. Richard Bube, for many years chairman of Stanford University’s materials science department, put it this way: “We live in a culture that takes certain things for granted, such as you find out how things really are by science. I don’t think people think that way. They just grow that way.”

It is odd, and perhaps ominous, that this fount of fundamental understanding is infinitely obscure to most Americans, even very-well-educated Americans. Most of us gel its findings only as they come filtered through newspaper reports, college textbooks, and occasional programs on educational TV. We have little idea how to judge the value of these assertions, how to tell good science from bad science, or how to tell science from sheer opinion. We only know what the newspapers tell us: “Scientists say.…”

Of particular concern to Christians is that science has been widely pictured as anti-Christian. Often science and Christianity are portrayed as at war—a war that began with Galileo, and continues in a battle over school textbooks. Science, which supposedly knows only plain facts and practices only common sense, would seem to threaten the very existence of a religion that depends on faith in the supernatural. At least, it seems to push that faith into the periphery of life—into the realm of opinion—while science dominates the world of “facts.”

People claim many things about science, often things bearing little resemblance to the work scientists do in their laboratories. Thus, as a journalist, I wanted to know how scientists, and evangelical Christian scientists in particular, experience the world of science. Their world and their work are too important to remain obscure, especially to people who seek to claim every realm for Christ. I sought out eminent Christian research scientists in the so-called hard sciences. Most are on the faculties of large universities, and some work in corporate or government labs. (Teachers, engineers, and medical doctors also are trained in science, but their culture is subtly different from that of the research scientists.)

I asked these researchers what it was like to be a Christian in relationship to their fellow scientists. I asked them what it was like to be a scientist in relationship to their fellow Christians.

In hearing them describe their world, I was struck by the degree to which faith and philosophy stay outside their scientific world. Repeatedly, Christians denied experiencing any hostility to their faith; frequently they described scientists as being “like anybody else” religiously. “There are probably as many atheistic truck drivers as atheistic scientists,” says Bube. “Folks are mostly kind of agnostic if you pin them down.” Robert Griffiths, a Carnegie-Mellon professor awarded the prestigious 1985 Heinemann Prize for his work in mathematical physics, told me, “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.”

How does this square with the picture of science given by, say, Carl Sagan, whose “Cosmos” series proclaimed a kind of materialist triumphalism? To understand why he, or any scientist philosophizing on TV, is out of the mainstream, you must consider how scientists fill their days.

Obscure Questions

Most research scientists work alone or in a small team on fantastically obscure questions that only a handful of people in the world understand. Their language is chiefly mathematical. The ordinary scientist does not think much about his work’s relevance to outside life. His eyes are on the problem; he gets enormous pleasure from wrestling its mysteries to the mat. Even if you could somehow demonstrate his problem’s utter irrelevance—if you could show him that it was kin to the medieval question of the substantiality of angels—he would be little disturbed, except that he would find it more difficult to get funding. He works within a world that supplies its own reasons.

Yet, in a sense, he knows little about that world. One question I asked was, “How much do scientists know about science?” By that I meant, how much do they know about science’s strengths and its limitations, or about its relationship to other ways of seeking truth?

Owen Gingerich is a Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist who has concentrated on the history of science since 1971; he was a consultant for Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” television series, and argued fiercely with Sagan over some of its generalizations. Gingerich is also a founding member of a Boston Mennonite congregation, and has lectured widely for the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), an organization of Christians involved in science. As both a working scientist and a student of science’s history, he is unusually qualified to discuss the relationship of science to the outside world. To my question, he answered, “Scientific education does not have much to say reflectively about science. Scientists don’t know much about its nature in a philosophic sense, what its claims to truth might be.”

Walter Thorsen, an articulate chemist at the University of Alberta, described scientists more bluntly: “At some point in their younger days they have bought into some idea of what science is, which they got from a book or a course, and for the most part they have not pursued this.”

It follows that, if you took the average scientist and put him in front of a television camera, he would have very little to say. What would he talk about? His work is almost certainly incomprehensibly obscure to his audience. Scientists who do get in front of television cameras are almost invariably from the small minority who have a strong interest beyond science. What they say often reflects the temper of our universities—materialistic, humanistic—more than the conclusions of science. Carl Sagan, when he interprets the cosmos, speaks as an amateur philosopher. He is not speaking for science; he is speaking for himself. The kind of thing he discusses on the air is almost never said within the laboratory. That, of course, does not make it illegitimate. It merely makes it something other than science.

