SCIENTIFICPROBLEMS FOR SCIENTISM

 

Dr. Robert C. Newman

Interdisciplinary BiblicalResearch Institute

Biblical Theological Seminary

Hatfield, Pennsylvania

 

            Abstract:  Fiveareas are examined in which scientism -- the view that the cosmos is all thatexists, and that it is entirely explicable by natural law -- has shown itselfto be problematic even from the perspective of scientific evidence.

 

One of the major opponentsof biblical Christianity in the West since the rise of modern science has beenscientism, the claim that -- to use the words of Carl Sagan -- Òthe cosmos isall that is, or ever was, or ever will be.Ó[1]

 

This view has been givenvarious names, depending on the nuance in mind.  As an absolutizing of science to be the only means to trueknowledge, it is called scien­tism.[2]  As the claim that matter-energy is theulti­mate reality, it is called materialism.[3]  As the belief that everything can beexplained by the operation of purely natural forces without miracles at all, itis called naturalism.[4]  As the view that all the com­plexorganization in our universe has developed by unguided processes working withinnatural laws, it is called evolution­ism.[5]  Though there is some divergence amongthese views, for simplici­ty in this paper we will lump them together andcall them scien­tism.

 

Scientism has hadsignificant influence beyond the circle of its own proponents.  It changed the definition of whatconsti­tutes true scholarship.[6]  In every academic field it led to therise of models which banished the supernatural from their own territory.  Some examples are: 

 

1.Liberal biblical criticism, e.g., the JEDP theory, that the first five books ofthe OT were not written by Moses, an eyewitness of miracles narrated in them,but by anonymous authors and editors living centuries later and reworking mythsand legendary material;[7]

 

2.Darwinian evolution, the claim that all the diversity of life on earth can beexplained by the operation of random varia­tion and survival of thefittest;[8]

 

3.Marxism, the ideology that human political history is totally economics -- inparticular, the struggle of various social classes for domination;[9]

 

4.Freudianism, the claim that human behavior is a result of non-logical,non-moral forces acting upon or within the human psyche.[10]

 

These models, in turn, haveprovided ammunition for groups with very different worldviews than scientism,which have typi­cally used it to shoot at biblical Christianity.  Muslims, for in­stance, use liberalbiblical criticism to discredit the Bible and keep their people from seriouslyconsid­ering its message.[11]  Liberal Christendom has adopted most ofthe results of scientism, turned many away from the faith, all the while tryingto retain some place for spirituality and religion.[12]  Libera­tion theology has bor­rowedits in­sights from Marxism.[13]  The New Age movement has taken overevolu­tion and given it a pantheistic or polytheis­tic fla­vor.[14]  Even with­in evangeli­calChristendom, there has been some heavy influ­ence from non-bibli­calpsycholo­giz­ing.[15]

 

Here we propose to look atfive areas in which scientism has made large and influen­tial claims, andto show that such claims face serious scientific problems -- not just theologi­calobjec­tions as would convince only committed Chris­tians.  In this way, I trust, we may bestrengthened our­selves, and become more effective in helping those aroundus who may be attracted by scien­tism or by its ideas which have pene­trat­edinto other cir­cles.  The fiveareas we shall consider are: (1) predic­tion; (2) continu­ity; (3)mindless­ness; (4) eternality; and (5) locality.

 

1. Prediction 

 

The French mathematicianPierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827) was one of the early proponents of the ideathat the universe is a vast machine which can be explained totally by theoperation of natural laws.  Hispopular work Exposi­tion of the System of the World (1796) proposed that thesun and earth had arisen from a large gas cloud.  Shortly thereafter, Laplace was reportedly introduced toNapoleon, who asked him what place this left for God.  ÒSire,Ó he replied, ÒI have no need for that hypothe­sis.Ó[16]

 

Laplace and others claimedthat since the world operated totally on the basis of natural laws, it would inprinciple be possible (once these laws were discovered) to calculate the entirefuture merely by knowing the position and velocity of all the particles in theuniverse at one time.  Let us callthis the Laplacean program for prediction.  To the extent that this project was substantially fulfilled,it would be a powerful apologetic for the worldview of scientism.  In fact, the mere attrac­tion ofthe idea itself, given the astonishing advances science was making, convincedmany that scientism was true even without this test.

 

The Laplacean program, however,has always been in trouble computa­tionally.  Consider, first of all, the question of how big a computerwould be needed to make this calculation. Even assuming that nothing but particles and forces exist, one wouldneed to be able to calculate the movement of each particle in the universeunder the influence of every force acting on it.  There appear to be at least 1080 elementaryparticles which would need to be tracked by the computer.[17]Each of these parti­cles exerts at least one kind of force on all the otherparticles within the range of that force, and the range for two of these forces-- the electro­mag­netic and gravitational -- is effectively infinite.[18]  The number of calculations involved foreach time-step is thus astronomically larger than even the number of atoms andelectrons in the universe! 

