Traditional Theology May Be Both Wrong and Right

Nobel laureate Charles Townes, who this past week received the Templeton Prize for contributions to the advancement of science and religion, implies in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ($) that, while traditional theology may turn out to be wrong, it can still be enormously useful, in the same way that classical physics is still useful in an age of quantum mechanics:

… Classical mechanics was in principle quite wrong. But, it was a good approximation, explaining very accurately the motions of everything much larger
than atoms, such as planets, balls, or ourselves. We still teach and use
classical mechanics. It’s a very good approximation to reality and much simpler
to understand than quantum mechanics, even though philosophically incorrect.

As we understand more, will our views in science and also in
religion be revolutionized as science already has been by quantum mechanics? My
guess is yes. We must be open-minded and without completely frozen ideas in
either science or religion.

But even with future changes, I also guess that,
like classical mechanics, our present understanding may be a good and useful
approximation even though new and deeper views may be revolutionary.

Overall, I believe we must try hard to understand both how our
universe works and what is its meaning as well as we can, and for now, live by
our best understanding. I hope very much that humans will in the future
understand more and more deeply, which can change our views.

And, just as
classical mechanics still works well, I expect our present ideas and principles
will still have a useful and functional validity.

(Paragraphing edited.)