God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (31 page)

The one example that requires some thought is the arrow of time. Ellis and authors before him note, correctly, that no direction of time is singled out in elementary particle physics. Yet an arrow of time is deeply embedded in our macroscopic experience. According to Ellis, who refers also to Paul Davies
⁴¹
and Heinz-Dieter Zeh,
⁴²
the macrosystem acts down to the micro level, forbidding the time-reversed solutions to occur at that level.

However, they are trying to prove a principle that doesn't exist. Time-reversal is not forbidden at any level—submicro, micro, or macro. Air from outside can rush through a puncture in a flat tire to reinflate the tire. A broken glass can reassemble. These can happen. They are just very unlikely. As we saw in
chapter 5
, chemical reactions happen in both time directions. As Richard Feynman showed, antiparticles are indistinguishable from particles going “backward” (by our everyday standard) in time.

Peacocke cites several other examples that he claims show “the parts of these systems would not be behaving as observed if they were not part of that particular system (‘the whole’).”
⁴³
Right. Like the electron in a bicycle tire. People who think this way simply have to get into the habit of picturing what is actually happening—particles are colliding with particles. Holistic thinking is not just wrong—it keeps you from grasping what is really very simple.

Peacocke lists the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, which is part of a class of chemical reactions occurring far from equilibrium that exhibit spatial and temporal oscillations. These reactions are very interesting, but they are well understood in terms of the underlying chemistry.
⁴⁴
They have been simulated on computers in terms of the interaction of their parts.
⁴⁵
Nothing is holistic about any of them. None prove top-down causation.

Again, we have one of those questions that does not divide the burden of proof equally on both sides. Currently science has found no need for a special principle to provide for the movement from simple to complex. Computer simulations can reproduce many of the patterns using only existing principles plus randomness. No experiment has ever isolated a teleological principle in action, the way experiments can isolate the actions of gravity and electromagnetism. We can safely say, beyond a reasonable doubt, no such principle exists.

So, is some unacknowledged principle in operation at higher levels that is not the simple result of the interactions of quarks and electrons? Everyone but arrogant particle physicists would like to think so, but none has come close to providing a viable theory, much less evidence to necessitate discarding, modifying, or adding to the reductionist paradigm.

THE DEFINITION OF LIFE

One of the basic issues that divides science and religion and has great importance for the future of life on this planet, because of its huge impact on population growth, is the definition of life. The conflicts over reproductive rights and stem-cell research arise from different understandings of the definition of life. Most religions insist on the notion that humans have immaterial souls independent of their material bodies. If a belief system does not include a soul, it is not a religion. Buddhism is technically an exception, but most Buddhists hold to some sort of spiritual belief.

Belief in a soul leads to the conclusion that human life begins precisely when God inserts the soul into the body. Current Catholic dogma holds that this is at the moment of conception, so even a single fertilized egg is a living human being. Note that this is not the traditional position of the Church's leading theologians. Both Augustine and Aquinas held that the soul doesn't enter until “quickening.”
⁴⁶

We can see that the notion of the soul harks back to the ancient belief that there is some animating force that gives life to an organism. As we found above, science has not found any evidence for such a force.

So, how is life defined in science? Biologists generally define an object as being alive if it is capable of metabolism and reproduction and has the ability to adapt to its environment. My colleague in the philosophy department at the University of Colorado, Carol Cleland, has cautioned scientists not to be too parochial in defining life when considering the possibilities of life on other planets—that it may be dramatically different from life on Earth. Basically, living things tend to be complex and to take energy from the environment, which they use for growth and reproduction.
⁴⁷
They do not necessarily have to be composed of carbon molecules and DNA.

In their 2009 book,
Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World
, marine biologists Jeff Schweitzer and Giuseppe Notarbartolo-di-Sciara go carefully through all the various characteristics usually associated with living things and conclude:

There is no single unambiguous definition of life
. Most examples of life are complex; most metabolize, grow, reproduce, and evolve over time. But not all do, and not all have all of these functions present. Some physical systems also share the same characteristics. That fact is not troubling: it reflects the reality of nature. “Life” is an
arbitrary label
we apply to distinguish extremes of complexity along a continuum. We know that a block of pure quartz is not alive and that a screeching kid in the restaurant is; whatever label we paste on all those cases in between is a convenient convention but in no way reflects any fundamental break or division between the living and nonliving.
⁴⁸

So there is no scientific basis for religious arguments made against stem-cell research, early abortion, and other forms of birth control. These are areas where religious belief comes in to work against the best interests of individuals and society. Another place is in the religious objection to same-sex marriage. That objection is not based on any thought-out philosophical principle but on some obscure passages from the Bible. We have already seen that the Bible is so full of errors, contradictions, and immoral acts by its characters, including those of an ancient tribal sky-god named Yahweh, that it is virtually useless as a guide for human behavior. Abortion is still a moral issue, and most people would support rational alternatives. Just think of how better off everyone would be if couples of the same sex had all the legal rights of those in conventional opposite-sex marriages and so could adopt children who might otherwise have been aborted.

