Lately I have been re-wrestling through the question of why I believe what I believe. It seems to me that there are some challenges that the modern world gives to Christian belief that should not simply be ignored. One of these challenges is that science has explained away the need for belief.
First, I think that much of the media in all its forms has popularized this notion of a war between science and belief. I do not buy it. I think it makes for a good storyline, but it breaks down upon analysis. For one thing, there are many scientists today who are Christian, or theist of some sort, or deist. For a significant percentage, and I honestly don't know what it is, science does not rule out belief in God. (An atheist may argue that they are merely being inconsistent and not following the evidence to its logical conclusion, but the theist can plausibly make the same argument for the number of atheists who are also scientists. So we should move on to other evidence.)
The atheist will also have to make the same argument of inconsistency about some of the greatest scientific minds from the start. For instance, Isaac Newton - who gave us gravity and calculus and the greatest modern textbook of physics and mathematics - actually wrote more about God than he did about science. Galileo, who in the popular imagination fought against the church and was condemned, was in fact a loyal member of the church and gladly counted himself Christian to the end. I actually admire his cautious outlook because he did not want the church to speak too hastily and miss the truth; he saw God as writing two books - the Bible and the world - and that both are true. We simply have to be humble and earnest in our interpretation of both. We could multiply this list, but I do not want this post to carry on too long...
I want now to come to a some of the arguments in a scientific vein that I find most compelling against belief in atheism.
1. If atheism is true, then nature is all that there is. There is no "supernature" or anything beyond or behind what we see here. Another word for this is naturalism. All we have to deal with is the physical world. Science then proceeds to find naturalistic explanations for any occurrence that it wants to try to explain. Presumably, if we are not limited in our capacity to measure and observe, and if we could continue indefinitely to advance our scientific understanding, there is theoretically nothing in the natural world that we couldn't explain. Science, unimpeded by limitation, can take any subject - say sociology or literature - and boil it down to biology. Those biological explanations can then be boiled down to the underlying chemistry, which could then be explained by a mathematical explanation of the physics of the atoms bouncing around down there. (Which perhaps could then be explained by a Grand Unified Physical Theory of Everything.) Scientists are already attempting such explanations, at least in pieces...
Now some atheists may be wise enough to concede the limitations of our knowledge. They may think it highly unlikely that we could ever reach such a full explanation of things in actuality. (Or they may be duped by the confident bluster of atheists like Richard Dawkins into thinking that we really already have such full explanations...) But even if we never do reach such a comprehensive understanding of every natural phenomena in terms of what is going on with the atoms underneath, it still seems to me that the atheist view of the world entails that such an explanation must at least be possible. On a purely natural look at the world, we should be able to explain things naturally.
You may disagree, and I am open to discussion, but I don't see how atheism does not lead to naturalism, how naturalism does not lead to theoretical reductionism, and in the end how reductionism does not lead to some sort of determinism. Is there such a thing as free will or is everything determined ahead of time? On the naturalistic account of things, it seems that free will and my own consciousness would be merely an illusion. What I am thinking right now is merely the product of a bunch of atoms doing stuff in my head. (Now admittedly, my illusion of consciousness is all I have to deal with, so I am going to deal with it, but aside from this necessity of acting like it is real, is it just an illusion?) If I am merely a collection of differentiated atoms at this particular stage in the history of a naturalistic universe, am I not controlled bottom-up by all the chemistry and physics in the basement, or is there really such a thing as "me" with some kind of top-down control (that isn't merely an illusion)?
Determinism, in my estimation, is fatal to rationality. By rationality I mean the ability to think, reason, and to assess evidence and testimony in order to arrive at true beliefs with proper justification. Determinism would mean that I came to believe what I believe as a function of a bunch of atomistic cause-and-effect, not as a result of true reasoning necessarily. My reasoning would all be part of the illusion. What I believe doesn't matter, because in a very real sense, there no longer is an "I" to believe anything. I have explained myself away. And I was destined by the dance of atoms to believe in a particular thing anyway.
What then is the point of discussion? My brain, through no control of my own, happens to fizz Christian-ly, and your brain happens to fizz atheistically. Why should I prefer your brand of fizzing to my own? The universe popped me out a Dr. Pepper, and he popped you out a Pepsi.
What does this look like in an argument? If atheism is true, I have no control over my beliefs. Yet, I do have control over my beliefs. Therefore, atheism is not true.
