DOES SCIENCE PROVE GOD?

While most atheists acknowledge that science cannot disprove God, they claim that neither can it prove Him. However, there are indications to the contrary.

Had science revealed a world of chaos instead of order and design, I think that the atheist and science would be able to discount the existence of an intelligent Designer (ID). However, all of the findings of science tell us just what our senses have always told us - that this cannot possibly be a world fashioned by chance. Why not? When we observe the world, we see order, design, complexity, functionality, harmony, and beauty. And all of these tell us that this creation is the glorious invention of a Creator, just as Scripture tells us (Romans 1:19-20).

It seems that even “chaos” has its order. Mathematician Ian Stewart succinctly stated that, “Chaos is lawless behavior governed entirely by law.” Actually, this is a common observation in the sciences. In other words, the elegant laws of science leave no physical object untouched by its order, but why? Perhaps, all that we can say is that this is a world remarkably interrelated and coordinated. Matter cannot exist without time and space. Nor does it seem that time can exist without space and matter.

Einstein’s famous formula illustrates in one small way the extent of the interrelationship:

E (energy) = M (mass) x C (speed of light) ² (precisely squared)

The order and relationships are precise, elegant, immutable, and universal. They pertain throughout this changing and expanding universe.

Science is little more than a matter of systematic and quantifiable observations, but it has taken us beyond our immediate senses. Science looks through a telescope and into a microscope. However, these too represent sensory observations, and these observations tell us the same things as do our every-day observations – that this is a world that bears the imprint of design wherever we look.

Consequently, Science has shown us that life is more than haphazard balls of jelly called “cells,” each containing an irreducibly complex array of machinery. Even the molecular components - proteins and DNA - are so complex and functional that they have laughed in the face of any naturalistic explanation. Here are two testimonies to this amazing fact:

·       "The cell is as complicated as New York City.” (Look, January 16, 1962, p. 46)

·       "A bacterium is far more complex than any inanimate system known to man. There is not a laboratory in the world which can compete with the biochemical activity of the smallest living organism." (Sir James Gray, chapter in Science Today (1961), p. 21)

Even atheists acknowledge this cellular wonder-world:

·       "A living cell is a marvel of detailed and complex architecture. Seen through a microscope there is an appearance of almost frantic activity. On a deeper level it is known that molecules are being synthesized at an enormous rate. Almost any enzyme catalyzes the synthesis of more than 100 other molecules per second. In ten minutes, a sizeable fraction of total mass of a metabolizing bacterial cell has been synthesized. The information content of a simple cell had been estimated as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." (Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894)

Can these wonders be explained by mindless “natural” forces or must we invoke the existence of an Intelligent Designer? Science has opened the door to the exquisite fine-tuning of the universe, its constants calibrated just right to support life. In “Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe,” biologist Michael Denton wrote:

·       “As the eerie illumination of science penetrates evermore deeply into the order of nature, the cosmos appears increasingly to be a vast system finely tuned to generate life and organisms of biology very similar, perhaps identical, to ourselves. All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology - that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as a fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact. Four centuries after the scientific revolution apparently destroyed irretrievably man's special place in the universe, banished Aristotle, and rendered teleological speculation obsolete, the relentless stream of discovery has turned dramatically in favor of teleology and design, and the doctrine of the microcosm is reborn.”

According to Denton, science has provided powerful evidence “that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind.” However, we have been told that science has made God irrelevant. Textbook author and evolutionist Douglas Futuyma’s has written that Darwinism and the sciences have made “spiritual [ID] explanations” irrelevant:

·       “Darwin showed that material causes are a sufficient explanation not only for physical phenomena, as Descartes and Newton had shown, but also for biological phenomena with all their seeming evidence of design and purpose. By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”

This might seem true as long as science is content with superficial answers. However, science is not. Science asks questions about the creation of the universe and it laws:

·       “Can natural un-designed causal forces explain the universe?”

·       “Can naturalism account for our elegant, immutable, and universal laws of science?”

·       “Is there any evidence that anything has ever occurred naturally, apart from ID?”

I think that the answer to all of these questions is a resounding “No,” which should put ID back onto the discussion table.

