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:

Scientists Who Believe in God

In this short interview (<4 min) Dr Francis Collins (Director, National Human Genome Research Institute) explains why he believes in a personal God and how his faith is compatible with science. For a brief article about Dr. Francis Collin's road to faith, see Why this scientist believes in God.

Given the apparent "rift" between science and faith in God in our modern world, it is perhaps surprising to learn that many famous scientists of the past had a deep faith in God! Many of today's scientists do too although you may not often hear about them. And like believing scientists before them (see a partial list below), they don't see a conflict between Christianity and science. Dr. Collins in the youtube video above is one example.

This topic is one I hope to visit time and again, but today I simply want to list a few scientists whom you may have heard of who were devout Christians:

1. Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543): Polish astronomer who put forward the first mathematically based system of planets going around the sun.
2. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627): Philosopher known for establishing the scientific method of inquiry based on experimentation and inductive reasoning.
3. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630): Brilliant mathematician and astronomer. He did early work on light, and established the laws of planetary motion about the sun.
4. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): Galileo's troubles with the established church are famous, but his problem was with the institutionalized church, not Christianity. His controversial work on the solar system was published in 1633.
5. Rene Descartes (1596-1650): French mathematician, scientist and philosopher who has been called the father of modern philosophy.
6. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662): French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and philosopher.
7. Isaac Newton (1642-1727): In optics, mechanics, and mathematics, Newton was a figure of undisputed genius and innovation.
8. Robert Boyle (1791-1867): One of the founders and key early members of the Royal Society, Boyle gave his name to "Boyle's Law" for gases, and also wrote an important work on chemistry.
9. Michael Faraday (1791-1867): The son of a blacksmith who became one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. His work on electricity and magnetism not only revolutionized physics, but led to much of our lifestyles today, which depends on them (including computers and telephone lines and, so, web sites).
10. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884): The first to lay the mathematical foundations of genetics, in what came to be called "Mendelianism".
11. William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907): Kelvin was foremost among the small group of British scientists who helped to lay the foundations of modern physics.

LIFE and death

The immortality of the soul is something of such vital importance to us, affecting us so deeply, that one must have lost all feeling not to care about knowing the facts of the matter"  Blaise Pascal

Me in the cockpit of a Piper Pawnee C, which I flew during
the summer of 1980 to apply pesticides to crops and pastures
near Scotia, Nebraska where I grew up.

My tension was rising as I powered my Piper Pawnee airplane down the short runway. I had been crop dusting all summer at my small-town airport but somehow this takeoff seemed different. The plane was fully loaded, sluggish, and had already passed the "point of no return" (where the airplane was moving too fast to safely stop even if I throttled back and applied brakes). The plane didn't seem to want to lift off, and the end of the runway was rapidly approaching. Immediately beyond was a county road with ditches on both sides and a barbed wire fence and tall corn field just beyond that. I knew the airplane wouldn't fare too well if I couldn't lift off by the time I got there, but worse, I knew I wouldn't fare too well either. By the time I got to the end of the runway the plane was still on the ground.That was not how I had planned for that day to go.

Science and Christianity

To become a Christian, do you need to throw away your mind & ignore the findings of science? Au contraire!

 
One of my five (yes, five!) majors as an undergraduate was biology. As a biology student who was also a Christian, I struggled with how to reconcile the theory of evolution with my faith. I knew Christians who felt strongly that evolution was contrary to Christianity, but in biology, evolution was the foundation upon which classes were taught. I wanted to stay true to my faith but was unsure how to reconcile this apparent contradiction. The symbols in the picture in this post testify to the hostility between some who hold these “opposing viewpoints”, and represent a sort of warfare mentality of the relationship of science to faith.

For me, probably the thing that bothered me most was the link, at least in my mind, between evolutionary science and naturalism, a concept adopted by many atheists. Naturalism denies the existence of God and teaches that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the world and that nothing exists beyond the natural world; life is solely the product of random forces guided by no one (i.e., accidental). I read articles explaining the “evolutionary basis for morality” and “religion as a natural phenomenon”. In a nutshell, they argued that morality and belief in God exists simply because they helped our ancestors adapt to their environments and survive, and not because they are true. In effect, the things our brain tells us about God, morality, and even love and beauty are not real, but merely a set of chemical reactions which only have the purpose of passing on our genetic code (i.e., natural selection).

These assumptions seem reasonable at face value, which only intensified my quandary as an undergraduate biology student who was also a Christian.

My journey on this road was long, but for the sake of brevity I will summarize my view by citing from “The Reason for God” by Tim Keller, who addressed this topic as well as any I have ever heard. Here is a synopsis of his argument:

If we can't trust our brains to tell us the truth about God, as naturalism suggests, then why should we trust our brains in any area, including to tell us the truth about any scientific theory (including evolution)? For that matter, how certain can we be in our ability to apply reason to anything at all? Indeed, reason itself can have no power if it is only a product of natural selection. Charles Darwin himself saw this major vulnerability, writing “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” (1). If our brains are products of random, unguided evolution, then it is as likely we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world (2). It is disingenuous for naturalists to apply the scalpel of their skepticism to what our minds tell us about God, but not to what our minds tell us about naturalism itself. Conversely, if we believe God exists, then our view of the universe gives us a basis for believing that cognitive faculties work, since God could make us able to form true beliefs and knowledge. Also, if God exists, our intuitions about the meaningfulness of beauty and love are to be expected. If you don't believe in God then these things are profoundly inexplicable. When evolution is turned into an All-encompassing Theory explaining absolutely everything we believe, feel, and do as the product of random forces through natural selection, then we are not in the arena of science, but of philosophy, and it has insurmountable difficulties as a worldview.

You may be wondering what my position is on this topic after all my wrestling. I believe that scientific thought can be compatible with religious belief, which is important since I am a scientist! Many Christians do not believe the theory of evolution; after all, it is only theory. But many Christians do accept evolutionary theory, although in the sense that God created life with purpose and evolutionary processes do exist. Since Christians have differing viewpoints on evolutionary theory, skeptical inquirers do not need to accept one of these positions in order to embrace the Christian faith. Rather they should concentrate on and weigh the central claims of Christianity such as the person of Christ and the resurrection.

There is much more to say about this but I have already gone long. As always, I am interested in your thoughts on this, whether you agree or disagree. Please feel free to share your thoughtful comments!

(1) Charles Darwin, Letter to W. Graham, 1881, The life and letters of Charles Darwin: including an autobiographical chapter;  (2) Alvin Plantinga, "Is Naturalism Irrational?" in Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 218.