3 Scientists explain why they Believe in God
3 Scientists explain why they Believe in God
Introduction:
For those of you who do not know, all of this is taken from a book called On the Seventh Day, written by Dr. John F. Ashton. I actually wrote all of this word by word straight from the book itself. I highly recommend both Christian believers and atheist or agnostic skeptics to give this a read. All three of these men, John R. de Laeter, A.J. Monty White, and Malcolm A. Cutchins, are real scientists of our modern times, who have all reached the conclusion that a God exists. Find out why!
Note: Please, before you post, read the whole post! Also, in the future, I might write about more scientists, so expect more than "3" in the thread name! Thank you.
John R. de Laeter - Physics
Professor de Laeter is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Curtin University of Technology in Australia, where he was previously Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Development. He holds a B.Sc. in physics and B.Ed. in education, both with first class honors, a Ph.D. in physics and a D.Sc. in physics, all from the University of Western Australia. Professor de Laeter has served as chairman of the International Commission on Atomic Weights and Isotopic Abundances, and presently is the Australian Academy of Science’s representative on that commission. He has published approximately 200 research papers and was awarded the Kelvin Medal of the Royal Society of Western Australia in 1993. A minor planet is named after Professor de Laeter in recognition of his contributions to astrophysics. He is an Officer of the Order of Australia.
Can a scientist believe in God? I have been asked that question many times during my professional life as a physicist.
When I studied science at the University of Western Australia (UWA) during the early 1950s the conventional answer to that question was "no." Science and religion were incompatible!
The Australian student Christian movement at UWA attempted to convince people by logical reasoning that science and religion were compatible, but I was not particularly impressed with their approach, in the sense that faith, and not logical argument is the way to the kingdom of Heaven.
I later studied philosophy in an attempt to see if there were irrefutable arguments to prove the existence of God - but one unit away from a bachelor of arts degree I gave up the study of philosophy because it did not answer my question.
However, there were two incidents at the UWA which had an important impact in my search for God, although, I have to admit, by instinct and upbringing I was always a believer.
The first occurred during my honors year in physics. One of the subjects we had to study was quantum mechanics, and I was struggling to understand the subject. I was getting desperate when I discovered a book on quantum mechanics written by a well known theoretical physicist/applied mathematician named Professor C.A. Coulson. To my surprise (and delight) I found I could understand Coulson’s approach to quantum mechanics and I subsequently passed the subject with flying colors. I then discovered, quite by accident, that Professor Coulson had written a number of books about science and religion in which he declared his Christian faith. So Coulson became, in a sense, my role model.
The second incident occurred when I was carrying out research on nuclear astrophysics for my doctorate in physics. My task was to separate minute amounts of tin from iron meteorites for mass spectrometric analysis. Knowing little about chemical separation procedures, I was directed to a book entitled Ion Exchange Chemistry. I had no sooner picked up this specialized treatise when I was amazed to read, in the preface, that the writer claimed God was the first ion exchange chemist! His assertion was based on a story in the Old Testament covering the bitter springs of Marah (Exodus 15:25). Moses, under instructions from God, told the Israelites to put branches of trees into the bitter water and, lo and behold, the water became drinkable and the children of Israel were saved from dying of thirst. The author of the book went on to argue that early ion exchange materials used for water softening were, in fact, made of cellulose, a major constituent of wood, thus giving an explanation as to how the bitter springs of Marah were made sweet. He concluded by saying that if scientists had taken this Old Testament story seriously, ion exchange chemistry would have been developed much earlier than the 20th century.
This incident had a deep impact on me because it answered - at least in part - one of the criticisms of scientists, and others, that many (or all) of the Biblical stories were "fairy tales." I have since studied many of these Old Testament stories and satisfied myself as to their veracity, even down to the smallest detail.
But why do I believe?
Most scientists accept that the universe is a rational place. In fact, the scientific method is based on the assumption that if you perform an experiment today and get a certain outcome, others can repeat the experiment under similar conditions, albeit in other places, and get the same answer.
To me, the Christian story as revealed in the Bible is a convincing account of human nature. As I observe my fellow human beings, the events of history, and the social phenomena of our times, I can perceive the age old struggle between good and evil, of sin and guilt on the one hand, and the freedom of forgiveness on the other. I see people struggling with their personal demons, and others who had risen above their strife through faith in a personal God.