 

A far more economicalstrategy would be to build a universe just like ours and watch what it does.[19]  But to do this, we need to know exactlywhat our universe has in the way of parti­cles and forces.  Then we need to get this informationset up in the form of a parallel universe.  Then we need to place all the particles in their properlocations with the right velocities. Then we need to figure out how to make this universe run much fasterthan ours does so it can get ahead of ours and be of some use for predictingthe future.  The project looks likesomething God might do, but nothing we will ever be capable of!

 

Two basic discoveries ofthis century -- quantum phenomena in the 1920s and chaotic behavior morerecently -- only serve to bury this project even deeper under its ownarrogance.

 

The strange world of thevery small with its quantum phenom­ena has frightened both Chris­tiansand non-Christians.[20]  The problem with which we are hereconcerned, however, involves our inability to locate the position and velocityof the small elementary particles exactly.  This is more than just a matter of limited precision inmeasurement, which afflicts all human activity.  The fact is that the nature of light and matter is such thatto measure position more and more accurately, we have to use light of shorterand shorter wavelength, and so larger and larger energies.  Eventually we cross a threshold wherethe energy of the light we are using disrupts the very thing we are trying tomeasure.  To measure a particle'sposition very accurately, we lose information on its velocity; to measurevelocity, we lose information on posi­tion.  The upshot is that we cannot even set up our paralleluniverse exactly in the first place, and (even if we could) we would have to besatisfied with statis­tical predictions of what will occur rather thanspecific de­tails.

 

Much has been made in thepast few years of so-called chaotic phenomena.[21]  Nature often does not behave as simplyas we would like.  Thoughscientists have tended to think that small errors in measurement will onlyproduce small effects in predic­tion, it is now clear that this is not thecase in many situa­tions.  Forinstance, in the complex world of weather -- the interaction between our air(with its dust and water vapor) and the sun, land and oceans -- a small changewill not always remain small, but may grow so large that predic­tion isimpossible.  The situation iscalled the butterfly effect, because it appears that the disturbance producedin the air by the flight of a single butterfly might sometimes make a bigdifference in the weather a conti­nent away and a week later!

 

Thus the Laplacean programis dead.  Even if the universe werea closed system of cause and effect, it would not be possi­ble to provethis by making predictions of what must happen.  The Christian worldview, by contrast, features the interven­tionof a prayer-answering God, a common experience among believers and one whichhas often functioned to bring unbelievers to salvation. More pub­liclytestable is the phenomenon of fulfilled prophecy, which has rightly been animportant part of Chris­tian evidences for most of church history.[22]

 

2. Continuity 

 

Scientism has shown adistinct antagonism toward (and fear of) discontinuities in nature -- apparentgaps, breaks and singu­lari­ties. Doubtless this is because such phenomena smack of divine interven­tionand have regularly been used by Chris­tians as evidence of such.  This antagonism shows up quite stronglyin both cosmolo­gy and biolo­gy, though we will save our comments aboutcosmology­ for the section ÒEtern­ality,Ó below.

 

One of the major attractionsof Darwin's evolutionary pro­posal (for himself and many of his followers)was that it pic­tured all change as virtually continuous, being produced bythe natural selec­tion of innumer­able small variations.  The discon­tinuities betweenpresent varieties of living things was seen as the result of slow, rela­tivelycontin­uous pro­cesses acting over long periods of time.  The violent reaction of biologists inthe 1940's to Goldschmidt's Òhopeful monsterÓ hypoth­esis (with its largemutational jumps) illustrates the powerful emotions raised by even anaturalistic attack on continu­ity.[23]  But neither the fossil record nor thetestable abilities of the Darwin­ian mechanism really suggest that thisassumption of continu­ity fits reality.

 

Though it is Òthe tradesecret of paleontolo­gy,Ó it is true that there are no transitionalsequences of fossils between upper levels of the biological classifica­tionscheme.[24]  Darwin felt the force of thisobjection, one of the strongest presented in his own time.  He proposed that the fossil record waswoefully incomplete, but that -- should it be possible to fill it in sometimein the future -- these transitions would surely show up. 

 

The 135 years of collect­ingsince Darwin wrote his Origin of Species have turned up an enormous number of fossilsfrom all over the earth -- we now have something like 200 million fossilscatalogued in museums.[25]  Still no transi­tionalfossils!  Already by the 1930's,this lack of transitions was troubling enough to require evolutionists topostulate that all significant evolution takes place in small, isolated groupsof plants or animals, so that we would hardly be likely to find the transitionfossils.  We will say a bit moreabout this under our discussion on mecha­nism, below.  Enough here to note that the majorevents of evolu­tion are missing from the record.  Certainly the fossil record is no argument for continu­ity!

 

Another fossil problem isthe shape of the fossil record. Textbooks commonly picture the fossils as showing a Òtree of life,Óbeginning with a single trunk early in earth's history (representing the primitivesingle-celled organisms), followed by the major branches into plants andanimals.  On each of these branchesin turn, we have smaller branches and then twigs going off to form the livingthings which exist today.  Ignoringthe fact that most of the branching junctions on this tree are hypo­theti­cal,the tree has the wrong shape.  IfDarwinian evolution is true, it should begin with one species, which wouldgradually mutate into more species. Then the species should become diver­gent enough to form genera, thegenera eventually forming fami­lies, and so on upwards in the biologicalclassification scheme to phyla, the major body plans among the plants andanimals.  Instead, the fossilrecord is upside-down!  Virtual­lyall the animal phyla appear to have formed in a very brief period called the ÒCambrianexplosionÓ right near the beginning of multi-celled life, and none (or one)have formed since.[26]  This certain­ly looks like adisconti­nuity!

