According to Pew Forum surveys, the number of atheists in the United States is rapidly increasing, although from a small base. An even greater increase has occurred in the number of young people who claim no religious affiliations – so called Nones. In our currently polarized society, there are many possible explanations for the increase. Certainly one of the driving forces in this cultural trend is the university progressive liberal professors and administrators. But I perceive that an even larger force is the dominance of science in our society and its practitioners who have contempt for religion. As a result, many people believe that science has disproved or at least rendered religion unnecessary as an explanation for life.
Evolution
Nowhere is the scientific attack on religion more blatant than in the field of evolutionary biology. Darwinism, particularly natural selection, therefore, is the phalanx for anti-religion forces. Although natural selection is in jeopardy, Richard Dawkins, the chief proponent of the scientific claim that Darwinism has made God redundant, has built an atheist following on the basis of his book The Selfish Gene. The book was a precursor for his direct confrontation of religion in his later book, The God Delusion. The argument turns on whether natural selection is the correct process by which animals develop. And natural selection is likely wrong, or even if right, humans will soon direct evolution, not nature.
Cosmology
Sean Carroll a well-respected cosmologist is a virulent atheist along with his friend Alan Guth; Andre Linde, a famous comogonist, is an atheist; Alexander Vilenkin, creator of a theory of multiple parallel universes is a member; Joe Polchinski denominates himself as the ultimate agnostic. A longer list of cosmologists confront the existence of God.
Still another noteworthy scientist’s opinion on religion comes from Steven Weinberg, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics who stated in 1999:
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil-that takes religion.” (1)
Most people confuse science with technology and are understandably impressed with the amazing gadgets that fill our lives. But science is its own epistemic phenomenon. It has a material bias simply because it is by its own definition confined to natural explanations for the objects and processes of the world. Has this led to the sudden discovery that science has replaced God? Some believe that is the case others dissent. Lennox, J. C., God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, Lion Hudson, plc. London (2007).
The arguments of philosophers against God and religion are hoary. But those arguments are abstruse and contentious. Their failure is manifested in the billions of people the world over who are believers and exercise their faith, sometimes, excessively. Science has displaced the puny arguments of philosophy to advance the cause of atheism.
On the other side of the aisle, some world class scientific men and women find their belief in God and religion perfectly compatible with science. C. S. Lewis is the most famous and well known. Einstein was a believer, but in a deist god, a god that wound up the clock of time and watches passively from afar. That will not lead to religion. A personal God, in my opinion, is what religion presumes. Here is Francis Collins, Director of the National Genome Research Institute, perhaps the most prestigious scientific job in the world:
“That God is a God who both created the universe, and also had a plan that includes me as an individual human being. And that he has made it possible for me, through this series of explorations, to realize that. It is not just a philosophy, it is a reality of a relationship.” (2)
There are other scientific men like John C. Polkinghorne (3) who was a world class physicist and later became minister in the church, or James Redford the iconoclastic advocate of the Omega Point (4).
My own observation is that the very progress of science that is cited by the atheists and agnostics is proving that there is no rational or scientific explanation for the most important questions of life. Principally, there is no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life despite more than a half-century of vigorous and well-funded research. The spontaneous origin of life has been the reigning paradigm since Darwin’s “soup theory” up to the work of Oparin, Haldane, Miller and Urey.
That is not to say that the search for the origin of life has been abandoned. An extraterrestrial source of life – panspermia – is a steady contender for an explanation or at least a description (5). The RNA theory held sway for some time but has been abandoned or perhaps merely desiccated (6). Alexander Cairns-Smith had a theory that mineral crystals in clay could have organized molecules into patterns that led to DNA. There was a deep sea vent theory that produced hydrogen-rich molecules by Dr. Wachtershauser. There was also the container-first theory of Deamer and Morowitz that focused on the cellular lipid shell necessary to house the organic molecules. But it is generally agreed that there is no accepted theory.
Consciousness
And a third problem is a fact of life that is so familiar that it is astonishing that there is no explanation let alone a possible source – I refer to consciousness, of course. Some experts do not believe that consciousness can be defined. There is no explanation for the simple question: What is subjective experience? The popular theory of integrated information that somehow creates a personal experience is not an explanation. We are certain that we have conscious experiences and draw analogies to the processes that take place in the brain. But the so-called Hard Problem is beyond our current understanding. Will it always be so? Daniel Dennett who has written several books on consciousness believes we have the tools now for studying what consciousness is, and we will soon have an explanation.
Is Science Limited?
Science is obviously a work-in-progress and it would be inane to argue that science will not find a natural explanation for these phenomena. But as in any program one can make an assessment while it is underway as to its potential for a natural solution. In my opinion the prospects are dim and increasingly discouraging. Or to put it another way, it appears at this time that one side has a belief in science and one a belief in God. Beliefs. Both sides admit that neither side can prove the existence or non-existence of God. One comes to the conclusion that rational argument takes you to the edge of a cliff where you are precariously balanced on the failure of proof or disproof, the Enlightenment has left you breathless, anxious, even fearful, and you must choose one belief or the other.
The book presents the struggle for the existence of God in a Darwin framework simply because it is the lynchpin of currently digestible scientific pretensions. And it is placed in the context of a court trial because the contest between atheists and believers is not confined to laboratories or observatories. It is a cultural issue in the United States and like too many issues it is settled by courts through litigation. But the question transcends courts and scientific theories and abstruse mathematical equations. There is no pretension that the book will deliver an answer for the question – is there a God – to every reader’s satisfaction, or even a few. But the current direction of society suggests that the question should be examined, at least from time to time.
1) Weinberg, Steven. “A Designer Universe?“. Retrieved January 28, 2016. This article is based on a talk given in April 1999 at the Conference on Cosmic Design of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.
2) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/collins.html.
3) Science and Providence: God’s Interaction with the World, Templeton Foundation Press, London (1989); Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven (2005); Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship,Yale Univ. Press, New Haven (2007); Science and Theology: An Introduction, SPCK/Fortress Press, London (1998).
4) The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything, Social Science Research Network (SSRN), (December 19, 2011), doi: 10.2139/ssrn.1974708; The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford Univ Press (1986); The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology and the Resurrection of the Dead, New York, Doubleday (1994); The Physics of Christianity, New York, Doubleday (2007).
5) Hoyle, F., The Intelligent Universe: A new view of creation and evolution, Dorling Kindersley, Ltd, London (1983)
6) Cech TR (Jul 2012). “The RNA worlds in context”. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology; Joyce, G.F. and Orgel, L.E. Prospects for Understanding the Origin of the RNA World in the RNA World , ed. R.F.Gesteland and J.F. Atkins, Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Springs Harbor, N.Y. (1993) at 19.
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