Science and the Mind of the Maker

Cain Travis Melissa

Description

Are We an Accident...or Not?The question of cosmic origins and our place in the grand scheme of things has been debated for millennia. Why do we exist? Why does anything exist at all?Today's popular narrative, based on advancements in science, is that it all happened by natural, random processes. Melissa Cain Travis points to powerful evidence that the opposite is truethat cosmology, astronomy, biochemistry, and other disciplines strongly support what she calls "The Maker Thesis," which explains the origin, rationality, and intricacy of nature and the human mind's capacity to comprehend it.Our universe is made up of numerous complex systems of order that both interact and coexist with each other as if in a carefully choreographed dance. Follow along on a fascinating journey about how the structure of nature and the mind of man resonate in ways that point to a Maker who fully intended the astounding discoveries being made in the natural sciences today.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology

Informations

• Publié par: Harvest House Publishers
• Date de parution: 03 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780736971294
• Langue: English

Extrait

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
All Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover by Bryce Williamson
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Image on page 123: Wikimedia Commons, RNA-comparedto-DNAthymineAndUracilCorrected.png.
Image on page 159: Image ID: 50392971. Copyright Tomas Kovalcik, Dreamstime.com , http://dreamstime.com/tomkovalcik_info . Used with permission.
Science and the Mind of the Maker
Copyright 2018 Melissa Cain Travis
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97408
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
ISBN 978-0-7369-7128-7 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-7129-4 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author s and publisher s rights is strictly prohibited.
Dedication
To Jonathan, Corban, and Cayden
Acknowledgments
To my husband Jonathan, all my love and appreciation for your emotional and practical support, without which this project would have been impossible.
Special thanks is due to my dear friend and colleague Dr. Holly Ordway, for her invaluable advice and guidance throughout my writing process.
My sincere gratitude to the following scholars for their reading and critique of specific chapters: Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Dr. Mark Linville, Kevin Wong, Brandon Rickabaugh, Carolina Liskey, Hillary Ferrer, and Wes Skolits.
Heartfelt thanks to wonderful friends who offered insightful manuscript feedback and much needed prayers and words of encouragement: Julie Miller, Ken Mann, Jason Kline, and Jenny Courville.
For their faithful prayers and continual moral support, my deep appreciation to Reverend Lisa Schwandt, Bishop Clark Lowenfield, Terri Washburn, and Alison Strobel Morrow.
Most importantly, I am thankful to my Lord Jesus Christ, who is always faithful in carrying me through the challenges of the work he gives me to do. Soli Deo gloria .
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Science as the Experience of a Masterpiece
Chapter 1: The Science and Faith Conversation: Understanding the Lay of the Land
Chapter 2: The Divine in Nature: A Big (and Ancient) Idea
Chapter 3: The Origin and Structure of the Cosmos: Finite and Finely Tuned
Chapter 4: Priests in God s Cosmic Temple: Natural Revelation and the Scientific Revolution
Chapter 5: Habitable and Discoverable: A World Just Right for Scientists
Chapter 6: A Death Knell for Design Arguments? Natural Theology and Darwin s Response
Chapter 7: The Language of Life: The Marvels of DNA
Chapter 8: Revival of the God Hypothesis: Twentieth-Century Physics and Cosmology
Chapter 9: A Meeting of the Minds: Our Comprehensible Mathematical Universe
Chapter 10: Mind or Marionette? Rationality and the Existence of the Soul
Chapter 11: The Maker Thesis: Putting the Pieces Together
Notes
Other Good Harvest House Reading
About the Publisher
Thou that fill st our waiting eyes
With the food of contemplation,
Setting in thy darkened skies
Signs of infinite creation,
Grant to nightly meditation
What the toilsome day denies-
Teach me in this earthly station
Heavenly Truth to realise.