The dangers this planet faces from overpopulation hardly need detailing. All one has to do is look at the figures on population growth. In 10,000 BCE there were just 1 million human beings on Earth. In 1810 there were 1 billion. Today, we are almost at 7 billion. The estimate for 2050 is 9 billion. There simply is no way that we can sustain this rate of growth. Something has to give, and give soon. And a major cause of this problem can be laid directly
at the feet of religion and its unsupportable positions on when life begins, reproductive rights, environmental controls, as well as its general distrust of science.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

The origin of life is certainly one of the most important outstanding questions in science today; it is not part of the current theory of evolution, which relies on the genetic system of life already being in place. In 1953, graduate student Stanley Miller, working under the guidance of the eminent chemist Harold Urey, made an amazing discovery in a very simple laboratory experiment. He found that the primary building blocks of life, the amino acids as well as other organic compounds, can be synthesized spontaneously by sending an electrical spark through a gaseous mixture of methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and water.
⁴⁹

At the time these were thought to be the ingredients of primitive Earth's atmosphere. Theists since have been quick to point out that the exact ingredients in the early Earth may have been different. They have concluded, therefore, that Miller's results were no evidence for a natural origin of life. Indeed, life did not spontaneously form from the ingredients in Miller's experiment, and no one has yet managed that feat. However, many experiments have confirmed Miller's findings with a wide range of gases.

The Miller-Urey result provided excellent evidence for a more general principle in nature that many people still find difficult to accept. They demonstrated, in the laboratory, that simple molecules can assemble naturally into more complex molecules. As described previously, this feature of simplicity evolving into complexity, which can be found in physics and other sciences besides biology, disproves the argument made by proponents of intelligent design creationism that the existence of complexity in the universe cannot be explained naturally. In the case of life, since purely natural processes can generate the basic elements of life, no obstacle exists to the ultimate assembly of these basic elements into more complex forms.

Certainly the current biological cell itself is far too complex to have arisen
by purely random processes, and no biologist claims it did. However, it is now well established in the laboratory that chemicals themselves evolve independently of the specific mechanisms of biological evolution.
⁵⁰
If the spontaneous formation of
some
complex system that had at least
some
of the properties of life were observed, then it would provide evidence that life had a natural origin.

The exhaustive review of the literature on life's origins provided by Albrecht Moritz in the
TalkOrigins
Archive
contains many examples of proposed mechanisms and provides extensive links to references. Moritz is conservative: “After critical study of the scientific literature I conclude that advances in our knowledge, with particularly exciting findings in the last decade, have now made the spontaneous origin of life a plausible assumption.”
⁵¹
Recall that it only takes a plausible assumption to defeat the God-of-the-gaps argument.

See also the beautifully illustrated article “Life on Earth” by Alonzo Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak in the September 2009 issue of
Scientific American.
⁵²
Here are the key concepts summarized by the editors:

Researchers have found that the genetic molecule RNA could have formed from chemicals present on the early Earth.

Other studies have supported the hypothesis that primitive cells containing molecules similar to RNA could assemble spontaneously, reproduce and evolve, giving rise to all life.

Scientists are now aiming at creating fully self-replicating artificial organisms in the laboratory—essentially giving life a second start in order to understand how it could have started the first time.

Epicurus has set us free from superstitious terrors and delivered us out of captivity…while we worship with reverence the transcendent majesty of nature.

—Cicero,
De Natura Deorum

THE AFTERLIFE
¹

L
ife after death can be identified with the ancient notion that the human mind is not purely a manifestation of material forces in the brain but has a separate, immaterial component called the soul that survives the death of the brain and the rest of the body. To read the case for an afterlife made by two popular contemporary authors, see the books by Deepak Chopra
²
and Dinesh D'Souza.
³
For the philosophical case against an afterlife, see
The Illusion of Immortality
by Corliss Lamont.
⁴
For a history of belief in life after death, see
Life After Death
by Alan F. Segal.
⁵

While the Torah, the Jewish scriptures that correspond to the first five books of the Old Testament, contains no mention of an afterlife, immortality was adopted into Judaism sometime before the first century BCE. While Plato held that the soul escapes the body after death, the Persians introduced the notion that the whole person, body and soul, survives death, which view the Jews then adopted.
⁶
This idea was adopted in turn by Christianity and Islam, in which it was given a far more central role than it has in Judaism.

