I cannot understand how Physics Today could have published Robert Griffiths’ review (Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 61 2 2008 65 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2883915 February 2008, page 65 ) of Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship by John Polkinghorne. Science education in the US is still under attack by those who feel that their interpretation of the Bible is an equally valid source of knowledge as the scientific work of generations of biologists. Therefore, it is a disgrace for any physics journal to publish a review that equates the methods of theology with those of science and to give credence to a book that argues the same point.
The methods of science and theology are not similar, nor is their validity. Who has ever designed an aircraft that flew on the basis of theological principles? Who has ever turned on a light that was powered on the basis of theological principles? Who has ever cured a child of a raging bacterial infection on the basis of theological principles? Or is Physics Today next going to publish descriptions of miracles?
Theology and faith can guide believers’ actions or provide emotional comfort, but they can never, as science can, be a method for deciding what is real or true. Although in a few fields, like cosmology and particle physics, some scientists have abandoned the scientific method for speculations not grounded in or testable by observation, the truth of that method continues to be validated every day by the efficacy of the technologies that are based on it.
In contrast, the tenets of theology are entirely grounded in the conflicting authorities of the sacred texts and priesthoods of the world’s many different religions. Disputes as to which religion is true can never be resolved—although there continue to be attempts to do so by force. To argue, as Polkinghorne and Griffiths do, that there is no real difference between science and theology is to help pave the shortest route to a new Dark Age.
