Has Science Disproved God?

"Science and religion cannot be reconciled.”
                                                             Peter Atkins

“All my studies in science… have confirmed my faith.”
                                                             Sir Ghillean Prance FRS

Wearing my new glasses!

Recently I picked up a pair of glasses for distance viewing, which for me is the first time ever. I was amazed at how sharp my vision was. The definition and clarity in road signs, trees, and buildings was astounding! It literally took me back almost 35 years to when my vision was much better!

Origins of Complex Life

I began to think about the different explanations for the existence of something as complex and functional as the human eye. A theist (one who believes in a deity) would say the eye was designed and created by God, while an atheist would say the eye emerged automatically out of matter through a mindless, unguided process. As I marveled at the sharpness of my vision, I couldn’t help but wonder whether atheism really requires more faith than theism (1). Why, if something as marvelous as vision simply emerged from the primordial soup, would vision be so sharp? Why, for example, wouldn’t it be sufficient for the eye to evolve just to the point of my present vision without glasses, which is still overall quite functional? (2) This question is similar to, although not as potentially damning as what has become known as Darwin’s Doubt. Darwin wrote:  ‘With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.’

 Mathematicians have calculated that  it is highly improbable that the eye could have evolved by numerous small mutational changes since the available time was simply not available. Even so-called new atheist Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion” stated: ‘You don’t need to be a mathematician or a physicist to calculate that an eye…would take from here to infinity to self-assemble by sheer higgledy-piggledy luck.’ Dawkins’ explanation, in a nutshell, is that natural selection is a law-like process that finds a faster pathway through the space of possibilities, which will increase the probabilities to acceptable levels over geological time. There isn’t space in this post to delve into the nuts and bolts of his explanation, but Oxford mathematician Dr. John Lennox dissects it brilliantly and concludes that Dawkins’ explanation turns out to be a guided process after all (3).

Science has Disproved God?

The new atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins also claim that science has eliminated the justification for believing in God. As a scientist who believes in God, I resoundingly reject that claim. A poll published in Nature in the mid-1990’s revealed that about 40% of all scientists believe both in a God who answers prayer and in immortality (4). There have also been and are some very prominent scientists who do believe in God – Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project, Professor Bill Phillips, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997, and others (5). The scientist Sir John Houghton FRS wrote: ‘Our science is God’s science. He holds the responsibility for the whole scientific story… (6) This reflects the belief of many scientists.

Even the late Stephen Jay Gould, who was not a believer in God, wrote: ‘Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs – and equally compatible with atheism.’ Gould also said that ‘science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God’s possible existence. We neither affirm it nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists’ (7). Prominent atheist Thomas Nagel goes even farther, criticizing the new atheists by saying their conception of nature, which is unable to account for mind-related features such as consciousness, meaning, and value, flies in the face of common sense and is almost certainly false (8).

War of the Worldviews

In his book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (9), Dr. John Lennox points out that, in light of some of the points made above, the real conflict isn’t between science and God at all. If that were true, the vast majority of scientists would be atheists, which simply isn’t so. No, the real conflict is between two opposing worldviews:  theism and naturalism. Naturalism is opposed to supernaturalism, and naturalism insists there can be no incursion into nature from outside of nature (such as God, angels, etc.). Therefore, naturalists have no other option than to insist that matter and energy must have the potential to organize themselves in such a way that eventually something as complex as the eye, or the human mind with its inherent hunger for meaning and purpose, will emerge.

Dr. Lennox concludes his book by noting that all of us must choose essentially between one of two presuppositions that will form the basis of our worldview. He wrote:  ‘Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator.’

As I drove into my driveway after picking up my glasses, I got out of the car and looked up into the starry sky. The ‘restored’ clarity of my vision truly enhanced the beauty of the moon and stars in the night sky. As I stood there I thought of the Psalmists words: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (10). And I thanked God that he gave me the ability to see with my eyes and comprehend with my mind even just a small glimpse of his glory!

Footnotes:

(1) There is actually an astounding amount of evidence, historical and otherwise, to support the claims of Christianity. See the book The Case for Christ, by Lee Stobel.

(2) Even evolution to that point would be quite remarkable!

(3) God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Chapter 10: The Monkey Machine. 2009, Lion Books, Oxford, UK.

(4) Survey results reported in Nature, 3 April 1997, 386:435-6. Note that believing in a God who answers prayer and in immortality is much more specific than simply believing in some kind of divine being.

(5) See my earlier post: Scientists Who Believe in God.

(6) He went on to say: ‘The remarkable order, consistency, reliability and fascinating complexity found in the scientific description of the universe are reflections of the order, consistency, reliability and complexity of God’s activity (The Search for God – Can Science Help?, Oxford, Lion, 1995, p. 59). Houghton is the former Director of the British Meteorological Office, co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Director of the John Ray Initiative on the Environment.

(7) As quoted in God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, 2009, p. 92 and 93. Original source: Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge. Scientific American 267, no. 1, 1992, 118-121.

(8) Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel. 2012, Oxford.

(9) Much of the material in this blog post is from this book by Dr. Lennox.

(10) The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.  Psalm 19:1-4