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D4T1: God or Science? An argumentative essay

God Or Science? What is Acceptable?
An Argumentative Essay

The argument between God and Science may be seen as a broader outlook on the Creationists vs. Evolutionists; alternatively, it may be seen as a part of the global discussion of whether there is a God, and if He does exist, is He relevant? Is He working? And more importantly, is He omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent?

There are various views on the first: according to the Creationists, who, by far, have relied on the "Missing Evidence" from the "evolution theory", life on Earth is exclusive to our planet, is very recent, and is "Created" by God, along with the entire Universe and all the celestial bodies within it, within a matter of 6 days, as per the narration in the Holy Bible (read with the other religious Books such as the Torah and the Qur^an).

Scientists, over the past 175 years, after the joint publication of the Theory of Natural Selection by Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in 1838, have increasingly pursued the scientific thought that living things cannot be a rarity in the Universe as life itself is born by "accident". They also firmly believe that life sustains itself only through a painful, yet necessary process of adaptation and natural selection. Beings that cannot adapt, perish.

According to the Natural Selection theory, therefore, only those fit to live will survive, while those who are weak or not adaptable will become extinct over time.

Let us now move on to the other, broader context of the present debate: Does God exist? Or are the athiests correct in presuming that there is no God? I firmly believe that "liberalism" as opposed to "exclusivism" is the right way to go. Liberalism means a way of scientific thinking that can accomodate other forms of observations about the world in general. Thus, liberalism is an extension of Niels Bohr's "principle of complementarity". It allows, for example, the human brain to have both, intelligence (science) and spirituality (soul).

Exclusivists, on the other hand, will deny rational thinking on any aspect of life and any thing in the world which does not have a provable, reproducible scientific basis (read "mathematical solution"). Philosophy as a tool to understand those concepts is not available to them in their tool-box, so they cannot philosophise about "non-scientific" things.

Science, pure science, or at least the way scientists understand science, relies on the phenomena of observation; on the basis of that, data is collected, analysed and collected into a logical pattern. After this, the analysed data is interpreted by comparison with past data and with parallel data so as to create a mosaic of reality that can be tested with mathematical equipment such as statistical formulae and the like.

When phenomena that are observed cannot be quantified, verified or understood, the pure scientist is at a loss. He will either put it down to his own equipments being inappropriate or to the fact that the theoretical aspects of the said phenomena have not yet been established. In the medical realm, an unexpected course of an illness often causes doctors to rush to examine why such an aberration occurred. If the aberration has never been noted in the past, it is put down to being just that: an aberration that proves that every rule has an exception. However, why should there be any exceptions to rules? Do physical rules have any exceptions? Don't all bodies released from heights ALWAYS fall back to earth? Doesn't water ALWAYS turn to vapour when heated?

Thus, while the physical and chemical sciences are more "mathematical" and "deductive", the same is not true of the biological sciences. Be it zoology, botany, medicine, or whatever, rules are ALWAYS broken by so-called aberrations that can neither be explained nor be explained away.

Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has written bluntly, "Religion and science will always clash." In his mind, and in the mind of all modernists, science is gradually chipping away at the bastion of religion and a day will come when faith will be completely superseded by science.

Richard Dawkins recently wrote a book called "The God Delusion". Referring frequently to the theories and observations of Charles Robert Darwin, he is the quintessential atheist whose book was at the top of The New York Times bestseller list for 5 weeks. Dawkins and his army have many articulate theological opponents, of course. But the most ardent of these don't really care very much about science, and an argument in which one party stands immovable on Scripture and the other immobile on the periodic table doesn't get anyone very far.

The common man is satisfied with having the cake and eating it too. Thus, while he marvels at the doorstep of Science, he will also kneel before God on the Sabbath. He is happy to have both, the MRI and the miracle. Heard about the statue of Jesus that bled? Of course, we all have, at some point of time or the other. And who are the ones who rush to see this miracle? Are they only those who are "unintelligent" the "hoi polloi"? No. They include all the so-called intellectuals that are thrown up by modern society - this includes teachers, doctors, and even, God forbid (pun intended), scientists.

Many intellectuals have become conciliators: they try and amalgamate Biblical quotations with scientific facts. The foremost among them is Francis Collins, a director of the Human Genome REsearch Institute since 1993. He has turned a devout Christian since the age of 27, and is an advisor to evangelists who flock to him to understand his thoughts of how to make modern thinkers accept the existence of God. In his book, Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press), he goes about doing the very same thing that he believes is the Conciliated Truth of Life.

According to Jacques Maritain, modern scientific equipment is inadequate to rationally prove the existence of God. In his opinion, the following five philosophical concepts prove His existence: the Principles of Change, of Efficient Causes, of Contingency and Necessity of things, of Degrees in things, and of Order and purposeful Governance. Does that make sense? No? Well, it refers to the fact that we see, around us, all the above five things, but when it comes to perfection in any of these, we all have different opinions about which one is perfect. Ultimately, we pass on the attribute of "perfection" to none other than Almighty God.

Further, he says that if we were to lay all our loyalties at the feet of Science, we would be victims of a very unfortunate chain of events that might perhaps end in an environmental or hydrogen-bomb holocaust. It is only because of the belief that we have in the religious or spiritual dimension of things that we remain optimistic about our race in general and about the life on our planet.

References:

1. http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/jm2404.htm

2. http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/11/05/cover.story/index.html

3. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132,00.html

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

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Judge Earl's comment: D4T1 - The prompt selected is written in a superb manner. Ty for citing the references. The details and the arguments are pivotal point in this task of which you did amazingly.

Earl

- ## Dr.Taher ##

"Honey-licking murderer" 
"With A Cherry On The Top" 



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