The Truth About God And The Bible
By Robert Roberts
Chapter 2: The Answer of Science
When we turn to science, we address ourselves to a department of knowledge of
which three things are often assumed that are not true:
1st, That science has plumbed and settled the mysteries of the universe;
2nd, That its conclusions are final and infallible; and
3rd, That these conclusions are opposed to the verdict of commonsense on the question of the being of a God.
In truth, science has but noted, registered,
and classified the facts or phenomena that lie on the surface of the universe.
It has not touched -- it cannot touch -- the great question of the how, or the
beginning, or even the why of things. The testimony of scientific men themselves
is the best evidence of this.
TYNDALL said in one of his published addresses: "At best it (science) only
marshalls the phenomena of nature under the head of all its sequences, which are
called law: the great ocean of the unknown simply recedes as we advance, and all
the researches that science may make to the end of time will never abridge by
one hair's breadth the infinite expanse of mystery across the boundless ocean.
The curiosity of the intellect will always sail towards an ever vanishing
horizon."
PROFESSOR THOMPSON (better known under the title of his knighthood, Lord Kelvin)
said in one of his last addresses: "One word characterises the most strenuous of
the efforts for the advancement of science that I have perseveringly made for 55
years, and that word is -- failure. I know no more of electric and
magnetic force, or of the relation between ether, electricity and ponderable
matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew 50 years ago."
The prevalence of agnosticism is itself a proof of the inadequacy of scientific
investigations to reach any certainty as to the nature and reason of the
universe. The agnostic says, "I do not know"; he goes further, and says "I
cannot know -- the fundamental truth is unknowable." There are theories, there
are speculations, but, as to knowledge in the highest realm, it is unattainable.
Consequently, the way is open, so far as science is concerned, for anything that
may be proved true in another way. We may even go a step further, and say that
the inductions of science, so far as they can be conducted demonstratively, make
room for and necessitate the very conclusion to which common sense conducts us
as to the being of a God.
The DUKE OF ARGYLE says, in his Reign of Law: -- This is now one of the
most assured doctrines of science -- that invisible forces are behind and above
all visible phenomena moulding them in forms of infinite variety. . . . The
deeper we go in science, the more certain it becomes that all the realities of
nature are in the region of the invisible, so that the saying is literally true
that the things which are seen are temporal, and it is only the things which are
not seen that are eternal. The profoundest physiologists have come to the
conclusion that organisation is not the cause of life, but that life is the
cause of organisation -- life being something -- a force of some kind, which
precedes organisation, and fashions it and builds it up. . . . For
illustrations, look at the shells of the animals called Foraminifera. No
forms in nature are more exquisite; yet they are the work and the abode of
animals which are mere blobs of jelly -- without parts, without organs --
absolutely without visible structure of any kind. In this jelly,
nevertheless, there works a vital force capable of building up an organism of
most complicated and perfect symmetry. But what is a vital force? It is
something we cannot see, but of whose existence we are as certain as we are of
its effects. We must go a step further and ask, 'What is force?' We know nothing
of the ultimate nature or the ultimate seat of force. Science, in the modern
doctrine of the conservation of energy, and the convertibility of forces, is
already getting something like a firm hold of the idea that all kinds of force
are but forms or manifestations of some one central force, issuing from some one
Fountain Head of Power. Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to say that 'It is
but reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect
result of a consciousness or a will existing somewhere.'"
These are the views and impressions of the master minds in the scientific world.
Of course, there are shallow minds in the scientific world -- mere memorisers of
technical learning, mere echoists of speculative opinions -- who are more
positive than their teachers. By these, "meaningless words are heaped on each
other in the desperate effort to dispense with those conceptions of intelligence
and design which alone render the order of nature intelligible to us. Thus we
are told that 'organism is the synthesis of diverse parts, and life is the
synthesis of their properties,' and, again, that vitality is 'the abstract
designation of certain special properties manifested by matter under certain
special conditions.'" What is gained by calling life "the connexus of organic
activities?" It still leaves untouched the question -- Who or what connected
them?
The DUKE OF ARGYLE says:- "It is a great
injustice to scientific men to suspect them of unwillingness to accept the idea
of a personal Creator merely because they try to keep separate the language of
science from the language of theology."
Even PROFESSOR HUXLEY said:- "If I really saw fit to deny the existence of a
God, I should certainly do so, for the sake of my own intellectual freedom. As
it happens, I cannot take this position with honesty, inasmuch as it is, and
always has been, a favourite tenet of mine, that atheism is as absurd, logically
speaking, as polytheism. . . . Denying the possibility of miracles seems to me
quite as unjustifiable."
PROFESSOR TYNDALL, in the address already quoted from, said that when he looked
at the springtide -- at the sprouting leaves and grass and flowers -- he has
said to himself: 'Can it be that there is no being in nature that knows more
about these matters than I do? Can it be that I in my ignorance represent the
highest knowledge existing of these things in the universe?' The man who puts
that question to himself, if he be not a shallow man, . . . will never answer it
by professing that creed of atheism which has been so lightly attributed to me."
Even DARWIN, in a letter published shortly before his death, said he felt no
certainty on the subject -- that sometimes he thought there must be a Supreme
Being, and sometimes he doubted it.
The answer of science, therefore, is an ambiguous answer. In fact, it does not
profess to give an answer. It says the subject is outside the range of its
studies; that so far as it is concerned, there may be a God; that it does not
know; that it cannot account for the existence of the universe without an
antecedent cause, that may as well be called God as anything else, so far as
science is concerned.