 

The Darwinian mechanism --mutation and natural selection -- is very attractive not only because it avoidsdiscontinuity but because at first sight it seems to be obviously true.  If variation occurs in all populationsof plants and animals (and it does), and if those variations which help anorganism better to survive in a given environment are more likely to be passedon to the next generation than their competitors (they are), then how could weavoid getting better and better plants and animals in the course of time?  This appears to be true, and suggeststhat Darwin's discovery of natural selection really has located a mechanism bywhich organisms adapt to changing environ­ments.

 

But Darwinists typicallyjump from here (microevolution) right to so-called amoeba-to-man evolution (macroevolution), without taking seriouslythe question of whether a mechanism for small-scale change will really producelarge scale changes.  Sinceextrapolation from one size-scale to another in other sciences often breaksdown (e.g., weather to climate, or Newtonian physics to relativity), we need tolook at the data to see whether or not it does here also, rather than justplugging in our worldview to solve the question.

 

When we look at the data, wefind trouble.  Even if mutation andselection can change (a few) dark and (many) light colored moths into (a few)light and (many) dark ones, it doesn't follow that it can produce moths in thefirst place.  Attempts to simulatemutation and natural selection on a computer do not work.[27]  Apparently random processes cannot beexpected to produce high levels of organization even in the time and spaceprovided by our whole uni­verse.[28]  This is a problem not only forproducing the first living things from non-living,[29]but also for all the really substantial changes thereafter.  These latter changes require fullyfunctional pathways from one working system to another, like converting aVolkswagen into a Cadillac without taking it off the road.  How do we get legs to change to wingswith all the intermediates not only fully functional, but good competitors witheverything else in their ecological niche?  How convert scales to feathers?  Or a two-chambered heart to a three- and then afour-chambered one?  Similarproblems exist for explaining the simplest functional forms of variousbiochemical systems necessary to photosynthesis, locomotion, vision, andrespiration.[30]  A great deal of hand-waving takes theplace of evidence or even specific proposals for pathways here.

 

Creation­ists areregularly sneered at for their ÒGod of the gapsÓ explana­tion, which wasfrequently plugged into places later explained by natural law.  The same procedure, however, isregularly used by scien­tism in the form of a Ònatu­ral law of thegaps.Ó  Just as Bible-believershave sometimes inserted miracles anywhere in science there appears to be a gap,proponents of scientism will in the same places (1) suggest an unknown naturallaw, (2) propose that there is no gap but only missing data, or (3) invoke thesemi-miracu­lous powers of mutation and natural selec­tion to bridge thechasm.  But science has notsucceeded in filling in these gaps. On the contrary, it appears that several of them are gaps in reali­ty.

 

3. Mindlessness 

 

For scientism, the only kindof minds that exist in the universe are those which have developed in thecourse of its history by mutation and natural selection.  Some think this has happened only once-- here on earth -- but the more popular view is that life and intelligence maybe rather common out there.[31]  In either case, the beginning of theuniverse as we know it, and of life, are mind­less.  Both Dar­win[32]and recently Daw­kins[33]try to ex­plain real­i­ty without recourse to a mind behind the uni­verse.  Darwin's work, in fact, has been widelyhailed as destroying Paley's argument that design implies a designing mindbehind it.[34]

 

But the existence of designin inanimate nature is devas­tating to this program, and so is the questionof where the complex organization came from that characterizes even thesimplest living things.

 

In non-living things -- likethe basic forces of the uni­verse, the nature of the chemical elements andcompounds, the frequency of various environments in the universe -- there is nomutation and natural selection to produce the observed order.  How is it, then, that our universe isnot only fit for life (if it weren't, we wouldn't be here), but that this fitinvolves a level of Òfine-tuningÓ that takes one's breath away? 

 

For example, the precise fitbetween the four basic physical forces in our universe is staggering.  The strongest force known is the strongnuclear interaction, 100 times stronger than the electromagnetic force.  Electromagnetism, in turn, is athousand times stronger than the weak nuclear force, and the weak force 10million billion billion billion (1034) times stronger thangravity.  These forces span a rangein strength of nearly 40 powers of ten, yet small changes in the strength ofany one of them would render the universe uninhabitable. 

