Poking Holes in the Theories of Militant Atheism

This past week I read David Berlinski's book, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. Berlinski is a secular Jew with a PhD from Princeton in Philosophy and completed postdoctoral fellowships in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University. He has taught philosophy, mathematics and English at various universities.

Berlinksi came to my attention after spanking John Derbyshire at National Review Online over Derbyshire's erroneous and unfounded attack on Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The article referenced "The Devil's Delusion," so I bought it.

In the book, Berlinski discusses major scientific theories like Newtonian mechanics, the theory of the electromagnetic field, special and general relativity and quantum mechanics. All of these theories are valuable and useful, but all contain gaps in our knowledge as well, which Berinski calls "the God of the gaps." Much of scientific theory employs supposition, inference, and what molecular geneticist Emile Zuckerlandl calls "unobservable entities": universal forces, grand symmetries, twice-differential functions as in mechanics, Calabi-Yau manifolds, ionic bonds, and quantum fields." Berlinski notes "Why physicists should enjoy inferential advantages denied theologians, Zuckerlandl does not say."

In other words, much of scientific theory is based on faith, not verifiable hard data. Berlinski notes: "If religious belief places the human heart in the service of an unseen world, the serious sciences have since the great [scientific] revolution of the seventeeth century done precisely the same thing." Science often answers questions as to the how and why of natural phenomena, and almost always creates even more questions in the process.

We open one door to find many more. There is a vast amount of what we do not know, and perhaps cannot know. Scientific atheism has its own kind of faith, that everything in the universe will eventually be explained by mathematics or other sciences. That, however, assumes the human mind is adequate to perceive all questions and comprehend all possible solutions. This ignores the probability that we can no more fully comprehend the cosmos than a boll weevil can understand quantum mechanics.

Underlying the dispute of science versus religion is a determination by scientific atheists to never admit the possibility of a Creator. As geneticist Richard Lewontin remarked, "We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Berlinski notes many facts that make atheist physicists uncomfortable. Some of these are as follows:

1. The Big Bang theory. Scientists once believed that the universe must have existed from "everlasting to everlasting," that it had no beginning and no end. Now there is substantial evidence that the universe appeared suddenly about 14 billion years ago, i.e. it had a definite beginning. What created it? Scientists do not know and cannot explain it. Perhaps it is unexplainable in human terms.

2. The existence of life. Science has described no mechanics by which life emerged from inert matter. What created it? We don't have a clue.

3. The universe appears to be "a put-up job," that is, appears to have been created intelligently and fine-tuned to support life. Various scientists have admitted this, including physicist Paul Davies, who observed "Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - that the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient 'coincidences' and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal." Physicist Leonard Susskind observed: "Without any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the Intelligent Design critics."

4. The human mind. Berlinski notes "We do not have a serious scientific theory explaining the powers and properties of the human mind. The claim that the human mind is the product of evolution is not unassailable fact. It is barely coherent."

5. Weaknesses in the theory of evolution. Berlinksi devotes a lot of space to evolution. One of his most persuasive arguments against it is that the fossil record does not support the theory of gradual emergence of new species from old. He quotes scientists themselves to support his argument. Robert Carroll, a committed evolutionist, noted that "most of the fossil record does not support a strictly gradualistic account" of evolution. Scientist Eugene Koonin published a peer-reviewed paper in 2007 titled "The Biological Big Bang Model for the Major Transitions in Evolution." He concluded: "Major transitions in biological evolution show the same pattern of sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity." So much for the theory of "natural selection."

Berlinski believes, as I do, that scientific atheism is based on arrogance and immaturity. He describes the feelings of many when he writes "Indeed, they [scientific atheists] are widely considered self-righteous, vain, politically immature and arrogant." One example he gives of this is militant atheist Richard Dawkin's remark: "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution that person is ignorant, stupid or insane."

Militant atheism, however, is its own kind of faith, and as Berlinski notes "And like any militant church, this one places a familiar demand before all others: Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

My conclusions are simple: People of faith have nothing to fear from science or militant atheism. Considering how little scientists actually know, the religious views of creation are as good as any to explain the origins of the universe and life on earth. Or, to quote an older book, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."