A simple question from his 6-year-old son led Tom Matlack into an examination of faith and science.
Sometimes it takes a 6-year-old to get to the truth of something.
Mine was just finishing up kindergarten this spring and beginning to learn about the physical world. He shocked me one when he saw an object balancing on a stick in one of his books. “Center of gravity,” he explained nonchalantly.
But the question that really hit me hard bubbled to the surface one day as I dropped him off. He was sitting on my lap in the school lobby, surrounded by a bunch of his friends. We had just been shushed by a teacher for a too-loud round of tickling as we killed time for the opening bell.
“Why does the earth rotate?” he asked me.
“It’s the magnetic fields,” offered up a 5-year-old buddy of his.
I was saved by the bell but promised to get back to them.
♦◊♦
I figured there must be an easy way to digest the explanation for the earth’s rotation and the existence of night and day. I was wrong.
A Web search gave long-winded answers about the creation of the solar system. I had to enlist other parents in my quest. One of the kindergartner’s grandfathers turned out to be a noted astrophysicist. An email was sent, posing our dilemma. What came back was equally unsatisfying:
“It’s a result of the formation of the earth. The lump of lava that was thrown out of the sun and became the earth was spinning when it was born. Otherwise I see no way that the rotation could have started later.”
♦◊♦
I was reminded of a conversation I had with another parent who happens to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Boston, having created vast companies out of thin air. We had been discussing the revolution occurring in an industry completely unrelated to his field of expertise, but he was able to offer me, in a few sentences, great insight into the underlying forces of change. When I emailed him later to thank him for the conversation, his response was “I only know a little about a little.”
One could assume this comment was false modesty from a man of such public success. But I don’t believe that. His humility about the unknown, despite his obvious brilliance, is his key to success. Too often it’s the things we think we know, but really don’t, that get us into trouble.
♦◊♦
All this conversation of night and day got me thinking back to a sermon I heard at our local church not long after the supposed rapture. The minister spoke about the interplay between faith and intelligence and the fact that faith is a personal matter that cannot be judged or reasoned away by another, no matter how smart.
Stephen Hawking, perhaps the greatest scientific mind of our generation, has famously dismissed faith in any afterlife as a “fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Our bodies, according to Hawking, are merely computers that lose power and become inert at the end of their usefulness. Despite his academic brilliance, he judges all believers as misguided and lays claim to the ability of science to explain everything.
I thought about what Hawking had said and how little that helped me explain the rotation of the earth to my son. I came back, as our sometimes zany pastor did, to C.S. Lewis, who said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
I wouldn’t describe my faith as purely Christian. I am more of a giant-pumpkin kinda guy. Call it karma, or Buddha, or even a higher power. I do believe in God but prefer not to name it as a single thing. To me, it’s many things and nothing at all. It simply is. I would prefer not to try to name it or limit it or use it as a way to cleave one from another.
♦◊♦
So the next time my son asked me about the rotation of the earth I was ready with a one-word response.
“God,” I said. “God makes the earth rotate.”
He smiled like he knew the answer all along, like he was just testing me.
—Photo Flickr/NASA Goddard Photo and Video
This is the first GMP article I’ve read that I think is fundamentally ridiculous.
There’s nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure how to explain it” – I say both to my 5yo all the time – rather than making stuff up.
The problem is you’ve done both rational thought and religion a disservice. The close-minded “I don’t understand the science so it must be God” position makes religious folk look silly, and like their religion is a crutch for their stupidity.
Ben, I find your reaction curious. Is it any more close-minded to say, “I don’t understand, so I defer to God”, than it is to say, “There is a rational explanation, so why even mention God”? The comments to Tom’s piece assume an either/or to the dialogue between faith and science. I think that misses the point of faith altogether. Faith and science offer two ways to view reality and neither is complete in and of itself.
“Close-minded” is the polite way to put it, Ben. I probably would have offered adjectives like “deluded and uncourageous.” Tom’s disservice to his son is the direct result of that fool’s errand known as ‘the dialogue between faith and science.’
“Fool’s errand”. That’s nice. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Close-minded is as close-minded does.” I am astonished at the vehemence with which any suggestion of the value of faith is attacked by people who claim the moral high road of reason. I wonder what it is that fuels such vehemence? Can you help me understand that?
You’d have to ask atheists who feel that to be an atheist is to be, ipso facto, morally superior to believers. Since there are, what, two of them with this much hubris, that shouldn’t a problem for a smart guy like you.
Roger,
Although an atheist, I don’t begrudge people their religion. I have no problem with someone saying “we humans haven’t worked that out ; maybe it’s beyond our understanding and in the realm of God “.
But this is quite different. Tom *knows* that there is an answer, he just doesn’t understand it. Why not just say that, rather than defering to God? If you invoke the mystical for the rationally explicable, you weaken both.