 

If the strong force wereonly 5% weaker, stars wouldn't burn; if it were 5% stronger, stars would ex­plode.  If electro­magnetism were a fewpercent stronger or weaker, the elec­trons around an atom would be held toostrongly or too weakly; in either case, there would be insuf­ficientchemical bonding for life molecules. If the weak force were a few percent stronger or weaker, there would beno elements heavier than hydrogen and helium outside stars, thus no planets tolive on and no chemicals to support life. If gravity were slightly weaker, stars would never get hot enough toturn on their nuclear furnac­es and no heavy elements would be formed; ifslightly stronger, the stars would be too hot, burn up too quickly, and provideno stable environ­ment for life. A precise balance between gravity and the expansion speed of theuniverse is necessary for it to form galaxies and stars.  The positive and negative charges ofthe electromagnetic force must cancel out almost exactly so that gravity candomi­nate at astronomical distances and provide habitable planets aroundefficient stars.[35]

 

The uniqueness of manychemical elements and the compounds they form is also striking, but tooinvolved for discussion here.[36]

 

Though science (and sciencefiction) writers regularly picture a universe with lots of earth-like planetsand intelli­gent beings living on them, the right conditions for life nowlook like they may be unique to earth in the entire universe.[37]  Certainly we live in a universe thatwould look designed to an unbiased observer.

 

Proponents of scientismspeak rather glibly about a natural­istic origin of life through a seriesof chemical reactions in the atmosphere, oceans and tidal ponds of the earlyearth.  But when actual details andscenarios are examined (as Robert Shapiro does in his book Origins), and when actual numbersare supplied for the probabilities, the whole idea moves from the plausible tothe ludicrous.[38]  The time and opportunity are not there-- not on earth, not on a thousand earths, not in a thousand uni­verses.  As William Dembski has said, Òtheprobabilistic resourcesÓ of the universe are insuf­ficient for somethinglike this to have taken place.[39]

    

But a mind can construct alevel of order that would never happen by chance.  That's why an archaeolo­gist can look at a chipped stoneand immediately discern it is an arrowhead, the work of a mind and not of therandom chipping and cracking that nature produces.  Yet the amount of information contained in the exactplacement of the chips that make the stone an arrowhead is minuscule comparedwith the information stored in the simplest DNA molecule.  Thus, the claim that the universe wasinitially mindless is merely the proposal of a world­view and not theconclusion of a scientific research program.  The enormous amount of information stored in DNA points ratherin the opposite direction.

 

4. Eternality 

 

In scientism, the universemust somehow be eternal.  Propo­nentsof scientism generally realize that there is no rational alternative withintheir system to postulat­ing that the uni­verse (in some sense) hasalways existed.  Recall Sagan'sremark that Òthe cosmos... is all that ever was.Ó  The recent triumph of the big bang cosmology in itsno-bounce form badly undercuts this claim.  Let's see how this is so.[40]

 

In the last century,atheists typically opted for the visible universe being eter­nal andbasically static.  They were awarethat no known laws would allow the stars to burn forever,  but no one knew how to make them burnas long as they obviously had. They knew that gravity was only attractive, so that a static universewould have to have some force holding the stars apart or it would eventuallycollapse.  Yet the problem of auniverse with a beginning was not squarely faced.

 

As we learned more aboutatoms and their nuclei in this (20th) century, it was realized thatmature stars burn by convert­ing hydrogen into helium.  Life-spans were calcu­lated for thevarious star-sizes, and it became apparent that the visible universe had notbeen around forever, but only for some billions or tens of billions ofyears.  A long time, no doubt, butpretty short when compared to infinity.

 

About the same time, itgradually became apparent that the universe was expanding -- distances betweenourselves and all galaxies but the local ones were in­creasing.  Einstein could already have predictedthis in 1915 from his general theory of relativi­ty, but the atmosphere ofscien­tism at the time was so much against this that he added a ÒfudgefactorÓ to make the universe static. It wasn't until Slipher and Hubble measured the reces­sion rates ofvarious galaxies that the fact had to be faced.  We live in a universe in which the galaxies are movingapart.

 

But if the universe isgetting bigger, it must once have been smaller.  Extrapolating this trend backward into the past would pointto a universe which was very small and very hot at a beginning some billions ofyears ago.  The Catho­licastronomer George Lemai­tre made such a proposal in the late twenties (theearliest version of the big-bang theory), and the history of cosmology sincethen has been a frantic attempt to avoid this beginning in spite of mountingevi­dence in its favor.

 

George Gamow, for instance,sought to change the beginning into a bounce.  In his view, the universe from eternity past had existed asa mass of thin hydrogen gas which was collapsing under its own gravity untiljust a few billion years ago, when it became suffi­ciently dense and hot torebound.  Other cosmologistsdecided this single-bounce universe was too contrived and opted for an oscillatinguniverse which bounced every hundred billion years or so.  Both models restored the idea of aneternal universe and were the popular versions of the big-bang theory untilquite recently.

 

Meanwhile Fred Hoyle, ThomasGold and Herman Bondi tried another tack to rescue the universe from abeginning.  They proposed aninfinite, eternal universe with stars running down and galaxies moving apart,but each place always looking about the same because new matter was continuallypopping into existence to fill up the gaps and provide new star-fuel.  They called this the Òsteady-stateÓuniverse.

 

New discoveries in astronomyput pressure on the steady-state theory first.  The model predicted that objects such as galaxies andquasars should be uniformly distributed through­out space (so long as thevolume being considered was big enough to average out randomfluctuations).  But in the 60s and70s it became apparent that there were far more objects long ago (at great dis­tances)than there are now.  Then the radioradiation predicted by the big-bang theory was discov­ered, and for mostastronomers, this put the last nail in the steady-state's coffin.  The universe was hotter and denser inthe past than it is now.

