Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Why elusion of God is nothing to do with science

Well I've committed myself to doing a presentation in the next few weeks entitled "Darwin, Dawkins and the elusion of God". I must admit it's focussing otherwise random thoughts and helping me to get through some reading I would have otherwise pushed to the bottom of my "to do" list. What has been fascinating in this reading is just how much inaccuracy is promulgated in such an important question, as if people want reasons not to beleive in God. It has been a delight to read Anthony Flew and his correction of the popular view that Darwin and Eistein were atheists. They clearly were not and Flew goes back to their original writings. What persuaded him to shift from atheism to theism was the fact that there are laws of nature at all and that we can understand them. He also has a brilliant illustration of the anthropic principle in which he pictures walking into an hotel room and finding his favourite drinks, his favourite literature distributed round the room, his favourite shampoo in the shower and his favourite films preprogrammed on the TV. Someone was expecting him. And he argues the universe is such that it appears as if it was expecting human beings. I'm looking forward to following this up by reading Paul Davies. Flew concludes his book with an investigation into the resurrection narratives of Jesus Christ as presented in the New Testament with obvious interest. Here science has lead him to consider theism and theism has lead him to consider the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. What a reversal of the popular view. And atheists becomes theist through science. What is becoming more apparent the more I read and study is that science can provide both an excuse for dismissing God and a route to considering God. So surely this fits with what we may surmise is the true place of science, particularly in evolutionary biology. It does not decide the question of God. So how can it possibly be used to avoid the existence of God? If science is a discipline which excludes the supernatural explanations a priori how come it ends up pointing towards theism at all? Surely only by a selective focus only on those aspects which seem to preclude God, or the god that many people believe can lead to scientists boldly claiming to have disproved God. Surely it is only nature red in tooth and claw that could be used to elude the existence of God, but how? If God can be seen even in these phenomena, where is there left to hide or escape him?