In some respects, I find that being a practicing scientist helps me in my understanding of God. The Trinity, the godhead, the three-in-one, may be a stumbling block for some, but to a physicist, who accepts the concept of the wave-particle duality of matter, the Trinity is a perfectly acceptable concept of the nature of God.
In my own research area of nuclear astrophysics I am struck by a large number of cosmic "coincidences" which have occurred in order for the universe to be as it is and for life to exist on planet Earth. Far from weakening my faith, science has in fact strengthened it.
Why do human beings exist in this vast universe? For what purpose are we here? Is it by accident or design? Are we simply part of the flotsam and jetsam of the universe, or is there meaning in life?
My scientific colleagues will accept the rationality of the universe and be prepared to concede that there may well be a "designer." In fact, most people around the globe and from the beginning of human existence have reached the same conclusion. Most of my colleagues will also accept that Jesus was a person who shaped history, who was a good man, who gave us the secret of how to live by the "golden rule." However, there is a "quantum jump" in thinking from the concept of a rational designer of the universe, to an acceptance that a person called Jesus is the Son of God, and that we can have a personal faith in Him.
In circumstances like this, I remind my colleagues that science is based on testing the theory or model by experiment. If it turns out that the model fails in the light of the experimental evidence, then we discard the model and seek a better one. Science proceeds by a rigorous regime of putting theories to the test. There is no reason why the scientific method should not be used in everyday life, and likewise that people should put the gospel to the test, and see if it works for them.
If we were prepared to study the Bible in the same manner that we study our scientific texts, we would discover a convincing description of human nature and behavior, akin to our scientific investigation of the physical world around us, which leads me to conclude that the Bible is indeed the living Word of God.
My testimony is that a faith in a personal Savior has worked for me and for my family and countless numbers of other people. I have based my adult life on the maxim that "I can do all things through him [Christ] who strengthens me" (Philemon 4:13; NRSV). My experience is that a belief in a personal Savior has been the cornerstone of my life.
A.J. Monty White - Physical Chemistry
Dr. White is retired from Cardiff University, U.K. He holds a B.Sc. with honors in chemistry and a Ph.D. in gas kinetics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Before joining the staff at Cardiff University, where he held a number of senior administrative problems, Dr. White specialized in research involving the electrical and optical properties of organic semi-conductors. He is also a guest lecturer at the State Independent Theological University of Basel where he lectures on science and the Bible.
My father was an atheist and my mother was an agnostic. At a very early age I was told that there was no God, that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, and that the Bible was nothing more than a collection of fairy stories. Although I now believe in God, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that the Bible is the Word of God, I did not arrive at this position overnight, as the following story abundantly shows.
Why I did not Believe in God
Although as a young boy I attended the local church, this made no impression upon me at all. In fact, attending that church put me off Christianity, for the vicar there had little time for children like me who were from a poor background. He never convinced me that God existed and he never encouraged me to read the Bible. All I remember of attending church is the purple robes of the vicar and the choir, the smell of the incense and candles, and the prayers for the dead! When I was 11 years old, I passed a public examination which enabled me to attend the local grammar school, and at that time I stopped attending church. Slowly I, like my father, became an atheist.
Although I was an atheist, I used to enjoy arguing with those who considered themselves to be Christians or in any way religious. There were aspects of the Bible about which I used to argue. The first one was Bible prophecy. I used to argue that what was written in the books of the prophets in the Bible is so general that one can interpret almost anything from their writings. The second line of reasoning concerned Jesus Christ. I could not accept what is written in the New Testament concerning Him - especially His resurrection from the dead. The third aspect of the Bible I could not accept was the miraculous element. I used to argue if Christianity is such a miraculous religion, as the Bible clearly teaches, why is it that we do not see miracles happening today?
In October 1963 I left home in order to pursue a degree in chemistry at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. In order to make friends at the university, I attended meetings of the Christian Union and one of the church societies, and at these meetings I met Christians who were different from any others I had met before. It was not that these people believed in God - they knew God. This bothered me and I began discussing with them why I rejected the Bible and why I did not believe in God.
Bible Prophecy has been Fulfilled
One of the reasons why I rejected Christianity was because of Bible prophecy. I considered the proclamations of the prophets to be so general that almost anything could be predicted from them. However, it was not long before I was shown that this was not the case. Many prophetic utterances in the Bible were extremely accurate and have already been fulfilled to the letter. One of these concerns the prediction of the destruction of Samaria.
