This might seem a strange question: surely that's what scientists are paid to do. However, it has become a rather more controversial issue in recent years. Of course, in America, in particular, there is a big divide between creationists and evolutionists, with the former convinced that evolutionary scientists are either interpreting data out of, at best, unconscious bias, or even deliberately driving the scientific community down a route which supports atheism. On the other hand, evolutionary scientists will often say that they are the only ones who are truly following scientific method to its logical conclusions and that creationists manipulate data or use pseudoscience for religious ends. This is a lesser debate in the UK, perhaps not always for good reason, but still quite vociferous. However, even some mainstream scientists are now querying if the more bizarre ideas that many serious scientists are making their life's work can really be defined as true science.
The question of worldview
From my experience of knowing a lot of scientists, I am convinced that most do their very best to follow scientific method and seek after truth. The controversy centres on what truth they are seeking, and that in turn depends on their paradigm. Paradigms are worldviews. Science is generally conducted within the currently accepted worldview, which puts limitations on the interpretation of scientific observations. It was Thomas Kuhn who succinctly explained how paradigms change.
If we go back a few hundred years, the accepted paradigm was that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, with all the stars and planets circling it, the natural place for things to rest was on the floor (which you will know is true if you have young children) and, for most people, creation involved a god. There was also an assumption that the Earth wasn't very old, maybe about 10,000 years. Clearly not everyone agrees all the time though.
According to Kuhn, science works within the current paradigm, making adjustments here and there, as necessary, to make everything fit, until it becomes impossible to contain new observations within the old wordview, at which point there is a paradigm shift. Observations by Copernicus, Galileo and others led to growing tension with the paradigm described above. It was becoming clear that the Earth was not at the centre of the universe, but paradigms don't shift easily, so complicated schemes had been put in place to make the new observations fit into the old worldview. In the end, though, something had to give. To cut a long story short, Newton finally produced a theory of gravity, together with laws of motion, which explained the solar system as it is, with the sun at the centre, as well as why and how things fall to the ground. James Clerk Maxwell later put together a wave theory of electromagnetism which, among other things, explained the motion of light. These theories, together with other new proposals, placed physics in a new paradigm.
Theories cannot be proven though; experiments can be undertaken to verify them, but they can't ever be confirmed as definitely true, because there is always the possibility that an observation will be made which doesn't fit. The theory has then been disproven. The idea arose that, to be accepted as theory, a new proposal had to be falsifiable, i.e. it needed to make predictions which, if they were found to be false, would disprove it. The theories of Newton, Maxwell and others fitted the bill. Verification after verification showed that these were robust theories, but eventually holes started to appear. For example, the orientation of the orbit of Mercury about the Sun gradually changes, but Newton's theory couldn't explain the rate at which that change occurred. Also, it was found that light acts as a series of particles as well as a wave, both at the same time. None of this fitted the paradigm of the Newtonian era and a new shift had to occur.
The paradigm of the day
We are now in a paradigm in which everything is fundamentally built up from 81 subatomic particles and four forces. All of that is explicable through the standard model of particle physics, plus Einstein's two theories of relativity. Using these it is possible, mathematically speaking, to trace back in time to the origin in the universe in a hot Big Bang, preceded by a period of inflation. The concept is so well embedded in society that there are many popular science programmes made using this premise, and even an American sit-com. In addition, new observations in geology and biology have led to the concept of a very old Earth in which all the species of life evolved from what has by some been termed a primordial soup.
In essence the current paradigm is one of evolution: of the universe, the solar system, the Earth and life. The fundamental physics on which all of this is based is properly falsifiable, but evolution of any form is not. How, for example, can we perform an experiment to determine if the universe evolved from a Big Bang? It was a one-off event. We could potentially prove that certain required process do not work today or that predictions from the theories involved are invalid (falsifiabillity), but in the absence of that there is no way of setting up a test to verify if any form of evolution actually occurred; it is all inference. However, those inferences are indeed strong.