The whole basis of rational discussion is believing that I have some control over my beliefs and that discussion to arrive at truth is a good thing. I think it is rational to conclude that rationality is real and not an illusion. (Think of the existential absurdity of saying that, "I rationally conclude that rationality is an illusion.") My very act of thinking - unless I want to lose myself - presupposes that I do not live in a purely naturalistic world.
Suppose the atheist does want to allow for consciousness as something, something other than illusion. He wants to allow for the existence of mind as something that thinks and wills and such. What is mind and consciousness? I would argue that it is not less than the atoms that make it up, but that it is a bit more. I would argue that it is an initiator of causes within this world, and not merely a result of cause-and-effect, lest we slip back into the irrationality of determinism. If we want to allow for the existence of mind as something like this, we are no longer in a purely naturalistic world, and we have a good analogy for God's relationship with the world. After all, God is described as a spirit who thinks and feels and wills things, much like a very powerful disembodied mind.
2. Let me press this a little further and a little more philosophically. My gut reaction is that things like love, joy, thankfulness, goodness, beauty, morality, ethics, consciousness itself, and the spiritual apprehension of reality are real. They are not an illusion. They may not be boiled to a mere explanation of atoms. I am not saying that atoms and physics and chemistry are not going on and a part of the explanation. But they are not a sufficient explanation.
I have been reading some Chesterton, and he asks me to look at things a little fantastically in order to see the reality of them... Imagine going out to check on your dog and he were in the midst of painting a masterpiece on the ceiling of his doghouse, his own little personal Sistine Chapel. What?! How abrupt and absurd! And yet the atheist believes that this is exactly what has happened in the case of that strange animal called man. And he believes that if he merely throws in some extra time and introduces the idea of smooth gradation that a miracle ceases to be a miracle.
What the atheist says is that, against all improbability, the impersonal universe produced what is profoundly personal. An indifferent universe produced creatures capable of love. The atheist says that the Christian must deal with the problem of evil, and I say that the atheist must deal with the problem of love. Surely when the atheist turns to his wife and tells her that he loves her he really does means it, and he is suppressing the reality of his position that she is nothing more than a bag of atoms and that his words are really meaningless if you take them apart. I do not say that the atheist is incapable of love. Not at all! I have known atheists who are probably far more loving than me. All I am saying is that I don't think the atheist can give a rational account for his love that does not destroy it.
3. My third argument is similar to the first. But I will move away from the idea of determinism.
Suppose we have only the natural world. If this is true, evolution is certainly the best candidate for how we got here. Evolution favors those adaptations that help us survive. Human thinking is done with the brain that evolution has handed us, but what reason do we have to think that evolution would have handed us a brain that would primarily tell us true things or things that correspond with reality?
Picture the wild rabbit who is forever skittish. He is programmed to imagine more dangers than actually exist. This helps him to survive, but it helps him project things that are not actually there. His brain produces helpful, if not true, beliefs.
On the basis of belief in evolution, we have reason to doubt what our cognitive faculties tell us, including the theory that evolution is true. We saw off the branch we're sitting on. If everyone came to believe in evolution, the best we would be able to say on the basis of the theory itself is that believing in evolutionary theory must give its adherents a survival advantage - not that it is objectively true.
But you may want to object: "No. I don't want to throw every individual belief under the survival advantage scalpel. Instead, I think that the human brain has evolved to produce mainly true beliefs, and so we can generally trust it." And it is here that the atheist is caught between a rock and a hard place. Because the vast majority of the human race so far has believed in some sort of god or gods.
The atheist needs to be able to trust his brain, but just as we have creative evolutionists spinning stories about why humans would have evolved a need to believe in God, we ought to have them apply their creativity also to why humans would have evolved a need to disbelieve in God. (There's not as much of a market for that sort of book I suppose.)
4. The first three arguments have been more presuppositional in nature. In other words, an atheistic worldview presupposes some things that shut down rational thought. But what about more direct arguments for God? Antony Flew, the most famous atheist of the 20th century converted to deism some number of years ago. Flew still did not believe in an afterlife, so it would be rather futile to claim that he converted because he was approaching death. But what convinced him was the apparent fine-tuning of the universe.
There are a number of universal constants that seem to be arbitrary or contingent - i.e. they could have been different - but they are finely tuned to such a precision that if any of them had been off by just a little bit in either direction, this universe would not have been able to sustain life. Why is this? It is like the universe knew we were coming from the beginning.
