Why science is not God

Ian Boyne

If science, strictly defined, is the only legitimate measurement of truth, how can we scientifically prove that slavery is wrong? By what scientific measurement? How do we scientifically prove that the strong oppressing the weak is wrong? If the survival of the fittest means we have to get rid of some unfit persons, what's wrong with that? Does science 'prove' that it is wrong for men to oppress women?

Science cannot prove that there are objective moral values. Morality could be no more than a social construct. An evolutionary adaptive mechanism for our species to survive. Science cannot prove that it is wrong for people to print counterfeit tickets and rob Keiran King of his theatre receipts. Science can't prove that it is wrong for The Gleaner not to pay him for his high-demand columns. He can bawl out for justice for 'breach of contract', but contract-honouring is just social convention.

The trafficking of persons, the exploitation of labour, including child labour, the sexual abuse of children are all issues outside of the purview of the natural sciences. Once you agree that not everything is subject to experimentation and measurement, you have conceded that there are truths outside of science. People need to realise that when atheists proclaim their science-only view, they lock out not only religion, but history, philosophy, law — and the arts also, Keiran. It's an impoverished view of life, utterly reductionistic and, in fact, self-defeating. I agree there must be standards of evidence, otherwise we can well believe in the Great Pumpkin, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy or Zeus.

But scientistic atheists draw the lines too narrowly. Noted Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland says in his book, Christianity and the Nature of Science: "A dogmatic claim of scientism (e.g., 'only what can be known by science or quantified and tested empirically is true and rational') is self-refuting. The statement itself is not a statement of science, but a second-order philosophical statement about science. The statement cannot be tested empirically, quantified and so on ... . Justifying science by science is question-begging."

MORE HUMILiTY NEEDED

Atheists need to exhibit far more humility than is exhibited in this statement from well-known New Atheist Daniel Dennett: "Religion is the greatest threat to rationality and scientific progress . ... Religion ... doesn't just disable, it honours the disability. People are revered for their capacity to live in a dream world, to shield their minds from factual knowledge. This imperviousness to reason is, I think, the property that we should most fear in religion ... . Religion demands it (irrationality) as a sacred duty."

It is not true that Christian theism is totally devoid of reason. Take the origin of the universe. Big Bang cosmology actually shows the plausibility (I did not say rational inescapability) of Christian theism. Many atheists used to believe in a steady-state universe and held that the universe always existed. The fact that we now know through science that the universe is 13.7-8 billion years old shatters that view. If the universe came into existence at a certain time, something must account for that. As I said last week, atheists have resorted to a multi-verse theory which they admit is yet unproven scientifically. By faith, they accept it — a kind of science-of-the-gaps argument.

Our one known scientifically confirmed universe is exquisitely, minutely fine-tuned. Without gravity, there would be no planets, stars or galaxies. Without the strong nuclear force, protons and neutrons wouldn't hold together in the nucleus of an atom.

Renowned Christian philosopher William Lane Craig put it this way in a debate with atheistic philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci: "The chances that the universe should be life-permitting are so infinitesimal as to be incomprehensible and incalculable. For example, Stephen Hawking has estimated that if the rate of the universe's expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed into a fireball. P.C.W. Davies has calculated that the odds against the initial conditions being suitable for later star formation (without which planets would not exist) is one followed by a thousand billion billion zeros, at least."

There is more from Craig: "A change in the strength of gravity or of the weak force by only one part in 10 to the 100 would have prevented a life-permitting universe. There are around 50 such constants present in the Big Bang that must be fine-tuned in this way if the universe is to permit life, and it's not just such quantity that must be exquisitely fine-tuned; their ratios to one another must also be fine-tuned. We now know that life-prohibiting universes are vastly more probable than any life-permitting universe like ours." What accounts for such fine-tuning? Blind chance?

Improbabilities do take place, but to the degree we see in the fine-tuning of our universe? Now, that takes a lot of faith!

But it's more than just having a universe fine-tuned for life. As David Wood says in the book, True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism: "But just as you can have a well-crafted doghouse without actually having a dog, you can have a universe finely tuned for life without actually having life." We need complex biology and the right conditions for life to emerge on earth. It's one thing to describe the phenomenon of evolution and to even establish it as a scientific fact. There are many Christian intellectuals who accept evolution and see no contradiction between that and the existence of a Creator.

For how did life get started in the first place? Evolution does not explain the origin of life. That still is unsolved. Theistic evolutionists say God started the process. Cell biologist Lewis Wolpert, known famously for his book, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: the Evolutionary Origins of Belief, exclaimed in a debate with Christian philosopher Keith Ward: "How the cell came about is just ... mind-blowing! It's truly miraculous. I think we understand quite a lot about evolution ... but the origins of life itself, the origin of the cell itself, that's not solved at all." Well-known atheist, physicist Paul Davies, says, "One of the great outstanding mysteries is the origin of life."

In February 2007, Wired magazine carried an article, 'What We Don't Know About', which included a section, 'Where did life come from?' In that article, Gregg Easterbrook says, "What creates life out of inanimate compounds that make up living things? No one knows. How were the first organisms assembled? Nature hasn't given us the slightest hint. If anything, the mystery has deepened over time. After all, if life began unaided under primordial conditions in a natural system containing zero knowledge, then it should be possible — it should be easy — to create life in laboratory today. But determined efforts have failed ... no one has come close. Did God, or some higher being, create life?" Of course, atheistic faith cannot consider that "ridiculous", "unscientific" possibility. It must be dismissed on the grounds of philosophical naturalism.

So Easterbrook concludes: "Until such time as a wholly natural origin of life is found, these questions have power. We're improbable, we're here and we have no idea why. Or how." But we have faith that science is the only way we can know! Theism can be seen as Inference to the Best Explanation. It is not inherently irrational. Early life forms would have to be capable of reproducing. Also, they had to have the capacity to contain the mechanism to pass on genetic information to offspring. DNA is a sophisticated information storage system. That came by chance? No, theism is philosophically robust and not patently absurd, as hubristic atheists believe.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.