Science | rfperth

Has Science Killed God?

A video of this talk from a different venue is available on youtube

Paul Whitfield

https://citybibleforum.org/users/paul-whitfield

Paul helps CBD workers investigate the meaning of life. Paul became a Christian whilst at university where he studied Psychology before working in Human Resources. He left behind the glamour of the Bureau of Statistics to study theology and now works for City Bible Forum full time.

Paul lives with his wife and 2 young boys on the south side of the river.

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design

"Darwinism kicked God out of biology but physics remained more uncertain. Hawking is now administering the coup de grace.” Richard Dawkins

We lay and looked up at the sky and the millions of stars that blazed in darkness… It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century or even once in a human generation, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. An experience like that… can be shared with a child even if you don’t know the name of a single star. You can still drink in the beauty, and think and wonder at what you see. Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

<image> F = (Gm1m2)/r^2

By I, Dennis Nilsson, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3455682

G “fine tuned to 10^-60

Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe, p 90

10^60 = 1 000 000

000 000 000

Entropy “fine tuned” to 10^-10^123

Roger Penrose, The Emporer’s New Mind, p 339-345

“it seems as though someone has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the universe. The impression of design is overwhelming.” Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint, p 203

“I would say the universe has a purpose. It’s not somehow just there by chance.” Roger Penrose, A Brief History of Time (movie)

Science is a systematic enterprise that creates, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

The very idea of a law of nature, from the moment of its birth, was… underpinned by theological considerations. Peter Harrison, The Development of the Concept of Laws of Nature

The reason why the Mathematicals are the cause of natural things is that God the Creator had the Mathematicals with him as archetypes from eternity. Kepler, The Secret of the Universe, note to 2nd edition

Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics. Galileo, The Assayer

From God’s immutability we can also know certain rules or laws of nature. Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all. Newton, General Scholium

the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Paul Davies, Taking Science on Faith

the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and… there is no rational explanation for it. Eugene Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to

God. Louis Pasteur