Atheist Universe: Chapter 3
Initially Posted: January 29, 2007
Contents:
2. Origin of the Universe: Natural or Supernatural?
3. God of the Gaps: Does the Universe Show Evidence of Design?
4. The “Miracle” of Planetary Clockwork
5. The “Miracle” of Life on Earth
6. Can Genesis Be Reconciled with Modern Science?
7. “Miracles” of Christian Perception
9. Christian Fundamentalists and the “Danger” of Internet Porn
10. Was America Really Founded upon Christian Principles?
11. “Intelligent Design”: Christianity’s Newest Cult
3. God of the Gaps: Does the Universe Show Evidence of Design?:
Mills reiterates his objections to the First Cause argument for God’s existence at the beginning of this chapter. Again, the reader can refer back to the review of chapter one for adequate responses to Mills’ objections.
Mills writes: “According to creationists, the universe is governed by physical laws—laws that they believe were purposefully designed and engineered by a miracle-working God. Creationists claim that these physical laws reveal an underlying order and regularity of the universe.” 1 Mills seems to be implying that only creationists believe physical laws exist in the universe—although I hope this is not the case for Mills’ sake. Mills also claims “the universe shows no evidence at all of miraculous design or supernatural management.” 2 However, even non-Christians acknowledge that the laws of physics exist, and that these laws, at least appear to be, “fine-tuned” so that carbon-based life forms, such as humans, can exist.
Some examples include:
Agnostic Robert Jastrow: “Einstein wrote, ‘The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.’ This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover.” 3
Carl Sagan: “It is easy to see that only a very restricted range of laws of nature are consistent with galaxies and stars, planets, life and intelligence.” 4
Stephen Hawking’s and Roger Penrose’s colleague George Ellis made the following statement in a paper delivered at the Second Venice Conference on Cosmology and Philosophy: “Amazing fine-tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of that word.” 5
Mills also discusses the “God of the Gaps” charge against creationists. Mills explains how people used to believe God was responsible for everything that occurs in the physical world. However, as science revealed more about the natural world, people ceased considering God to be in control of different phenomena. 6 Therefore, Mills argues, scientific discoveries will eventually make God as a designer irrelevant. However, is this conclusion justified?
Dr. Hugh Ross writes: “Both theistic and nontheistic evolutionists charge that whenever believers in God encounter gaps in the knowledge or understanding of natural phenomena, they commit the ‘God-of-the-gaps” fallacy—claiming that’s where God supernaturally intervened. Because historically several of these gaps were later discovered to have natural explanations, many theistic scientists have become reluctant to identify any perceived gap with the work of a supernatural Agent. Some insist that whether or not God exists, the record of nature is ultimately free of such gaps. Hence, they argue that while appeals to the supernatural are permissible during religious services, such appeals must remain off-limits for scientific research and education.
Ironically, a reasonable case could be made that scientists sometimes engage in similarly flawed logic. They commit what could be called the ‘Nature-of-the-gaps’ fallacy. They presume that some unknown force or phenomenon of nature must fill all the gaps in human knowledge and understanding. Many theoreticians have appealed to the existence of unknown laws, principles, constants, dimensions, or hypothetical variations in the constants and laws of physics to explain a gap and dissolve supposed evidence for supernatural intervention. Stuart Kauffman and other scientists at the Santa Fe Institute, for example, appeal without any observational support or physical evidence to a hypothesized ‘fourth law of thermodynamics.’ They say that this hypothetical law would spontaneously produce a high degree of order, complexity, and information content where none exists. By this imaginative means, they explain the ‘natural,’ sudden, and very early appearance of life on Earth without benefit of a primordial soup or the arrival of prebiotics (building blocks of life molecules—see chapter 6, pages 115-123) from outer space.
Similarly, some nontheistic cosmologists have appealed (without any observational support or physical evidence) to a hypothesized new law or constant of physics as a way to avoid the conclusion that the universe arose from a singularity or that the universe manifests extreme fine-tuning to allow for the existence of life.
A more productive approach would be to test what happens to gaps as scientists gain more knowledge and understanding. If a certain gap becomes narrower and less problematic from a naturalistic perspective as data accumulate, then a natural explanation for the gap appears in order. However, if the gap becomes wider and more problematic from a naturalistic stance as scientists learn more, then a supernatural explanation appears in order.
The entire ensemble of gaps can be exploited to evaluate and contrast competing creation/evolution models. Such testing calls for answers to these questions:
1. Which interpretation or model contains the fewest gaps?
2. Which model(s) most accurately predict where as-yet-undiscovered gaps will be observed?
3. Which model(s) most accurately forecast what scientists will discover as they use new data and technology to explore the gaps?
4. Which model is the least contrived and most straightforward in explaining both what is known and what is not yet known?
To put this challenge another way, researchers need to make the case for their models based on factual evidence—the known instead of the unknown. The measure of a model’s success must be how well that model predicts what will be discovered as researchers continue to explore current gaps of knowledge and understanding. For example, astronomers, biochemists, paleontologists, and anthropologists can take advantage of both the current body of data and current gaps in knowledge and understanding in their efforts to determine whether natural or beyond-natural explanations (and, specifically, what kind of natural or beyond-natural explanations) best account for certain phenomena relevant to the origin and history of the universe, life, and human beings.” 7
Dr. Ross also discusses the “God-of-the-gaps” objection on pages 100-101 of his book The Creator and the Cosmos. Third Expanded Edition (NavPress, 2001) .
Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland writes, “…even if the number of gaps in science is small and getting smaller, this does not prove there are no gaps at all. It begs the question to argue that just because most alleged gaps turned out to be explainable in scientific terms, then all alleged gaps will turn out this way. After all, what else would one expect of a gap but that there would be few of them? In this regard, gaps are like miracles. By their very nature, they are in the minority, for two reasons. God’s usual way of operating is through secondary causes. Primary causes which generate gaps are special acts of God. For example, Genesis 1 says that God delegated to living things themselves the ability to reproduce after their kinds. Regardless of where one locates gaps in this process where God created directly, such gaps are in the minority. Second, the epistemological value of a miracle or a gap arises only against a backdrop where the miracles or gaps are rare and unexpected. It is in the contrast with the usual that a miracle or a gap obtains evidential value for being a direct act of God.” 8
Moreland continues: “...a ‘God-of-the-gaps’ argument can be used against science itself. Most past scientific theories have been replaced or falsified, and therefore a pessimistic induction from the history of science would seem to imply that current science will not be successful for long either. Past scientific theories are often like cases where God was used inappropriately to explain gaps. They were shown later to be inadequate. In my opinion, the history of discarded theories in science warrants caution in accepting too readily a current theory. But it does not warrant a view which rejects all scientific theories. Similarly, past cases of inappropriately appealing to God to explain a gap should warrant caution. But such cases do not warrant a view which rejects all uses of God in scientific explanation, especially in those cases where ultimate boundary conditions are being discussed (since they are outside the bounds of science) or in those cases where careful biblical exegesis gives us reason to expect a primary cause from God was in operation. In these latter cases, it is not our ignorance of science that causes us to appeal to God, but knowledge of the biblical text.” 9
Consult pages 157-159 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, by Dr. Norman Geisler and Dr. Frank Turek for more Christian responses to the “God-of-the-gaps” charge.
Thus, Mills’ “God-of-the-gaps” objection is not completely justified.
Mills also asserts that creationists no longer believe earthquakes and hurricanes are “acts of God.” 10 However, Mills’ claim is not completely accurate. Dr. Hugh Ross, for example, still considers hurricanes and tornadoes to be acts of God.
Dr. Ross writes: “No doubt hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes, wildfires, ice ages, floods, and droughts cause inestimable damage and untold suffering to plants, animals, and humans. Though it cannot and does not diminish the pain and loss, the fact is that even more damage and suffering would result if none of these ‘acts of God’ ever occurred.
It would be possible for a Creator to get rid of hurricanes and tornadoes, for instance. Wind velocities depend on Earth’s rotation rate. The more slowly Earth rotates, the fewer, shorter, and less intense its tornadoes and hurricanes. If Earth’s rotation rate slowed to 26 hours per day, no hurricanes or tornadoes would ever occur. However, a rotation rate that slow would make for significantly colder nighttime temperatures and significantly warmer daytime temperatures all across Earth’s surface. Such temperature extremes between day and night would cause even greater suffering and death than do the current number, intensity, and duration of hurricanes and tornadoes. A slower rotation rate would also result in less rainfall and more sporadically distributed rainfall on continental landmasses.
Already Earth rotates more slowly than it did in the past. As noted in chapter 5, the moon acts as a gravitational brake on Earth’s rotation rate. Bands in 400-million-year-old coral reefs show that at the time these corals formed, Earth rotated more than 420 times (days) in a year, each spin taking less than 21 hours.
These 21-hour days spawned enormously more destructive hurricanes and tornadoes. Placing humanity on Earth when the rotation rate had slowed to 24 hours meant that the Creator timed the human era to correspond with the ideal hurricane and tornado era in geologic history—another piece of evidence that the timing of humanity’s advent was planned rather than accidental.
The argument for creation goes far beyond the notion that while hurricanes and tornadoes are bad, the alternatives are worse. Hurricanes and tornadoes actually serve several good purposes. For example, hurricanes significantly increase chlorophyll concentrations along continental shelves. Semi regular chlorophyll enrichment enhances both the biomass and biodiversity of the all-important life-forms that reside on these continental shelves.
Hurricanes linger over oceans far longer than over land. Their powerful winds lift huge quantities of sea-salt aerosols from the oceans. These aerosols make up a large fraction of cloud nuclei, which in turn play a critical role in raindrop formation. Thus, hurricanes (and, to a lesser degree, tornadoes) ensure that enough rain falls from the atmosphere to support a large and diverse population of land life.
These aerosols and the clouds that form them also efficiently scatter solar radiation. So hurricanes also fulfill a life-essential role as Earth’s thermostat. When the tropical oceans get too hot, they generate hurricanes. The sea-salt aerosols produced by hurricanes cool the tropical oceans to a benign temperature. To a lesser degree tornadoes act as thermostats also, cooling certain continental landmasses that have become too hot.” 11
More examples of how hurricanes provide benefits can be found on pages 181-182 of Dr. Ross’ book The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries Reveal God. Third Expanded Edition (2001).
Go here for in-depth examples of the many parameters that must be “fine-tuned” to allow carbon-based life, such as humans, to exist in the universe. I also highly recommend Dr. Ross’ book The Creator and the Cosmos, because it presents a plethora of examples of “fine-tuning.” You may also go here for a very small list of quotes made by astronomers related to this topic.
Endnotes:
1. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 83.
2. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 84.
3. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers. Second Edition (New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1992), 105.
4. Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), 260.
5. Quoted in Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos. Third Expanded Edition (Colorado Springs, CO: NAVPRESS, 2001), 159.
6. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 86.
7. Hugh Ross, Creation as Science: A Testable Model Approach to End the Creation/Evolution Wars (NAVPRESS, 2006), 34-36.
8. J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1987), 206.
9. J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1987), 206-207.
10. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 86.
11. Hugh Ross, Creation as Science: A Testable Model Approach to End the Creation/Evolution Wars (Colorado Springs, CO: NAVPRESS, 2006), 170-172.