 

Since the early 70s, thecompetition has been between various forms of the big-bang theory.  Did the universe begin at the bigbang?  Or was the big bang just abounce from a previous contract­ing phase of its history?  One problem was that a universe whichcollapsed to the densities and tempera­tures that character­ize the bigbang would not bounce but become a black-hole.  And if the theory of general relativity is true, then spaceand time (as well as matter and energy) came into existence at the big bang.  Thus the big bang itself appears to bea creation event!

 

Stephen Hawking attempts toavoid a creator at this point by postulating that the universe popped intoexistence without a cause![41]  His suggestion is so at odds with thebasic methods of science that he should be ashamed to hold such a theory andsimulta­neously sneer at Chris­tians for their supernatu­ralism.  We at least propose an adequate causefor the universe.  Thus theapparent non-eternality of our universe is a serious scientific problem forscientism.

 

5. Locality 

 

In a universe with matter-energyas the ultimate reality, one would naturally expect the interactions betweenparticles to be local, one bumping against the other.  This is how the an­cient Greek atomists viewed it.  When Newton proposed that forcesoperated at a dis­tance by means of fields, the material­ists of histime were very skeptical; it seemed to them to smack of spirit­ism.[42]  Even after physi­cists got used toNewton's idea of fields, the basic view was that two particles inter­actedby direct (local) contact of each with the field produced by the other.  The rise of quantum mechan­ics hasput serious pressure on this idea, and it now appears that there is somethinglike instan­taneous interac­tion between widely sepa­rated loca­tions.

 

Some of the strangeness ofquantum phenomena in this regard can be seen in the famous two-slit experimentand its relation to the controversy over whether light is particle or wave.[43]  In an otherwise darkened room, light issent out from a very small source at one end of the room and detected by aphotograph­ic plate on the wall at the other end.  With no inter­vening screens, the plate will just fog uprather uni­formly, which either waves or particles might do.  If a screen with a single narrow slitis set up a few feet in front of the wall, the plate when developed will showone strongly exposed line which is an image of the slit, but with a pattern ofdimmer lines around it, a phenome­non called Òdiffrac­tion.Ó  These extra lines are not somethingparticles would make, but this is how waves operate.  When the screen is made with two paral­lel slits in it,the pattern changes to a whole series of nearly equally bright lines (called anÒinterfer­ence patternÓ) rather than just two images of the slits.  Again, what we would expect from waves.  So light is a wave, right?

 

Now comes quantummechanics.  If we turn down theintensi­ty of the light to a very low level, it will not only take a longtime for this two-slit interference pattern to form, but if we look at theplate we will see that the pattern forms by an increasing number of dots on theplate which gradually form this pattern, rather than by the whole inter­fer­encepattern just getting clearer as more light arrives.  Apparently, the photo­graphic plate is absorbing thelight at a particular spot each time (rather than all over at once), as thoughthe light was arriving in parti­cles instead of waves!  But particles wouldn't form inter­ferencepat­terns, and waves wouldn't be absorbed at single points.  What is happen­ing?  Are we dealing with some kind ofdispersed, non-local particles?

 

We're not finished yet.  If one turns down the intensity of thelight so much that only one Òlight-particleÓ would be in flight from the sourceto the plate at any time, we still get our interference pattern!  But if we block up one of the slits, oreven try to measure which slit the particle went through, the pattern won'tform!  The same results areobtained if we run the experi­ment using electrons rather than light.  Somehow the particle ÒknowsÓ about theother slit, whether you think it only goes through one of them or both atonce!  There is something decidedlynon-local about matter and light.

 

This non-locality can extendto great distances, as we see more clearly in Einstein's attempts to circumventthe uncertainty principle. Einstein proposed measuring two identical particles which had just sepa­ratedfrom one another in a decay event. Since they are identical, they will be moving at equal speeds inopposite directions.  So if wemeasure the speed of one and the position of the other, we indirectly learn thespeed and position of both, violating quantum uncertainty.  And if we measure the two when they arefar enough apart, neither will know what kind of measurement we did on theother, since information cannot be conveyed faster than the speed oflight.  But a version of thisexperiment has recently been done, and Einstein was wrong. Somehow the oneparticle did ÒknowÓ what was done to the other, even though there was not timefor light to travel from one to the other![44] 

 

Theo­r­eticalphysicist John Bell has also shown that, if the quantum facts are correct -- nomatter what sort of theory we use to explain them -- reality must be non-localin the sense that mutual influences can take place at rates exceeding the speedof light.[45]  Here again, we arrive at a scientificresult that is counter-intuitive to scientism, but consistent with a God who iseverywhere present and need not wait for light to bring information from somedistant source.

 

Conclusions

 

In this paper we have lookedat five areas where the view of reality proposed by scientism is challenged byactual scien­tific observa­tion. We called these areas prediction, continuity, mindlessness, eternalityand locality.

