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Transcript of 1 The Rise & Fall of Naturalism “Is God Dead?”. 2 References §Patrick Glynn, “God, The...
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1
The Rise & Fall
of
Naturalism
“Is God Dead?”
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2
References
Patrick Glynn, “God, The Evidence”, (1997)
Gerald L Schroeder, “The Science of God” (1997)
Newsweek magazine, July 27, 1998, “Science finds God”
Time magazine, December 4, 1995, “Evolution’s Big Bang”
Various articles from the Internet and CD-ROM encyclopaedias
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3
An Ancient Harmony Disrupted
Worldviews accommodate divine agency
Allows for natural and intelligent causes
Harmony between science and faith
Then came Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and the clash in worldviews with the Catholic Church…
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4
Birth of Modern Science
Copernican worldview: Man is not the centre of the cosmos, contrary to the Catholic Church’s worldview
(Catholic’s worldview actually based on Ptolemy’s philosophy, not on Scriptures.)
Faith contradicts realityCatholic Church eventually discredited in its
persecution of Galileo Pope John Paul II apologised for this unfortunate event in
1992
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Science vs Faith
Gradual separation of science and faith
Eventual exclusion of divine agency, which cannot be seen or empirically tested
Accepts only natural causes/explanations
Naturalism
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Methodical Materialism
Only natural explanations accepted
If it cannot be empirically tested, it is not science
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A boost from Darwin
Then came Darwin It was not necessary to believe in the existence of God to explain the origin of life.
Human life came about essentially by accident, from mechanistic forces working randomly over eons and eons
Man - “a curious accident in a backwater”, a by-product of the “random universe” (Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science, 1935)
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Rise of the Secular Worldview
Thus began decline of religious worldviews and rise of secular ones
Age of Enlightenment
Age of Reason
Modernism
Atheism
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Atheism Ascendant
Science had “long before dissolved the Christian worldview in nitric acid” (Ludwig Feuerbach, 1850)
J Hillis Miller echoed Nietzsche in 1963 when he spoke of the “disappearance of God”
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Empty Boast
Science was able to provide more and more explanations of how things worked - “Nothing left for a Creator to do” (Carl Sagan)
Just how real is this boast?
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From Harmony to Conflict
Science, by definition, is based on naturalistic and mechanistic principles
But it should be limited to the natural realm
Whether there is Divine Agency or not is a premise that cannot be tested by science, as scientists rightly recognise – it is a matter of faith, and for faith
If science is unable to prove the existence of God, it has no business to deny it either
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Unsolved
Mysteries of
Modern
Science
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Four centuries later…
Science not any closer to important questions after centuries of search
Origins of the universe
Origins of life
Basic questions like gravity
Or even what is matter made up of?
Instead, it opened up even more questions.
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Life by Accident?
1953 laboratory experiment created amino acids by “random” chemical reactions
Led George Wald, Nobel prize winner in biology and Harvard professor, to write an article in 1954 for Scientific American stating that given enough time, life can begin by chance
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Wald’s Article (1954)
“... since the origin of life belongs in the category of at-least-once phenomena, time is on its side. However improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once ... The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. ... Time is in fact the hero of the plot. Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles” (Wald, G., "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, Vol. 191, No. 2, August 1954, pp.47-48)
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Autobiogenesis
Wald reinforced belief in a godless, “random” universe
“Nothing left for God to do”
But his basic premise is so severely flawed
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Life cannot come by accident
In 1979, Scientific American reprinted Wald’s article, with a retraction to deny that life can possible start by chance Very serious to retract an article by a Nobel prize winner in such
a manner, but significance of Wald’s statement warrants this unusual action
Consequence of computation by Harold Morowitz that time required for life to begin by chance would be more than the age of the universe!
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Scientific American Retraction
“Although stimulating, this article probably represents one of the very few times in his professional life when George Wald has been wrong. Examine his main thesis and see. Can we really form a biological cell by waiting for chance combinations of organic compounds? Harold Morowitz, in his book “Energy Flow and Biology,” computed that merely to create a bacterium would require more time than the Universe might ever see if chance combinations of its molecules were the only driving force. In short, life could not have started by chance.”
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Life cannot come by accident
Amazingly, no one wrote in to defend Wald’s original article!
Since 1979, most reputable journals no longer accept articles supporting spontaneous generation
More significantly, research to determine how life begin is currently under-supported.
If not by chance, then what is the most likely alternative?
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Stubborn Denial
“I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation. One only has to contemplate the magnitude of the task - life from non-life - to concede that spontaneous generation of a living organism is IMPOSSIBLE. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.” (George Wald)
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What’s the Matter?
http://particleadventure.org
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Uncertainties, Uncertainties
You cannot be sure where things really are (Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty)
Is light wave energy or a solid? Is an atom a solid or a wave? (Wave/Particle Duality)
So what or who controls how matter behaves?
