A RATIONAL ORDER IS NECESSARY FOR SCIENCE AND GOD IS NECESSARY FOR A RATIONAL ORDER

Is God a science stopper or science promoter? According to Regis Nicoll, retired nuclear engineer and physicist, God has inspired the quest to understand His ordered creation:

* Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton were all men of faith whose faith gave them hope that scientific knowledge was attainable. Because the universe was the product of an Intelligence that made it intelligible to intelligent beings, they had confidence that man could discover something of the true nature of nature by careful observation and experimentation. 

They believed that God had created rational universe and welcomed human attempts to understand it. Nicoll continues:

* Kepler put it this way: "The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which he has revealed to us in the language of mathematics." 

While all scientists employ a similar methodology to unlock creation's mysteries, there are deeper mysteries to ponder, namely, the origin of creation and its knowable order:

* Similarly, Newton warned people inclined to infer a "Clockwork Universe" from his laws of motion and gravity that "gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."

According to Newton, God establishes, underpins, and sustains His creation with His elegant, immutable laws. If this is so, then every finding of science belongs to Him, and He should be acknowledged for every piece of knowledge that we gain. 

Nicoll adds that God has enabled us to do science because of the intelligible nature of His creation:

* Our ability to learn about the universe derives from the fact that it is governed by laws and exhibits a rational order and functional design that reflect purpose.

Is this the conclusion of blind faith? Certainly not, but a necessary inference from our observations of a rational order.

THE UNLIKELIHOOD OF SCIENCE ARISING OUT OF ATHEISM

Physicist Lawrence Kraus insists that:

• The more that we learn about the workings of the universe, the more purposeless it seems.

Meanwhile, mathematician and physicist, Lord William Kelvin, who propounded the first and second Laws of Thermodynamics, asserted:

• I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.

James Joule, the English physicist who discovered the law of the conservation of energy noted:

• It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed.

Why would Joule claim such a thing? Perhaps for the same reason that the skeptic and physicist, Paul Davies, wrote:

• There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all… It seems as though somebody has fine tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe… The impression of design is overwhelming.

While Kraus insists that only idiots can believe that God created this world, Albert Einstein perceived something very different:

• I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.

Meanwhile, Kraus claims that God is irrelevant to science. However, Regis Nicoll claims the very opposite thing:

• Our ability to learn about the universe derives from the fact that it is governed by laws and exhibits a rational order and functional design. (Salvo Magazine, Spring 2016, 33. All of the quotations come from his article.)

In fact, it was the belief in a rational God-given order that had prompted Christian scientists to probe the discoverable laws that govern its workings. Consequently, Johannes Kepler wrote:

• The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which he has revealed to us in the language of mathematics (31).

In contrast to Kepler’s understanding, physicists like Kraus would not have been able to predict that this world, with its immutable and elegant laws, is knowable. Atheism can only account for molecules-in-motion in an ever-changing physical and unknowable world. Consequently, it is unlikely that science would have arisen out of such truncated worldview.

In Kraus’ purposeless, random universe, it would be unlikely to encounter design, order, and knowability – the necessary sine qua non or conditions of science.

The Growth of Violence and what we can do about it

We have become a violence-prone society. One indication of this is the escalation of what NY Times columnist David Brooks calls “spectacular rampage murders”:

• According to Brooks, from 1913 to about 1970, there were no more than two of these types of murders per decade worldwide. After that, the number shot up to nine in the 1980s, eleven in the nineties, and 26 in the past decade. Since July 2012, when Brooks wrote this analysis, there have been half a dozen more. (Regis Nicoll, Salvo, Issue 27, 22)

What can account for this epidemic? Psychotropic medications seem to be one culprit (Their growth certainly hasn’t done anything to stem the violence!):

• Harvard University’s Dr. Joseph Glenmullen warns that antidepressants could explain the rash of school shootings and mass suicides over the last decade. People taking them “feel like jumping out of their skin. The irritability and impulsivity can make people suicidal or homicidal.”

• A study of 950 acts of violence committed by people taking antidepressants found 362 murders, 13 school shootings, 5 bomb threats or bombings, 24 acts of arson, 21 robberies, 3 pilots who crashed their planes and more than 350 suicides and suicide attempts.

• Medical studies show that patients with no history of violence, develop “violent urges to assault” while under the effects of psychiatric drugs. 

Perhaps there is even a simpler, more direct explanation. If psychotropics can reduce guilt, anxiety, fear and shame, they also can serve to remove inhibitions necessary to curb anti-social behavior.

Western society is quick to refer disturbed individuals for psychiatric care. However, there is good reason for hesitation. Dr. Michael, a professor of clinical psychiatry, claims that only a small percentage of serial killers are insane:

• After personally examining over 200 mass murderers, Dr. Stone found that “only 25 were ruled clinically insane.” The rest he found were “social misfits or angry loners” whose rage was triggered by “some event.” (Salvo, 23-24)

If mental illness is not the cause of escalating incidence of violence, what is? There are many indications that what we believe will profoundly affect the way we act, even the way we kill. Oddly,high self-esteem also seems to loosen our natural inhibitions to violently act-out:

• "Violent people are violent because their self-esteem and self-confidence are unrealistically high. Many violent criminals describe themselves as powerful, special and elite people who deserve special treatment" says Ulla Lovenkrands, Danish psychologist who spent 20 years studying criminal psychology."

• "Street gang members have high opinions of themselves and demand respect from others. Bullies from school playgrounds consider themselves more special than others. Low self-esteem and self-confidence are found amongst victims of violence, not amongst violent people."

In Western culture, self-esteem has been released from any consideration of moral conduct and truth and has been encouraged to soar.  Along with this, has been the growth of a dangerous belief of self-entitlement – “I am entitled to my pleasures, and you have no right to interfere with my pursuit of them.” Instead of learning to take responsibility for our behavior, we have been taught that there is no objective standard of moral truth to restrain us. Rather, morality depends exclusively on what we deem it to be. Consequently, there remains no adequate reason to not fulfill ourselves, even if it is at the expense of others.

We have decided that objective biblical values are archaic, repressive, and guilt-producing. They have hindered our self-esteem and prevented us from experiencing the freedom to follow our own inclinations. However, once we follow these inclinations, we then require drugs to quiet our conscience.

A recent study had concluded that those cultures that still retained a belief in eternal punishment tended to behave less criminally. Nicoll concludes:

• Unless the nihilistic [morally relativistic] worldview is abandoned for one that recognizes such a Transcendence [God], we can expect a rise in the number of walking dead and their devastating crimes. We must teach students and young people to reject what some of the supposedly brightest minds today are selling them – that the universe is meaningless and without purpose or supervision. Such nihilism only deadens the soul, which, after all, was created for communion with the living God. (25)

Keep you eyes opened!