The Language of God

This is Part Two in a three part exploration into the relation between science and God. In Part One we looked into the beginnings of the universe. Now we must examine what followed, particularly with regard to life on this earth. Could it have all come about by chance, or must it have been directed by God?

It is startling to consider the complexity of our world and life as we know it, remembering the smoothness and total simplicity of the universe at the moments just following the Big Bang. From that total simplicity it is incredible to consider the formation of the elements, not to mention the formation of complex worlds, organisms and bodies. Similarly, once the bang itself was over and the universe began to cool, everything was chaos. Elements formed, broke apart, re-formed, crashed and splintered with one another at an alarming rate, as it all shot away from itself at close to the speed of light. Yet from this chaos arose the order of the universe, the forces of nature, the grand dance of space and time.

When our world was formed it was chaotic, but from that chaos rose the complexity and order of the atmosphere, land and water, and eventually, life in the incredibly complex bodies of the plants and animals. Where in nature do we see any examples of complexity arising out of chaos? On the contrary, we observe that the opposite takes place. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that the disorder in a system always increases. Yet evolution seems to imply that order can arise out of chaos. Could this be true?

When Darwin first posed his theory of mutation through multiple generations, plant and animal bodies were not thought to be as complex as we now know them to be. It may have taken a leap of faith to believe that we developed slowly over millions of years, from single-celled protozoa to humanity, but not as much of a leap as it takes today. I do not argue that evolution occurred in the development of the world, but in this chapter I wish to point out, using strictly scientific data, the impossibility of chance as the only answer. In the end, believing that life came about by chance is no more scientific than belief in a deity.

Without considering the dramatic complexity of our entire bodies, let us merely examine one cell, and then consider the possibility that it would have evolved through chance mutations, without some force driving it toward life.

So how does a cell work? What makes it so fascinating and beautiful? Within a cell are hundreds of proteins, each designed for specific functions. They all combine to make the cell behave in such a way that your organ or limb then behaves in the way you expect it to. Let us look at one example of what happens within a cell, this example within the nerve cell of a finger after touching a hot surface, as described by Professor Gerald Schroeder in his book, “The Hidden Face of God.” (2002, Simon & Schuster)

You’ve touched something too hot for comfort. The heat stimulates the sensitive endings of the nerve, inducing it to rapidly send the message to its target receivers, in this case the spinal cord. The signal, a cascade of ions, travels from the receiving dentrite, past the cell body, and on toward the axonlike extension. At this point the action potential is generated that, as a wave, transmits the signal the length of the axon to the synaptic terminals at its end. Since the axon terminal does not actually attach to the target neuron’s dendrite… the nerve has the electrical action potential within the axon stimulate the release of chemical neurotransmitters into the synaptic gap. The electrical signal has become a chemical signal. These neurotransmitters have been “conveniently” stored in organelles called Golgi apparatus near the axon’s terminals. The Golgi package the neurotransmitters at their point of manufacture in the cell body and then, with the help of motor proteins, transport them and other essential molecules from within the cell body, down the axon, to the location of use near the cell membrane. The Golgi, upon command, release the neurotransmitter into the synapse, where it diffuses across the opening, attaches to the target dendrite, and in doing so triggers a secondary neural signal to start on its way… The trip from the cell body where the Golgi and neurotransmitter are made to axon terminal can be up to a meter distant, [and would take] about two days when traveling via motor protein… [But] when called into action, the Golgi move within a millisecond. The Golgi fuses with the inner surface of the axon synaptic membrane, and then, in a process known as exocytosis, bursts through on the outside, into the synaptic gap. (Chapt. 6)

I know this is a bit complex. But that is the point. When I think of this process I visualize something that looks more like a big factory than my own little nerve cell. It is stunning to think of it all taking place each time my fingers strike the key on which I am writing. It all occurs within a split second. And consider that a million such processes are being carried out by the cells of your body right now. Your cells are actively breaking down nutrients into ATP, using that energy to build various proteins, just like the Golgi and motor proteins described above, so that they will be ready for action as soon as they are needed.

