Re: [asa] When Science Points To God

Nice to see Dinesh writing on these topics again. I found that Discover
issue interesting as well.

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 9:19 PM, 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 01:42:05 2008