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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.

CHAPTER 3: The Answer of History

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