In Micah 1:6 the prophet declares, "Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour her stones into the valley and lay bare her foundations." (NIV). There are four specific predictions in this one verse of prophecy that was uttered in the later half of the eighth century B.C. The first is that Samaria’s ruins would become a heap of rubble. The second is that the stones used to construct Samaria would be pushed into a valley. The third is that Samaria’s foundations would be laid bare. And the fourth is that Samaria would eventually become a place where vineyards would be planted.
Although the destruction of Samaria was predicted by the prophet Micah in c.730 B.C., it was not until A.D. 1265, almost 2000 years later, that the prophecy began to be fulfilled. No one can argue that the prophet Micah saw this happen and then wrote it down spuriously claiming that he lived decades before the event and so had successfully prophesied Samaria’s destruction. Samaria was totally destroyed in A.D. 1265 when Muslims defeated the Crusaders who were defending the city, and it has never been rebuilt. Arabs living in the vicinity cleared much of the ruins in order to use the site for agricultural purposes, and in doing so, they dug up its foundations and dumped them into a valley nearby. Today, grapevines can be seen growing on this ancient site, just as prophesied by Micah over 2700 years ago.
In view of the many fulfilled Bible prophecies, including the prediction of the destruction of the city of Samaria with such incredible accuracy, I began to think that perhaps Bible prophecy could be trusted.
The New Testament is Reliable
Another reason why I rejected the God of the Bible was that I could not accept that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that He rose from the dead. These two factors are linked through the authenticity of the New Testament.
The New Testament writers claim that many of the events in the life of Jesus Christ are fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. For example, it is claimed that the fact that Jesus Christ was descended from King David and that He was born of a virgin in Bethlehem is the fulfillment of three specific prophecies. It is also claimed that the fact that Jesus taught using parables, had His words rejected, had an unjust trial and was crucified are the fulfillment of specific Old Testament prophecies. The New Testament also claims that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that after His death, He rose from the dead.
However, I had a problem. Could the New Testament writings be trusted? What if the New Testament had been deliberately written so that the Old Testament prophecies concerning the life of Jesus Christ appeared to be fulfilled? How reliable was the New Testament? In other words, how reliable were the documents from which the New Testament had been translated?
In order to answer this question, I turned to a book called The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? written by the late Professor F.F. Bruce who was Rylands professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester. In this excellent paperback, he concludes that there is substantial historical evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament writings.
I now had no alternative but to accept that the New Testament documents were reliable and that we can have confidence in the facts they record. Slowly I began to accept that Jesus Christ did exist; that he was who he said he was; and that he did rise from the dead.
God Answers Prayer
Up to the time I went to university, I never experienced miracles happening in people’s lives, and this was my third reason for not believing in God. However, I found that as I talked to the Christians I met at university, they could often tell story after story of miraculous happenings not only in their lives, but in the lives of others. These stories could not be dismissed as mere coincidences - they were far too complicated for that.
As an example, the following story shows the lengths to which God will often go in order to reveal himself to someone. I know that this story is true because after my conversion, I met the lady in question.
One day the husband of a childless couple who were devoted to each other died. The woman was heartbroken and used to spend every afternoon at the grave of her husband. One day the pastor of one of the local churches was walking through the cemetery and saw this lonely widow sitting by her husband’s grave crying. He tried to comfort her, but to no avail. However, he did manage to get her address and promised to visit her even though she did not seem particularly interested in talking to him.
Soon, it was Easter, and the pastor’s church always made a collection at this time for widows of the church. The pastor told his elders and deacons about the widow he had met at the cemetery and it was decided to give this lady some money from the collection. The treasurer gave the pastor an envelope containing some money for this widow; the pastor put it in his pocket and promptly forgot all about it! A few days later the pastor’s wife decided to take his suit to the cleaners. Going through the pockets, she found an envelope containing the money. When her husband came home in the evening, she told him about her find. He was horrified that he had forgotten it so he decided to take it to the widow that very evening. Before doing so, he wrote a message on a Christian greeting card to accompany the money.
When the pastor arrived at the widow’s house, it was in darkness for she had gone to bed. So the pastor pushed the envelope containing the greeting card and money through the letter box in the front door and it landed on the doormat in the hall.
