Does science make belief in god obsolete
Can science explain everything about our existence and the universe? Does science just need more time? If one-day science does explain everything about our world, would people disregard it for the sake of religion? All of these are important questions about our natural world and the way we perceive our existence.
Depending on what view an individual has about god existing can determine whether they believe science will ultimately explain the story of the universe and human kind. Theists hold a view that God created the world and every beautiful object in it. Atheists stand on the other side holding multiple views such as the infinite universe theory and the multiverse hypothesis, atheists are just waiting for science to explain everything. Agnostics are Switzerland in this argument saying “either side could win, but we’re going to stay out of it”.
All of this brings us to the ultimate question of: Does science make belief in god obsolete? Personally I don’t think science will ever be able to understand the spark of our beautiful universe. My main support of this is Paley’s “intelligent watchmaker”. Look at the design of our existence, science now can explain almost all of our natural processes and how they work. As far as how they started or why that’s still a mystery and I believe it always will be.
I’d like to start by breaking this into three main areas of design: The origin of the universe, origin of life, and the origin of new species. Eventually I agree that science will be able to explain the origin of new species. However, the beginning of our universe and the first life that accompanied it, I don’t feel will ever be explained it’s a beautiful phenomenon that science will forever only have guesses about.
Kenneth R. Miller, a professor at Brown University has opened a different approach to the validity of god in my mind. “The categorical mistake of the atheist is to assume that God is natural, and therefore within the realm of science to investigate and test.” (Miller). From a religious standpoint I stood as an agnostic for most of my life, until now I didn’t realize that I was searching for a god that was apart of the natural world in a sense. Brown makes the case that it is impossible for god to be apart of nature if he’s the reason for nature. “He is the answer to existence, not part of existence itself.” (Miller)
In the same article Miller makes another great argument that parallels Paley’s “Intelligent Watchmaker” design theory. Miller says: “We live in a world literally bursting with creative evolutionary potential, and it is quite reasonable to ask why that is so. To a person of faith, the answer to that question is God.” (Miller) The fact that science proves new universes are constantly being “born” follows the creative evolutionary potential that Miller discuses. A creator god could be designing an entirely new species of being in another universe. Using our existence as an experiment of some sort, testing our moral identity and improving upon it to rid said universe of evil. This idea could be repeating millions of times to get the perfect race of beings.
“Science has not only made belief in God obsolete. It has made it incoherent.” (Stenger) Victor J. Stenger has made his entire argument on the fact that “The universe could have come from nothing.”(Stenger) How is that possible? Nothing is the absence of some thing. The whole idea of nothing is literally no thing exists. Earlier in this response Stenger discussed that the positive energy of matter was equal to the negative of negative energy of gravity. In my mind energy, matter and gravity are all things. So I believe he is contradicting himself within this article. Stenger goes on to say “The only creator that seems possible is the one Einstein abhorred—the God who plays dice with the universe.” (Stenger) Within this argument lies the answer to the nothing questions. Viewing his beliefs, it seems that if a creator god has the power to create the universe, would that god not be a thing?
As discussed in class traditionally the idea that the universe could arise from nothing has been dismissed. That is why I find it so hard to find any truth in Stengers’writing he fails to give a proper explanation of “nothing”. In the case that our universe was created the creator itself would then in fact be a thing. Then the loop of “well, what created the creator?” begins. I’m not saying that there is a creator, but I feel like science will never be able to provide a satisfactory answer to how the universe came to be. We will always need a further explanation of how the universe came to be.
Hawking holds a very interesting point of the argument of something from nothing that I disagree with entirely. The idea behind Hawking’s beliefs are under the right circumstances particles will pop in and out of existence. One particle does not explain the idea of an entire universe that is capable of sustaining life. The idea that the perfect conditions to support life come from one atom popping into existence from nothing is ridiculous. If this were true, the universe should be so old it would appear to be an infinite universe. Science wouldn’t be able to give us a timeline at all for how old the universe would actually be. One particle would also be considered another “thing” then it would need another particle to react with that would be the original reaction that sparked our universe to arise. Creating something from two particles that are in fact things that take up space.
In Steven Pinkers response he believes that we would be better off if science does make the belief of a god obsolete. Pinker also opens up to the other sciences such as history and philosophy. “…not just people with test tubes and white lab coats.” (Pinker) Pinker goes on to discuss how belief in god was accepted because of the god of the gaps argument. Belief in god gave answers to people for things that couldn’t be explained.
“Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of natural selection…” (Pinker) Pinker uses this quote to show how the process of natural selection is no longer an argument for the theist. I’m sorry but I refuse to believe I evolved from the same common ancestor as a whale. Darwin was onto something but it is taken to such a great extent that it makes it unbelievable. During an anthropology lecture I was shown a slide that gave an explanation why we shared a common ancestor with whales. Some of the bones found in whales are fins are very similar to the bones found in our hands. That’s what this whole argument is based on? Are similar bones? That’s insane to me. Science can explain a lot of things but this is just a sad attempt of explaining our past.
Even though I disagree with most of Pinker’s response there is one part that stuck out to me. That’s really making me wonder about a deeper answer. This is found in this quote. “Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days…” (Pinker) Science has proved that the earth is older than depicted in the bible. So far this is the only thing I have found that is making me question my answer to the question, does science make belief in god obsolete?
In all of this I just focused on weather science will be able to disprove the theory of a creator god. What if science one day proves that our existence and the creation of the universe is too perfect to happen without a creator god. There are so many variables that have to be perfect in order for a planet to sustain life, much less a universe to exist.
A video from Prager University explains this idea in a short six-minute introduction. In 1966 astronomer Carl Sagan had the idea that in order for a planet to sustain life two variables must be perfect. The type of star, and the distance of the planet from the star. This leaves an estimated one septillion planets that could sustain life. In the 1960’s the S.E.T.I. program was launched. This was the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. So far there has been nothing found.
As our scientific knowledge increased we realize today that there are more than two hundred variables that need to be perfect for a planet to safely sustain life. One of these being that without a giant, gravity rich planet right next to the life sustaining planet, asteroids would be pulled in destroying said planet. In example Jupiter pulls all of the asteroids away from Earth.
Another key point made in this video is the fact that all four of the fundamental forces were set almost instantly after the “Big Bang”. Had any one of the values of the forces been different the universe would not have been able to exist. “My atheism was greatly shaken by these developments.” Said Fred Hoyle who created the term “Big Bang”.
After viewing some of these cases I’m beginning to ask if science is fighting for the case of a creator god without even knowing it. The odds of our existence are simply too low to comprehend. The beginning of the universe and our intelligent form of life is just to miraculous to ignore and say it just happened through natural causes that science can’t yet explain. With the advances in scientific reasoning and technology already so far ahead of anything older philosophers could have imagined, how much more time do scientists need to prove the validity of God. It could be tomorrow, in thousands of years, or never. That’s the unprecedented complexity of this question. Today’s society is so used to having all of the information in the world at the palm of their hands. We as a society are forgetting how to think critically and rely on our own judgment in a scenario of the unknown.
In my opinion the origin of new species is the one area that science might fully understand one day. The other two areas: the origin of life, and the origin of the universe will almost certainly be unknown for the remainder of my life. Maybe even longer. The delicateness, beauty, and sophistication of our lives and universe are too astronomical to just say it happened by a particle suddenly appearing from nothing.