There's a "meme" going around that's just dead wrong, and mighty hard to squash. Today, it rears its head in the New York Times, that journalistic pick-up joint for uncritical liberal readers in search of erroneous memes to confirm their prejudices:
"I have no need for that hypothesis," Pierre-Simon Laplace famously responded when asked where God fit into his new astronomical theory... The theory didn't explain where the solar system came from. But Laplace also had an answer. The planets, he proposed, had congealed from a swirling cloud of gas and dust surrounding the sun.
O.K., so where did the sun and the mother cloud come from? And what set the whole thing revolving?
By now, scientists think they have even those answers, and they do not involve the intervention of any Great Engineer. The whole point of science for the last few hundred years has been to explain everything in terms of a physical process, something that can be described by equations.
The quest, however, is far from done. God, for those who want to use that term, can be invoked to account for phenomena that have not yet yielded to the scientific method.
The idea is somehow that "God" or "miracle" exists mainly to allow primitive sorts to explain that which has not yet been explained by science. This is utter balderdash.
In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. Theists believe Science is simply discovering what God has done or is still doing. As Paul the Apostle put it, "In Him we live and move and have our being." If God created the universe, how could science, as the study of it's behavior, be separate from that? Such views imply a profound ignorance of traditional theism.
Newton, referenced in the article, didn't start searching for the laws of planetary motion because he wished to eliminate the need for God -- indeed, he felt he was trying to find the way the "Great Engineer" constructed (that is what engineers do, after all) the machine in question. To the contrary, his quest was only made possible by his belief in a created, orderly universe guided by God-given law: his religion spurred and enabled his scientific endeavours.
Further, when he discovered laws regulating planetary motion, Newton didn't conclude: "Ooops! There goes God!" Instead, he felt he'd uncovered the mechanism by which God had ordered the universe. Knowledge of, and belief in God didn't "retreat" with the progress of science. Instead, it advanced. Even today reasonable theists view each new discovery in the search for truth as an unveiling another aspect of its author and creator.
Oh, he's just a theist trying to rework his religion to a modern view.
Don't be silly. There's nothing new in the belief that knowing the mechanism doesn't deny God. Look at the words of Jesus:
Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them.
Is Jesus here trying to say that we don't understand the mechanism by which ravens are fed? That, since he says "God" feeds them, they must be sustained by some mysterious means?
Of course not! Even primitive people can watch them pick grain off the ground and eat insects or carrion. There's nothing unusual (i.e. "miraculous") about these actions. Yet Jesus says: "God feeds them", and credits God with their sustainence, even though the mechanism is obvious.
And what about thanking God for food? Is the theist ignorant of gardens, farms, feedlots, restaurants, waitresses, grocery stores, and stoves? That ignoramous -- he thinks God gave him his supper! What an maroon -- we all know food grows in the ground!
Knowing the mechanism by which things occur has never precluded God in theism. Since God is creator of these laws, there is not, and simply cannot be, any conflict. None, whatsoever. Sceptics who employ this straw man argument do so out of profound ignorance of theistic traditions.
Well, what about miracles?
Yes, indeed, in contrast to deists, theists do believe miracles will happen on occassion.
A miracle is a temporary suspension or violation of the normal working of things. Please note that the definition itself demands and understanding of the "normal working of things" -- the laws of physics.
Miracles, by definition, are not the kind of phenomena which will show up in a lab. They're not repeatable: if there were, they wouldn't be "miraculous". They don't give the theistic scientist some excuse to lay down his calculator and just say, as the cartoon quips, "Then a miracle occurs". He is still concerned about the rules, and isn't going to throw in the towel because he acknowleges a God who sets up rules could also hypothetically suspend them.
The fact that a significant portion of the scientific community today are theists is evidence of this. This is only suprising to those who have a deep ignorance of, or antipathy towards, theism.
But I guess we shouldn't expect a major tenant of theistic scientific pursuit to show up in a New York Times article about, I don't know... God and Science?