Re: [asa] When Science Points To God

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On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:19:37 +0900 John Walley
<john_walley@yahoo.com> wrote:
>When Science Points To God
>by Dinesh D'Souza
>
>Contemporary atheism marches behind the banner of science. It is
>perhaps no surprise that several leading atheists—from biologist
>Richard Dawkins to cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker to
>physicist Victor Stenger—are also leading scientists. The central
>argument of these scientific atheists is that modern science has
>refuted traditional religious conceptions of a divine creator.
>
>But of late atheism seems to be losing its scientific confidence.
>One sign of this is the public advertisements that are appearing
>in billboards from London to Washington DC. Dawkins helped pay for
>a London campaign to put signs on city buses saying, “There’s
>probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Humanist
>groups in America have launched a similar campaign in the nation’s
>capital. “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake.”
>And in Colorado atheists are sporting billboards apparently
>inspired by John Lennon: “Imagine…no religion.”
>
>What is striking about these slogans is the philosophy behind
>them. There is no claim here that God fails to satisfy some
>criterion of scientific validation. We hear nothing about how
>evolution has undermined the traditional “argument from design.”
>There’s not even a whisper about how science is based on reason
>while Christianity is based on faith.
>
>Instead, we are given the simple assertion that there is probably
>no God, followed by the counsel to go ahead and enjoy life. In
>other words, let’s not let God and his commandments spoil all the
>fun. “Be good for goodness sake” is true as far as it goes, but it
>doesn’t go very far. The question remains: what is the source of
>these standards of goodness that seem to be shared by religious
>and non-religious people alike? Finally John Lennon knew how to
>compose a tune but he could hardly be considered a reliable
>authority on fundamental questions. His “imagine there’s no
>heaven” sounds visionary but is, from an intellectual point of
>view, a complete nullity.
>
>If you want to know why atheists seem to have given up the
>scientific card, the current issue of Discover magazine provides
>part of the answer. The magazine has an interesting story by Tim
>Folger which is titled “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent
>Creator.” The article begins by noting “an extraordinary fact
>about the universe: its basic properties are uncannily suited for
>life.” As physicist Andrei Linde puts it, “We have a lot of
>really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences
>are such that they make life possible.”
>
>Too many “coincidences,” however, imply a plot. Folger’s article
>shows that if the numerical values of the universe, from the speed
>of light to the strength of gravity, were even slightly different,
>there would be no universe and no life. Recently scientists have
>discovered that most of the matter and energy in the universe is
>made up of so-called “dark” matter and “dark” energy. It turns out
>that the quantity of dark energy seems precisely calibrated to
>make possible not only our universe but observers like us who can
>comprehend that universe.
>
>Even Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate in physics and an
>outspoken atheist, remarks that “this is fine-tuning that seems to
>be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to
>accept as a mere accident.” And physicist Freeman Dyson draws the
>appropriate conclusion from the scientific evidence to date: “The
>universe in some sense knew we were coming.”
>
>Folger then admits that this line of reasoning makes a number of
>scientists very uncomfortable. “Physicists don’t like
>coincidences.” “They like even less the notion that life is
>somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are
>forcing them to confront that very idea.”
>
>There are two hurdles here, one historical and the other
>methodological. The historical hurdle is that science has for
>three centuries been showing that man does not occupy a privileged
>position in the cosmos, and now it seems like he does. The
>methodological hurdle is what physicist Stephen Hawking once
>called “the problem of Genesis.” Science is the search for natural
>explanations for natural phenomena, and what could be more
>embarrassing than the finding that a supernatural intelligence
>transcending all natural laws is behind it all?
>
>Consequently many physicists are exploring an alternative
>possibility: multiple universes. This is summed up as follows:
>“Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes
>in an inconceivably vast multiverse.” Folger says that “short of
>invoking a benevolent creator” this is the best that modern
>science can do. For contemporary physicists, he writes, this “may
>well be the only viable nonreligious explanation” for our fine-
>tuned universe.
>
>The appeal of multiple universes—perhaps even an infinity of
>universes—is that when there are billions and billions of
>possibilities, then even very unlikely outcomes are going to be
>realized somewhere. Consequently if there was an infinite number
>of universes, something like our universe is certain to appear at
>some point. What at first glance seems like incredible coincidence
>can be explained as the result of a mathematical inevitability.
>
>The only difficulty, as Folger makes clear, is that there is no
>empirical evidence for the existence of any universes other than
>our own. Moreover, there may never be such evidence. That’s
>because if there are other universes, they will operate according
>to different laws of physics than the ones in our universe, and
>consequently they are permanently and inescapably inaccessible to
>us. The article in Discover concludes on a somber note. While some
>physicists are hoping the multiverse will produce empirical
>predictions that can be tested, “for many physicists, however, the
>multiverse remains a desperate measure ruled out by the
>impossibility of confirmation.”
>
>No wonder atheists are sporting billboards asking us to
>“imagine…no religion.” When science, far from disproving God,
>seems to be pointing with ever-greater precision toward
>transcendence, imagination and wishful thinking seem all that is
>left for the atheists to count on.
>
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Received on Wed Nov 26 00:48:00 2008