The enormous Greek influence on Christianity that was initiated by Paul (the New Testament was written entirely in Greek) led many Christians to
adopt the Greek view that only disembodied souls survive death. With the Copernican revolution in the Middle Ages, heaven was no longer a place beyond the stars, and hell was no longer inside Earth but, rather, these were viewed as immaterial places inhabited by immaterial souls. Nevertheless, bodily resurrection is still anticipated by both the Catholic Church and many Protestant sects.

As we saw in
chapter 2
, Augustine's view was that God created time along with the universe and is himself outside of time. Later Christian theologians formulated life after death to take place in an eternal realm disconnected from space and time. Actually, this realm should not even be characterized as “eternal” since that is a temporal term. It's kind of a constant “now.” Of course, this is the Christianity of theologians, not the faithful in the pews, who are kept in the dark about theology by their preachers.

Life after death is an Eastern as well as Western idea, though the forms are quite different. The traditional belief in the East is some form of reincarnation in which souls have many lives on Earth.
⁷
A revised understanding of Hinduism was instituted in the
Upanishads
, a philosophical work from 2,500 years ago referred to as Vedanta, or “post-Vedic” Hinduism. According to this text, humans break out of the endless cycle of reincarnation while all our souls merge into a single reality. Buddhism adopted the Hindu notion of reincarnation (yet another version of an “afterlife”) for souls that hadn't yet “achieved enlightenment,” whereby the cycle ends in Nirvana and the soul, as in Vedanta, merges with reality while the individual ego is lost.

Although belief in the afterlife is a widespread notion, it is not unanimous. After all, perhaps 1 to 2 billion living people don't believe in it. We can identify four different perspectives: (1) the Eastern view of the disembodied soul undergoing reincarnations in new bodies and then eventually merging into a single ultimate reality; (2) the Western view in which the soul, even without a body, remains individually differentiated; (3) the Western view of survival of the whole person, body and soul together; and (4) denial of an afterlife. Christians who don't believe in bodily resurrection but in a heavenly realm beyond space and time still expect to meet their departed loved ones and favorite pets there as individual souls. Interestingly, this difference between East and West is a characteristic of the respective cultures, with individualism
a prime trait of Americans and Eurasians, while East Asians place more emphasis on everyone harmonizing with their culture. Even East Asian beliefs in heaven or hell correspond to their cultural expectations and thus differ substantially from Western notions. You would think that if the notion of an afterlife were based on any kind of divine revelation there would be one universal version. But then there would be one religion rather than thousands.

BEYOND MATTER

If we were to try to think of the most basic disagreement between science and religion it would be on what is termed
transcendence
. The evidence gleaned from the earliest prehistoric burial sites, the historical record, and the global society today make it clear that what we commonly label as religion is characterized by the notion that something exists beyond the world that addresses our senses.

Notice that we do not require belief in God or gods in this definition. Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism did not have gods originally, although many of their adherents today worship gods of one sort or another. Nevertheless, the ancient sages of the East all had some concept of the transcendent.
⁸

Science, on the other hand, deals only with the world of our senses. Of course, science has its theories and utilizes mathematics, which are just as much in our heads as the mantra in the head of a Tibetan monk or the prayer in the head of a Catholic nun. But to be science, thoughts must be tested against observations, while religious thoughts need not be. Indeed, when they are, as with the creation story in Genesis or intelligent design, they invariably fail the test.

Now, this does not mean that science is in anyway proscribed from applying its methods to seek empirical evidence for something transcendent. However, there exists a widespread notion, promulgated at the highest levels of the scientific community itself, that science has nothing to say about God or the supernatural. In an otherwise excellent and comprehensive report on the science of evolution and the issues involved around teaching it in schools, the National Academy of Sciences takes a strong NOMA position (non-overlapping
magisteria; see
chapter 1
). Let me quote from the section titled “Religious Issues.”

Aren't scientific beliefs based on faith as well?

Usually “faith” refers to beliefs that are accepted without empirical evidence. Most religions have tenets of faith. Science differs from religion because it is the nature of science to test and retest explanations against the natural world. Thus, scientific explanations are likely to be built on and modified with new information and new ways of looking at old information. This is quite different from most religious beliefs.

