1

THE OLD MEETING HOUSE East Montpelier Center, Vermont October 9, 2016 Does Science Make God Unnecessary? Preached by the Rev. Elissa C. Johnk Heavily indebted to the Rev. Adam Hamilton and Professor Henry Fritz Schaeffer (See endnotes for references) There is a museum in Kentucky that calls itself the Creation Museum. According to its website, it is a “The state-ofthe-art Creation Museum allows you to venture through biblical history, stunning exhibits, botanical gardens, planetarium, petting zoo, zip line adventure course, and much more.”i We can debate the use of the term ‘state of the art’ later. The museum is supported by an organization called “Answers in Genesis” that promotes what it calls the “Young Earth” theory of Creation – meaning that it takes Genesis literally (in opposition to what I would call taking Genesis seriously) and purports a worldview where humans and dinosaurs coexist next to a replica of an Ark. Since it opened in 2007, the museum has been visited by 2.5 million people. Now, in the great state of Spiritual-but-not-religious-Vermont, I think I am probably safe in assuming that very few of us gathered here subscribe to the belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old. In fact, I don’t have any close friends who believe this. Instead, amongst my friends and clergy colleagues, we see in Genesis a poetic rendering of the beginning of all things, and the nature of the human in the context of creation. And this is, perhaps, why I find this subject so challenging. While a great many people believe there is a serious, inherent conflict between the scientific and religious disciplines, it is difficult for me to grasp the fault lines unless one views religion in general – and Christianity in particular – solely in the terms of belief housed in a 75,000 square foot warehouse “museum” in Kentucky. And unless, of course, one reduces science to a field that would be unrecognizable to many, if not most, scientists. In fact, throughout most of recent history, it would have been difficult to have distinguished the two fields. Francis Bacon, who is sometimes credited with the discovery of the scientific method, did so as a means of studying the “book of God’s works” – which he believed were manifestations of God’s words. This prevailing cultural idea, then – that anything worth knowing can be tested and replicated scientifically – originally stems from a curiosity about, and awe for, God. Professor Henry Fritz Schaeffer, a renowned chemist, gave a lecture series in the late 20th century entitled “Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?”ii In it, he quotes bedrock, foundational scientists from across the different fields, all discussing the reasons for their ultimate faith in God. He gave the lecture series because he often heard his first-year students tell him that it was impossible to be a scientist and a person of faith at the same time. And yet, there he was. Instead, he remarks, drawing from others in his field, “This faith of the [modern] scientist arose historically from the Christian belief that God the Father created a perfectly orderly universe.” From this flows the realization that: “the observer is always there in the laboratory. He always makes conclusions. He is never neutral. [And he always

2 uses ‘he’.] Every scientist brings presuppositions to his or her work. A scientist, for example, never questions the basic soundness of the scientific method.” A scientist, in other words, believes that all things can be discovered through patient observation, and truth is discoverable, precisely because they have faith that the universe is logical and orderly. And this faith, the basis of science as we now know it, stems from the very same place of awe and wonder and belief that, as stated in the Gospel of John, “in the beginning was the word.” Word – logos in the original Greek– meaning speech, yes, but also principle, law, force. In the beginning was the logos – the foundational rules that structure the universe in logical, orderly, physical and discoverable ways. In the beginning was the logos. The foundational structures: That, from nothing, the universe was created. Light and dark, and gas and matter. And then there was basic life, in the seas. Which developed into more complex life on land. Until the earth was teeming. Until the earth pulled forth from its matter the human form. Or, as put by Richard Dawkins, the leading force behind the modern atheist movement: “All this diversity stems from successive branchings, starting from a single bacterium-like ancestor, which lived between 3 and 4 billion years ago. […] There has to be an ultimate source of new genetic variation, and it is mutation. Copies of newly mutated genes are reshuffled through the gene pool by sexual reproduction, and selection removes them from the pool in a way that is non-random. […] Chance cannot produce life. […] Natural selection is nonrandom.”iii

Or, as Stephen Hawking puts it, “In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that produced life like ours is immense.” Now, as I said last week, I am relying heavily for this sermon series on a series by the same title preached about 10 years ago by the Rev. Adam Hamilton. In his more conservative pastorate in Kansas, he was finding that folks had a hard time reconciling these things.iv And when he read Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, he knew he had to preach on it. He knew he had to preach on it because Dawkins states in the book his hopes that, by the end, believers who read the book would become atheists. He is, as Rev. Hamilton states it, an evangelical atheist. But, again as Hamilton states, it’s hard to blame Dawkins given the virulence of the movements that seek to undercut the principles of science across the country – in textbooks and classrooms, in churches and social media. It is hard to blame him for his rhetorical style when 2.5 million people go to visit places like the Creation Museum. Not only does it undercut science but, in my view, it undercuts faith. Rev. Hamilton had to preach on it because he found himself nodding along to all Dawkins’ observations and questions, writing “yes!” in the margins. It was only with Dawkins’ conclusions he couldn’t agree. I feel similarly.