Physicist, philosopher, and professor at Arizona State University, Paul Davies, concluded that chance events could not account for what he had been observing:

·       “Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth – the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient “coincidences” and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs (of which there are 40) must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn’t exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleus and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life.”

The only other explanation for this fine-tuned universe is the Multiverse. This theory claims that if there is an infinite number of universes, it is likely that one of them would be as fine-tuned as ours is. However, the many regard the Multiverse as a desperate attempt to avoid God. Why:

·       There is no evidence for a second universe, let alone an infinite number.

·       If there were other universes with other laws out there, what keeps them from interacting and undermining one another?

·       There is no known mechanism to generate them.

·       It is also logically impossible. An infinite number of universes would require an infinite amount of time and space. However, if time always existed, it would be impossible to ever fulfill an infinite number of years to arrive in the present.

British astrophysicist George Ellis also sees the scientific evidence pointing to ID:

·        “Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”

Nobel Laureate in physics Arno Penzias came to the same conclusion:

·        “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.”

Frank Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics, recounts:

·       “When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.” (All these quotations have been taken from: http://ubcgcu.org/2013/03/05/mind-expanding-quotes-on-fine-tuning/

From the scientific evidence, Tipler and the others had concluded that naturalism could not account for the facts. Only ID could.

I would go a step further. Even the exercise of science depends on the bedrock of the immutable, universal, and the elegantly designed laws/forces of science. Without these wonderfully designed and predictable laws, there could be no science at all. Consequently, the very fact that we can do science and accumulate knowledge depends on a God who has designed it all - the very God we stubbornly deny. We have moved into His home, but have claimed it as our own.

Well, why should we believe that these laws of science are supernatural as opposed to natural? And what immutably maintains these laws/forces in a world of molecules-in-motion?

Everything we observe cries out "design," even the "natural" laws we now look towards as our Creator-substitutes.

Does science prove God? Science cannot utter a syllable without God. All of its findings should be labeled, "Made by the Designer."

In fact, the evidence for the Designer is so compelling, that it has compelled many to abandon atheism as a failed hypothesis. Former atheist and astronomer Alan Sandage wrote:

·       "As I said before, the world is too complicated in all of its parts to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. . . . The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some kind of organizing principle—an architect."

In "There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind," Antony Flew concluded that DNA requires an intelligent cause:

·       “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”

·       “I now believe there is a God…I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together."

Flew had become a theist based upon the evidence of science. Meanwhile, science offers no evidence in favor of non-design, especially at science's most seminal levels.

If science offers no evidence against the existence of the Designer, why is His existence denied? Purely by choice!

To this, the atheist responds:

·       "Science doesn't have anything to say about the non-existence of the good-tooth-fairy or the spaghetti-monster either, nor should it."

This objection misses the point. The spaghetti-monster is irrelevant to science unless the atheist claims that this is the name of the Intelligent Designer.

Science, in regards to ID, is addressing a fundamental question of origin - did the world come into existence by itself or was it designed by a transcendent being? Besides, is it possible to invoke natural causation if the natural hadn't already existed?

To these questions, the spaghetti-monster is irrelevant.

But what does the flagship of naturalism, the theory of evolution, say about God? For one thing, we all believe in change-over-time. Creationists believe that all of the human races or variations came from a single couple. The various packages that humans come in illustrate change-over-time. We call this micro-evolution. This refers to the tiny changes within species.

However, macro-evolution, which represents what we think of as the theory of evolution, is a different story. This claims that all of the changes from the amoeba to the human came about through natural and unguided forces.

Does this mean that evolution has replaced God? Not at all! Science has not been able to offer one piece of evidence that, if macro-evolution did occur, that it wasn’t guided by God. However, evolution has far greater problems. For one thing, there is no evidence that anything has ever occurred or changed naturally, without design.

In our universities, where naturalism reigns as a god, this statement sounds extreme. Don’t we talk about the “natural” laws of science? Of course! And we all agree that phenomena predictably and verifiably happen according to the laws/forces of science. However, we have to ask, “Are these laws naturally originating, operating, and sustained or do they proceed from the mind of God?”

This is the very question we will address in the next chapter.