Whether an ultimate creator as envisaged by religion exists or not is a question that science can address

Overlapping magisteria (Image: Richard Wilkinson)

Read more: “The God issue: New science of religion“

THE party line among scientists – believers and non-believers alike – is that science and religion are what Stephen Jay Gould called “non-overlapping magisteria”. In 1998 the US National Academy of Sciences issued a statement asserting “Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”

Yet according to a survey the same year, 93 per cent of the members of the academy do not believe in a personal god.

Since about the same percentage of all US citizens say they do believe in a personal god, it makes one wonder what, if not their science, leads the elite of US scientists to differ so dramatically from the general population.

A majority of scientists at all levels do not believe in any god. Yet most are unwilling to challenge the religious beliefs of others. I am a physicist who, along with others dubbed the New Atheists, is willing to challenge religious belief. The gods worshipped by billions either exist or they do not. And those gods, if they exist, must have observable consequences. Thus, the question of their existence is a legitimate scientific issue that has profound import to humanity.

“The gods worshipped by billions either exist, or they do not; if they exist they must have observable consequences”

We can consider the existence of God to be a scientific hypothesis and look for the empirical evidence that would follow. Many of the attributes associated with the Judaic-Christian-Islamic God have specific consequences that can be tested empirically. Such …