God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty (6 page)

The Scripture explains the tendency of the human heart to gravitate toward unbelief by suppressing the evidence for God. Like a lawyer who doesn’t want any evidence to come forth in a trial that could discredit his client, the skeptic is threatened by the believer who makes a case for God based on reason. Paul wrote, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them” (Romans 1:18–19).

This is why there is such frustration and anger on the part of atheists when God is mentioned. All their hard work of suppressing the truth gets sabotaged. The tendency of the human mind is to suppress or ignore intentionally something it doesn’t want to hear. Fear operates in a similar way. It is when we stop thinking and reasoning soundly that fear comes barging into our lives. For instance, I know that flying is much safer than driving and have flown several million miles in my travels over the last thirty years of ministry. Even though I know flying is safe, there are times when turbulence can cause me to needlessly worry about crashing. By using reason, I can calm my fears and restore my confidence that the turbulence isn’t going
to cause the plane to crash any more than a bumpy dirt road would cause my car to crash. Sound reasoning can restore my faith in flying.

Unbelief can result from failing to remember. Jesus performed many
miracles
, such as feeding thousands of people from a handful of bread loaves and a few fish. Time and time again, although His disciples had experienced miracle after miracle, they would forget Jesus’ power as soon as they faced another challenge. The unbelief of the disciples was the result of not thinking clearly and not remembering. Sound reasoning can restore your faith in God.

I
S
S
CIENCE THE
A
NSWER TO
E
VERYTHING?

While reason is obviously vital for our existence, it must not be applied in an unreasonable fashion. This tendency is seen when reason is used in a reductionist fashion and attempts to limit truth to only that which is scientifically and empirically verifiable, even eliminating logical and philosophical means of attaining
knowledge
. Atheists tend to do this when they portray science as the savior of humanity. This philosophy is called
scientism
and is the belief that science is the only source of knowledge; not even philosophy or theology may weigh in on the ultimate questions that face our world. “Indeed, it is the ideology of a great part of the scientific world. Its adherents see science as having a mission that goes beyond the mere investigation of nature or the discovery of physical laws. That mission is to free mankind from superstition in all its forms, and especially in the form of
religious belief
.”
¹⁷

Scientism is a philosophical position that all of life’s challenges and riddles can and should be handled scientifically. Science is certainly important, but it is not able to answer the ultimate questions
.
In a review of Daniel Dennett’s book
Breaking the Spell
in the
New York Times
, literary critic Leon Wieseltier wrote, “Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition, one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science to say so.”
¹⁸
Linguist Noam Chomsky, by no means an advocate for religion, nonetheless pointed out the limits of science:

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can’t deal with them. . . . But it’s a complicated matter: Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated.
¹⁹

Therefore, we must look for something beyond science to guide us through this complexity with justice, fairness, and mercy. Yet finding such a source of ethics that originates in humanity is not easy.

L
IMITS OF
S
CIENCE

Science is certainly important. It explains how the physical world works. It is the process that is used to investigate how to
grow crops, cure disease, and develop inventions that make our world safer and more interconnected through technology. But science cannot explain some of the most important elements of human existence. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, in a debate with atheist Peter Atkins, pointed out these things that demonstrate the limits of science. In a rather humorous exchange, Atkins shockingly asserted that “science is omnipotent,”
²⁰
to which Craig retorted quickly that there were several things not provable by the scientific method. These include the following.

E
THICS AND
M
ORALITY

Science can’t tell us how we should live our lives—what is right and wrong,
good and evil
. Scientists can certainly be ethical and moral people, but they didn’t derive character from scientific experimentation. In other words, a scientist didn’t hold an experiment and conclude scientifically that murder was wrong. Science can’t answer the deepest ethical issues of our day. Science doesn’t determine ethics; ethics should be a guide to science.

It can explain what happens, but it can never determine how one ought to live. For instance, scientists can study the consequences of certain actions, such as charity or abuse. However, they can never justify why one action is morally superior to another.

M
ATHEMATICS

The mathematical order in the universe was discovered, not invented. Even more basic than the order are the numbers themselves; they must be accepted as simply true. It’s because of
this mathematical order that we can explore the world around us with such confidence. Mathematics allows us to send probes into outer space as well as into our own bodies. “The miracle of the appropriateness of the language
of mathematics
for the formulation of the
laws of physics
is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research.”
²¹

Mathematics is an abstract creation of rules and relationships by the human mind. Why should it explain so elegantly the mechanics of our universe with relatively few equations? Most significantly, mathematics is the
language
and foundation of science, so science can never justify its existence. In other words, if math is the basis of science, then science can’t be math’s source of verification. It would be like a house holding up a foundation rather than a foundation holding up a house. This is a glimpse of how difficult it is to have science be the ultimate judge of whether God exists, since God is the Creator and ground of all being.

