When the NASA New Horizons pictures of Pluto were recently published, many people online reacted with declarations of: “I LOVE SCIENCE!” and of how amazing, awe-inspiring, and praiseworthy science is. There is nothing inherently wrong about appreciating science, loving it even. But, do people realize that science did not create Pluto? That science has nothing to do with the existence of Pluto?

You might think that this phenomenon of people declaring their love of science has nothing to do with shirk and is absolutely harmless. And in many cases, I would agree. But in our cultural circumstance, where people are increasingly leaving religion, becoming agnostic and atheist, and generally denying the relevance and power of God, these statements are not without a deeper significance.

The universal human response upon seeing the sublime wonders of nature is to be in awe, to be dumbfounded with the splendor that is the natural world. Also, universally it is human to feel that someone, some agent, is responsible for this splendor — that it did not just come from nothing, that it didn’t just create itself — and then to praise and appreciate that agent. For those who do not believe in God, these involuntary sentiments have to be directed somewhere. So people divert their declarations of adoration to science or “Mother Nature,” etc. Obviously, these people do not believe that there is an actual entity or deity of Mother Nature. And they do not and could not believe that science is responsible for the creation or preservation of natural phenomena (science does not have agency or will, after all). So in what sense should the sight of Pluto elicit that kind of glee, joy, adoration, excitement, and love toward a man-made academic discipline? Or put another way, if people show this much love and appreciation toward science for its ability to produce images of or to discover details about the natural world, then what about the Creator of those details and the objects of those images?