2. Is There Not a Cause?
IS THERE NOT A CAUSE?
Science has “explained” nothing; the more we know, the more fantastic the world becomes, and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
—Aldous Huxley
The story is told of a cynic, sitting under a nut tree, carrying on a rather jesting and gibing monologue with God. His grounds for complaint lay in what he considered to be an obvious failure on the part of God to go by the book on structural design. “Lord,” he said, “how is it that you made such a large and sturdy tree to hold such tiny, almost weightless nuts? And yet, you made small, tender plants to hold such large and weighty watermelons!”
As he chuckled away at the folly of such disproportion in God’s mindless universe, a nut suddenly fell on his head. After a pause he muttered, “Thank God that wasn’t a watermelon!”
In our high-paced, information-inundated society, it is certainly going to take more reasons than a falling nut on a questioning head for many to come to the same conclusion as the man in the story. This reasoning process may not be all bad. The danger of a simple faith is simplistic answers. An informed mind can and ought to bring a proportionate response.
Atheism finds itself with access to enormous data, and it must wade through much material to justify its conclusions. In this pursuit it must cross many hurdles that stand in the way to logical, existential, and pragmatic viability. When it cannot cross those hurdles, it must then be willing to look at the viability of theism, observe how well a theist crosses the same barriers, and study the reasons for his conclusions. In this, and in some of the ensuing chapters, I contend that atheism is unable to cross the major hurdles in its path and ends up making either illicit or ill-fated leaps. In some of these efforts, the resulting damage is far greater than others. But cumulatively, the hurdles are ultimately uncrossable, and this failure has immense implications.
By definition, atheism is the doctrine of belief that there is no God. It is an affirmation of God’s nonexistence. This ought not to be confused with agnosticism, which claims not to know. Postulating the nonexistence of God, atheism immediately commits the blunder of an absolute negation, which is self-contradictory. For, to sustain the belief that there is no God, it has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge.” Let’s not, however, get bogged down in the morass of such pedantic verbal dead ends. Other counter arguments are more important.
The first great hurdle to cross is the question of origins, and the ill-fated monumental leap that some scientists are wont to make from the findings of science to atheism. There is little doubt that the theory of evolution provided a massive thrust for ousting God from the paradigm of origin and existence. Since then, the whole terrain of evolution has been so efficiently mined that the Christian walking on tiptoe through it, is bound, sooner or later, to step on one and be decimated, along with all he has cherished.
The history of interaction between theism and evolutionary theory is filled with vitriolic language and vilifying exchanges between competing worldviews. Often, the antipathy manifested by science against religion is either ill-founded or clearly prejudiced. A landmark illustration of that scorn is Thomas Henry Huxley’s well-known response to Archbishop Samuel Wilberforce of Oxford at a meeting of the British Society for the Advancement of Science in 1860:
If the question is put to me whether I would rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather, or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence, and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.
It is said that when the Bishop of Worcester later reported these proceedings to his wife, she replied, “Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not true; but if it is, let us pray that it will not be generally known.”[1] Unfortunately for the Bishop’s wife, the story did become generally known.
Biology or Theology
The real tragedy, however, is the big difference between what is known and what is believed. The progress in microevolutionary processes and the extrapolation into macroevolution, with particular application to origins, is neither scientifically nor metaphysically sound. Yet, strong acerbic language, issuing from a grave antagonism towards things spiritual, has often found its way into scientific journals and into the popular writings of journalists. The instances are too many, and the deductions too seriously implicative, to leave them unaddressed. The straying of physics into metaphysics, making repeated inroads into philosophical and theological application, is like a sword being wielded irresponsibly, unlawfully, and hence, with immense danger. Ultimately, the one wielding the sword cuts off his own head.
