{"id":35157,"date":"2016-07-06T19:19:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T23:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=35157"},"modified":"2016-07-21T18:16:09","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T22:16:09","slug":"why-science-does-not-disprove-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/why-science-does-not-disprove-god.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Science Does Not Disprove God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I am grateful to Morrow for sending me a gratis review copy of Amir Aczel\u2019s book Why Science Does Not Disprove God<\/a><\/em>. Aczel\u2019s previous work on the history of science and math is well-known. This book is based on interviews with a range of scientists and scholars, and is intended as a direct response to the claims of New Atheists. Aczel describes his aim in writing as follows: \u201cThe purpose of this book is to defend the integrity of science<\/em>\u2026My goal is to restore science and faith to their proper realms and end the confusion sown by those who aim to destroy faith in the name of science\u201d (p.5). What follows in the first chapter is essentially a history of religion as science, or in other words, as the exploration by ancient human beings of the idea that behind the visible workings of the world around us are powerful unseen forces. Chapter 2 challenges the idea that archaeology disproves the Bible, and while Aczel rightly rejects that simplistic statement, he lurches too far in the opposite direction, failing to mention that Kathleen Kenyon\u2019s work at Jericho confirmed the collapse of the walls, but also raised problems for those who would connect that collapse with invading Israelites. That chapter, at any rate, seems like a bit of an oddity, as the volume resumes its survey of the entangled history of religion, philosophy, and science, covering topics ranging from Isaac Newton\u2019s interest in the Book of Daniel, to Foucault\u2019s pendulum experiment proving in 1851 that the Earth does indeed rotate (with the Catholic Church finally accepting this proof in 1913). Aczel also highlights the revisionist approach to the history of science that New Atheists adopt, such as when Lawrence Krauss inserted \u201c[sic]\u201d after the word \u201cGod\u201d when quoting Einstein (p.105). Chapters 7 and 14 focus in on Krauss\u2019 deceptive attempt to claim that science can genuinely give us a universe from \u201cnothing\u201d (as opposed to pre-existing laws, quantum foam, or something else that isn\u2019t \u201cnothing\u201d in any obvious sense). Other chapters focus in on problems with the ways that New Atheists appeal to a multiverse, probability, and the anthropic principle. In chapter 12, Aczel seems to once again swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction in responding to the New Atheists when, in discussing altruism, he writes, \u201cI have never heard of an atheist group volunteering to offer comfort to the ill or the distressed\u201d (p.205). I am quite sure that I could pull up quite a few examples of atheists working together for positive ends without too much trouble, and without this exaggeration, the point would still have stood that religious charitable organizations are much more numerous and widespread.<\/p>\n

The book is not about proving the existence of God. Rather, the aim is to show that science has not disproven God, nor has it shown that the idea of a God of some description is superfluous in light of scientific progress. It may be that the origin of life and the emergence of consciousness will have full explanations in materialistic terms. But that is not something that is scientifically proven. And when it comes to the origin of the universe that might be able to give rise to those things, science simply is not poised to answer the ultimate question. That doesn\u2019t mean that religion is, much less that some particular religion is. That is Aczel\u2019s point: that while the New Atheists and their religious fundamentalist mirror images confidently claim to know, if we are honest we will have to live with mystery and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

And so Aczel\u2019s point is an excellent one as a response to the New Atheists, and I recommend it to those who may have been unduly impressed with the confident claims those figures have made. But it is equally relevant to Ken Ham and others involved in producing the Ark Encounter. Ham abandons faith as a result of the limits knowledge and perspective humans have, and substitutes confident certainty despite not having been there (to echo his silly question). And so, as Aczel emphasizes, far from YEC fundamentalism and New Atheism being poles apart, with one likely to achieve victory over the other, they are in fact mutually creating and sustaining interdependent phenomena, with the irrational confidence and unsupported assertions of each simply leading to further entrenchment and elevated rhetoric from the other.<\/p>\n

Now that the fundamentalists have a giant Noah\u2019s Ark, I can\u2019t help but wonder what equal but opposite edifice we will get from the New Atheists\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am grateful to Morrow for sending me a gratis review copy of Amir Aczel\u2019s book Why Science Does Not Disprove God. Aczel\u2019s previous work on the history of science and math is well-known. This book is based on interviews with a range of scientists and scholars, and is intended as a direct response to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":37205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,85],"tags":[568,4005,5323,10886,10903],"class_list":["post-35157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-science","tag-amir-aczel","tag-god","tag-interviews","tag-science","tag-scientists"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Science Does Not Disprove God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I am grateful to Morrow for sending me a gratis review copy of Amir Aczel's book Why Science Does Not Disprove God. 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