Who made God? Searching for a theory of everything
Edgar Andrews
EP Books, Darlington, 2009, 304pp.
It is a common belief that science and religion are locked in an eternal conflict, from which science will eventually emerge victorious—if it hasn’t already. In Who made God? Edgar Andrews, Emeritus Professor of Materials at the University of London, seeks to equip Christians with arguments to use in answer to the scientific claims of the New Atheists, particularly Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger. The title of the book refers to the common refrain of those who reject the idea of creation—“if God made everything, who made God?”—and the attempt of scientists to find a ‘theory of everything’, within which all physical phenomena may be accommodated. In response, Andrews puts forward the ‘God hypothesis’ as a true theory of everything that embraces both the material and non-material aspects of the universe.
Refuting the overzealous claims from the likes of Dawkins and Stenger that science has removed the need for God is indeed a worthy goal. However, there are several key issues with this book that leave me reluctant to offer a whole-hearted recommendation. In particular, Andrews seems to be making the same mistake as the New Atheists: assuming that scientific explanations for natural phenomena remove the need for God. It may well be that the biblical conception of God explains ‘life, the universe and everything’ in a more comprehensive and absolute fashion than science, and yes, there are things in the universe that go beyond the mere physical realm (like love, friendship and justice), but to contrast the explanations of science with the explanations of theology creates a false opposition between these two different types of explanations.
What is science?
One of Andrews’ key aims in this book is to refute the “common but mistaken idea that science explains (or someday will explain) everything, leaving no room for God to take responsibility for the universe and the way it works” (p. 27). This is, indeed, an important claim to address. Andrews contends that the ‘God hypothesis’ provides a better explanation of the beginning of the universe, the very existence of natural and moral laws, and the origin of life itself. Science, on the other hand, cannot actually explain anything at all. All science can do is describe the world in terms of its own specialized concepts and models, which become more bizarre and increasingly non-intuitive the deeper we go.
But it is not necessary to respond to the New Atheists by ridiculing the claims of modern science, and dismissing its potential to eventually explain all physical phenomena in natural terms. A scientific understanding of the universe does not have to replace a theological understanding.
Science, at the most basic level, is the attempt to understand and control the physical world. In order to do so, scientists employ methodological (sometimes known as pragmatic) naturalism, which assumes, solely for the sake of doing science, that all physical phenomena can be explained in terms of purely natural processes. Methodological naturalism allows the natural and physical explanations of science to exist alongside theological explanations. Even if science could eventually explain everything, this would still not remove the need for God. For example, a scientist who is also a Christian can believe that God created everything by his power and will, while still utilising natural explanations in science to understand and influence the universe that God created.
By contrast, philosophical naturalism is the view, expounded by Richard Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists, that these natural processes are all that really exist. Philosophical naturalism is not essential for the pursuit of science, though methodological naturalism arguably is.
What use is it, scientifically speaking, to say “Oh well, science cannot explain how life arose, only the God hypothesis can”? This dismissal of science doesn’t help us to understand our environment or develop technologies to alter our surroundings. As Christians, we believe that our state of health is dependent upon God’s mercy, and when we are unwell we pray for healing. But we also consult medical practitioners and take medications; we employ the benefits of modern medical science. Taking medicine does not mean that we don’t believe that God is in control of everything, but we believe that God has equipped us to understand his creation and its natural laws and, to a certain extent, control it. Where do we draw the line between what can be explained by science and what can’t? Christians believe that God created everything, including life itself, and a scientific understanding in terms of natural processes does not have to replace the theological claim.
This has been the view of Christian scientists for centuries. Fellows of the Royal Society of London, one of the earliest scientific societies in the world, followed Francis Bacon in limiting the scope of science to explaining how things worked, in purely natural terms. These early scientists, such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, were not atheists, but they considered theology to be a separate activity from science. Johannes Kepler, a committed Lutheran, spent most of his career trying to understand the structure and functioning of the planetary orbits. When he developed his laws of planetary motion he did not—as Andrews acknowledges—say “Well, that’s one less thing to explain by appeal to God”. Instead, he believed that he had discovered God’s architectural blueprint. Kepler believed that God had created everything, but he also believed that the human mind could understand the universe without sporadically playing the ‘God did it’ card.
God of the gaps and science of the gaps
The ‘God did it’ card, pulled out whenever there are gaps in our knowledge that science cannot yet fill, is an argument known as ‘the God of the gaps’. This label is frequently attached to the Intelligent Design movement, which points to the limits of science to explain certain aspects of nature as evidence that an intelligent designer must have been involved. The problem with this approach is that as science advances, and more and more of our world can be explained according to natural processes, the ‘gaps’ that God inhabits become smaller and smaller.
While Andrews quite reasonably maintains that “God certainly doesn’t dwell in temples made of gaps” (p. 83), he fails to fully escape this view. Andrews frequently points to aspects of nature that science cannot explain as part of his argument that God provides a superior and more complete explanation. However, history teaches us that the borders of science and the limits of human knowledge are always expanding. Andrews describes how complex even the simplest living organisms are, and articulates the various questions that science has not yet answered about genetics, concluding that a better explanation can be derived from the biblical view that God created life by direct action. What will happen, however, if some day science can answer these questions? The gaps in which God’s action is currently identified might be closed. Andrews dismisses this hope as a ‘science of the gaps’, but in doing so neglects the lessons of history. An alternative is to acknowledge that science and theology provide different kinds of explanations that are not necessarily contradictory.
Why is science possible?
I agree with Edgar Andrews about the advantage of the ‘God hypothesis’ in regards to the question of why science is even possible. Why are there regularities in our world that science can identify and articulate as ‘laws of nature’? Why is the universe comprehensible to the human mind (the bizarre nature of quantum mechanics notwithstanding)? This is something that philosophical naturalists, such as the New Atheists, must take for granted. Historians of science and religion tend to agree that the modern pursuit of science and the concept of ‘laws of nature’ arose in the seventeenth century from theological considerations. If God imposes laws in the moral realm, why should he not also impose laws in the natural realm? However, if God created the world by his own free will, then understanding the laws he decided to impose will be a matter of empirical investigation. Out of the multitude of possibilities, we need to figure out the details of the world God has chosen. For Christian scientists such as Galileo, Kepler and Newton, science was a way of understanding the world that God did create, and hence the investigation could only bring him glory.
Andrews’ main concern in this book is to defeat atheistic naturalism—the view not just that science can explain everything according to purely natural processes, but that such explanations are all that matter. This is a worthy goal, but it can be achieved without encouraging Christians to disregard the findings of modern science. It is important for us to have a good understanding of science and its relationship with religion, not least because we live in a world in which science has a great deal of authority and prestige, and it is frequently wielded as a weapon against belief. However, by setting science and God up as alternative and mutually exclusive explanations, Andrews is actually fuelling the conflict. There is no need for this. It is possible to believe in a creator God who maintains providential control of the universe, while still employing science to understand and interact with the world that God created.
Where should a Christian turn for a better guide to navigate the murky waters of the science-religion debate? In response to the claims of Richard Dawkins, the scientifically trained theologian Alister McGrath has written two excellent books: Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (Blackwell Publishing, Massachusetts, 2005) and, with Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 2007). On the controversial topic of the origins of life and humanity, the director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge, Denis R. Alexander, offers Creation and Evolution: Do we have to choose? (Monarch Books, Oxford. 2008). But on the general issue of science and religion—what they are and how they relate—Kirsten Birkett’s Unnatural Enemies: An introduction to science and Christianity (Matthias Media, Sydney, 1997) remains one of the best treatments available.