Thus, the first mistake atheism makes is the illicit leap through science, from evolution to first causes. It is a leap that is unjustifiable. Thomas Henry Huxley, popularly known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” introduced a militant mood with his tendentious and denunciating arguments. In reviewing The Origin of Species in 1860, he waxed eloquent with transcending glee:
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated. But orthodoxy is the bourbon of the world of thought, it learns not, neither can it forget.[2]
His rhetoric spared nothing, and like a giant mastiff, he chewed Christianity to bits and spewed it out. Huxley’s thinking went significantly beyond that of Darwin, as award-winning scientist and writer, Stanley Jaki, has pointed out:
The word “evolution” made its appearance in The Origin only in the form “evolved,” and only in its sixth edition in 1872. The word became a prophetic counterpoint to that Grand Conclusion into which Darwin inserted (from the second edition on) a reference to the Creator as the One who “originally breathed life with its several powers into a few forms or into one.” Yet the whole evolution of Darwinism shows that the last phrase in The Origin about the Creator is out of place in what evolutionary philosophy, or evolutionism, has by and large come to be. A telling anticipation of this was the conflict between the last phrase of The Origin and the third of the three mottos introducing it. Through that motto, a quotation from Francis Bacon, Darwin warned against the presumption of believing that one could, by contemplating nature, be in possession of final truths, either in divinity or philosophy.[3]
Darwin clearly stated in his autobiography that he was a theist when he wrote The Origin. His agnosticism on how life began grew over the years, but he felt it was not within his range to come to such philosophical conclusions. Recognizing himself to be a weak metaphysician, he found himself trapped in a maze, not knowing whether the concept of God in his mind was due to the underlying truthfulness of the idea, or whether it was purely a mechanistic inculcation. Yet he certainly did not have the castigating intentions or hopes that Huxley developed.
Huxley’s claim that when science and religion have come into conflict, it has always resulted in the decimation of the latter by the former, is neither true nor fair. If Huxley’s allegation were true, and his fait accompli attitude were warranted, there would not be such a great number of eminent scientists today who reject the metaphysical leap of Darwinism or post-Darwinian thought, to say nothing of the scientists who are avowedly Christians.[4]
Take, for example, Michael Behe, who in his book Darwin’s Black Box, shows us the irreducible complexity of the human cell, which biological evolution cannot explain. Darwin argued that a human eye evolved from a simpler one, and yet he set aside the essential question of its origin. Behe not only observes Darwin’s avoidance of this question but tackles it by describing the chemical changes that are set in motion to generate sight. From the moment a photon hits the retina to the end result of an imbalance of charge that causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain, resulting in sight, a series of chemical reactions have taken place that in evolution’s mechanism would have been impossible. Thus Behe concludes that the irreducible complexity of the human cell reveals that biochemically macroevolution is impossible and Darwinism false.
Contrary to Huxley’s view, the leap to atheism actually does more to destroy science than theology. Huxley would have done better to have concentrated on the internecine warfare within the scientific world itself, where scientific theories and beliefs have fallen by the wayside as new finds decimate old ones. The move from Ptolemy to Copernicus to Newton to Einstein, and to the high value placed on Quantum Theory, has massive leaps within it.
Science is neither metaphysical nor monolithic, and honest scientists would study their subject with caution and humility, retaining a judicious agnosticism about the limitations of the scientific understanding of humankind. If they do not, they transgress and make a metaphysical leap, turning science into scientism.
Mary Hesse, in her Criteria of Truth in Science and Theology, and Jürgen Habermas, in his Knowledge and Human Interests, warn of this. Commenting on the role of science and the restrictions it must observe, Hesse reminds us that the knowledge of science “does not yield truth about the essential nature of things, the significance of its own place in the universe, or how it should conduct its life.”[5]
Science is not monolithic, I say, because of the various demarcating disciplines that have to converge if there is to be a unified result. In such a vast terrain the many routes have their own built-in restrictions. The distinct disciplines that are necessary in the study of humankind are so varied and demanding that the scientist ought to have a great deal of respect for the challenge he or she faces. These disciplines incorporate the roles of the cosmologist and astrophysicist, the physicist and physical chemist, the biochemist, the molecular biologist, the cell biologist, the anatomist, the physiologist, and the neurophysiologist. How vast is the area of understanding needed.