Therefore, “belief” is not really an appropriate term to use in science, because testing is such an important part of this way of knowing. If there is a component of faith to science, it is the assumption that the universe operates according to regularities—for example, that the speed of light will not change tomorrow.
⁹
Even the assumption of that regularity is often tested—and thus far has held up well. This “faith” is very different from religious faith.

Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.
¹⁰

Now let us see why the above statement from the top science organization in America can be proven scientifically false on the grounds that it disagrees with the empirical facts.

RELIGION AND HEALTH

The National Academy of Sciences' assertion that science has nothing to say about God or the supernatural is refuted by the fact that highly respected institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, Duke University, and Harvard University have engaged in studies on the efficacy of remote intercessory prayer. If it could be shown scientifically that prayer really works, and no natural explanation can be found, then we would have an empirical case for transcendence.

The largest prayer experiment, called the
Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer
(STEP), was performed by a collaboration of researchers from six academic medical centers.
¹¹
The study focused on 1,802 patients recovering from coronary-artery bypass surgery in six hospitals. They were divided into three groups: (1) 604 patients who received intercessory prayer after being informed that they may or may not receive prayers; (2) 597 patients who did not receive intercessory prayers after being informed that they may or may not receive prayers; (3) 601 patients who received intercessory prayers after being informed that they would receive prayers.

The investigators found no effect of intercessory prayer on the recovery of the patients examined. In fact, those patients who knew they were being prayed for fared worse!
¹²

Earlier Mayo Clinic
¹³
and Duke University
¹⁴
studies also failed to find any benefits of intercessory prayer. While several other published papers had previously reported positive results, these are the only three studies that were conducted with the highest scientific standards.

The three well-conducted studies found no significant effects
but they might have
, which would have provided evidence for the supernatural if not for God himself. The fact that patients in the STEP study fared worse after being prayed for cannot be taken as evidence for a vengeful God. They probably thought, “I must be in lot worse shape than they are telling me, if people are praying for me.” And it is well established that patients' attitudes can have a strong effect on their health.

Another area of study on the health effects of religion and spirituality concerns the possible benefits of religious practice. The American public widely believes that religion and spirituality can reduce the risk of disease for adherents. A huge literature exists claiming scientific evidence that this is indeed the case. A number of reviews of the literature have strongly supported this conclusion.
¹⁵

On the other hand, psychiatrist Richard Sloan and epidemiologist Emila Bagiella have examined a large number of such reports and concluded that there is little empirical support for these claims.
¹⁶

A considerable effort to study the connections between religion and health is centered at the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke
University. Its founder, psychiatrist Harold G. Koenig, is a respectable scholar who has authored or coauthored numerous books and articles on religion, health, and ethical issues in medicine that promote the benefits of religious practice.
¹⁷
I have communicated with him personally and have found him to be a competent researcher.

Koenig coauthored one of the prayer studies mentioned above that found no evidence that prayer improves health. In an interview on the website Beliefnet, Koenig says about the Duke study, “The results are very consistent with good science and good theology.” The experiment was well designed and well conducted, so it was good science. The negative results were also “good theology,” according to Koenig, “because God is not predictable, he's not part of the material universe.” Koenig insists that the studies “tell us nothing about the effectiveness of prayer.”
¹⁸
However, if the results had been positive he would be singing another tune. Can't you see the headline? “Science Proves God Exists.”

The one area where a fairly convincing case for the beneficial health effects of religious practice can be made is in churchgoing. A review of published papers on religion and health conducted by epidemiologist Lynda H. Powell and collaborators has supported this conclusion.
¹⁹

The authors carefully chose from a large number of publications, tossing out many that failed to meet stringent controls or otherwise lacked proper scientific protocols. They labeled as “persuasive” the evidence that church attendance improves mortality. They did not say whether or not it guaranteed immortality.

However, churchgoing was pretty much the only religious practice that improved health outcomes. Here's the summary of Powell's conclusions:

In healthy participants, there is a strong, consistent, prospective, and often graded reduction in risk of mortality in church/service attenders. This reduction is approximately 25% after adjustment for confounders. Religion or spirituality protects against cardiovascular disease, largely mediated by the healthy lifestyle it encourages. Evidence fails to support a link between depth of religiousness and physical health. In patients, there are consistent failures to support the hypotheses that religion or spirituality slows the progression of cancer or improves recovery from acute illness, but some evidence that religion or spirituality impedes recovery from acute illness.
²⁰