Professor Schroeder urges one to think of all the instances, just in this one process described, when small parts of your cells seem to act with knowledge and intelligence in performing their tasks. The design is so intricate. If it was not created with knowledge, then knowledge must have been written into the system. In other words, the laws of science pre-destined intelligent life. Yet to say that such complexity is written into the laws of he universe would be just as amazing as the complexity we observe. Who gave the Golgi, the axons, the neorotransmitters in your finger their knowledge? If it was the laws of science, then how did the laws of science acquire its knowledge?

I would advise everyone who thinks that their bodies could have come about by chance to really make a full examination into the world of molecular biology. I would highly recommend Schroeder’s book which I quoted above. The ingenuity of it is absolutely stunning!

How carefully God ordered everything in our bodies. For a human being to engineer the complexity of a single cell would be an invention unsurpassed by any other. To think of even one cell coming about by pure chance defies logic. Those who try to use such science to explain away God are like those of whom the book of Wisdom says, “seeking God and desiring to find him, while they live among his works they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful. Yet… if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things?” (Wis. 13:6-9)

The more I learn about the inner workings of my body the more I am stunned by its order and complexity. Little of this complexity was known when Darwin suggested that varying species came about by random mutations.

Find the most complicated machine, or appliance in your house. Examine it for awhile, then think about the possibility of someone who knows nothing about it taking its parts, laying them on the floor, stirring and arranging them in a variety of ways, heating and cooling the solder at random, and eventually the machine comes to be in its present, not only functional, but well designed and beautiful form. This exercise, of course, is ridiculous! Fifteen billion years would not suffice for it to work. Yet this is not far off from Richard Dawkins’ model of random evolution! And your body is a million times more complicated than the appliance. St. Dionysius observes that “no object of any utility, and fitted to be serviceable, is made without design or by mere chance, but is wrought by skill of hand, and is contrived so as to meet its proper use.” (De Natura, II)

But maybe it did all come about by chance. Maybe the elements were pre-disposed to combine in such ways to make this complexity happen. Before you confess to such a theory, remember that we are bound by the laws of our world. If there is no power that is outside of and greater than our world, then we must imagine such things coming about in the world as we understand it to operate. And where in the world, in nature, do you find any example of complexity arriving out of chaos? Where has it ever been shown that elements could spontaneously manifest into complex forms? When left alone, nature decays, rather than creates. The only example we see in nature of the opposite is from a parent to a child.
But does the theory of random evolution demand that it happens more than once? Darwin stated that given enough time a species can beget a vastly different species through mutations and generations of intermediate varieties (“The Origin of Species,” chap 9). Darwin’s theory is widely supported by the fossil record for the evolution within a particular genome (dogs evolving into other types of dogs), within families (an ape evolving into a man), but nowhere do we find evidence of one phyla giving rise to another (a sponge evolving into a fish). This latter type of evolution is purely speculative. Darwin theorized that it could happen, given enough time.

But in the years since, notably in the work of Elso Barghoorn during the 1970s, and through the analysis of the Burgess fossils in the 1980s, it was proven that life forms developed over a rather short period of time. The first single-celled organisms came to be between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago, and more complex organisms came into existence about 530 million years ago. This period, when multi-celled life begins to appear in the fossil record, is known as the Cambrian Age. The ideal conditions on earth at this time gave rise to every additional phyla (animal group) that has survived to the present day. Some phyla died off in the ensuing Ordovician Ice Age, and the rest have come to represent all the species we know today. This huge diversification of life has come to be known as the “Cambrian Explosion.” The climates were warm, wet and mild, and ocean currents moved freely, baring the significant build up of ice formations. (M. Alan Kazlev: “Palaeos,” 2000) The Cambrian Age only lasted 53 million years, a “blink of an eye” in geological terms, yet all the complexity of multi-celled organisms came into being at this time.

Classical Darwinian evolution shows how a single ancestral line can change through beneficial mutations and then gradually take over the entire population with the new trait. It takes a very long time. The speculation was that over many millions of years, new species would be formed and grow. But what the Cambrian explosion tells us is that the time was not long enough for all species to have come from a single parent. Complexity arose out of simplicity, not once, but dozens of times. These discoveries prove that the chance manifestation of complexity which we see nowhere else in the natural world did not just need to happen once. It needed to happen numerous times within this “short” period. The type of progeny which Darwin describes relies on a much longer stretch of years.