For example, a neurophysiologist studies the brain (just one intricate strand of study) with its billion long nerve cells, each of which, on the average, makes contact with 10,000 other cells under the control of chemical messengers. Even the brain of an octopus far exceeds in complexity any human artifact, and the human brain is immensely more complex. Charles Sherrington, in Man on His Nature, gave a picturesque description, seeing the brain as
an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of sub-patterns.[6]
This is the magnitude of information from just one physical organ, thus hardly a pursuit for a hobbyist at play. When one adds the other dimensions of a human being’s intricate nature, the task is no longer manageable by the physical scientist alone. Humans also function as social and aesthetic beings. Our unique linguistic capacities, our moral struggles, our religious bent, our yearning for love, and our search for personhood only add to the endeavor at hand. This complexity necessitates that scientific theorizing recognize its own limitations, or the conclusions will be severely warped. The progress in science, and its changing theories, quickly demonstrates that Darwinism and its post-Mendelian forms (involving genetic theory) can hardly afford the pejorative summation of Huxley on theology.[7] Scientific facts have often been discarded with fresh discoveries, old laws have surrendered with the advance of new hypotheses. The divergent views of dissenting voices over the last century have been many, and deep-seated conflicts remain. A brief glimpse of the areas of conflict will serve to justify this caution.
Biology or Physics
The conflicts within science are felt on at least three fronts. The first of these is the absence of a unifying system that pulls together the variegated strands into a homogeneous unit. One of the key struggles here is in having to deal with the problem of determinism; that is, are we the product of blind chance? Although several philosophers have dealt with this question, up to this point none has been able to present a unifying theory that gives a satisfactory answer.
Second, evolution itself has been subjected to several major disagreements within the sciences over at least three main periods. In the early part of the century, the debate focused on whether the offspring inherited a blending of the parental characteristics. The whole issue of inherited variations came into great controversy when Gregor Mendel’s work was rediscovered, and many bitter words ensued between the Biometricians (those who measure biological material) and the Mendelians. The animosity engendered turned into personal and vilifying exchanges.
The next conflict, between paleontologists and geneticists, raged in the 1920s. As knowledge of mutations increased, a widespread disenchantment with classic Darwinism came about, resulting in the propounding of a variety of other theories of evolutionary mechanism. If one reads the histories of biology of this time (Nordenskiold, Radl, Singer, and others), they portray the evolutionary theory as an illogical mess.
In the 1960s and 1970s the debate on neutralism and selection gained impetus. Two of the key names involved here were H. J. Muller and J. B. S. Haldane. R. J. Berry, professor of genetics at University College, London, said:
The theoretical arguments of Muller and Haldane can in retrospect be seen to be rather naïve. Both men effectively thought of every gene acting independently of its carrier. This is patently not true.[8]
Coming right up to our day, American paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that says our lack of knowledge of the origin of species is the result of gaps in the record. Instead, they say, evolution proceeds by fits and starts, and therefore, the gaps are not gaps, but only rest periods in the process. The deductions that follow from this view have brought about further intense debate.[9]
Not only have there been great differences in terms of process, but the third front on which science faces its most serious struggle is in the even deeper conflict about the various possibilities of origins. For example, Sir Fred Hoyle has argued in his book The Intelligent Universe that the idea that life originated by the random shuffling of molecules is “as ridiculous and improbable as the proposition that a tornado blowing through a junkyard may assemble a Boeing 747.” He calculated that the likelihood of life beginning in such a way is one in ten to the power of forty thousand. (He illustrates this by examining the chance that two thousand enzyme molecules will be formed simultaneously from their twenty component amino acids on a single specified occasion.)
I find the answer of one contemporary scientist to Fred Hoyle rather fascinating:
But this is not the correct calculation. The relevant chance is some far simpler self-replicating system, capable of development by natural selection, being formed at any place on earth, and at any time within a period of 100 million years. We cannot calculate this probability, since we know neither the nature of the hypothetical self-replicating system, nor the composition of the “primeval soup” in which it arose. The origin of life was obviously a rare event, but there is not reason to think that it is as extraordinary or unlikely as Hoyle calculated.[10]
Note this response. The opening line says, “This is not a correct calculation.” The next statement says, “We cannot calculate this probability . . .” The condemnation of Hoyle is made because of an incalculable probability on the basis of an unknown system. The admission is unblushing. Science just does not have knowledge of the beginnings in the genuine sense of the term. It cannot answer the how, much less the why of there being something rather than nothing.
