Come for a free dinner and guest speaker

Has Scientific Progress Left God Behind?

Sam Detmer - Sam is a fifth-year PhD student at MIT in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Research focus - the development of more robust and deliverable siRNA and mRNA therapeutics. Sam received a Bachelors (in Chemistry and Physics) and Masters (in Physics) from Harvard before starting his PhD at MIT.
 

Before the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, belief in God provided a convenient explanation for many phenomena in the natural world. Today this no longer seems to be necessary. Evolution explains the formation of biological organisms, computational advances provide insight into the workings of the human mind, and physics explains a vast array of processes from chemical reactions to galaxy formation. Is belief in God just a relic of an antiquated system for explaining the world? Has scientific progress left God behind?

Werner Heisenberg, who gave his name to the famous uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics, would beg to disagree. He claimed, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

In this talk, we will explore Heisenberg’s claim through the eyes of an MIT student. Do the discoveries of modern science make God obsolete? Come to hear how one young scientist currently weighs the evidence by grappling with the overlapping claims of science and faith.