So, knowing that time was too short for all the new phyla in the Cambrian Age to have come from a common ancestor, could these species have come to be without the benefit of a parent? The kind of chance manifestation of complexity which Richard Dawkins claims could develop naturally? This would require cells to form and combine on their own. Think again of the experiment with the household appliance, and the forces of nature being the maker attempting to put the parts together. Let us just look at the possibility of one single protein evolving on its own (not to mention a whole cell!).

The average protein consists of 288 amino acids, of which 12 are different types of amino acids. The absence, addition, or replacement of a single amino acid in the structure of the protein will ruin it. Every amino acid has to be in the right place and in the right order. Now 288 amino acids could be arranged in a number of ways approximating ten to the three hundredth power. Since we know that only the exact amino acid chain is viable, the chances of creating these viable proteins by chance are approximately one in ten to the three hundredth power. Furthermore, one protein cannot survive in nature on its own, without a cellular structure to protect it from outside forces. The human body contains an estimated 100,000 proteins. Even given an ideal setting, with a rapidly evaporating amino acid concentrated Cambrian pool, the chances of even one viable protein forming by accident is microscopic! (G. Schroeder: “The Science of God, chap. 7 1997)

I wonder how discouraged Dawkins, or other “neo-evolutionists” who argue that chance brought it all about, would be if they tried to put together a mathematical probability equation for their theory. The scientists who pay more attention to mathematics realize how unlikely it is for ten to the three hundredth power to occur a hundred thousand times! Then think that it has to happen in all the new phyla that came about during this period, and that it only has 53 million years to complete the work. There is no way to make a mathematical case for this theory. Dawkins’ model for randomness seems to imply that it is possible, but he starts out knowing the answer he is trying to reach and thus, the evolution is essentially directed toward that goal. In this experiment, Dawkins plays God, knowing the final form and then directing the hypothetical mutations that way. The problem with thinking that nature might have known its goal, would be that for multiple generations, the organ would have remained only partially evolved, in which state it would have been useless. St. Dionysius anticipates Dawkins and proves him wrong with the plain truth that when anything is not in service, not useful, then we observe in every case that it begins to break up indeterminately, and decomposes and dissipates in casual and unregulated ways, for the wisdom which constructed it no longer controls or maintains it. (De Natura, II)

Dawkins himself admits that “it is vanishingly improbably that exactly the same evolutionary pathway should ever be traveled twice.” (“The Blind Watchmaker,” 1985 p. 94) Yet Schroeder points out, using the example of the eye, how this trait of vision had to have developed simultaneously in multiple Cambrian era phyla. (“The Science of God, chap. 7 1997) The eye is vastly more complex than the nerve cell described above, yet it seems to have evolved almost simultaneously and nearly identically in multiple phyla. Could an organ as complex as an eye have sprung into existence just through blind luck?

Rather, the details prove the careful work of the love which created us. The beauty of science is to begin to understand the language with which our Creator works and to see its marvel in ever greater detail.

Imagine if life on earth came to a close. All our cities are destroyed and buried beneath dust. After a thousand years some intelligent species from another planet comes to the lifeless earth. There are curious archeologists in this group and they begin to uncover the remains of our cities, starting with the most recent. They first dig up our huge skyscrapers and sprawling malls. Then they dig up some brick apartment buildings from a century before, noting the difference, and the added complexity of the newer buildings. Eventually they get to the ruins of medieval castles and churches, then of Roman times, and finally to the huts of primitive tribes. Knowing nothing of humanity, they return to their planet and publish their findings, concluding that these structures evolved over thousands of years, pointing to the gradually increasing complexity. At some point, they observe, electricity suddenly and inexplicably manifested itself in these buildings, giving a whole new range of functionality.

Did human architecture evolve? Of course! But to think of it happening by chance is ridiculous. And do we blame early humans for the mistakes they made, or how long it took? No. We marvel at their ingenuity and creativity.

Why do we not allow our Creator the same? Must it either have all been created at once, perfect and complete, or have evolved completely by chance? When we look at the complexity and beauty just of our own bodies, not to mention the rest of the world, is it beyond our concept of God to suggest that maybe it was hard work and took some time? Is God less magnificent if we suggest that the work may have taken several billion years, or that the engineering was in some cases left to the species itself? Is this a concession of sovereignty?