R
EASON

Reason is like the central processing unit in a computer hard drive. When you buy a computer like the one I’m working on, the creator of the computer has placed within it a processor that is able to run the programs and the software that are loaded on the hard drive. Similarly God has created us to be rational creatures. We can think abstractly, learn languages at an amazing speed, and know the difference between right and wrong. In contrast, natural selection would only have developed in us the basic abilities to survive: acquire food, avoid danger, and find a mate. Nature would not have generated the capacity for higher reason. “The
notion that the only rational beliefs are those that can be confirmed by scientific observation, experiment and measurement is yet another self-refuting proposition, since it is a statement that itself cannot be confirmed by scientific observation, experiment and measurement.”
²²

God must necessarily exist in order for atheists not to believe in Him. There is no other explanation for the capacity to reason (even poorly). Atheism and naturalism can’t account for reason. To say that reason came into being for no reason is unreasonable. The logical processes of reason and deduction in the scientific method must be assumed in order for scientific inquiry to take place; therefore, science can’t verify itself in the strict sense.

W
HY?

The biggest limitation of science is that it can’t tell us why we are here. Why was the universe made? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? Dawkins now bristles at the
why
question and calls it silly, possibly because he knows that science will never really answer it. “ ‘Why?’ is a silly . . . ‘Why?’ is a silly question. ‘Why?’ is a silly question. You can ask, ‘What are the factors that led to something coming into existence?’ That’s a sensible question. But ‘What is the purpose of the universe?’ is a silly question. It has no meaning.”
²³

Curiously, just a couple of years earlier in a debate with John Lennox in Birmingham, Alabama, Dawkins’s opening statement said that his motivation for getting into science was the why question. “My interest in Biology started with the fundamental questions of our existence. Why we are all here.”
²⁴
The question of why we’re here is far from silly; it is fundamental to our existence, ground zero for our identity as humans, and part of our future.

R
ELIGION AND
S
CIENCE
A
RE
A
NSWERING
D
IFFERENT
Q
UESTIONS

The late Stephen Jay Gould of
Harvard
spoke about faith and science being “non-overlapping magisteria.”
²⁵
This means they are two distinct, equally valid spheres of existence. While his work and contributions are celebrated by most skeptics, many skeptics are critical of Gould for not dismissing religion and faith as delusional and for conceding the contributions that people of faith have made to the world. “Science
and religion
are not mutually exclusive, [John] Polkinghorne argues. In fact, both are necessary to our understanding of the world. ‘Science asks how things happen. But there are questions of meaning and value and purpose which science does not address. Religion asks why. And it is my belief that we can and should ask both questions about the same event.’ ”
²⁶

Science basically tells us how things work. Religion and faith tell us why things are here and how we should live ethically and morally. Neither of these questions can be answered by science.

“Science tells us that burning gas heats the water and makes the kettle boil,” [Polkinghorne] says. But science doesn’t explain the “why” question. “The kettle is boiling because I want to make a cup of tea; would you like some? I don’t have to choose between the answers to those questions,” declares Polkinghorne. “In fact, in order to understand the mysterious event of the boiling kettle, I need both those kinds of answers to tell me what’s going on. So I need the insights of science and the insights of religion if I’m to understand the rich and many-layered world in which we live.”
²⁷

There is no real conflict between science and God, but there is a conflict between naturalism and
faith
. Naturalism is the belief that all that exists is nature. This excludes by definition anything supernatural or beyond nature. In a 1941 lecture called “Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium,” prepared for a conference at the
Jewish Theological Institute
in New York, Albert Einstein gave insight into his view that both realms of religion and science are valid:

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
²⁸

While Einstein did not believe in a traditional understanding of God, he did express the understanding of many scientists then and today that science is as much dependent on faith as any major religion.

S
UMMARY

Real faith is not blind. It is evidence-based and requires all our efforts in pursuit of the truth. God requires that we not bury our heads in the sand but open our eyes to behold the evidence of
Him all around us. He calls us to use our reason and intellect (Isaiah 1:18; Matthew 22:37) as we develop a faith that is credible. The challenge for skeptics is to follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of preconceived ideas, not closing their eyes to the obvious when it contradicts their worldview. Ironically, it is the nature of skeptics to be unaware that they are blind to the truths evidencing a supernatural Creator. In this case their reasoning can become darkened and unreliable (Romans 1:21).

All faith should contain reason just as reason itself contains faith. I have heard it said that no one has absolute
certainty
except God and certain madmen. Tragically, when skeptics try to assert the nonexistence of God, they lose touch with reality and sound reason and unwittingly head down the long, dark road to insanity.

3
GOOD AND EVIL ARE
NO ILLUSIONS

I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives.

—R
ICHARD
D
AWKINS
¹

There must be an absolute if there are to be
morals,
and there must be an absolute if there are to be real
values
. If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict.