Philosophy fails without God

The necessity of God in modern science

This is my second shot at the narration thing, and I’m still shaking off a rough voice from being sick. But I’m really enjoying this feature and looking forward to improving with practice.

Live long and ponder the cosmos

I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God. —James Clerk Maxwell

The Necessity of God in Modern Science

My early view of science was influenced by two TV icons—the coolly logical Mr. Spock from Star Trek and the visionary Carl Sagan of Cosmos. If you ask me now who better represents the essence of modern science, I would say both do. Science is fundamentally a human pursuit, and if any trait epitomizes the best of humanity, it is the fusion of reason with a longing for awe and mystery. This blend not only defines ideal human nature but captures the spirit of modern science.

While science is rooted in both the logical and the mysterious, it is also molded by a framework of beliefs and methodologies. It encompasses a set of values and principles that guide how we understand reality, knowledge, and their interplay. This framework forms a philosophical system—the philosophy of science—whose roots are deeply embedded in the ideals and assumptions of Christianity.

Science as Part of a Christian Worldview

The narrative peddled for the last century and a half—that religion and modern science are locked in mortal combat—is as flawed as claiming a composer is at war with his own symphony. Nothing could be further from the truth. Modern science did not emerge despite Christianity, it was born out of it. Europeans of the 16th and 17th-century, fueled by a uniquely Christian set of beliefs about God and the cosmos, laid the groundwork for what we now call modern science. Their perspective did not just allow for science; it was the very soil from which science grew.

But we also owe much to the wisdom of the Greeks. Their mathematics and rules of reason are powerful tools for making sense of the world. However, the Greek view of the world was a double-edged sword that also inhibited them from taking the fateful leap from reasoning to experimentation.

The Christian view of the world is that of a good creation. Anyone who appreciates modern science is an inheritor of this perspective, whether they are conscious of it or not. But the goodness of the material world is not a given apart from belief in the God of the Bible. The ancient Greeks believed the material world to be inherently corrupt, a mere shadow or imperfect reflection of the eternal, unchanging world of Forms. This disdain for the tangible, coupled with their aversion to manual labor, explains why they largely shunned experimentation. The ancient Greeks relegated their flawed, material world to the cosmic basement, a place so low in the cosmic order it anchored Earth at the center of their models of the universe. But contrast this with the creation narrative from the Bible, where the refrain “And God saw that it was good” echoes seven times in Genesis 1, a divine stamp of approval on the material world. God proclaims from the heavens: “This universe I have crafted? It is a marvel worthy of your study.”

To the Christian, the universe is not a puzzling and subjective maze but a grand tapestry, woven with logic and laws by a rational Maker. This stands in stark contrast to philosophies where the cosmos is an unsolvable riddle or shaped at the whim of arbitrary gods. Unlike some pagan views where nature is seen as unpredictable or even hostile, Christianity presents a world where each discovery unveils the profound wisdom of its Creator. From the methodical creation narrative in Genesis 1, we see not an eternal realm of chaos capriciously bent to the wills of unsympathetic gods, but a cosmos created with purpose and significance by a God who is the essence of love itself, beckoning us to solve its mysteries. This resonates with the wisdom in Proverbs 25:2, which declares, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” Here, the act of uncovering the secrets of creation is not just an intellectual pursuit but a divine invitation to engage in a heavenly game of hide and seek, where each revelation reflects the glory of both the Creator and the curious seeker.

But to crack the mysteries of the cosmos, we need a key—the scientific method. This method relies on belief in the consistency of nature’s laws. Newton’s groundbreaking work, merging the mechanics of the Earth with those of the previously disconnected heavens, was the culmination of the Scientific Revolution, and it was founded on the belief that nature’s laws are steadfast. This consistency is not just a scientific given; it is rooted in a Christian worldview where the laws of nature mirror the reliability of their sovereign Creator. (“Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.” –Isaiah 26:4)

The under-appreciated twist in the birth of modern science is the leap from the pagan never-ending carousel of time to the revolutionary Christian concept of time as a straight arrow, a progression of never-to-repeat events, from the moment of creation to the end of days. In the pagan worldview, with time perpetually recycling, there is a certain futility to discovery since everything that happens has happened before and will happen again. But Christianity introduced a narrative where time marches forward, each moment a fresh piece of canvas on history’s wall. This linear view of time did not just revolutionize calendars; it transformed our very approach to knowledge. Each scientific discovery is a step into uncharted territory, building upon what came before. This belief in a progressing timeline ignited a culture where the accumulation of knowledge about the natural world was not just possible but required. It was this philosophical leap from an endless cycle to a singular journey that laid the groundwork for how scientists explore the natural world.

The Vulnerability of Science Without God

When Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the Israelites, feeling abandoned and uncertain, turned to the worship of a lesser god that promised immediate gratification and visibility. This act symbolizes our easily-shifting devotions to tangible, immediate sources of power and comfort when we lose sight of the spiritual, long-term rewards of glorifying God.

When belief in God and His moral principles are sidelined in modern science, the temptation to worship the lesser gods of ego, power, and wealth is difficult to resist. Some modern scientists, untethered from the motivation to glorify God, have transitioned from legitimate pursuers of knowledge to arrogant promoters of their own arguments. For those still active in research, the pursuit of money and influence can dictate research outcomes in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Just as the Israelites turned to an idol they could see and control, modern scientists and their followers can be swayed from the pursuit of truth by the allure of personal acclaim, political influence, and financial gain. Science can also be manipulated to serve personal ideology. Atheist physicist, Hugh Everett III, driven by the desire for a form of scientific immortality, championed the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. He is not alone among atheist scientists who have been drawn away from the solid ground of empiricism towards speculative hypotheses like the multiverse. This has sparked serious debate within the scientific community. A small but growing number of scientists advocate moving away from empiricism as the standard for science, yet most still recognize that the house of modern science will crumble if not built on the rock of empirical evidence.

Science without God also grapples with profound challenges when confronting the fine-tuning of the universe and the implications of statistical mechanics, revealing fatal internal contradictions of the atheistic worldview. The fine-tuning argument posits that the constants and laws of the universe are precisely calibrated for life. This apparent fine-tuning is so profound that secular scientists often explain this by theorizing a multiverse—where an unknown metaphysical machinery spawns countless universes with every conceivable combination of constants and laws. However, this undermines one of the most important assumptions of science, as the multiverse hypothesis removes any basis for believing in the constancy or reliability of natural laws. Given a near-infinite array of universes in the multiverse, we cannot rule out that we inhabit a universe in which the laws of nature spontaneously change. The Boltzmann brain paradox delivers yet another challenge to science devoid of God. This paradox suggests that it is statistically far more likely for a self-aware entity, like a brain, to spontaneously emerge with false memories of a universe than for our intricate, real universe to exist. This implies your perception of reality might just be a hallucination. Without the foundation of a God to affirm the reality of our existence, it becomes more logical to conclude that you are hallucinating even as you read this. The only coherent resolution to these contradictions lies in the belief in a transcendent God, who deliberately crafted a universe precisely tuned for life.

But not just any deity will do. One of Israel’s wayward sons serves as an intriguing case study in how Christianity uniquely aligns with the tenets of modern science. J. Robert Oppenheimer, best known for his leadership of the Manhattan Project, also played a role in the eventual discovery of black holes. Despite his significant contributions to the mathematics of collapsing stars, it was left to future physicists to complete the journey. Although Oppenheimer was born into a Jewish family, he was deeply influenced by Hinduism, famously quoting Lord Krishna, “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds,” upon witnessing the sheer destructive power of the atomic bomb he had helped create. This mystical inclination, as noted by his friend and colleague, Isidor Isaac Rabi, seemed to envelop Oppenheimer’s vast scientific knowledge in a “fog” of mysticism. According to Rabi, Oppenheimer had drifted from the precise, concrete methods of theoretical physics towards the realm of the mystical and intuitive. This “broad mysticism” obscured from him the full implications of his mathematical insights, with Rabi lamenting Oppenheimer’s lack of “earthiness”—a disconnect from the practical, real-world aspects of scientific inquiry. Ironically, Christianity, despite its otherworldly focus, emphasizes earthiness—the tangible reality of this world—asserting that God not only created a real universe but did so with an inherent intelligibility, using the language of mathematics to write the laws of nature. This perspective blurs any strict boundary between the divine and the physical, making Christianity uniquely compatible with the principles of modern science. By affirming the realness of the material world, Christianity supports a worldview where scientific exploration can thrive, grounded in the belief that the universe is an ordered system, decipherable and worth studying.

Science as a Divine Exploration

Science, at its core, is about uncovering truths about God’s material universe. This view instills a motivation driven by love, awe, and reverence for God, pushing scientists even beyond curiosity to a quest for understanding the divine through his creation. However, there is also a profound Christian motivation rooted in the fear of misrepresenting God by conducting shoddy science or succumbing to temptations like fame, power, or wealth. Without this Christian lens, which acknowledges a Creator and his influence in the world, science encounters philosophical and methodological roadblocks, especially in areas like cosmology. Complex questions about the universe’s beginnings or its precise conditions for life are often sidestepped with theories like the multiverse, which, while intriguing, leave us without the satisfying, purpose-driven answers that a biblical worldview offers.

Scriptural Foundations

For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. – Proverbs 2:6

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. – 1 Corinthians 1:20-21

I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. – Ecclesiastes 1:13-14

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. – Isaiah 55:8-9

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