Has Science Discovered God?

Has Science Discovered God? 
May 2, was the Alpha and Omega lecture that the source of everything contemporary science discovered is the intelligence we call God. The lecture was a video created and published in 2004 by the Institute of Metascientific Reseasrch: http://www.sciencefindsgod.com/about.htm
About the Video: The publisher had these words on the cover: "A half-century ago, in 1955, Professor Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his “Theology and Falsification”, a paper presented in a debate with C.S. Lewis. This work became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last 50 years. Over the decades, he published more than 30 books attacking belief in God and debated a wide range of religious believers. Then, in a 2004 Summit at New York University, Professor Flew announced that the discoveries of modern science have led him to the conclusion that the universe is indeed the creation of infinite Intelligence."

It was a complex panorama of 100 years of scientific findings compressed in 50 minutes on video. The fast and often deep narration by great minds attests to the complexity of the matter. I suspect that many of the people in audience have not fully digested it yet. This was my fear which I expressed before the showing of the video. As suggested after the lecture, we will have to revisit this video and discuss it slowly in several sessions in future. Thanks to all the people who ventured to attend and reflect in the short discussion after the lecture. Let’s now plunge into the main points made. Forgive me if I insert some additional points – I have been studying the subject for many years.
First: The ascension of life The origin and timeline of creation suggested by the Big Bang theory has been clearly explained by the explorations of the Hubble telescope, the cosmic background radiation (found by Penzias & Wilson, 1965) and the explorations of COBA satellite (1990s). This timeline of the cosmos starts 13.7 billion years ago. The Big Bang was a huge explosion or rather an expansion of a tiny “singularity” according to Stephen Hawking (i.e. nothing). The cosmos expands and in the process billions of stars and galaxies are formed from the extraordinary nuclear energy present in very hot particles. The Sun is one of the stars and in 9 billion years the earth is formed and cools off within the solar system. This is the time when inanimate matter is formed (e.g. iron). Life suddenly appears at roughly 10.5 billion years starting from carbon-based matter with amino acids to cells then the formation of bacteria. This is cellular life. To-date there is no way to recreate any life from inanimate matter (Attempts by Miller in the 1960s to recreate carbon-based life failed when applied to the atmosphere of the early earth). At this level reproduction occurs by replication. The ability to move is still not there yet. This is followed by fish and other water inhabitants. Within this period, about 300 million years later, some invertebrates move to land. Plants appear on land in another 300 million years, but now dinosaurs rule the earth. At about 13.5 billion years there is a sudden appearance of animals and birds. It is believed that most phylas appeared suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, and the dinosaurs were all extinguished by a huge comet (S. J. Gould, 1970s). This phase signifies the move of intelligence from sentient beings to consciousness. We note here that reproduction is now by sexual mating. Species in this phase have the ability to move. And finally at about 13.7 billion years homosapiens (humans) appear from primates. Some high primates such as chimpanzees have the ability to think and communicate at a very rudimentary level but humans alone are distinguished by their ability to think, even abstract thinking including mathematics, listen to and compose music, appreciate beauty, and communicate at a high level using a language they understand – This is the advent of mind (What Teilhard de Chardin calls the noosphere).
Conclusions from the above scientific findings: a. There is a beginning to the existence of the universe. b. There is a gradual evolution for life to appear starting from inanimate matter to the appearance of sentients followed by the appearance of animal consciousness to finally the leap to the appearance of the mind. c. There appears to be an unknown cause or intervention in the sudden appearance of living beings at the Cambrian explosion period. d. There appears to be a guidance in evolution (i.e. it is not random but there is a plan and history has a direction). Eastern philosophy and religions argued that history is cyclical, but here science shows history has a beginning and a direction.
Recent works by biochemist Michael Behe shows there is irreducible complexity in organs of living beings and so must be the work of intelligent design beyond the creation. William Dembski argues too from information theory that specified information in living beings is evidence for intelligent design beyond the creation. This confirms the Biblical data of creation.
Second: The fine-tuning of the universe In 1986 scientists confirmed the existence of the Anthropic Principle (Barrow and Tipler). According to the Anthropic Principle, the universe is fine tuned for life to a very accurate degree. There are some 30 constants that govern the laws of physics (such as Pi, Planck’s constant…etc). If one constant is slightly changed, the universe would end or collapse. Stephen Hawking says that if the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before life could have formed. Freeman Dyson draws the following conclusion “I conclude from the existence of these accidents that the universe is unexpectedly hospitable place for living creatures to make their home in. Being a scientist, trained in the habits of thought and language of the twentieth century rather than the eighteenth, I do not claim that the architecture of the universe proves the existence of God. I claim only that the architecture of the universe is consistent with the hypothesis that mind plays an essential role in its functioning” (Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion, 2000 - See also Paul Davies, Cosmic Jackpot, 2007).
Conclusion from the above scientific finding: The fact that the very vast universe we live in is fine-tuned for life on our planet is evidence for a super mind behind it.
Third: The language puzzle In 2002-2003 an article in Times suggested that monkeys are probably able to understand and even produce work comparable to human writings. The article suggested that given enough time monkeys could even write one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. An experiment was carried out on these animals to verify this ability. A keyboard attached to a computer was left between their hands for a month. They produced over 50 pages but nothing was meaningful in their output. To type a single-letter word in English, say an “a”, you need to type “a” followed by space bar followed by another “a.” If you estimate there are 30 letters on average in the language including extra punctuations, the probability of typing the correct one-letter word is 1 out of 27,000. To try this with a word from Shakespeare’s 48 sonnet such as “Shall”, the probability becomes 1 out of 10 to the power of 680. If you count the particles in the universe (electrons, neutrons …etc) the total is 10 to the power of 80. This means that the probability of typing a word is 1 out of 10 to the power of 600. It is virtually impossible that monkeys could get it right. The evidence is clear. Meaningful words exist only in human language. The video showed examples from the earliest Indian civilizations 5,000 years ago.
Fourth: The DNA super processes The structure of the DNA molecule was discovered by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. A particular sequence of three bases within a strand of DNA corresponds to a particular amino acid. The order of the triplets of bases in the DNA determines the order in which the amino acids are assembled into the protein chains that form the cells of all living organisms. In DNA, an “alphabet” of just four “letters” (the bases) grouped in three-letter “words” (triplets, each specifying one of the amino acids), is arranged in “sentences”(specifying particular proteins). Thousands of sentences of varying length and word order can be made from the twenty basic words, so there are thousands of possible proteins. Long strands of DNA made of exactly the same four bases in various sequences, constitute the genes of all organisms, from microbes to human beings. In all organisms the same genetic code is used to translate from DNA to amino acid, which seems to indicate a common origin for all living beings. Recent techniques for comparing the molecular structure of similar proteins in various living species allow us to estimate the time since their lineages diverged. For example, the enzyme cytochrome-C in humans consists of a sequence of 104 amino acids. In the comparable sequence in monkeys only one of these amino acids is different; horses have 12 that differ and fish have 22, indicating increasingly distant kinship (Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion, 2000). Looking closely at it, DNA is transcribed into RNA. RNA is translated into proteins and proteins recreate themselves in a process called folding (they assemble themselves without external intervention). Every cell makes 2000 proteins every second from amino acids. Does this tell us that behind the DNA super processes, there is a super intelligence? It is this particular discovery that impressed atheist Professor Anthony Flew and made him become a theist!
Fifth: The brain-mind problem This is the subject of huge studies since the early 1980s. Some of the great philosophers of mind include John Searle. Neuroscientists attempt to explain how the mental state of consciousness is reflected in the brain processes of 100 billion neurons in every human brain. However, no single human is able to explain the “hard problem,” that is, when I see a red apple what gives it its redness in my mind? Subjective experience of the “I” can never be encapsulated in an objective formula like when science speaks about a “he.” Agnostic neuroscientist Steven Pinker agrees that the “I” does not refer to anything in the body (or the brain). One of the marvels that the video refers to is the complexity of the eye in all conscious living beings and how it is communicating information in humans.