Says Gingerich, “In most scientific environments, there is little opportunity to talk about Christian faith. One would not talk about it easily or very naturally. As a consequence of that, one does not know where one’s colleagues stand in the religious realm. You may have no idea except for one extreme or the other, such as if they are outspoken as atheists. Ironically, people in other places are more likely to know where I stand [because of his ASA lectures] than here at the Center for Astrophysics.”

Gingerich gave one ASA lecture at Rice University, and the entire astronomy faculty turned out, sitting in the front two rows. Among them was one of the world’s foremost experts on nucleo-genesis (the formation of the elements), which Gingerich discusses in relation to divine Creation. Afterwards, Gingerich asked the Rice professors what they thought of his views. “They rather sheepishly said, ‘We really don’t talk about it very much.’ ” Such are not the words of a people at war with Christianity.

Together Again

Within this highly specialized, relatively unreflective world—so different from the Renaissance and Reformation environment in which modern science first emerged—there are indications that science and faith could begin working together again, as they often did before the mid-1800s. Perhaps the most startling symbol of this was Edward O. Wilson, the famous Harvard sociobiologist and self-described “secular humanist,” attending a three-day forum called by Roman Catholic Archbishop James Hickey last year. A report in the Chicago Tribune quoted Wilson as saying, “Theologians are raising more insistently age-old questions on the nature and meaning of humanity and the basis of moral reasoning that scientists can no longer ignore.” To hear Wilson compliment theologians is as surprising as it would be to hear Reagan compliment Gorbachev on his insightful views of Nicaragua.

Modern events have shaken scientific autonomy. Scientists have seen the work of the greatest scientist of this century, Albert Einstein, put to use making nuclear arsenals. The ravages of pollution, the anxieties of a technological world, and the potential for massive accidental destruction (such as the possibility of losing the atmosphere’s protective blanket of ozone because of aerosol deodorants) have created doubts about whether science is a liberating force or a machine out of control. Society’s need for a moral basis has grown more obvious, but equally obvious is science’s inability to offer one. Science offers truth, but not all the truth we need.

Other factors have worked to shake science’s confidence. Historians and philosophers of science, like T. S. Kuhn and Michael Polanyi, have cast doubt on scientists’ traditional understanding of their work. New, strange ideas regarding religion are about. Quantum mechanics has led a few reputable scientists to write books proclaiming “Zen physics,” in which the consciousness of an observer is said to play a role in the interaction of particles. Says chemist Thorsen, “Modern physics is so impossibly weird, and evokes questions about the substantiality of things. It provokes ways of thinking that are very open.”

In short, if you read books about science, particularly in the philosophy of science or the so-called Zen physics, you may get an impression that science is ripe for a reassessment. But within the world of working scientists, these changes do not seem to have had much effect. For one thing, very few scientists read about science. David Cole, a University of California at Berkeley biochemist, points out, “In biochemistry we are swamped trying to read just the material that’s relevant to our work in the lab.” The greatest difficulty in bringing science and theology together may not be antipathy, but the isolation of scientists in their laboratories.

Besides, there is an inherent conservatism in science. Scientists learned their method of problem solving by watching other scientists during their graduate-school apprenticeship. They know it works. If a philosopher tries to convince them that what they think they are doing is not quite what they are really doing, they tend, like all seat-of-the-pants fliers, to treat the philosopher with bemused skepticism. Nor do they favor metaphysical speculation. The physicists I talked to work daily with quantum mechanics, yet all thought that “Zen physics” was sheer bunk. Scientists are cautious about drawing conclusions that reach beyond their data.

In the popular view, science deals in certainties. Watson and Crick, when they discovered the double helix structure of DNA, were discovering the true nature of our genetic material—as real, once discovered, as the River Nile. But in their day-to-day practice, scientists deal very little in certainties. They think, rather, about unknowns. They may spend a lifetime puzzling over one particular question, for which there are a half-dozen reputable, contradictory explanations. Scientists are quite comfortable living with uncertainties. They know, too, that today’s certainties are likely to be improved upon tomorrow. Geneticist Elving Anderson says, “Church people look to science for final proof [in the creation-evolution controversy]. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what we mean by a scientific test. It is generally easier to exclude an explanation than to prove one. You know your explanation will be improved on in the future. We don’t claim to reach the final truth.”