Paradigms come and paradigms go, but science keeps moving forwards.
The paradigm change in physics during the first part of the 20th century was enormous. It was found that space was curved, which was the underlying origin of gravity rather than Newton's force, which just happened to exist. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, which hadn't been envisaged previously. On an atomic scale, Newton's mechanics and Maxwell's electromagnetism were replaced by quantum mechanics, based on rules of probability (chance) that eventually developed into quantum field theory, which described the 81 fundamental particles and the other three fundamental forces besides gravity.
Unfortunately, this physics paradigm, linked with biological evolution and the geological timescale, has been used by many to propose that God is unnecessary and has to be fitted in ad hoc if we want to believe in one. The argument goes that we know so much scientifically now that we can explain everything and there is no room for God to get involved; maybe he is there spiritually in some way, but there's no role for him to play in creation or miracles etc. This brings me back to my starting point: most well-meaning professional scientists will work within this paradigm because it's the one that we have. Some will do so gleefully because they have a vested interest in disproving God's existance, others try to do the ad hoc fitting in of God, with varying degrees of success, but most don't think too much about the religious implications and just get on with their work. Any concept that 'Science' as a whole is anti-God is neither true nor fair - it is generally neutral.
Tomorrow's world
So what does this mean for the way forward? Do we have to accept that God isn't necessary and has just become a matter of personal faith? No! Not at all. What we aren't generally told at school, university or the media is the big holes in the current paradigm. Theories are constantly being adjusted to make them fit it, and still some discrepancies are massive. Cosmology is not all tied up with a mathematical theory that takes us back to the origin of time. The standard model explains everything that we've found (just about), but we know that it can't be the full story. Einstein's general relativity doesn't explain gravitation in a way that talks to the other fundamental forces, but we know that it would have to if we were going to understand fully the Big Band and black holes. The 'chance' element of quantum mechanics is bizarre and various theories have been put forward, at least some of which are essentially unfalsifiable (e.g. the existence of huge numbers of parallel universes with which we can't necessarily interact).
Moreover, to explain the way the universe is today we have to add in vast amounts of dark matter and dark energy, such that they make up around 95% of the universe, but we don't know what it comprises. Part of the solution could be a fifth fundamental force (as was talked about even just a few days ago on the BBC website at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/56643677). There is a number in gereral relativity (one of the best verified theories ever), the cosmological constant, which could also help, but the predicted value is out by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
(the observed value would have to be multiplied by that to get it to match the theory), one of the biggest and most enduring disrepancies in all science (as discussed yet again in the March 2021 edition of Physics World, the trade journal for UK physicists).
The word on the physics street which is being espoused by many is that physics is creaking at the seams. There are equally huge problems in other areas of science, including biological evolution. To sort all of this out it seems that we shall have to enter into a new paradigm. Perhaps things will look very different again with possibly more particles and forces, explained in a different scientific philosophy. Maybe our current idea of a Big Bang will be laughed at in 100 years' time. For now, though, most scientists continue to work within the current creaking paradigm, where they feel necessary going down routes of unfalsifiable and bizarre suggestions to make things fit. Is this really science? Where does it become science fiction? That is a question which has been raised and debated before, and is really a moot point. If the only explanations available for some phenomena at the moment are not falsifiable, does that mean that they can't be discussed by scientists? Opinions vary on that, but it seems unfair to limit what people can think about.
So, yes, I think that most scientists do real science, working within their paradigm, sometimes moving outside the border of standard scientific method, but for honest reasons. Admittedly, some are motivated by religious or atheistic convictions to an extent that leads to bias in their interpretation. How, though, can anyone, in such a scenario, say that science definitively explains so much that we should discard the notion of God? The more we know, the more we realize how little science really explains. Holes in our understanding will be identified, theories modified and paradigms will shift - but how life, the universe and everything got here and the Creator who brought it about will never change.
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