Secular Theology

The Religious Foundation of Modern Science

It was from the intellectual ferment brought about by the merging of Greek philosophy and Judeo-Islamic-Christian thought that modern science emerged with its unidirection linear time (rather than cyclic), its insistence of nature's rationality, and its emphasis on mathematical principles.  All the early scientists such as Newton were religious in one way or another. . . . In the ensuing 300 years, the theological dimension of science has faded.  People take for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. 

The underlying order in nature--the laws of physics--is simply accepted as given, as brute fact.  Nobody asks where the laws come from--at least they don't in polite company.  However, even the most atheistic science accepts as an act of faith (i.e. an assumption) the existence of a law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us.  So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.  [Paul Davies, "Design in Physics and Cosmology," in God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science, ed. Neil A. Manson (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 148.]