So the theory of evolution, while it may be taught in high schools as an eternal verity, is not usually thought of that way by research biologists. They see it as a way of looking at their data that is powerful in explaining difficult facts. They are quite aware that large, unanswered questions remain, but they are content to continue to grapple with them. It is an undogmatic mindset that Christians in science would like others, including theologians, to adopt.

Under Fire

Ironically, many Christians in science feel at war only when they are under fire from their fellow Christians, particularly those influenced by the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, California. This energetic group, led by Henry Morris, believes that the Earth’s age should be calculated in thousands, rather than billions, of years, that its geology may be largely explained by a catastrophic, worldwide flood, and that human beings did not evolve from other creatures. They do not see themselves as opposing science, but as revolutionaries within science, trying to overturn some of the most fundamental paradigms of modern science. John Baumgardner, a staff member with Campus Crusade for Christ before becoming a geophysicist at the U.S. government’s Los Alamos laboratory, is one scientist dedicated to this scientific revolution. He admits it is a daunting task. “If people had really known what I was venturing out to do, they would have said I ought to be locked up.”

Creation-science advocates are often, indeed, regarded by other scientists as kooks. Unlike most of the scientists I talked to, they often feel themselves to be in a hostile environment, particularly if they work in the life sciences. But, Baumgardner points out, so did geologists who suggested only a few decades ago that the continents are in motion. Taking a minority view is seldom comfortable.

Disregarding the merits of the argument, it is worth reporting that nearly all the Christians I talked to sided with conventional science: they accepted the idea of an Earth billions of years old, and the general idea that all life has evolved under God’s direction from less complex forms. They did not find it hard to harmonize this with the biblical accounts of Creation. Elving Anderson, a widely respected geneticist at the University of Minnesota medical school, is probably typical in saying of the San Diego Institute, “They have a laudable motive, trying to take the Bible seriously. Creation science does this for some, and totally destroys it for others, particularly for those in the scientific community who are knowledgeable about the data base and are not moved by arguments purporting to prove recency.”

Ironically, while many scientists like Anderson have found questions of origins a source of friction with other Christians, few have felt them to be a great obstacle in talking about their faith with other scientists. John Suppe, a geologist at Princeton, is an interesting case, for he began his long, lonely search for God as a Princeton faculty member. Vaguely aware of his spiritual needs, he began attending services in the Princeton chapel, then reading the Bible and other Christian books. He eventually committed himself to Christ, and had his first real experience of Christian fellowship in Taiwan, where he was on sabbatical. He told me, “Some nonscientist Christians, when they meet a scientist, feel called on to debate evolution, which is definitely the wrong thing to do. If you know scientists and the kinds of problems they have in their lives—pride, selfish ambition, jealousy—that’s exactly the kind of thing Jesus talked about, and which he came to resolve. Science is full of people with very strong egos, who get into conflicts with each other.

“The gospel is the same for scientists as for anyone. Evolution is basically a red herring. If scientists are looking for meaning in their lives, it won’t be in evolution. I have never met a non-Christian scientist who brought up evolution with me.”

What scientists like Suppe particularly dislike is the polarization the issue creates among Christians. They hate being cast as heretics. Anderson told me, “I prefer to call [creationists] the ‘young Earth’ group. We’re all creationists.” Robert Griffiths said, “It seems to me that a number of Christians have gone out on a limb to say we must interpret Genesis in a particular way, as describing in a literal fashion events 10,000 years old. I regard that as a theory, and one that doesn’t fit the facts too well. If Christians hold different views on the interpretation of Genesis, that doesn’t cause too many problems as long as we respect each other and listen to the things science observes, as well as to theology. What does bother me is when Christian brothers say, ‘You have to believe this way. We’re absolutely sure that our interpretation of the Bible is correct. We have to have that or we can’t have faith.’ ”

Gingerich says, “I think it is a very serious issue to Christians. The creationists are going to give a large impression to young people that there is a serious incompatibility in being a scientist and being a Christian.”