Some scientists may seek refuge from the theistic implications of this by retreating into the multiverse. Some string theorists believe their theories entail many, many, many different universes, and we just happen to be in one of them, the one that is fine-tuned to bring us into existence. String theory, while interesting and elegant, is a bit more like science fiction than it is like science. By definition, these parallel universes are inaccessible to us, and there is no way to prove they exist or to test their existence. Any problem that atheists have with God as a hypothesis would also be a problem for these invisible and inaccessible other universes. (Except unlike these other universes, God may have decided to enter his creation, and we are not out of bounds to ask if he has done this.)
The simplest explanation is God. If the universe appears designed, then maybe it is. Even if you are not convinced of this, it is still a very rational position to hold.
5. The following is the cosmological argument for the existence of God.
a. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
b. The universe began to exist.
c. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Some thoughts on this...
From nothing comes nothing. It would be absurd to think of absolute nothingness - is it even possible to do so? - and to imagine my grandmother popping into it for no reason. It is equally absurd to imagine the universe popping into existence out of nothing and for no reason.
Scientists like Stephen Hawking think that somehow the universe caused itself to come into existence. But the universe would have had to already exist to bring itself into existence. And he thinks that gravity or some law explains how this can happen, but gravity as a law can only act on something that's already there. It has no causal power in itself to make things happen. And is he claiming that gravity exists apart from the universe and has enough power to bring the universe into existence? Gravity is starting to sound a lot like God in his way of explaining it.
For those who claim that Jesus could not have been raised from death to life, many atheists make similar leaps of faith - 1. the universe causing itself to come to life from absolute nothingness, 2. Life literally coming from non-life to start our evolutionary chain. 3. Animal life becoming human life with all that means.
Christians said for millenia that the universe had a beginning. And now with the scientific advancements of the last century, the modern world has reluctantly agreed.
What kind of cause would this sort of first cause be? Well, there is not a physical universe or time as yet, so it would be eternal and timeless. To bring the universe into existence it would also need to be powerful. The best candidate is a very powerful, eternal, disembodied mind. And if we couple this evidence with the evidence of fine-tuning for life, we would not be irrational in assuming that this Mind is personal and wants us here...
6. Does theism shut down scientific investigation? Isn't God just a God-of-the-gaps that we use to plug holes, and the more we know of science, the less need we have for God? No.
The god-of-the-gaps is much more like the deistic god who winds up the whole show at the beginning and then retreats to a distance. Except the god-of-the-gaps was a little sloppy and has to come in for course correction on occasion. That is not the Christian conception of God. Christians believe God never left and is intimately involved in every part of his creation. We believe that he sustains it constantly with his Word. Therefore, the greater the scientific explanation for a particular thing, the more appreciation I have for God. I believe the physical equations describing the universe are a way of knowing the God who sustains them. God speaks many languages, and I think math is one of them.
I don't think there is a conflict between God and science. I think there is a conflict between God and naturalism. Naturalism would push us to find only one type of explanation as reasonable, but if I asked you to explain a car, you might explain the mechanics of it or you might say Henry Ford. Both are legitimate, compatible explanations that are just of different kinds.
I think science is a way to glorify God. As I have argued, atheism and naturalism would tend to shut down rationality if they are followed to their logical conclusions. But Christianity, on the other hand, can account very well for rational discourse. Why is there such a fit between our minds and the universe? Why are we able to discover things? Why should this thing called mathematics be such a powerful way of describing physical phenomena?
I believe God created the world and created us as well with the intention that we would discover things about the world to the praise of his glory. God gave us our minds and our curiosity. As I said before, God speaks truthfully, whether he is speaking in his Word or in his world. This world is God's speech as well, and I am excited about the opportunity to trust him in harmonizing the two, understanding how they fit together.
To do science, we need to know that the universe is uniform, that the universe is rational, that my mind is rational, that inductive reasoning is reasonable, and that the future will be like the present (the dials with the constants are not being monkeyed around with). God helps us to account for these, whereas without faith in God we must still take all these assumptions on faith. To try to prove them would require circular reasoning. (How would you prove your brain is reliable without using your brain...? How in the world could you prove that the future must be like the past so that we can trust our experiments?)
The assumptions required to do science and the results of science itself lead me to belief in God, and it leads me to wondering if he has ever tried to communicate with us, which is a different story for another day.
Oops, went a little long with this one. Forgive me.