The next morning the widow awoke and was very upset for it was the first birthday she had since her husband died. However, she had prayed to God and asked him to prove to her that he really existed. She had asked God to do for her on her birthday what her husband always did for her - place an envelope with a card and some money inside on the doormat in the hall. As the widow walked down the stairs that morning, she was very surprised to see an envelope on the doormat in the hall. She was even more surprised when she opened it and saw the greeting card and the money! She could hardly believe it, for God had indeed answered her prayer in detail. Needless to say, this widow began to believe in God from the very moment she opened that envelope and saw the card and money inside. The next Sunday she went to church, repented of her sins and accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior.
Believing in God for Myself
Within a few months of going to university, I found that all the arguments that I had for not believing in God had evaporated: I was convinced that the writings of the Bible, especially those of the prophets, could be trusted; that Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be and He did rise from the dead; and, finally, that God does perform miracles today. However, my intellectual assent to these truths did not affect my life at all. It was not until February 1964 when I experienced a real conversion as I repented of my sins and knew the joy of being forgiven as I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, that I began to experience God in my life.
I firmly believe that the experiential is another reason for believing in God. Since the time of Christ, millions of people from all walks of life have testified of a conversion experience when they have repented of their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. Furthermore, such people, myself included, can tell of God’s leading and guidance - sometimes through circumstances, other times in a more direct way. Such testimonies cannot, and should not, be dismissed lightly. There is a God. The Bible can be trusted as God’s revealed word to humankind. God does answer prayer and does reveal himself to men and women today. I know - I am one of them!
Postscript
Since my own conversion, both my parents have become Christians - my mum a few months after my own conversion in 1964 and my dad in 1997, at the age of 78.
Malcolm A. Cutchins - Aerospace Engineer
Professor Cutchins is professor Emeritus of aerospace engineering at Auburn University. He holds a B.S. in civil engineering and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics, all from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Professor Cutchins spent 33 years in aerospace engineering research and teaching at Auburn University, serving as a full professor since 1979. He is the author and co-author of numerous technical papers primarily in the area of structural dynamics.
When I returned to graduate school seven years after my B.S. degree in engineering, I was pondering the existence of the supernatural God of the Bible. It was also the time when I began to be exposed to advanced mathematics including complex variables, vector analysis, advanced differential equations, and two quarters of tensors. I had felt particularly drawn to mathematics during the latter part of these seven working years and almost began teaching the subject at the college level part time at night before the opportunity surfaced to return to graduate school.
I had been exposed to the claims of evolution and really questioned the theory in the absence of any real proof for most if not all of the claims. If the broad claim were true that time and chance resulted in humankind, plants, birds, the Earth, and its unique moon, even our entire universe, then that might question the claims of the Bible. But such a claim would also mean that the whole of mathematics just happened by time and chance too.
Instead, I found the order in the solutions to ordinary and partial differential equations to be beautiful, perhaps best illustrated in the graphical patterns associated with sinks and sources in fluid mechanics. I recall physical demonstrations of these in vivid color in front of a large audience near the beginning of my graduate studies in engineering mechanics, showing streamlines and various properties in brilliant testimony, not to what "just happened," but to what was extremely ordered.
Could all of the transformations in advanced mathematics also have just happened? What great coincidence could have happened, mathematically, for a circle to be able to be mapped using the complex variables, which could hardly have occurred by time and chance. And in tensor analysis, could the tensor transformation laws have come about by time and chance? No, I don’t think so. Not only do the tensors of any order transform in perfect harmony, but also properties of tensors such as invariants hold constant in completely different coordinate systems. These "speak" profoundly to purpose, not to an aimless, purposeless, chance-dominated interpretation of our world.
Properties such as gradient, divergence, and curl in vector analysis have numerous applications in science and engineering. Gradient, for example, can be used to derive the equation of a line perpendicular to a surface. No matter how complicated the equation of the surface may be, performing the gradient with the calculus yields that important normal, hardly a result of time and chance.
Orthogonality is a property that shows up in many technical areas. There is no better illustration here than the orthogonal modes of vibration that every physical thing on Earth has, from our eyeballs to complicated aircraft, from sloshing fluids to various pendulum motions. A vibrating system not only has order - physically and mathematically - when vibrating at an orthogonal mode, but it’s motion even in other instances can be modeled with a summation of usually just a few of the individual modes. How could such ordered phenomena have "just happened" without some kind of direction and purpose?