Yet, many still insist on taking that blind leap. George C. Simpson stated that evolutionary theory arguably demonstrated that the whole evolution of life could have ensued, and did so, automatically. Simpson said, “There is no need, at least, to postulate any non-natural or metaphysical intervention in the course of evolution.” But as Stanley Jaki argued in response:
Two remarks may be in order, one scientific and one metaphysical. It is the scientific burden of a proponent of automatic evolution to account for the nonautomatic features in man’s behavior in general, and for the presumably nonautomatic formulation of theories advocating universal automatism. As for metaphysics, it is indispensable to evolutionary process as in relation to its very start.[11]
From a different angle, Lesslie Newbigin, in his book Foolishness to the Greeks, addressed the same thorn in the side of the scientists who hold to automatic evolution, rather than an intelligent first cause. One of their deep-seated struggles is to explain thoughts and conclusions that are based in a brain that is purely mechanical. Can the deductions of such a process be really considered true? Referring to the phenomenon and the epiphenomenon of the brain and its relationship to the mind, Newbigin said this:
[H]owever we may explain our mental states, we know that we have them. I think that I exist. If this idea is only a series of electrical pulses in my brain, the capacity of the brain to produce these pulses must be the result of evolution by natural selection. But since the idea that I can by my will affect the operation of these pulses is an illusion, the existence of this idea can have no effect upon what happens in the world of physical and chemical change. Therefore, it can have no bearing on natural selection. Therefore, the existence of this illusion is an unexplained mystery since it cannot have arisen from natural selection. The “explanation” fails to explain.[12]
I might add that this is one of the key issues Darwin struggled with, and it has serious implications for the behavioral scientist. Atheism has never meaningfully defused these questions that force atheistic worldviews into circular arguments. Indeed, addressing the atheist, biologist George Beadle raised the question, “Whence came the hydrogen?” Beadle added, “Is it any less awe-inspiring to conceive of a universe created of hydrogen with the capacity to evolve into man, than it is to accept the Creation of man as man?”[13]
Beadle’s point is well-taken. In pushing back the regressive causes, the atheist is not able to escape the inexplicability of an impersonal first cause, to say nothing of the awe-inspiring capacity of the “raw material” from whence it all “evolved.” The turning of hydrogen into thinking and purposive beings is scientifically undemonstrated, and philosophically devoid of merit.
This whole area is such an insurmountable problem for the scientist that F. H. C. Crick, whose discovery of the DNA molecule has had such a profound effect on genetics and biological life as we know it, has said, “The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.”[14]
Yet, as we progress, we come to a dead end. Biologists have shown that the discovery of the physical basis for the genetic code has made the answer to the question of origins even more elusive. Even if we were to grant that the genetic code is the result of natural selection, it still needs the “machinery” to translate the code into function, and this translation itself depends upon components that are themselves the products of translation. The possibility of this occurring is so small as to amount to zero probability, bringing about a suggestion from Crick that life in bacteria form may have been transmitted to this planet in a missile from some other part of space. We are back to ground zero. Crick, and others who leave God out of the paradigm, constantly end up with an explanation that fails to explain.
Physics or Metaphysics
The ascending of biological forms into more complex and superior designs also comes into conflict with the Second Law of Thermodynamics in Physics. Thermodynamics is that branch of physical science that is concerned with the interrelationship and interconversion of different forms of energy, and the behavior of systems as they relate to certain basic quantities such as pressure and temperature. Since the origin of the physical universe is intensely connected with this area of science, the Laws of Thermodynamics must be held intact.
The Second Law basically states that heat cannot be transferred from a colder to a hotter body without net changes occurring in other bodies. In an irreversible process, entropy (i.e., heat death) always increases. If the pun may be pardoned, the descent into entropy, or total randomness, really boils down to a move from order to disorder, from the complex to the simple.
Shakespeare presented this idea in the farewell speech of his last play, The Tempest, where he has Prospero saying:
Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yes, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
From the scientific point of view, the question is, How, in this closed order, do biological systems “swim against the entropic stream”? Or to put it differently, how do biological systems climb the ladder of intricacy and order, while the natural world descends to entropy and disorder?
Scientists have attempted to deal with this conundrum in their studies in dissipative structures, which show that biological organisms maintain their structure at the expense of the system, returning heat to the environment. However, as other scientists point out, this still does not explain nor answer the question of how it was that such highly ordered systems as living organisms could ever have come into existence in a world in which irreversible processes always tend to lead to an increase in entropy and thus, to disorder.
