| 来源类型 | Article |
| 规范类型 | 评论 |
| Does Modern Science Undermine Atheism? | |
| Christopher Hitchens; Roy Varghese | |
| 发表日期 | 2005-04-01 |
| 出版年 | 2005 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | Prominent atheist Antony Flew has announced that the latest science convinces him some sort of God exists after all. Religious scientist Roy Varghese and non-believer Christopher Hitchens debate his rethinking. YES IT DOES: Roy Varghese The most famous atheist in the academic world over the last half century, Professor Antony Flew of England’s University of Reading, now accepts the likelihood that some sort of Deity brought the universe into existence. Flew’s paper, “Theology and Falsification,” which grew out of a 1950 presentation to the Socratic Club chaired by none other than C. S. Lewis, set the agenda for modern atheism. Now, in a remarkable evolution, Flew accepts the existence of a God who “possesses most of the usual defining characteristics of omnipotence, omniscience, immateriality.” His newfound “Deism” is the product not of a personal conversion, but of reasoned analysis of the latest scientific data. “What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved” in the origination of life, he states. “The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved looks to me like the work of intelligence.” The philosopher has said that if admirers are upset with his about-face, then “that’s too bad. My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato’s Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads.” Flew’s conclusion is actually consistent with the beliefs of most modern scientific pioneers, from Albert Einstein to Werner Heisenberg. In their view, the intelligence of the universe–its laws–points to an intelligence without limit, “a superior mind,” as Einstein put it. Many of our men and women of letters, it would seem, have been looking for God in all the wrong places. Those who dismiss God as a product of psychological conditioning or pre-scientific myth have not come to terms with the findings of modern science. The universe follows laws, which leads us to ask how those laws came into being. How does the electron know what to do? In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking asks what breathes fire into the equations of science and births a world that follows their descriptions. The answer, he concluded, would reveal “the mind of God.” Last May, I helped organize a New York University symposium on religion and science, with the participation of Professor Flew and others. Our starting point was science’s new knowledge that the history of the universe is one of quantum leaps of intelligence, the sudden yet systematic appearance of intrinsically intelligent systems in an ascending order. Many people assume that intelligence somehow evolves out of non-intelligence, given chance and enough time. But even in the most hardheadedly materialistic scenario, intelligent systems come fully formed from day one. Matter came with all its ingenious, mathematically precise laws from the time it first appeared. Life came fully formed with the incredibly sophisticated symbol-processing of DNA, the astonishing phenomenon of protein-folding, and the marvel of replication from its very first appearance. Language, the incarnation of conceptual thought, appeared out of the blue, again with its infrastructure of syntax, symbols, and semantics intact from the start. Modern science has shown that “mindless matter” is in fact a network of precise and exquisite processes, laws, and structures. It has demonstrated that living beings are imbued with ingenious architecture, databases, and operating systems that construct, repair, and replicate themselves. Discovery of these algorithms induced Antony Flew to infer therefrom the existence of an intelligent Source. The critics who protest that he hasn’t consulted the most recent speculations on the origins of life miss the point. No scientific work can ever address the question of how intelligence arose in a universe of undifferentiated matter. Three central facts of our existence simply cannot be explained by science: the laws of nature; the presence of intelligent, autonomous agents; and the existence of consciousness and conceptual thought irreducibly different from material reality. The evidence shows there was no progressive, gradual evolution of non-intelligence into intelligence in any of the fundamental categories of energy, life, or self-conscious mind. Each had intrinsically intelligent structures from the time it first appeared. We can, if we want, declare that there is no reason why there are reasonable laws, no explanation for the fact that there are explanations, no logic underlying logical processes. But this is not the conclusion adopted by Einstein, Heisenberg, and, most recently, Antony Flew. Roy Abraham Varghese is the author of The Wonder of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God. NOT AT ALL: Christopher Hitchens It had seemed that Antony Flew, author of anti-religious works like Merely Mortal, and possessing the reputation of a determined atheist, was prepared to go on record on behalf of creationism. Yet in his most recent exchanges, Flew retreats from his very tentative flirtations with a “First Cause” and now admits that when it comes to biology and physics (whose evidence he credits with opening his mind to the possibility of some sort of prime mover) he may not be an authority, or understand the authorities in any case. (This would place him on the same level as most of us mere mortals.) What an anti-climax. One wishes for the sake of his own reputation that Professor Flew had never exclaimed in childlike wonder at the complexity of nature. Those who are overawed by the complexity and symmetry of nature are faced with a problem which admits of no solution. If we are to credit the “design” of the natural order to a designer, how much more in awe we should have to be of the designer who thought of that designer (who is himself in just as much need of a first cause). Although only part of our cortex is rational, it must be admitted that it is with that very part of ourselves that we seek for (and invariably find) patterns and systems. Ancient astronomers who thought that the world was flat were nonetheless able to predict eclipses. When I first read of the Burgess Shale discoveries, demonstrating that immense branches of once-actual and potential life fell into extinction and went nowhere, I confess that something in me desired to resist the possible conclusion of nature’s randomness. Just as we atheists do not exactly relish the idea of personal extinction at death, neither do we rejoice at the thought of all the wasted life and energy expended in the process of evolution. But we must never confuse our wishes with our thoughts, and we have no right to discard the razor of Occam, which demands we reject supernatural explanations where natural ones can be found. However much they may try to converge, philosopher skeptics like Antony Flew and religious scientists like Roy Varghese will never be able to agree. This is for a simple reason. Arguing from design means accepting that there are consistent patterns and systems in the physical world. Thus wooden statues cannot shed blood. Stone statues cannot weep tears. Dead men do not walk the streets again, and greet their friends. Smoldering vegetation does not speak, in any tongue. Who dares argue for nature’s caprice on this scale? The supposed “miracles” of the creator are mere nothings when compared to the truly stupefying majesty that is disclosed by a glance through the Hubble telescope, or by a few hours spent reading Stephen Hawking, or by the infinite possibilities opened through the unraveling of the DNA string. Here’s my point: The creationists want to take credit for design, in order to take even more credit for the random–that which contradicts and even negates the design. This is greedy, and self-refuting. Using nature’s rationality to prove the existence of an extra-rational God is the same solipsism that congratulates the “created” when things go well (thus helping preserve the illusion of the man-centered universe), but which is silent about the lifeless planets within a few miles of our own, the plague bacilli, and the tsunamis, preferring at this point to dissolve into idle talk about “mystery.” Flew himself commits this blunder in a different way, tending to blame God for the existence of “evil”–as if the world’s traumas were somehow attributable to anything but flawed human character and the vagaries of a still-cooling planet. I agree with the faithful in one respect, and would myself say if I was a believer: We have no right to demand or to expect an explanation from the inventor, and our expectations of ever getting one, let alone of intuiting one, are quite vain. I propose a bargain: Let science get on with the job of explicating and elucidating evolution, and leave the godly to the task of justifying the supernatural. It is not a sign of progress that these days even the creationists are attempting to “evolve.” The division of intellectual labor needs to be restored. So I hope this is the last we shall be hearing of a coalition of the sacred and the profane, or at least of an alliance between the authors of The Wonder of the World and Merely Mortal. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate. His latest collection of essays, Love, Poverty, and War, has just been published. Published in Democracy Breaks Out in the Middle East April/May 2005 |
| 主题 | Uncategorized |
| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/does-modern-science-undermine-atheism/ |
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States) |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/240737 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Christopher Hitchens,Roy Varghese. Does Modern Science Undermine Atheism?. 2005. |
| 条目包含的文件 | 条目无相关文件。 | |||||
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