I always had an attraction to flight and have ended up teaching aspects of it for over 30 years. Flight is difficult to achieve, hardly the type of thing that one would expect to develop from chance. Successful flight requires great attention to detail of structure, propulsion, aerodynamic surfaces, structural dynamics, and stability and control. In 2003 we [have] reached only the 100-year anniversary of flight by humankind. Do we really think we are so smart and so advanced that we cannot reflect upon and give credit to the Intelligent Designer of earliest flight? I believe it to be impossible that the amazing flight of a hummingbird, the silent flight of an owl, or the night feeding of a bat in total darkness could have developed by chance happening. Similarly, both the lens system and the navigation system of the monarch butterfly are far superior to anything that humankind has yet designed. No mechanism has yet been identified that could lead to these types of complexity.
Aeroelasticity is the study of phenomena that involves the interaction of fluid, elastic, and inertia forces. Much of the real world of flight requires solving aeroelastic or aeroservoelastic problems. It pushes our computers just to solve a short time of flight when aeroelastic phenomena are present. Blood flow in our bodies is another example of aeroelastic phenomena, involving an interaction of the blood fluid, elastic blood vessels, and the inertias involved in the dynamics of the flow. Yet there are aeroelastic failures in the 20th century (like the Tacoma-Narrows bride in 1940) that are not yet fully explained, even with film of the failure and more than 60 years of analysis. In light of this, it is unscientific to attempt to explain dogmatically the origin of flight, not only with birds, but differently three more times with insects, flying reptiles (now extinct), and flying mammals (bats), by helping mutations, gradual changes, and chance and time.
During those four years of gaining a masters and Ph.D. in engineering mechanics while teaching part time, my third child was born, the first girl. If chance and time were to be gods, what would be the purpose of her life? What would be the purpose of my family that included two fine young boys? Surely there has to be a better answer than the one the completely secular world has to offer.
I also gained an appreciation during those years of advanced study for the dangers of speculation, reinforcing my faith in the supernatural God of the Bible and increasing my resistance to the claims of speculative alternatives.
As one example, in the study of materials I was exposed to the phenomenon of creep. Experiments can be performed over certain periods of time and that data can be carefully extended into the region where there is no data (since this is usually a long-term phenomenon), but there are warnings about this process of extrapolation and careful engineering limitations on the length of time to which such predictions can be applied. Now there are no real philosophical world views founded on the creep process; it is strictly a technical phenomenon. But if there are restrictions on a technical process concerning the danger of extrapolation, how much more careful we should be not to swallow extrapolated data in support of a godless world view.
Even in our modern hi-tech world, we have measured very few things over a time period of more than approximately 200 years. In light of the creep description above, extrapolating from these 200-year scientific measurements to extreme periods of millions and billions of years is not science; it’s pseudo-science. To illustrate, consider a 100 foot rope to be representative of one billion years. The portion of the length of the rope representative of 200 years is only the width of a piece of paper. (Even for one million years represented by the same 100-foot rope, we have less than 0.25 inch of the rope to represent the 200 years of scientific measurements.) No honest scientist would try to "predict" the shape of the rest of rope from knowledge of such a short part of it, yet this illustrates the typical method of the adherents to the gods of time and chance in many of the facts they claim and attempt to force on others as being without question.
In contrast to speculative matters as described above, I have found the God of the Bible and His Scriptures to hold good and always appropriate advice for any problem in life: for death of loved ones, for a resource to develop the fortitude required to endure suffering (what better example than Jesus), and for preparing for one’s own demise, something that will come to all of us.
On the positive side, this same God can be the inspiration for motivation of all kinds (at 70, I still play full-court basketball at lunchtime two to three days a week, now estimated at well over 10,000 games), for being the best one can be - physically, mentally, and spiritually, for marriage and, after death of a spouse, remarriage.
As we stand on the rim of a great abyss of moral decay and ethical nightmares, there is not a single moral or ethical dilemma to which the Scriptures do not speak. I have found that whatever situation one may encounter in life, Scripture addresses it with great clarity. And if one accepts the promises contained therein, great peace can be the result. I do not believe that can be said of anything else in this world.
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Re: 3 Scientists explain why they Believe in God
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Re: 3 Scientists explain why they Believe in God
