Science and Ignorance

Do any of you live near New York? Perhaps you saw that in last Sunday’s Times (August 12th.) Book Review the editor remarked that Christopher Hutchins had written a book entitled God Is not Great, which can only deny the existence of God-as-we-know-Him (it was third in the NON-FICTION table!)

But, strange to relate, in a review on page 10 Hutchins himself quotes a fictitious character saying “How can I possibly prove it doesn’t exist?”
This character, a mere schoolgirl, has grasped the essential principle of science: one cannot prove any theory about the real world to be true. You can only make a conjecture, and test to see whether it is affirmed or refuted. And if the result is FALSE, then you admit that the theory has been disproved, and you look for a better conjecture.

Hutchins quotes the girl just as if he found her rhetorical question well-considered – as indeed it is. But if he accepts her reasoning, how can he claim to have proved that God, or the unicorn, or the Loch Ness Monster, does not exist?

But, you will surely say, some truths are self-evident! They are indeed: for instance, if you have a six-faced die that comes up with a 6 just one-sixth of the time, then the odds against throwing a 6 twice in succession must be 35 to 1. Again, Galileo did not drop a musket ball and a cannon ball from the Leaning Tower, he said to himself, “What would happen if I tied the two balls together; would the musket ball slow the cannon ball down, or would the combined mass fall even faster? Reductio ad absurdum!”

Thus a theory that governs both the real world and the ideal world -- one which can be both worked out mentally and applied experimentally -- is indeed true beyond contradiction; you may say that you don’t understand it, but only the determined unbelievers (the bigots) can deny such a theory.