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Uncertainty of Life
Order in the universe prevails because of the laws of nature
Even in chaos as seen in fractals
But order and stability are susceptible to slight disturbances; hence, existence is precarious
The Butterfly Effect
There is also uncertainty in the cosmos - man can never be sure of tomorrow
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A Perfect Balance
But order and chaos is in perfect balance, thus preserving the existence of the universe - and life
Who holds this balance so vital to the continued existence of this cosmos?
For more on order, chaos and uncertainties
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Natural Disappointments
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Nagging Questions
If spontaneous generation is false, then how did life come about?
The fossil record does not support Darwinist theories of evolution
Why a purely naturalistic (hence atheistic) cosmos should appear “designed”
Main engines of secular, atheistic worldviews stalling!
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The Failure of Naturalism
After 350 years of scientificinvestigation and “progress”,modern science:
Unable to answer numerous fundamental questions concerning the universe
Still fail to produce satisfying answers concerning the origin of life
Too much
faith in
science!
?
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Turning Points
The Cambrian Explosion
The Anthropic Principle
Intelligent Design
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Darwin’s Big Bang
Dramatic step change in in the fossil record occurred at beginning of the Cambrian period
Geologists as long ago as William Buckland (1784-1856) realised this
Darwinists have for long time been stumped by this Cambrian explosion
Still no answer
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The Cambrian Explosion
The Theory – continuous evolution over time from single source
The Data – sudden appearance all over – and not from single source
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The Anthropic Principle
1973 at the International Astronomical Union
Occasion: the commemoration of the 500th birthday of Copernicus
In attendance: world’s most prominent astronomers and physicists including Stephen Hawking
Presentation of paper by Brendan Carter, a well-known astrophysicist and cosmologist from Cambridge University
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The Anthropic Principle
Mysterious finely tuned fundamental constants
Relationships among unrelated areas
Unexplained “coincidences” favouring creation of universe, life – and man (hence, the term “anthropic”)
Evidence of “design”?
Paper: “Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology”
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Intelligent Design
Presents a scientific approach to support the old teleological argument
ID movement took off in late 1980’s
Basic Premise: If there is “Intelligent Design” in this cosmos, then it is scientifically detectable.
If there is Intelligent Design, then there is an Intelligent Designer – but stops short of identifying who this is
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ID Criteria
Irreducibly Complex
“A single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.” [Michael Behe]
Specified Complexity
Anything with a less than 1 in 10150 chance of occurring. [William Dembski]
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The ID Filter
Contingent?
Complex?
Specified?
Intelligent Design
Necessity
Chance
Constrained Chance
Start
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
A testable method – hence “scientific”
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Converted
Antony Flew – one of world’s leading philosophers, and one of the most renowned atheists of the past half century
Abandoned naturalism, and atheism, as a result of Intelligent Design
Twilight of Atheism
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The “Scientific” Reactions
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Paradigms
“Science starts, not from large assumptions, but from particular facts discovered by observation or experiment.” (Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science, 1935)
But science not always objective
Normal science or the work of reason is always guided by some larger insight or belief - what Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm”
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Paradigms
Scientific research and thought defined by “paradigms” or conceptual worldviews - (Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962)
Paradigms influence
the experiments conducted
types of questions asked
the problems that are considered important
a priori prejudices
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Paradigm Shifts
Need radical change in fundamental concepts, i.e. discarding of old paradigms, to trigger new approach to research, new theories and experimentation, search for new evidences
Hence, Kuhn’s observed that advances in science not made through gradual progress but by revolutionary change
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“Scientific” Disenchantment
Optimism in last decade of finding solutions now being replaced by pessimism
“As we make progress understanding the expanding universe the problem itself expands, so that the solution always seems to recede from us.” (Steven Weinberg, 1977 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, 1997)
The more the universe has become comprehensible through cosmology, the more it becomes pointless (Weinberg)
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Denial a first reactionWhen confronted with anomalous evidence that fails to
fit the prevailing “paradigm”, scientists deny the evidence or explain it away
Examples Newtonian mechanics displaced by Einstein’s
theory of relativity
Einstein’s own struggle to reconcile his discovery of relativity with quantum mechanics (resolved only in the 1980’s, long after his death)
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Resistance to change
Hence many scientists still reject the Anthropic Principle or Intelligent Design
Many still cling on to spontaneous generation of life
Many still insist that the theologians are wrong
Anything but acknowledge God - the resistance to paradigm shift!
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Attempts to deny the “Big Bang” (coined in 1948 by George Gamow)
“So long as the universe has a beginning, we could suppose it had a Creator.”
(Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time)
Hence, Hawking invented his controversial “no boundary” theory (1981) suggesting the universe has no beginning Even if theory finds support, it still does not explain why the
physical laws behave as they are
A return to old hypothesis
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From Modern Science to Sci-Fi
Search for a unified theory, a “theory of everything” to explain the physical constants
Counter-hypotheses to retain the atheistic paradigm All speculative, unobservable, therefore unverifiable by
scientific methods
For many scientists, science fiction hypotheses preferable to supernatural design
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“Science Fiction” Reaction
There exist billions of parallel universes - all godless and random Hence the “coincidences” to produce life in at least one
of these, are not so unlikely
Also “baby universes” (size = 10-25 cm) and “bubble universes”
Above based on quantum mechanics
One definition is that these other universes cannot be observed
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More Science Fiction
The Gaia (gila?) Theory (James Lovelock, 1990)
Earth is in reality a single living organism (a gaia) within the galaxy, also a living organism, and so is the universe
Purpose of the universe is to produce other universes (baby universes) via black holes
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Science or Blind Faith?
None of these can be observed to be verified scientifically!
Why are theories like the “multi-verse” science, but not “Intelligent Design”?
Who defines what is or isn’t “science”?
Is this science or blind faith?
Goal is to keep alive the concept ofa cosmology without the divine
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Science or Blind Faith?
Scientific Dogma Reality
Matter is eternal Matter has a beginning
Matter and laws evolved
Matter and laws constant – no new laws
Trend toward order
Trend toward disorder – second law of thermodynamics
Spontaneous generation Law of biogenesis Laws of Probability state this is impossible
Continual creation and evolution
Conservation – first law of thermodynamics
Scientific dogmas blind to reality
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Science or Blind Faith?
Scientific Dogma Reality
World history has progressed in uniformity
World catastrophe in the great flood
Organs evolved gradually
Organ always full developed – natural selection culls
Mutations can improve
Mutations always harmful
Civilisation grew gradually Archaeology and anthropology show civilisation appeared suddenly
Man is an animal Huge gap between man and animals
Naturalism Design is manifest – life complex and highly ordered
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The Emptiness of Naturalism
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Mechanistic & Impersonal
Not interested in “final cause” - the goal, the purpose
Emphasis is on “efficient cause”, i.e. the mechanism - how things work, how things came about
Also assumes randomness, and hence denied the existence of “first cause”
Takes humanity toward a mechanistic, impersonal and random view of the cosmos - devoid of the spiritual, the soul, of God
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Naturalism & Nihilism
Hence
Reject concept of God as “first cause” lost roots
Lack final purpose aimless, without purpose - what is the point?
Nihilism, a belief in nothing
Nothingness cannot produce anymeaningful answers to life?
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Naturalism & Nihilism
In neglecting the “final cause”, modern science has nowhere to go, no purpose - condemned to wander endlessly in the knowledge wilderness
In rejecting the theistic paradigm, the quest for answers to timeless questions concerning life is hopeless because there is no other answer!
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Reduced to nothing
“You, your joys and your sorrows, your
memories and your ambitions, your sense of
personal identity and free will, are in fact no
more that the behaviour of a vast assembly of
nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
(Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, page 3)
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The more objective ones would join John Wheeler, once the most prominent proponent of the parallel universes hypothesis, to abandon a “sci-fi” approach because it turns “science into a kind of mysticism”
Newsweek (July 27, 1998) reported of an astronomer Allan Sandage who at 50, willed himself to accept God” after reason alone failed to provide answers: “It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”
“Science-sibility”
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“Science-sibility”
“In this 20th century age of skepticism it is indeed ironic to discover that more evidence has accumulated for the existence of a transcendent Creator in this century than any time in the last 1,900 years.”
“This evidence is so powerful that numerous prominent scientists have begun to speak openly about the existence of God.”
(Mark Eastman & Chuck Missler, “The Creation beyond Time and Space”, 1996)
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A New Breed of Scientists
Scientists who recognise the existence of God
Charles Townes (1964 Physics Nobel prize winner)
John Polkinghorne (physicist turned priest)
Fred Hoyle (astronomer)
Paul Davies (physicist)
Arthur Peacocke
Robert John Russell
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A New Breed of Scientists
According to a 1997 study, 40% of scientists now believe in a personal God
Some are actively informing the world that the post-secular age has arrived.
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A New Breed of Scientists
A fellowship of Christians in science
Share a common fidelity to the word of God
Committed to integrity in the practice of science
“The issue is not evolution versus creation. The issue is design versus accident.” (Owen Gingerich, A.S.A.)
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Where to find the Answers
“Why?” (the purpose) is a far more important
question than “How?” (the mechanics)
The important answers have always been there
– “first cause”, “final cause”, purpose
Revelation & Reason