“I believe in science not God.”
If I had a coin for every time I heard someone say that then I'd probably have four...five...coins...anyway...
Is it really true that belief in God and science conflict?
There are two questions we have to deal with in science when it comes to considering whether
the existence of God is plausible.
The first is creation, essentially how did the universe come to exist in the first place?
We have two options here: either the universe is infinite - it has always existed without
a beginning - or it is finite - it came into existence at a certain point.
If the universe is infinite it does not require a creator because it was always there.
This theory was prevalent in the ancient world, but since the 1960s the scientific world has
found strong evidence that the universe had a beginning, what we call the Big Bang.
Now, if the universe is finite, if it had a beginning, it would require something beyond
the universe to create it.
The logic is simple.
Everything in the universe is based on cause and effect and therefore if the universe began,
it is the effect, and therefore must have had a cause.
Now what would this cause look like?
Well it follows logic that since this cause is outside of the universe, and thus outside
of space, it would have to be spaceless and immaterial.
Since it is outside of the universe, and thus outside of time, it would have to be timeless.
And in order to cause the universe to exist it would need to have unfathomable power.
A timeless, spaceless, immensely powerful force - does this sound like something contradictory
to the monotheistic concept of an infinite God?
Today it is the atheists who have the greater burden of proof, not the monotheists.
The monotheistic position does not contradict science if the universe is finite.
So what do the atheists say now with regard to the creation of the universe?
Well the best idea they have come up with is to posit that it is possible for “something
to come from nothing”, as argued in Lawrence Krauss’s book, “A Universe from Nothing”.
He argues that just because the universe had a beginning, it does not necessarily have
to require a cause.
David Albert, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the M.A. Program in The Philosophical
Foundations of Physics at Columbia University reviewed Krauss’s book and destroyed the
basis of the argument.
What Krauss described as “nothing” (quantum fluctuations), Albert explained, was something.
And therefore the whole argument that the universe came from nothing did not stand.
Secondly :
How is it that the universe is so finely tuned for life and so complex in its nature?
We also have two options here.
Either it all happened by accident, or it was designed by an intelligent designer.
The unbelievable intricacy, beauty and constants that permit the universe and life to exist
seems to suggest to us that you need a designer.
To put the 19th century theologian William Paley’s example in modern terms - imagine
you were to stumble on an iphone in the desert, you would recognise that its complex nature
must have been designed by someone.
To suggest thatit came into its current form in a random process which was not guided by
an intelligent designer would be absurd.
So how much more so should we apply this to the universe?
By the 1970s, scientists began to recognise something known as the “anthropic principle”
– which is that the universe doesn’t just happen to be suitable for human life, it seems
to be set up that way.
The universe exists within what scientists have called “the goldilocks zone” – different
constants are “just right” for life to exist – if they were just slightly different,
life would not be possible.
Some examples:
1.the distance of a planet (earth) to the star (sun): not too far, not too close
2.
The way the earth spins on its axis providing seasons
3.the unique properties of such a simple molecule as water.
For example, in warming weather, chunks of ice float, rather than sink to the bottom
of a lake where they might melt extremely slowly – this does not happen with other
liquid molecules.
These properties therefore allow aquatic lifein the lake to survive during the winter.
Sir Fred Hoyle, who was an atheist, said that, “A common sense interpretation of the facts
suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and
biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.
The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this
conclusion almost beyond question.”
The incredible design, structure and fine-tuning of the universe as a whole therefore indicates
that there is an intelligent source which designedit.
So what do the atheists say to this?
It is important to recognise that today the debate is not between science and religion.
It is between the scientists – those who are theists in some capacity and those who
are not.
Today, the atheists say that the design of the universe is remarkable, but, maybe there are an infinite
amount of universes that exist, and we just happen to be living in the one with all the
right constants – this is known as the multi-verse concept.
So what is their evidence of this?
Nothing.
By definition, the multi-verse is not provable as we cannot escape the dimensions of our
own universe.
Bernard Carr of Queen Mary University said, “if you don’t want God you better have
a multi-verse”
Isn’t it ironic that the atheists are relying on nothing evidence based.
So who exactly are the one’s with the ‘blind faith’?
George Ellis, a famous cosmologist, wrote an article which featured on the front page
of Scientific America where he said: “The trouble is that no possible astronomical observations
can ever see those other universes.
The arguments are indirect at best.
And even if the multiverse exists, it leaves the deep mysteries of nature unexplained.”
A specific question in the issue of fine tuning is how living things - animals and human beings
- came to be.
Darwin’s theory of evolution, thoughlogically coherent, has two fundamental questions which
remain unanswered.
That is the question of how the first, original cell came into being inthe first place?
Darwin believed that it emerged from inorganic earth, but as Freeman Dyson pointed out, ‘there
is an enormous gap between the simplest living cell and the most complicated naturally occurring
mixture of nonliving chemicals.
We have no idea when and how and where this gap was crossed.’
The first living cell would have had to contain DNA - something which, as Bill Gates put it,
is quote “like a computer program only much more complex than anything we’ve been able
to design”.
Francis Crick, the man who discovered DNA said - “An honest man armed with all the
knowledge available to us now could only state that insome sense the origin of life appears
at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to
have been satisfied to get it going” and Dr. George Whitesides, an Organic Chemist
from Harvard University with the highest Hirsch-index rating of any living chemist, wrote on this
topic, “How?
I have no idea.
Based on all the chemistry I know it seems astonishingly improbable” In effect, there
is no known way that an organism with DNA, no matter how simple, could have emerged from
an inanimate element if guided by nature alone.
The other most notable issue with the theory of evolution is that it is extremely unlikely
for it to have occurred by chance.
Sir Fred Hoyle, wrote that “the chance that higher life forms might have emerged by chance
is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble
a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”
John Barrow (Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge) and
Frank Tipler (Physicisit, Cosmologist and Mathematician at Tulane University) calculate
the probability of the evolution of the human genome to be essentially impossible.
The questions around evolution, both how it begun and its likelihood of producing life,
does not destroy the legitimacy of the theory - but there remain unanswered questions - and
at this stage, you would need to believe that it did not happen by chance, but that it was
a guided process.
So to claim that evolutionary theory necessarily negates the need for an intelligent designer
is simply wrong.
These points, among others, led Evolutionary Professor at the University of Cambridge,
Simon Conway Morris to say that “atheism is dead”.
Could it be that science is gradually coming to recognise the necessity of the world having
a Creator and a Designer – of there being a God?
You may argue that science doesn’t necessarily indicate there must be an intelligent designer
and creator - you can say we just don’t have all the answers at this stage.
But to claim that science necessarily negates the existence of God is simply untenable.
I'm Ollie Anisfeld and you're watching J-TV.