catchusthelittlefoxes

[catchusthelittlefoxes]

It’s okay to pray for your lab

I have been afraid for a long time of even remotely thinking about praying for the experiments I work on because it seems like telling God about what I hope will result from my work will interfere somehow with the cause-and-effect underlying the scientific method. Although on further thought, I know that praying for experiments probably has about as much of an effect as praying that my team wins the Superbowl, I still need to work out why it’s okay to pray in the lab.

From a skeptic’s standpoint, strictly excluding God from “interfering” in the scientific method makes total sense. If your experiment succeeds when you get Result A and fails when you get Result B, you’re going to pray for Result A. You start the experiment, say a quick prayer that it works, go get some coffee, and when you come back, it’s produced Result A. The quandary now is knowing whether the experiment produced Result A because of a miracle of God or because that’s what was going to happen anyway. For a moment, you consider adding “God, the Creator of All Things” in the acknowledgements section of the paper you’re planning to publish, but your imperial post-Enlightenment Western scientific training takes over and you wonder, “What if I repeat the experiment, but don’t pray this time?” You are gripped with sudden horror at needing to now account for the influence of the Holy Ghost as a variable in your lab setup and briefly wonder what kind of error bars it would need.

For the skeptical non-believer the scenario above is an accurate representation of what goes on in the mind of a person of faith who does science. It is easy to see why the Catholic scientist would want to leave God outside the laboratory door–for the sake of upholding the validity of their scientific results.

As a Catholic, I don’t mind being counter-cultural, unpopular in the eyes of the world. In fact, it’s my call to embrace a life which goes against the tide. However, as a scientist, my reputation as a producer of valid and verifiable experimental results is what allows me to pursue my career. Praying, “Dear God, let my experiment go well today,” is, at least on the surface, a conflict of interest.

For the Catholic scientist to resolve this conflict, there has to be a settling of this divine quantum mechanics of how God interacts with creation. What I believe is that God ultimately wishes for us to understand his creation and how he has designed it to work, therefore has no reason to interfere, even if we ask.

Each decision we make, each experiment we design, whether we are the direct observer or not, is an extension of our free will. Like a quarterback in the Superbowl, God has each of that player’s hairs counted, but it is the individual’s skill and daring that decides the outcome of the game.

But are there “angels in the outfield”? If there was a lot riding on an experiment and its outcome, would that make it more probable God would interfere? Imagine, for example, a multi-million dollar particle physics experiment, the outcome of which determines if a struggling research facility gets support for another year to do ground-breaking research or is shut down for good. In such a dramatic situation, where human understanding of the building blocks of matter potentially hangs in the balance, there’s a lot of room for the Catholic scientist to rise to the occasion. Acting with prudence, perseverance, and fortitude, she can work to the best of her abilities, to make sure the experiment works the way it was designed. This is part of her vocation, to make her diligent work an offering to God, regardless of the success of earthly things. But part of her relationship with God is to bring all things to Him in prayer, including this experiment. She finds herself hesitating, but why?

There is an attitude towards work in other Catholic vocations which science should adopt, that even when the person loves as much as they can, and say, “Here must be the limit of what I can do,” there is there is always room for grace. The capacity to love, whether as missionary, teacher, parent, is made infinite in God. I must believe there is also room for grace in the laboratory, not a (holy) ghost in the machine, but the creative spirit of God moving in the heart of the scientist.

This is what gives me reason to pray when I am in the lab. I’d rather God not interfere with my lab setup (unless I’m about to touch a high voltage wire and also step into a puddle of water–then, by all means, please, let my guardian angel step in), but I do want him moving through my heart and mind and the hearts and minds of my peers, to inspire us and make us open to moments of grace, whether it's acting on the impulse to double-check that config file before running a long simulation or asking one more question of that taciturn but knowledgeable colleague. A scientist is open by nature to serendipitous discoveries, to mistakes that turn into "Eureka!" moments. Therefore, rather than shutting the creator Spiritus out of the lab, the Catholic scientist should recognize the movements of the Holy Spirit as the archetype of the scientific serendipity that leads to discovery. The Holy Spirit works with the scientist's experimental nature, with her desire to measure and understand and then marvel at the created world.

When I pray for my co-workers, I am praying for them first as one neighbor for another, for their well-being, their families, and the personal struggles they share with me. Beyond sharing with God what they share with me, I pray for them as my co-workers. I pray that we can work together in harmony, with wisdom in our decision-making, courage to pursue new ideas and humility to accept criticism. I pray for these things because we were created with curiosity in our hearts, a shared desire to understand the world we in habit and how it works, and we need God’s grace to rise above insecurity, arrogance, and pride in order to find what He is showing us.

Every time we find a new exoplanet, or create a quark-gluon plasma, we celebrate a little victory, defying the ignorance of our broken world and the Devil who wants nothing more than for us to remain in the disastrous ruins of Babel. We need God’s grace to work together (and not only in the sciences) to bring about the kingdom and restore our relationship with the Creator who entrusted us with his creation. As any Catholic does, we act as witnesses to God’s love and mercy in our lives; as Catholic scientists, we have an additional tool, the shared vista with our co-workers of the wonder and mystery of creation. We need to pray for our labs, that God works in us to open our eyes to what He has made, that he “prosper the work of our hands.”