Rereading a book by the astrophysicists Fred Hoyle and
Chandra Wickramasinghe Cosmic Life-Force (1988) I was reminded of
a real, but equally futile conflict which has been going on in western societies since the
nineteenth century, though thankfully without violence.
In the book, which
predicts the importance of viruses in DNA and the recent discovery of organic
matter in space and around stars, they describe concisely how those who
believed that God created the universe came to be regarded first as wrong and
later as a threat to biology. Hoyle laments the narrow, doctrinaire and
unscientific mindset of evolutionary biologists, not for religious reasons but because they won't accept even the possibility that life may have originated in outer space and been transported here, possibly being propelled across interstellar space by light pressure (panspermia). Instead they cling to absurd ideas of chemicals being juggled about in terrestrial primeval soups to form living systems against all mathematical odds in a blink of evolutionary time.
In the book, which
predicts the importance of viruses in DNA and the recent discovery of organic
matter in space and around stars, they describe concisely how those who
believed that God created the universe came to be regarded first as wrong and
later as a threat to biology. Hoyle laments the narrow, doctrinaire and
unscientific mindset of evolutionary biologists, not for religious reasons but because they won't accept even the possibility that life may have originated in outer space and been transported here, possibly being propelled across interstellar space by light pressure (panspermia). Instead they cling to absurd ideas of chemicals being juggled about in terrestrial primeval soups to form living systems against all mathematical odds in a blink of evolutionary time.
In the 19th century there was a socioscientific
movement which sought to undermine the authority of the church because
fundamentalists within it failed to recognise that evolution had occurred,
treating Genesis in the Holy Bible as a literal, scientific account of creation, rather than a divine poem . This
caused a furious attempt by certain evolutionary biologists to team up with
sceptical biblical text scholars to debunk Christianity, tarring the whole
Christian world-view with the same brush and seeking, with spectacular failure,
to question the Resurrection itself.
The fundamentalist young earth Creationists, i.e. those who believed the
universe was made less than 10,000 years ago, are today especially vocal and
organised in the southern states of the USA. This is unfortunate not only
because, in my view, it tends to devalue the wonder of God’s Creation but
because it seems to have forced evolutionary biologists wedded to the idea of
everything being a result of chance plus the laws of physics to fall into a
trap. They have become paranoid about admitting that because the universe looks
and behaves purposefully and as though it is designed, it may actually be
designed. Shock horror. It would imply a Creator.
ID is totally compatible with the observations of biology and indeed those scientists who believe in the teleological nature of our world are more likely to come up with powerful concepts on how it works than those who attribute everything to chance plus the laws of physics. In a sense it is reverse engineering - stripping off layer after layer to see how the system works, but knowing there will always be another layer of mystery. ID was the standard philosophy among scientists throughout the Enlightenment. Einstein and Newton were both believers in ID. There is no God of the gaps. The belief comes from the wonder at the works of the Divine Artist.
When a new scientific observation is made which is not
compatible with current models (e.g. a new elementary particle which does not
fit into any existing explanatory scheme) there are three possible ways of
dealing with it:
1. Revise the scheme
2. Assume God is the only explanation needed
3. Assume chance is the only explanation needed
The ID scientist is in fact more likely to adopt the first approach than one who does not accept that the universe is in any way designed, as a step towards building up a hierarchical model reflecting the true nature of the Creation. In fact outside the field of biology even a young Earth creationist scientist would do so, whereas a conventional evolutionary biologist would adopt the third approach when he encounters a currently inexplicable phenomenon within the life sciences. It is also a sad reflection on modern cosmology that some theorists are so fearful that there may indeed be a Creator that they resort to unscientific metaphysical unprovable models which eliminate the experimentally supported Big Bang, with its obvious implications for a Creation event.
I too fear the Creator but not because of the implications
for scientific methodology or progress. My fear is a kind of awe at the majesty,
power and mystery of God and the nature of the reality which God holds in
being. The same applies for many Christians who work in or follow science.
In which chance is the new God of the gaps and extremely dangerous to science.
The teleological argument for the existence of God
John
reach me at
cosmik.jo@gmail.com
