Members of the Northwestern community debated the scientific possibility of miracles and other contested spiritual issues Wednesday during the Veritas Forum, an annual event meant to encourage discussion about both religious and secular answers to difficult philosophical questions.
The crowd present for the forum packed Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.
The discussion, entitled “Faith & Science: Friends or Foes?” was just one installment of a program that began at Harvard University in 1992 and now holds forums at universities across the nation. For NU, this year’s event focused on whether religious beliefs could be reconciled with modern scientific thought.
“The project of trying to disprove and discount faith has been fully pursued by philosophy and science throughout the years, and the debate is still going on,” said Laurie Zoloth, a professor of religion at NU and the event moderator. “What is true? How do we know? What do we mean by that?”
Although originally billed as a discussion between Axel Mueller, a senior lecturer of philosophy at NU, and Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the structure of the forum changed significantly when Mueller was called away on a family emergency.
While Hutchinson, a practicing Christian, argued for coexistence between science and religious faith, the NU Secular Student Alliance filled Mueller’s place and submitted questions directly to the moderator.
“Obviously we would have loved to have Dr. Mueller present, but given the circumstances it was as good as we could have expected,” said McCormick senior Jens Notstad, an organizer of the event and member of Church of the Redeemer at Northwestern.
In his presentation, Hutchinson pointed to the distinction between science and “scientism,” which he defined as the idea that real truth could only be determined through purely scientific means.
Hutchinson said some disciplines, such as history, could not be quantified or repeated in a laboratory, and therefore were not scientific fields or subject to “scientism.”
“If we recognize that science has inherent limitations of scope, that allows us to affirm the coherent approach that scientific and non-scientific descriptions can be simultaneously valid,” Hutchinson said.
He concluded his presentation by introducing a Christian understanding of reality, which he said was neither scientific nor anti-scientific.
“We believe that both the deepest reality and highest moral authority are found in loving relationships,” Hutchinson said. “We believe the relationship exists because a god, who is love, willed it and loves it.”
The SSA, which acted as the secular counterweight in the discussion, raised a number of questions about Hutchinson’s presentation, many of them having to do with conflicts between accepted scientific thought, such as the theory of evolution by natural selection and religious dogma.
Although Hutchinson said he accepted theories such as natural selection, he did not shy away from questions concerning miracles and asserted that science was unable to determine whether miracles could happen. He said science was meant to examine natural laws and “is powerless to determine” conclusions about events in which those laws may have been suspended.
Weinberg sophomore Michael Lamble, co-chair of publicity for SSA, disagreed with Hutchinson, saying he had no evidence for a god that was capable of intervening with natural laws, and therefore could not prove his claim. This demand for evidence formed the main part of the SSA’s questions throughout the night.
“We want people to look at their beliefs, challenge them, put them through the crucible of academic inquiry and go through the other side looking at them,” Lamble said. “We have evidence; he has ‘God says so.'”
Despite his disagreements with Hutchinson, Lamble said he was happy for the opportunity to participate in the Veritas Forum, which he said opened up discussion for those on all sides of the issue.
Notstad said the Veritas Forum is the only event of its size during Spring Quarter, but follow-up discussions and firesides will continue during the next few weeks.