 

First, we saw that thepredictive program of Laplace which, if successful, would have effectivelydemon­strated the truth of scientism, has collapsed.  The structure of nature is such thatthere appears to be no way from within the universe to make accuratepredictions beyond rather trivial ones that are either broad-stroke, short-termor local.  By contrast, thebiblical evidence of fulfilled prophecy22 (though not discussedhere) points beyond this universe to the transcen­dent God of the Bible.

 

Second, we saw that the attemptof scientism to explain reality without recourse to discontinu­ity innature faces serious empirical challenge. We looked in some detail at gaps in the fossil record and at theinadequacy of the Darwinian mecha­nism, both of which point to real discontinuityin the history of life.  We mightalso have mentioned the origin of the universe and the origin of life asfurther examples.  All these areconsistent with a theism in which God sometimes reveals himself by interventionin nature.

 

Third, we saw that Darwinand Dawkins' proposal of no mind behind the universe is no better than itsability to explain such apparent design as is known to exist.  Though this proposal is widely hailedas successful in biological evolution -- which we dispute in our discussionunder Òcontinuity,Ó above -- it founders in explaining evidence of design ininanimate nature, both the structure of the universe as a whole and thespecific Òfine-tuningÓ of our own environment here on earth.  Rather, these features are just thesort of thing we would expect from a Designer like the God of the Bible.

 

Fourth, we saw that thenecessity for scientism to have a eternal universe has stumbled over theevidence that the cosmos began at the big bang some billions of years ago.  Those who espouse a materialistworldview must now retreat to a uni­verse popping into existence withoutcause, thus abandoning one of the primary axioms of science.  Or they must propose that our uni­verseis just part of a much larger universe of which we can never have any evidence,thus abandoning their claimed empirical superiority over Christianity.  The believer's faith in the unseen isat least based on objective evidence of divine revela­tion.

 

Lastly, we saw that theprogram of scientism to have a universe of merely local causation -- whereparticles and fields only interact by contact -- seems to be doomed bydevelopments in quantum research. The apparently instantaneous interaction at a distance observed in Aspect'sexperiment seems more consistent with an omnipresent, omniscient God than witha universe of mindless particles and fields.

 

This should encourage us asChristians not to fear the forces of secularism which seem so powerful anddaunting in the media and education today.  The God of the Bible really exists.  He has not left himself withouttestimony.  We can trust him tokeep his promises.  He will notabandon us to our enemies.  May weseek to study and proclaim the truth, both as it is revealed in God's word, theBible, and in God's world, the universe.

 

References:

 


[1]. Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980),p. 4.

[2]. Òscientism,Ó Webster's ThirdNew Internation­al Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Springfield, MA: G. and C.Merriam Co., 1966), def. 2, p. 2033; Webster's Ninth New Colle­giateDictionary(Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1983), def. 2, p. 1051 gives a morepejorative meaning: Òan exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods ofnatural science applied to all areas of investigation.Ó

[3]. Òmaterialism,Ó in Webster'sThird Unabridged,def. 1a, p. 1392; Webster's Ninth Collegiate, def. 1a, p. 753, gives: Òatheory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that allbeing and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or resultsof matter.Ó

[4]. Ònaturalism,Ó Webster's ThirdUnabridged, def.2, p. 1507; Webster's Ninth Collegiate, def. 2, p. 780, gives: Òa theory denying that anevent or object has a supernatural significance; specif. the doctrine thatscientific laws are adequate to account for all phenomena.Ó

[5]. Òevolutionism,Ó Webster'sThird Unabridged,def. 2, p. 789, is somewhat broader than what I have in mind here: Òadherenceto or belief in evolution, esp. of living things.Ó  I am concerned with the specifically naturalistic version ofthis as promoted by Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York:  Norton, 1986) and critiqued by PhillipE. Johnson in his paper ÒThe Religion of the Blind Watchmaker,Ó Perspectiveson Science and Christian Faith 45 (March, 1993): 46-48.

[6]. Note Webster's ThirdUnabridged underÒscientism,Ó def. 2, p. 2033: Òa thesis that the methods of the naturalsciences should be used in all areas of investigation, including philosophy,the humanities, and the social sciences: a belief that only such methods canfruitfully be used in the pursuit of knowledge.Ó  A helpful recent response to this claim is Roy A. Clouser's TheMyth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Beliefin Theories(Notre Dame, IN:  University ofNotre Dame Press, 1991).

[7]. For the classic presentation ofthe JEDP theory, see Julius Wellhausen, Prolegom­ena to the History ofAncient Israel(1878; English reprint, Cleveland: Meridian, 1957) and S. R. Driver, An Introduc­tion to the Litera­tureof the Old Testament (1897; reprint, Cleveland: Meridian, 1956).  OttoEissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Intro­duc­tion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965) gives a rather detailed tour of the whole liberalscheme of biblical criticism, with material on the JEDP theory in pp.155-241.  Evangelical responses aregiven (in general) by R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1969) and specifically forJEDP by William Henry Green, The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch (1895; reprint, GrandRapids:  Baker, 1978); Oswald T.Allis, The Five Books of Moses (Philadelphia: Presbyte­rian and Reformed, 1964); and Allan A. MacRae, JEDP:Lectures on the Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch (Hatfield, PA:  IBRI, 1994).

