Will God mess around with our scientific experiments?

Lawrence Krauss approvingly quotes Jack Haldane as saying that his scientific practice is atheistic, because he “assume[s] that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its [an experiment's] course.” Hence, according to Krauss, “science is by necessity an atheistic discipline.” Indeed, “one cannot proceed with the process of scientific discovery if one assumes a ‘god, angel, or devil’ will interfere with one’s experiments. God is, of necessity, irrelevant in science.”

Krauss admits that moving from “atheism of science” to “general atheism” is a “leap” and “not unimpeachable.” Yet is is “certainly rational.”

But I cannot see how God’s absence in a scientific experiment lends any credence to a general atheism. First, there are no good reasons to think that God would interfere with scientific experiments. I am aware of only one case where anyone has argued to the contrary: Richard Swinburne thinks God would not respond to studies or experiments designed to test the effects of prayer. But of course these investigations do take theological categories into account.

The second, and to me more significant reason to reject Krauss’s assertions is that they mean almost every activity justifies general atheism, including several religious activities. For example, probably no culinary arts schools operate under the assumption that God will interfere with culinary activity (although such assumptions might make television shows such as Iron Chef even more mesmerizing than they already are). Indeed, assumptions of divine interference would make cookbooks quite useless.

Religious charity operates under the assumption that, for example, God will not strike airplane pilots dead while flying shipments of food. And a host of other assumptions about God’s noninterference.

Perhaps Krauss’ argument reduces to an argument from the regularity of nature. If God exists, we’d expect nothing to make very much sense, or work very well. But that seems not only to lack justification, but to be contrary to what many theologians think theism entails.

Krauss then goes in another direction, without realizing it, talking about how various miracle claims, which may vary in doctrinal significance, are contary to specific scientific assumptions and beliefs. But it seems to me that even if it is the case that Jesus was born from a virgin, indeed miraculously, this would change zero things about medical practice. But then I’m not a doctor.