In spite of attempts to arrive at a satisfactory answer to the question raised by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the perplexities remain. A fundamental law of biology must operate in direct opposition to a fundamental law of physics. Scientists argue that the law for the whole does not apply to all of its parts. (This sleight of hand is fraught with serious problems for those who wish to live by their laws.) One way or the other, it goes back to the “primeval soup” somehow having the awesome capacity within itself to rise above fundamental physical laws. And once again, as Lesslie Newbigin observed, the explanation fails to explain. The answer keeps coming back like a chorus with a mantric resonance to it: chance.
French biochemist Jacques Monod said without apology, “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.”[15] Monod brings his song of harmony out of discord, order out of chaos, to a ringing climax with the words:
The ancient covenant is in pieces; man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged by chance. Neither his destiny, nor his duty have been written down. The kingdom above or the darkness below; it is for him to choose.[16]
A Snake or a Rope
Theoretical physicist John Polkinghorne, a colleague of Stephen Hawking and the former president of Queen’s College, Cambridge, is eminently known for his scholarship and brilliance in his field. He has been at the forefront of high energy physics for over thirty years. Physics Bulletin described his book The Quantum World as one of the best books of the genre. Dr. Polkinghorne does a masterful job of refuting those who think science has done away with a theistic world. He challenged Jacques Monod’s conclusion that chance, through a process of random shuffling, brought about our world, and pointed out that the problem is particularly acute in respect to the beginnings of life itself.
Polkinghorne argues against the mindlessness of the position that amino acids just randomly strung themselves together to form the protein chain, and strongly asserts that a tightly-knit and intelligible universe such as ours is not sufficiently explained by a random chance process. The exactness of our universe argues for the anthropic principle, which basically states that the existence and sustenance of man is not brought about by a random universe but is dependent on a universe with a very particular character in its basic laws and circumstances. It is like an acute Copernican revolution, not restoring the earth to the center of the cosmos, but linking the nature of the universe with its potential for the existence of man.
So delicate is the balance, and so tightly knit, wrote Polkinghorne, that
scientists have felt particularly uneasy about the delicate balance required by the anthropic principle. To alleviate their anxiety some of them have suggested that there might be a portfolio of many different universes . . . arising from an infinite series of oscillations of one universe, ever expanding and contracting, and each time having its basic structure dissolved in the melting pot of the big crunch, thence, re-emerging in a different form in the subsequent expansion of the big band.
Then Polkinghorne added:
Let us recognize these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but, in the strictest sense, metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes. . . .
A possible explanation of equal intellectual respectability—and to my mind, greater elegance—would be that this one world is the way it is because it is the creation of the will of a Creator who purposes that it should be so.[17]
The conclusion should be clear in our minds. Whether it is Crick’s speculation that life could have been shuttled here by a guided missile in bacteria form from another planet, or Monod’s exaggeration on chance, Huxley’s contention that science has delivered a mortal blow to theology is a pipedream. One of the tragic lessons of this century is that experts within certain fields draw upon their knowledge to prove virtually anything they want to prove, all along ignoring a unifying truth that gives fair recognition to other disciplines. It appears that the real problem lies in the fact that Huxley in his contention, and those who live under its fallout, seeing the micro-processes of the trees, have lost sight of the macro-necessities contained in the forest.
An ancient Hindu parable tells of a man, in the dark mists of the night, seeing a shape twisting ominously in the wind and mistaking what was a rope for a snake. The atheistic scientist living with tunnel vision, and under the tyranny of a single idea, in the mist of his laboratory, has blundered in reverse, and mistaken a snake to be a rope. In the Eastern parable, the error lay in perceiving that which was dead to be alive; in atheism the error lies in perceiving that which is alive to be dead. Positing a mindless first cause, the atheist has lost the essence of life.
How well I remember a seminar under Dr. Polkinghorne at Cambridge University. In commenting on the built-in factors within this universe, with particular reference to Quantum Theory, he said, with a grin, “There is no free lunch. Somebody has to pay, and only God has the resources to put in what was needed to get what we’ve got.”
Questions for Study and Discussion