The South Pole Telescope and the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic
Polarisation experiment, or Biceps2, at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station are seen against the night sky. Researchers used the equipment to detect ripples in
the space-time fabric that echo the massive expansion of the universe that took
place just after the Big Bang. Photo: CNS Belief in Jesus Christ and God as our Creator remains absolutely compatible with science, writes Dr Brian Wilson
As a young Catholic increasingly curious and hungry for more knowledge of the Faith, I find that rather than holding my faith back, my scientific training has helped to deepen it. After taking time to understand and ponder the beliefs of the Christian faith, I have been attracted by its long tradition of engaging in debate and providing a clear defence of what it believes, as well as why it is relevant for today. Modern culture increasingly presents faith and science as diametrically opposed. Many surveys of young people reveal that the number one statement of unbelievers is that science has refuted religion. Whatever is true, is of God. Jesus said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Therefore Catholics reasonably seek compatibility and complementarity between truths of science or philosophy and the truths of religion. But a lot of people succumb to this modern myth – and it is modern – that science and faith are at loggerheads. But it is useful to remind ourselves that many great figures in science have been Christian believers. Georges Lemaître is just one example. He was a Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics. Fr Lemaître was the first to propose what later became known as the ‘Big Bang Theory’ which convinces the scientific community today.
The key question in my mind is how the simplest organism capable of independent life, the bacterial cell, could be created from non-life?”
In the Creed each weekend I profess my faith in God in the first line: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” At the same time I realise that the society in which I live in now is predominantly of the opinion that science and faith are incompatible. It is accepted that we are just animals, a species like any other, differentiated by the fact of our large brain. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, presented in his 1859 publication On the Origin of Species, has played a major role in the emergence of a world which accepts humans as just another species within the animal kingdom. In a nutshell the theory provides a plausible explanation of how the simplest form of life (a microorganism or bacteria) steadily evolved into fish, then to amphibians, from amphibians to reptiles, from reptiles to mammals, and from apes to humans.
Key question
The key question in my mind is how the simplest organism capable of independent life, the bacterial cell, could be created from non-life? Stephen J. Gould, an evolutionary biologist, palaeontologist, and Harvard professor noted over 30 years ago: “Evolution, in fact, is not the study of origins at all. Evolution studies the pathways and mechanisms of organic change following the origin of life.” The theory of evolution attempts to explain only the diversity of life. Even the bacterial cell is regarded by scientists as a “masterpiece of miniaturized complexity which makes a spaceship seem rather low-tech”. The likelihood of sugars, amino acids and the like somehow coming together has been said to be about as likely as “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 from the materials therein”. Chance assembly is just a naturalistic way of saying ‘miracle.’
A scientific explanation of this is deemed unnecessary by Darwinists, who handle the problem with philosophical argument. Life obviously exists, and if a naturalistic process (a process excluding God) is the only conceivable explanation for its existence, then the difficulties must not be as insuperable as they appear. But I understand that science is not decided by vote, but by evidence. The fact that scientists have never come even remotely close to creating life from non-life is ignored. Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent atheists today, reasons that: “An apparently miraculous theory is exactly the kind of theory we should be looking for in this particular matter of the origin of life.”
The advancing scientific field of epigenetics is now regarded as providing the most vivid reason why the popular understanding of evolution might need revising, but it’s not the only one. Epigenetics helps to explain observations where a simplistic approach to evolution and genetics cannot. For example, why do identical twins end up with different diseases in old age? How can a caterpillar change into a butterfly? Why does new research show that a person’s diet affects the lifespan of their grandchildren? Additionally, scientists have recently discovered that huge proportions of the human genetic code consist of virus-like materials, raising the notion that they got there through infection – meaning that natural selection acts not just on an accumulation of small random mutations, but on larger sudden additions in complexity introduced from elsewhere. There is also growing evidence in bacterial science of genes being transferred not just vertically, from ancestors to parents to offspring, but also horizontally, between organisms.
Scientific community
Charles Darwin was clear when he said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” The scientific community has already observed exceptions to his theory, but it remains accepted as fact. It goes unnoticed by many supporters of Darwin’s theory that he was adamant that there was no reason to assume that natural selection was the only imaginable mechanism of evolution.
The honest answer is that uncertainty remains.
A step of belief in the unknown and flawed is required to fully accept how human life was created”
So a step of belief in the unknown and flawed is required to fully accept how human life was created. But why is it deemed acceptable by many to uncritically believe in a process which is increasingly shown to have flaws? We don’t do this with other scientific theories, so why should we do it with this one? It is contrary to an honest search for truth. Right now the only intellectually honest answer is that there’s no way to know for certain how life was created. So I have a choice to make. Switch off my enquiring mind and believe that chemicals originated from nothing and life emerged from these chemicals due to an unknown natural process. The logic follows that we are creatures like any other, and once we die, we die, and that’s it. Belief in Jesus remains compatible with science.
Why not consider the possibility of God’s intervention in the creation of the world? Science and the search for answers would continue. What scientists would lose is not their research programmes, but the illusion of total mastery of nature. They would be brought to the possibility that beyond the natural world there is a further reality which transcends science. It is core Christian teaching that God created the world from nothing, that he has intervened in it in the past by sending prophets, sending Jesus the Redeemer, and raising him from the dead. Many of my friends say that this is nonsense and an escape from reality. Some tolerate my faith but make it clear that I will have to accommodate to the so-called enlightened public opinion. But the practicality of the Christian faith remains to this day. As science learns more about how different organisms form, perhaps the greatest irony we may be discovering is that we remain closer to the beginning of that journey than we’ve come to think.
Huge mystery
To accept we are human is to accept uncertainty. The origin of life still remains a huge mystery, but the rather rapid elimination of honest, deep discussions around the topic has contributed greatly to confusion and atheism. It is hugely unscientific to ignore the questions which remain. For the scientist, the choice of belief in Christ remains compelling.
Dr Brian Wilson holds his PhD in chemistry.