Physics and Metaphysics are Entangled!

I have long felt that there is no common ground between science and religion. This idea is known as Non-Overlapping Magisteria. NOMA makes sense, because:

1. science specifically precludes non-physical phenomena (such as souls or free will); and
2. many questions previously answered by religion (such as the structure of the cosmos) have been shown to be utterly mistaken. This trend is known as God of the Gaps.

The world-view of keeping science to itself and religion to itself is very effective, because you don't get science telling you there is no God (it doesn't) and you don't get scripture telling you science is wrong (it isn't).

More recently I have been reading a series of famous historic papers on Quantum Mechanics, most of whose authors received the Nobel prize in physics. And there is an odd thing in these papers: not only do they undermine classic Newtonian physics, but they also challenge the philosophy of science. The foundational ideas of science, such as causation and objectivity are not as certain in the Quantum and Relativistic universe as they were in Newton’s universe.

This re-examination of the philosophy of science has had many unexpected twists and turns; it turns out that modern science says a great deal about religious ideas.

Somewhat ironically, Newton himself was a deeply religious man – he wrote more about theology than science – who saw a deep connection between science and religion. More than anything else, his motivation to understand natural philosophy was religious:

When I wrote [Principia Mathematica], I had an eye upon such principles as might work with [convincing] men [of] the belief of a Deity and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.

This is the first in a series of posts about the mutually reinforcing nature of science and religion.