Such chance occurrences as Dawkins supposes cannot truly be considered a scientific theory. Admittedly, neither can my assertion that life was created by God. For a theory to be scientific, according to Stephen Hawking, it must “relate quantities in the model to observations that we make… A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.” (“A Brief History of Time,” p. 10) Aristotle thought that philosophy itself could discover all the laws of the universe, but beginning with Galileo, scientists began to test their theories with more and more rigorous experiments. (ibid. p. 15) This is now the accepted scientific method. Dawkins’ view on chance, and mine on God, must now be considered philosophy rather than science, since observation and prediction does not apply. What science can show us is what philosophy may be incorrect or highly improbable. It is easier to refute than to prove. In my mind, the examples shown of the complexity of micro-biology, and the speed at which it had to evolve disprove the philosophical theory of chance.

Surrounding all the details of life’s evolution is the over-arching reality that existence is balanced on a preverbal knife-edge. On a micro level (species), one cell, or even protein altered could kill an organism; at its onset, that alteration would have precluded the species from having ever existed. On an intermediate level (earth), a slight atmospheric or temporal alteration would wipe out life on this planet; and with all the evolution that has occurred over the years, it is hard to imagine the atmosphere would not have even briefly been altered in a deadly way. On a macro level (universe), in the last chapter we looked at what disaster would have occurred if the Big Bang had propelled things a fraction faster or a fraction slower. This slim balance of life does not suggest randomness but order. Where in life or our experiences do we see any evidence of order arising out of chaos? Science fits so perfectly to existence. How can something so precise be utterly random?

Even if we claim that science had laws which forced the precision and urged matter toward complexity and life, how did the laws of science arise? That presents us another puzzle just as unsolvable as the first. Some scientists, realizing the implication of the new discoveries described above, now argue that the universe was pre-disposed toward life. The laws of science themselves urged life to spring from the chaos. To this theory I would make two remarks—first that we are already doing away with the laws of science by saying this. The laws of science, if they are laws, must behave consistently, and we do not see this occuring anywhere else in observation or experiment. Any such theory leaves the realm of science, for it is inconsistent with the laws. Remember what we have defined as the accepted guidelines of scientific theory. This leads us to the second observation—that any “urging” which caused life and does not fit in with scientific law, is a definition for God, just as any “cause” of the Big Bang, which is outside science, would be a god. My own definition of God may be different than how the agnostic describes this outside force, but as they relate to science, the difference is obsolete.

Truly, God is not outside the laws of science. God is the laws of science! Science is the language of God. St. Thomas says “the word ‘God’ signifies something of which nothing greater can be thought.” (Summa Theologica, I Q2. A1)

We hate to admit that there is something beyond our ability to explain. If something does not fit into science, we are disposed to think it cannot exist, or perhaps our understanding is incomplete. This leads us into the trap of trying to explain away God with his own language of science. God does not fit into the scientific method. The scientific method makes the claim to truth being the simple facts that we can observe. In Latin, Verum est Factum. There is no room for mystery, or for a set of rules beyond the reach of our measurements.

I have tried to present these theories to some scientists who write the whole thing off before they even consider my arguments because it does not adhere to the scientific method. It is not a theory which can be tested and proved. (They seldom have an answer to my own claim that chance is not a proper scientific theory either.)

Yet does science always even fit the scientific method?

For the answer, let us leave biology and take a closer look into the field of quantum physics. There we will find how the scientific method has led us astray, and perhaps an answer to how we must approach our queries into the divine.

At the onset of the twentieth century the entire study of physics was turned upside down, mostly by the work of Max Planck and Albert Einstein, who discovered the fact that Newton’s laws, which work very well when applied to large particles of matter (let us call them macro particles), break down when applied to a single atom (quantum particle). This brought about the study of quantum physics. Let us look at the surprising results that we achieve from experiments with quantum particles.