3 And it is also how I feel when, at least one or two times a month I hear, in the receiving line, that folks “really appreciated the sermon,” and [I] “gave [the]m a lot to think about,” but they “weren’t sure they “could go there with [me] because” they “have a scientific mind.” Now, I understand where you are coming from, but I’ve reached differing conclusions. The questions Dawkins poses – his need for certainty, provability, fact – these things run straight to the heart of the question of faith, because they go straight to the heart of the question of doubt. And without doubt, there would be no faith. Unless you have wrestled with the intangibility, or even transient nature at the center of transcendence, any crisis will prove a test you cannot pass. You see, I cannot prove to you the existence of God. I cannot give God to an atheist to touch, because an atheist would not see what I provided as God. As the Rev. Hamilton states, an atheist and a theist will look at the same piece of information very differently. Dawkins will look at the cosmic improbability of life, and see non-random chance. I look at the cosmic improbability of life, and see non-random chance. Non-random chance, breathed into life by a Creator in whom rests creation itself – the great “I AM.” Dawkins will look at the way I feel on a mountaintop, or in love, and see endorphins, oxytocin. I will look at the way I feel on a mountaintop, or in love, and see endorphins and oxytocin – as the elements of the Spirit that makes life life. Dawkins will look at the new realms of science proposed by String Theory, and see the laws of the universe. I look at the realms of science proposed by string theory and… well, no, I won’t. But I will have someone else look at them and explain them to me in a way I can understand, and in little strings of the universe, the fabric of life, and see in them the energy of God, Godself. The great “I AM” – YHWH in Hebrew, translated in our Bibles as THE LORD. “I AM who I AM, I AM what I AM.” The energy of our being, before time, in time, beyond time. James Maxwell, a chemist and theologian who was a contemporary of Darwin, declined an invitation to speak on evolution in relationship to Biblical Interpretation, saying: “The rate of change of scientific hypotheses is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretation. So if a [biblical] interpretation is founded on such a [changing scientific] hypothesis [that interpretation] may […serve] to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten.”v Say, for example, the “Young Earth” hypothesis. Or, as Schaeffer notes in his lecture, up until just under 60 years ago, one of the prevailing theories of the origin of the universe was the Solid State theory. Which I understand, essentially, to mean that everything that you see always has been. As Schaeffer puts it, you should have seen folks doing backbends trying to reconcile that with a literal reading of Genesis’ creation – where there was a time before creation. Where creation is formed from nothing. But eventually, upon the discovery of microwaves, the Solid State theory gave way to the Big Bang Theory – that from nothing, came something.

4 One does not base biblical interpretation on scientific theories, as doing so does a dis-service both to science and faith. But neither do scientific theories challenge the biblical principles of a loving Creator, who whispers into Being, the biblical logos of a Creator in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Indeed, it is actually even a misperception that scientists are usually atheists. While it is true that, nationally, scientists are twice as likely to be atheists or agnostics as the general population, worldwide this is not the case. In fact, there are places in the world where there are more atheists in the general population than in the scientific community.vi And even in the United States, over half of scientists proclaim a belief in God or a Spiritual Higher power. Worldwide, fewer than 30% of scientists believe there is any conflict between the two disciplines at all.vii It is therefore, I think, an illogical conclusion that Dawkins reaches when he states that one of the worst “effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.”viii Instead, at least historically speaking, and certainly within myself and my colleagues, it seems to inspire an awe. Indeed, etched above a laboratory in England is this quote: “In the distance tower still higher [scientific] peaks which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects and deepen the feeling whose truth is emphasized by every advance in science, that great are the works of the Lord.” This is a laboratory, by the way, from which came 15 Nobel Prizes in Science in the last century.ix “Do not indoctrinate your children,” Dawkins states. Instead: “Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.”x I could not agree more. As, I’m sure, would Lord Kelvin – the person for whom the international standards of temperature are named – as he is quoted as having said: “Do not be afraid to be free thinkers. If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to the belief in God.” All links accessible as of October 9, 2016 i https://creationmuseum.org/ ii For the complete text of his lectures, as well as the quotations used in the sermon (and many others), please go to: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/docs/scientists.html iii http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/dawkins_evolution.htm iv http://archive.cor.org/worship/sermon-archives/show/sermons/Science-and-God/ v http://www.leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/docs/scientists.html vi http://phys.org/news/2015-12-worldwide-survey-religion-science-scientists.html vii Ibid. viii Dawkins appears to have said this many times, on-screen for the BBC, and in his work, The God Delusion, p.126 ix http://www.leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/docs/scientists.html Other favorite quotes from the Schaeffer lecture include one from Kepler, the man who discovered the elliptical trajectory of planets – who did so “in order to delight in God’s works.” Or from Blaise Pascal, who is often called a father of mathematical probability, providing the link between mechanics of fluids and of rigid matter. He was a prominent theologian, and while you might be familiar with his wager (that it is better to believe in God and be wrong than not to believe and be wrong), he also said that, “At the center of every human being is a God–shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.” There’s also Isaac Newton, who wrote more books on theology than science, and Boyle – who developed the idea of the atom – and also endowed a lectureship to defend Christianity against “indifference and atheism.” x The God Delusion, p. 264