Nourishing Atmosphere

Rather than feeling like an embattled minority in science, many Christians I talked to felt they were working in an atmosphere that positively nourished faith. Several noted that in their university, most of the Christian faculty were in the sciences; they thought it would be much harder to be Christians in the English or philosophy departments. Not that they encounter so many believers within science. It is the atmosphere of science itself that they find helpful.

Bob Kaita, a physicist at Princeton’s plasma physics lab, put it this way: “We as scientists butt up against worlds not of our own making. Scientists more often confront things that tell them no—things that don’t work the way we suppose they should.” Such an atmosphere, he thinks, makes it easier to consider the claims of a historical faith.

Others, noting the profoundly Christian thinking of many early scientists, suggested that a Christian world view underlies the practice of science. “Physics is built on certain moral principles,” notes Bob Griffiths. “You don’t publish data that you didn’t take.” And beyond that, suggests chemist Walter Thorsen, “People who do science often realize there is a profound mystery in the universe, and you finally have to ask why. I believe that in science there is a fundamentally religious drive.”

I was talking, of course, to the most articulate Christians I could find in the scientific community. They seek a life that integrates both science and faith. To them, that means granting science as well as theology a certain authority. Says Thorsen, who was once charged by his Brethren assembly to keep silent on his view of Creation, “Galileo is still relevant. The problem with Galileo was not so much with his model of the solar system, but that theologians perceived science as an area that could lead to truth outside the aegis of the Catholic church. This is a big threat. We have to come to realize that we live in a world where truth can be learned from the world around us. Respect for scientific truth does force you to read the Bible in a different way. I think science has a claim on us.”

“What we all need is constant integration,” says Stanford’s Bube. “To see that there is good science and bad science, good biblical theology and bad biblical theology, and to take the best from both and see them both as ways that God guides us. In order to form a good understanding of our choices in life we may need scientific information. In order to choose a research topic, a scientist may need theological or ethical information. Unfortunately, compartmentalized life is the most common. It’s easier to make simple judgments. You don’t even see what you’re avoiding.”

Sermons and Science

I asked every scientist I talked with what he or she would say to pastors or church leaders about their ministry to scientists. It was reassuring, in a sense, that they had few points to make. While many of these scientists are involved in faculty or student fellowships, and some attempt to lead special courses and lectures in scientific-religious issues, they found their main source of Christian support in a local church. They emphasized to me that scientists’ needs are little different from other people’s.

Most of them, however, quickly volunteered the difficulty they felt in hearing sermons that offered, often in anecdotal form, a “scientific fact” that was sheer nonsense to scientists. Richard Bube says, “I wish we had a routine course on science and Christianity in the seminary curriculum. Failing that, I’d urge pastors not to say things out of folk mythology.”

Beyond that, several mentioned their desire for the church to tackle difficult areas where science and faith converge: issues of medical and genetic technology, for instance. This would require, however, leadership that was well read in both scientific and theological issues.

At a practical level, I was reminded that the demands on the time of working scientists are extremely heavy. David Cole told me, “Christians in laboratory science make poor family men, poor church people, and poor just about anything else. There are powerful demands on time in this work. When people take surveys asking how much you work, and scientists say 65 to 70 hours a week, I believe it. But it’s like anything else. You have to set priorities. You can certainly be a Christian—it’s just that you won’t compete as effectively.”

Bube says, “The commitment required of young faculty may be incompatible with living a Christian life.”

For me, it is important, and impressive, to remember that the scientists I talked to have managed to do both: to compete in an extremely demanding environment, and yet to strengthen their faith, thinking and working to integrate the powers of science with their Christian belief.

In the last century, scientists have become extremely specialized, rarely receiving much of an education outside their own field. By the same token, their fields have become extremely difficult for nonscientists to grasp. Ironically, the most powerful force in modern culture has become increasingly isolated from the rest of our culture. We see this in the church: How many pastors know anything about science? And how many scientists know anything about theology?

Undoubtedly, specialization will hinder any move back to the days of Isaac Newton, who spent more of his life on theology than science, writing about 1,300,000 words on biblical subjects. Nonetheless, it is clearer today than ever before that both fields of knowledge need each other, for they reflect in different ways on a single creation.

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