[8]. Charles Darwin, The Origin ofSpecies (1859;frequently reprinted, e.g., New York: Collier, 1962); Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker.

[9]. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, TheCommunist Manifesto (New York:  InternationalPublishers, 1948). For evangelical responses, see Francis Nigel Lee, CommunismVersus Creation(Nutley, NJ:  Craig Press, 1969);Lloyd Billingsley, The Generation That Knew Not Josef (Portland, OR:  Multnomah, 1983).

[10]. Robert D. Nye, ThreePsychologies: Perspectives from Freud, Skinner, and Rogers, 2nd ed. (Monterey, CA:  Brooks/Cole, 1981), pp. 2-3.

[11]. e.g., Maurice Bucaille, TheBible, the Qur'an, and Science (Indianapolis, IN: Ameri­can Trust Publica­tions, 1979).  For an evangelical re­sponse, see William Campbell, TheQur'an and the Bible in the Light of History and Science (Upper Darby, PA:  Middle East Resources, 1992).

[12]. Hugh Ross Mackintosh, Typesof Modern Theology: Schleier­macher to Barth (London:  Nisbet, 1937); William Hordern, ALayman's Guide to Modern Theology (New York: Macmillan, 1955), ch. 4. For evangelical responses, see J. Gresham Machen, Chris­tianityand Liberalism(1923; reprint Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1946); Carl F. H. Henry, ed., Christian Faith and ModernTheology (NewYork:  Channel, 1964).

[13]. Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theologyof Liberation(Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis, 1973); J.Andrew Kirk, Liberation Theology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1979).  For arecent evangelical response, see Humberto Belli and Ronald H. Nash, BeyondLiberation Theology (Grand Rapids:  Baker,1992).

[14]. e.g., see Marilyn Ferguson, TheAquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time (Los Angeles:  Tarcher/St. Martins, 1987), pp.157-167; Benjamin Creme, Maitreya's Mission (Amsterdam:  Share International, 1986), pp.151-197.  For evangelicalresponses, see Douglas R. Groothuis, Confronting the New Age (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsity, 1988); Vishal Mangalwadi,When the New Age Gets Old (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsi­ty, 1992).

[15]. William Kirk Kilpatrick, PsychologicalSeduction(Nashville:  Nelson, 1983); Martinand Deidre Bobgan, Psychoheresy (Santa Barbara, CA:  Eastgate, 1987); Gary R. Collins, Can You TrustPsychology?(Downers Grove, IL:  InterVar­sity,1988).

[16]. The Napoleon/Laplace story ismentioned in several places, e.g., James Hastings, ed., Encyclopaedia ofReligion and Ethics (1909), 2:178a.

[17]. See D. W. Sciama, ModernCosmology(Cambridge:  Cambridge UniversityPress, 1971), pp. 124-125; P. C. W. Davies, Accidental Universe (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp.59, 76-77.

[18]. The range of a force is thedistance within which the force has a signifi­cant effect.  For the strong nuclear force, thisdistance is roughly the diameter of an neutron or proton (10-13cm).  For the weak nuclear force itis about one hundred times smaller. For the electromagnetic and gravita­tional forces, the strengthdecreases with the square of the distance from the source instead of having arather sharp cutoff as the other two forces do.  Thus their range is sometimes spoken of as infinite, thoughobviously their significant effect becomes negligible at finite distances.  In any case, the range of theelectromagnetic and gravitational forces is much longer than those of the twonuclear forces.

[19]. This would replace the manyparts in the computer to represent each particle with just one -- the particleitself.

[20]. P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown,eds., The Ghost in the Atom: A Discussion of the Mysteries of QuantumPhysics(Cambridge:  Cambridge UniversityPress, 1986); Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics (Garden City, NY:  An­chor/Doubleday, 1985); HughRoss, The Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1993), ch. 12.

[21]. James Gleick, Chaos: Making aNew Science (NewYork:  Viking, 1987).

[22]. A survey of biblical prophecies,both those already fulfilled and others still future is given by J. BartonPayne, Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy: The Complete Guide to ScripturalPredic­tions and Their Fulfillment (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). Books specifically dealing with fulfilled prophecy as evidence for thetruth of Christianity are Robert C. Newman, ed., Evidence of Prophecy (Hatfield, PA:  IBRI, 1990) and John Warwick Montgom­ery,ed., Evidence for Faith (Dallas:  Probe/Word,1991), part 4.

[23]. Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin onTrial, 2nd ed.(Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsity,1993), pp. 37-41.

[24]. The phrase is Stephen JayGould's in Natural History 86, no. 5 (1977): 14.  See also Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, ch. 10; George Gaylord Simpson,The Major Features of Evolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), p. 360; Steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution:Patterns and Process (New York:  Freeman, 1979),p. 82.

[25]. D. Raup, ÒConflicts BetweenDarwin and Paleontology,Ó Field Museum Bulletin (Jan 79): 22.