Ben, I appreciate your moderate voice. It is a welcome contrast to most of the reactions that I have read (and received in some of my posts) from those who identify themselves as atheists. As I read Tom’s post again, though, it seems that all of the emphasis of the comments are focused on the last line of his post. It was, most likely, intended as a whimsical way to end his article, not some grand declaration that God is the answer to every question. The other thing I would say, Ben, is that there is a profound difference between… Read more »
Roger, in response to your last comment preceding the one above, Not to deny that there are close-minded atheists (talk to my Dad for five minutes), but the ‘close-mindedness’ gambit is one I’ve been faced with before. Having an open mind isn’t the same as accepting all possible answers as equally true. It means having the courage to accept that you have been proven wrong and changing what you think. I’ve studied social sciences, and the sociology OF science, so I’m fully aware of the validity of multiple explanations and the fallibility of human knowledge. Nevertheless, in this case the… Read more »
I appreciate the link. I will take a look and see what I learn. One thing, I don’t think science proves anything about the existence or non-existence of God. And I am not convinced that scientific truth and faith are contradictory or competing. For instance, I can accept, as true, as far as it goes, the theory of evolution. I can also accept, as descriptions of the interaction between the human and the divine, the creation storyies in Genesis. Do I think they are scientifically true? Absolutely not. Do I think they have something of value to teach us about… Read more »
Oh for sure, the stance you describe is very similar to my own. Although I am cautious about how morally beneficial some faith stories are (Leviticus comes to mind). I tend to view faith stories such as those in the Bible as stories that worked THEN, but not NOW. Whether or not there is room for both faith/divinity/whatever you want to call it and science is really the distinction between atheism and agnosticism. People for whom the answer is no would be your atheists. However, what Tom wrote polarises the argument somewhat because he appears to have selected faith OVER… Read more »
I wouldn’t want to speak for Tom, but my reading of the last line of his post was not that he was choosing God over science, so much as he was offering a whimsical conclusion to his post. If you and I were sitting down with Tom, talking through these questions, I would imagine that we would have much common ground on which to stand. If Tom’s conclusion was polarizing, which it obviously was, it may have been more productive for people to say that, rather than attacking him as “shameful” or “ridiculous” or “deluded”.
Quijiboh, thanks again for the link. I agree with Dr. Plait’s point that vitriol does not further the discussion. It was fascinating to me, though, to listen to the premise of the presentation. Dr. Plait was evangelizing, just as surely as the church has evangelized for centuries. He was preparing people to go out and convince/convert. He was instructing people on what it takes to “win the game”. That same speech has been given in churches across the ages – people thinking that they hold an important truth that will “save” others, if only they can get the message out… Read more »
I’m an agnostic, so am open to the concept of a divine force of some form or another. Nevertheless, your article reads as though you have decided that the explanation for why the Earth rotates must be ‘God’ simply because you were unable to understand the scientific explanation given to you. That, to me, doesn’t seem like a solid foundation upon which to base a belief. I get what you say about the limitations of knowledge and the problem of thinking that you know too much. One should be critical and skeptical. But it means one should ask questions of… Read more »
What?! Instead of spending time with your son finding the answer to the question, you lied to him? Do you really believe that some religious power pushes the Earth around? You should be ashamed. Let me help you out: The Earth spins because of angular momentum. If you know the mass of an object and the orbit, you can easily calculate the expected spin. Scientists hundreds of years ago used that fact to “find” moons orbiting around the other planets in our solar system: If the expected spin did not match the calculated spin, then another force was acing on… Read more »
Good scientific explanation. You obviously paid attention in Science Class. But why does the earth spin? Seriously? Because it has to? But why? Ultimately, don’t scientific explanations have to answer to some greater purpose? Whether it is mechanics/physics/science/fate/cause-and-effect/God. It’s like the argument about evolution – why evolve? To survive? But why survive? Pointing to God as an answer is no more fatalistic, or simplistic, than pointing to science. Let me pose a question: What is light? Is it a particle? Is it a wave? The answer is yes to both. It depends on what you are looking for. One does… Read more »
“Why survive”? There is a simple but deep answer to this, that doesn’t require a god: without the survival instinct we wouldn’t be here.
I’m sure organisms have existed that didn’t have a strong survival instinct. They probably died after a few generations. We are the product of a long line of evolution that, at every stage, had a strong survival mechanism/instinct. It’s a self-selecting trait, if you will. If all of our ancestors didn’t survive, we wouldn’t be here to ask questions 🙂
I get that, Ben. But what difference does it make if we are here or not? Why is there a self-selecting trait? Why does existence, exist? Those are the questions of faith. Science doesn’t much care about those questions. I can’t seem to leave it at “we have a mechanistic instinct to survive, or else we wouldn’t survive”. I get that, sort of, but it doesn’t answer the “why?” question. Does that make any sense?
Brilliant, Tom. In its simplicity. I, like you, believe in God, but with no real understanding of what that means. I believe in God/Love, like I believe in the wind. I don’t see either, but I see the impact they have. As for Hawking’s analogy of humans as computers that get “turned off” when they die, I don’t buy it. I’ve sat be the beds of too many who have died, and watched as they breathed their last, to believe it is as simple as being “powered down”. There is a qualitative shift in energy that takes place that can… Read more »