A number of recent books and articles claim that science has disproved the very existence of God. It stands to reason that since we know so much about how the universe works – they insist God is unnecessary.
There is no arguing with the fact that science has brought us an immense understanding of our world or that human knowledge doubles roughly every couple of years. But where is it written that all of this knowledge, all of this understanding disproves the existence of God?
Did not God tell us in Proverbs 1:7 that the reverence of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and that fools despise wisdom and instruction?
Science is indeed amazing. But it has never revealed why the universe came into existence or what preceded its birth in the Big Bang. Biological evolution has not brought us the slightest understanding of how the first living organisms emerged from inanimate matter on this planet and how the advanced eukaryotic cells, the highly structured building blocks of advanced life forms, ever emerged from simpler organisms.
Neither does it explain one of the greatest mysteries – how consciousness arose in living things. Where do symbolic thinking and self-awareness come from? What is it that allows humans to understand the mysteries of biology, physics, mathematics, engineering and medicine? And what enables us to create great works of art, music, architecture and literature?
But much more important than these conundrums is the persistent question of why our universe is so precisely tailor-made for the emergence of life. The deeper science delves into the mysteries of physics and cosmology, the more the universe appears to be intricate and incredibly complex. Just to explain the quantum-mechanical behavior of even one tiny particle requires page after page of advanced mathematics. And it becomes even more daunting as we expand our view to the entire cosmos.
Why did everything we need in order to exist come into being? How was all of this possible without some latent outside power to orchestrate the precise dance of elementary particles required for the creation of all the essentials of life?
The great British mathematician Roger Penrose has calculated, based on only one of the hundreds of parameters of the physical universe, that the probability of the emergence of a life-giving cosmos was 1 divided by 10, raised to the power 10, and again raised to the power of 123. This is a number as close to zero as anyone has ever imagined. The probability is much, much smaller than that of winning the Mega Millions jackpot for more days than the universe has been in existence.
Atheists scramble to explain this troubling mystery by suggesting the existence of a multiverse, an infinite set of universes, each with its own parameters. In some universes, the conditions are wrong for life; however, by the sheer size of this putative multiverse, there must be a universe where everything is right. But if it takes an immense power of nature to create one universe, then how much more powerful would that force have to be in order to create infinitely many universes?
History is full of scientists who were not only believers in God but made great discoveries. Newton, Copernicus and Mendel are but a few of the groundbreaking scientists who believed that scientific exploration and discovery were integral part of man performing his divine mission, not a way of denying that the mission existed. The history of science is entwined with our human search to discern a deeper understanding of our purpose within the universe.
The 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics, Arthur L. Schawlow, said that “…when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious….I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life.”
Even to a mercurial nonbeliever like Stephen Hawking, the thought of philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people working together to reach the answer for “the question of why it is that we and the universe exist” would be like to “know the mind of God.”
If you want to come closer to God, the study of the sciences can, as philosopher John Locke wrote, bring you to the “visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power” that “appear so plainly in all the works of creation that a rational creature…cannot miss the discovery of a Deity.” Louis Pasteur said that “science brings men nearer to God” and that the more he studies nature, the more amazed he became with its Creator.
Science and religion are two sides of the same deep human impulse to understand the world, to know our place in it, and to marvel at the wonder of life and the infinite cosmos we are surrounded by.
“As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency – or, rather, Agency – must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?” George Greenstein, Astronomer
Source: Why Science Does Not Disprove God, by Amir D. Aczel; Science, Faith and English Professors, by Chad Chisholm, The Imaginative Conservative; The Intertwining of Science and Religion, by Richard Trzupek
