[28 February 2021]
In my second and final post on the ‘Does God Exist?’ issue, you will see that I have found myself, in the end, on the “Yes’’ side. But it has genuinely – and often - been a struggle. I bring it up now so that readers may bear in mind that, when I later give the concept of ‘God’ a rather rigorous evaluation, I am doing so not from a place of scepticism or secret atheism; it is from the seat of belief. My concern has always been, however, that the concept of God has been so often abused and misrepresented throughout history that, as a younger man, I felt a period of reflection was needed before committing.
Last week, I spoke of Origins and this week Pill Popping!
Whichever world viewpoint we take, none of us can escape the fact that there are huge numbers of questions which have not, as yet, been answered. It seems that we all - due to the spectacular complexity of the religious/scientific explanations given – need to swallow a few Improbability Pills!
In the pharmacy of Explanations it would seem, to me, that there are only two tablets available for prescription:
Option 1: Accidental Existence
The current scientific model is based around alligning all the events of the cosmos together with no specific ‘design’ built in. From this perspective, there was NO deliberate Will or Purpose involved and things can only therefore be described as Accidental. The millions of ‘tiny’ steps (many are actually huge) which have had to occur in order for the universe to evolve have all happened by pure Chance. From the very first BANG onwards, there was NO conscious force acting upon or controlling ANYTHING, only the enormous (but not deliberate) ‘forces’ of physics, then chemistry and - eventually - biology, all of which came into being at that single moment at the ‘start’ of time.
Of the innumerable steps that must have occurred in order to create our modern universe, I am just going to describe eight which, as a biologist, I find in particular most difficult to ‘swallow’. Each must occur by pure random chance, separately, individually and in a specific order to get us to where we are:
1. Our universe spontaneously came into being from absolute nothing – by random chance. 2. From what I would call “super-nothingness” (no space or time in which anything can occur) appears, in an instant, enough energy/matter (and corresponding Dark Energy/Matter) to make a billion galaxies, each with a billion stars, each with their myriad planetary systems – by random chance. 3. The quantum complexity of even a single element almost defies understanding, yet the atom and hence all matter must nonetheless reach stability – by random chance. 4. Eventually, Earth’s conditions allowed the beginning of organic chemistry to arise. Ours is a soup of 98 naturally occurring chemical elements, each of which was formed separately across billions of years, individually created by the explosion of their own far flung star and finally accumulating on earth in a perfect blend – by random chance. 5. Chemistry eventually formed primitive biology, which somehow survived long enough for the RNA to replicate – and regularly – without, it seems, - initially - the necessary cellular machinery that would make it possible. All this, too, by random chance. 6. Life evolved towards complexity in many different species, reaching the insanely complex cell biology that now exists – these staggering ‘mini machines’ with ‘photocopying capacity’, these myriad production lines inside tiny cells the size of a speck of dust – by random chance. 7. This incredible, beautiful planet, with life teeming from the top of its mountains to the bottom of its ocean trenches, is unique (or shockingly rare!) amongst every other observable barren planet in our universe - by random chance. 8. That out of the harsh principle of ‘survival of the fittest’ the beauty and delicacy of life on earth simply came about - by random chance.
These are just eight significant ‘Improbability Pills’ but, in reality, it would have to be more like a few million Improbable Steps - some larger, some smaller - in order to bring about the universe we currently know.
Option 2: Deliberate Existence
That there is an eternal, intelligent and sufficiently powerful Being who has created this universe for a purpose. What makes this pill particularly difficult to prescribe is that there is no possible way to physically detect or observe Them in any form. I recognise that this is fundamentally a MASSIVE Improbability Pill to swallow.
Ultimately, the point I became personally swayed by is that this is just ONE pill which, once swallowed, intrinsically contains the explanation for all the detail above. Because of this ONE pill, all the richness and complexity of our universe is DELIBERATE. If the Being, sufficiently intelligent and powerful, is designing something in stages, then the eight examples I have given are not so difficult to swallow.
So there it is, the choice: one super massive pill, or a million tiny ones? There are improbabilities in both view points, but neither involving the rejection of science - instead the dilemma speaks more towards the ‘directive force’ behind the stunning complexity we see.
This may be, perhaps, a moment to reflect on how we like to take our pills?
Bear with me! Jonathan
Apologies
1. To my non-religious and non-monotheistic friends for what I am sure will seem like a one-sided summary. I do not write this to persuade, because I am now going on to the more important topic: What on earth has been done with this concept of ‘God’?
2. To my religious friends who may not be comfortable with me using the term ‘massive Improbability Pill’ with respect to God. For some brought up within a religious group the concept of God seems so straightforward, but for many it really is an enormous hurdle.
3. To my science-based friends who will have plausible explanations for each of the eight steps I have described above, many of which I do not know. They, nonetheless, represent significant plausibility barriers for me on my journey. I also “Know t
hat there is much I do not Know” and remain open to new information as it arrives!
The Image? The staggering biological complexity shown in the picture is how just one tiny segment of our DNA is replicated. The blue coloured blobs are helicase proteins which ‘literally spin as fast as a jet engine’ in order to unwind the DNA ready for processing.
If you want to have your mind blown, just watch this video for six minutes from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Wow!!
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