Fearfully & Wonderfully Made
Thomas S. Buchanan on God & Science
For several years I taught a course to freshmen on basic mechanics. In this course a teacher will begin by assuming that the universe is a very simple place where all ropes are massless, all pulleys are frictionless, and everything has only two dimensions. It is amazing how many problems you can solve when assuming that we live in such a strange universe.
As the students progress and master simple mechanics, the teacher must introduce a third dimension, gravitational forces, and friction. The problems can no longer be solved so easily. That is, once the students understand the basic concepts with the simplified assumptions, they must be given more realistic assumptions, so that they begin to see the way things really work.
I believe that this is essentially how modern science deals with God. For the sake of building simple equations and mathematical models, we assume that he does not exist, because accounting for God is more than most of us can handle, mathematically. These equations work well for the most part, explaining the phenomena they are supposed to explain, but they are a simplification of the real universe.
Naturalism Breaks Down
In the study of physics or engineering, these assumptions—the “laws” of physics—make good sense. The naturalistic approach solves most of the problems we have. God does not usually violate the principles of gravitational forces, and I would prefer to know that the engineers who designed a bridge took those forces into account and did not presume upon divine intervention to hold up the roadbed, before I load my family into my car and drive across it. The basic “laws” of physics serve us well.
Nevertheless, the naturalistic approach breaks down when challenged by more realistic assumptions, as when we get to certain aspects of biology. As a neuroscientist, I can tell you that we have made little progress in understanding human thought and reason. This is due, in part, to scientists’ beginning premise that man is made of just body, without soul or spirit. For to believe that man also is made with an immortal soul is to acknowledge the existence of a part of us that is beyond the reach of electrodes, a part that can even continue after death.
Man is both physical and spiritual. A few neuroscientists understand this. For example, the Nobel Prize laureate Sir John Eccles believed this and attempted to study how the spirit affects the way neurons fire in the brain.
However, for every Eccles there are a hundred or more naturalists who believe that the nerve cells and neurotransmitters describe everything that happens in the mind and that once we formulate laws governing cellular interactions we will understand all there is to know about human thought and behavior. In like manner, many geneticists believe that once we understand the human genome we will understand the secrets of human behavior.
Scientists bounce from one idea to another, looking for a type of Rosetta Stone that will allow them to unlock the secrets of human behavior without having to consider the soul—that part of us that is supernatural, the part that communes with God. They do this to show their independence of God. What this bouncing shows is in fact their ignorance of him.
Broad-Minded Christians
Thomas S. Buchanan is the George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware. He has studied at UCSD, Northwestern University, and MIT, and has held visiting professorships at the University of Western Australia and the University of Aix-Marseille. He has served as department chairman, deputy dean, and institute director, president of the American Society of Biomechanics, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied Biomechanics. He is on the Board of Trustees of Saint Katherine College, the editorial board of Touchstone, and the board of The Fellowship of St. James.
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