Through the creatures Thou hast made
Show the brightness of Thy glory,
Be eternal Truth displayed
In their substance transitory,
Till green Earth and Ocean hoary,
Mossy rock and tender blade
Tell the same unending story-
We are Truth in Form arrayed.
James Clerk Maxwell
A Student s Evening Hymn
Cambridge, 1853
Prologue: Science as the Experience of a Masterpiece
God invents the truth of the universe, as his art; man discovers it, as his science. Human science is the indirect reading of the divine mind. 1
Peter Kreeft
S cience is a marvelous enterprise. It expands our knowledge of the world around us, illuminating the macroscopic, the microscopic, and even some of the altogether unseen. Human ingenuity has produced everything from space telescopes that capture breath-taking, high-definition images of galaxies hundreds of thousands of light-years in diameter and millions of light-years away to functional nanomachines composed of only a few molecules. In countless respects, scientific discovery has vastly improved the human condition through advances in medicine, agriculture, transportation, and communication. We are rightfully awestruck by science s ability to explain the workings of the universe and enhance the quality of our lives.
Yet profound questions inevitably arise from what we re learning about nature and our capacity for understanding it: Why does anything exist at all? What was the ultimate cause of all things? Why is there a deep rationality in nature that corresponds to the human intellect? Why are our minds trustworthy finders of complex, abstract truths, such as those gleaned through logic and the advanced mathematics employed by the sciences? These kinds of questions transcend the domain of science and require interaction with philosophy and theology. Note, however, that the answers these two disciplines provide do not, in any way, undermine the natural sciences. In fact, philosophical and theological insights significantly enhance our understanding of why science is possible in the first place. Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne has a clever way of phrasing this idea: I do not deny that science explains, but I postulate God to explain why science explains. The very success of science in showing us how deeply orderly the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause of that order. 2
That s what this book is about-how Christian theism uniquely provides a well-rounded account of both the findings and the existence of the natural sciences. I will argue that not only do scientific discoveries have positive implications for the existence of a Mind behind the universe, they strongly suggest that this Mind intended for human beings to take up the noble project of rational inquiry into the mysteries of nature. In other words, Christian theism, unlike atheism, offers a sufficient explanation of the observable features of the natural world as well as mankind s impressive scientific achievements.
The title of this book intentionally echoes the words of Dorothy Sayers, a theologian, novelist, and playwright who explored the relationship between literary artists and the doctrine of the Trinity in her book The Mind of the Maker. In a passage that immediately captured my imagination, Sayers wrote, As soon as the mind of the maker has been made manifest in a work, a way of communication is established between other minds and his. 3 Indeed! In stories, poetry, musical compositions, and visual art, the creator of a piece shares his or her thoughts with all those who experience his or her creations; contemplation of a work allows us to gain a glimpse into the mind of the artist. Upon reading Sayers s words, it occurred to me that this is certainly true of the most magnificent of all creations-the cosmos. Our world is a masterpiece that can be appreciated both aesthetically and intellectually; this includes scientific exploration as well as philosophical and theological reflection.
Two astonishing facts make scientific activity possible: the fundamental rationality of nature, and the existence of inquisitive creatures with intellects fit to discern that rationality. Why are things this way? Atheistic materialism-the view that nothing exists beyond the material world-must treat this uncanny resonance as nothing more than inexplicable happenstance. Yet the fact that we inhabit an orderly universe structured in such a way that the human mind can grasp it to a remarkable degree is exactly what we should expect if there is a Maker of all things in whose image we are made and whose mind is made manifest in the rest of creation.
I call this the Maker Thesis.
Chapter 1
The Science and Faith Conversation: Understanding the Lay of the Land
One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. 1
Stephen Weinberg
I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion 2
G.K. Chesterton
R eligion and science are engaged in a kind of war: a war for understanding, a war about whether we should have good reasons for what we accept as true I see this as only one battle in a wider war-a war between rationality and superstition. 3
So says Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago evolutionary biologist and bestselling author, in his diatribe against religious belief, Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. Despite the fact that he is untrained in either philosophy or theology, Coyne spends nearly 300 pages attempting to support his philosophical claim that religion is incapable of finding out truth and that science is the only form of rational inquiry that is capable of describin