[26]. Stephen Jay Gould, in ÒThe Powerof This View of Life,Ó Natural History (June 94): 8, says: ÒAll but one phylum arose ina single geological whoosh, within some five million years or so, at the dawnof Cambrian times, 530 million years ago...Ó  See also Jeffrey S. Levinton, ÒThe Big Bang of AnimalEvolution,Ó Scientific American (Nov 92): 84-91; Richard A. Kerr, ÒEvolu­tion's BigBang Gets Even Bigger,Ó Science (3 Sept 93): 1274-75.

[27]. Murray Eden, ÒInadequacies ofNeo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,Ó in Paul S. Moorhead and MartinM. Kaplan, eds., Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretationof Evolution(1967; reprint, New York:  Alan R.Liss, 1985); Mark A. Ludwig, Computer Viruses, Artifi­cial Life andEvolution(Tucson, AZ: American Eagle, 1993).

[28]. William A. Dembski, ÒOn the VeryPossibility of Intelli­gent Design,Ó in J. P. Moreland, ed., TheCreation Hypoth­esis: Scien­tific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVar­sity, 1994), pp. 113-138,followed up by the actual evidence in the succeeding chapters.  More detail is given in William A.Dembski, ÒThe Incomplete­ness of Scientific Naturalism,Ó in John Buell andVirginia Hearn, eds., Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? (Richardson, TX: Foundation forThought and Ethics, 1994), pp. 79-94.

[29]. Fred Hoyle compares this to thelikelihood of a tornado assembling an airplane from parts in a junkyard!  ÒHoyle on Evolution,Ó Nature (12 Nov 81): 105.  See my discussion in Robert C. Newman,ÒSelf-Reproducing Automata and the Origin of Life,Ó Perspectives on Scienceand Christian Faith 40 (1988): 24-31 and responses in PSCF 41 (1989):26-28 and PSCF 42 (1990): 113-14.  See also Ludwig item in note 27 above.

[30]. Michael J. Behe, ÒMolecularMachines: Experimental Support for the Design Hypothesis,Ó paper presented atthe national meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, Seattle, 1993; seealso Michael J. Behe, ÒExperimental Support for Regarding Functional Classes ofProteins to Be Highly Isolated from Each Other,Ó in Buell and Hearn, Darwinism:Science or Philosophy?, pp. 60-71.

[31]. Carl Sagan, The CosmicConnection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective (New York: Dell, 1973); Edward Regis, Jr., ed., The Extraterrestrials: Scienceand Alien Intelligence (Cambridge:  CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985); G. Siegfried Kutter, The Universe and Life: Originsand Evolution(Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1987); Thomas Michael Corwin and Dale Wacho­wiak,The Universe: From Chaos to Conscious­ness (Orlando, FL:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989).  Some evangelical per­spective isprovided in the August 1977 issue of the SCP Journal and in Hugh Ross' The Creatorand the Cosmos(Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress,1993).

[32]. See Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 2nd ed., p. 33, and Dawkins, TheBlind Watchmaker,p. 249.

[33]. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker.

[34]. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, pp. 4-6, 37; John D. Barrow andFrank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (New York:  Ox­ford University Press, 1986), pp.76-87.

[35]. Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint ofGod, 2nd ed.(Orange, CA: Promise, 1991), ch. 12; Ross, The Creator and Cosmos (Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1993), ch. 14; see also P. C.Davies, The Accidental Uni­verse (Cam­bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) and Barrow and Tipler, An­thropicCosmological Principle.

[36]. See Barrow and Tipler, AnthropicCosmological Principle, ch. 8.  Much of thismaterial was originally collected in Lawrence J. Henderson, The Fitness ofthe Environment(1913; re­print, Magnolia, MA: Peter Smith, 1970).

[37]. Hugh Ross has compiled thismaterial in his Creator and the Cosmos, ch. 15. More detail and documen­tation is provided in his Fingerprint ofGod, ch. 14.

[38]. Robert Shapiro, Origins: ASkeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth (New York:  Summit Books, 1986).  See also Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L.Bradley and Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin: ReassessingCurrent Theories(1984; reprint, Dallas:  Lewis andStanley, 1992).

[39]. See note 28.

[40]. Robert C. Newman, ÒThe Evidenceof Cosmology,Ó in John Warwick Montgomery, ed., Evidence for Faith (Dallas:  Probe/Word, 1991), pp. 71-91; Ross, Fingerprintof God, chs.6-10; and Ross, Creator and the Cosmos, chs. 3-11.

[41]. Stephen W. Hawking, A BriefHistory of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Toronto:  Bantam, 1988), ch. 8.

[42]. A. Rupert Hall, From Galileoto Newton 1630-1720 (London:  Collins, 1963),p. 312; Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science:  Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy  (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), pp. 73, 89-90.

[43]. J. C. Polkinghorne, TheQuantum World(Princeton:  Princeton UniversityPress, 1984), pp. 34ff; Davies and Brown, Ghost in the Atom, pp. 7-13.

[44]. Davies and Brown, Ghost inthe Atom, pp.13-17.  I have simplified thediscussion considerably.

[45]. Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality, pp. 50-52.