All the above constitute a very beautiful tapestry of contemporary scientific evidence that supports the evidence of a super mind as the great physicist and atheist Fred Hoyle said. But intelligence is not, in my opinion, the most accurate description of God. The recent attempts in theoretical physics are trying hard to find a “theory of everything.” The M-string theory by Ed Witten in 1995 attempts to unify the four basic forces in the universe (electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravity). The theory postulates dancing strings at the bottom of every being which remain inaccessible to any scientific experiment. It also postulates that all existing matter lives in 11 dimensions. The accomplishment of Einstein in his Relativity Theory was to show that there are not 3 but 4 dimensions to every thing in the universe including length, breadth, height, and time. Hugh Ross, with a PhD in astronomy postulates that God uses the 11th dimension. Moreover quantum physics in the 1920s showed that everything in the atomic world has two characteristics, a wave-like and a particle-like character. Since it was found, new technology made full use of it (e.g. laser and transistor, flash memory chips in USB drives).

However, the mystery that no scientist understands is called quantum entanglement at a great distance. It has been stipulated that when an electron or a photon is smashed using a particle collider, the resulting 2 particles will still communicate at a large distance from each other even though the Theory of General Relativity prohibits any speed higher than the speed of light (Cf. EPR). There seems that there is some kind of “relatedness” or communication in the microcosmic world. Does this probably tell us anything about the deepest nature of existing matter? Is it possible that God created the cosmos to reflect his inner-being as we Christians believe it? Again the Trinity means three persons in one God. They are fully in love: The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and the binding love between them is the Holy Spirit. The nature of God appears to be love - eternal love. Self-emptying love – Full relatedness and communication. And where is the kingdom of God? Christ tells us: it is “inside you.” What I said here is only an opinion. We believe in the teaching of the Church and the Church is protected by Christ from the powers of hell till the end of time. God bless. George Farahat May 3, 2008