You may be familiar with what is known as the “Two Slit Experiment.” Atoms are fired one at a time at a screen with two slits cut vertically from each other. There is another screen set on the other side to pick up the interference pattern. Now if light were shown against the slits we would expect the interference pattern to show up as a series of fuzzy lines because of the wave quality of the light. The astonishing thing is that atoms, shot one at a time at first seem to be hitting the far screen in a random pattern, but after many have been fired, they begin to show the same sort of interference pattern as the light. The end result of this experiment is one of the proofs that quantum particles, though they leave the gun and are recorded on the far screen as localized particles, actually behave as waves and seem to go through both slits at once. What scientists have come to believe about both light and the components of atoms is that both behave as particles and waves simultaneously. The particle aspect is the localized actualization of a potential created by the wave. Thus, we can never be completely sure where we will find the quantum particle at any point in measurement.

Needless to say, scientists have attempted to observe this phenomenon at work. But something very strange happens when they do this. If any sort of detector is placed near the first screen to “watch” the atom going through the slits, the interference pattern disappears, and the atoms appear in two groupings on the other side, as we would expect if we were sending macro particles through instead. The simple act of watching causes the atom to behave as a particle throughout the test, and never as a wave. This has confounded physicists for decades.

The act of detecting the quantum particle actually changes its nature. This is unavoidable, because if we were to shine a single photon of light at an atom, the photon would interact with the atom, changing its behavior, in some cases even its atomic makeup. Remember that the photon, just like the atom, has the properties of both a particle and a wave. The photon becomes entangled with the atom. For this reason, in our observation of quantum particles, we are never able to know everything about both their location and their movement at any time. Einstein theorized with his 1935 Gedanken Versuch that we can observe the atom’s particle nature or its wave nature with near complete accuracy at any time, but not both. Thus, we encounter a failure in our ability to predict the behavior of an atom. We can determine the probability of an atom’s location or velocity, but we cannot pinpoint it for sure.
Yet, even understanding that the measuring system, by means of entanglement, alters the behavior of the quantum particle, nearly a century later we do not know why it causes the interference pattern (seemingly the entire wave aspect) to disappear. We cannot explain what goes on behind the so called quantum curtain. Niels Bohr argued that it was useless to theorize what happened in the absence of a measuring device, since the only way we can learn anything about quantum behavior is if we accept the interaction it has with the measuring device; the observer is central to the behavior of the atom, photon, or electron. This is a simplistic summary of the Copenhagen Interpretation, spearheaded by Bohr. It is pretty much saying that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, it does not make a sound! I am not so quick to give up, and I expect that time will lead us to further discoveries in our ability to measure the quantum system, but Bohr’s interpretation does lead us to the heart of the problem. We, the observer, our measuring device, even the very surroundings we are giving to the experiment, are soundly entrenched in the macro plane. We are subject to classical Newtonian laws of physics. Meanwhile, the tiny quantum particle we are playing with is obeying different laws altogether. When we attempt to measure it, we are subjecting it to laws it was never meant to obey, and terminology by which it was never meant to be described. We cannot understand how anything can behave simultaneously as a particle and a wave, nor can our measuring systems, and thus have we inadvertently forced the quantum particle into a macro world. The only way we could truly measure the quantum particle would be with quantum measuring systems and a truly quantum observer. Obviously this is impossible, and so for now we must be content to accept that the truth is a mystery. Verum est Mysterium. It is there. We must believe it. But for now, we cannot see it. The scientific method gives us no help when observing quantum particles.

The two important conclusions we are forced to draw from our observations of quantum particles is, A: we cannot be sure that the rules we know for one system will apply to another system and, B: truth is sometimes more than the facts, even in science.

Do you see the similarities we face when discussing the realm of the divine? God is in a metaphysical realm while we try to observe him with physical laws. It is impossible. God made the rules, yet put us in a different system, subject to different rules. Similarly, since we and all matter are made up of millions of quantum particles, we could say that the quantum particles “made” the classical, Newtonian laws with which we then attempt to view the quantum world. We do not understand how an atom can be both wave and particle, yet the truth is that we, who do not understand, would not exist if this were not so! Similarly we do not understand God, the metaphysical realm, or what happens to us after death. We cannot fit God into our understanding just as we cannot fit a quantum particle into the observance of a macro system.

Every new discovery in science has given us a closer glimpse at the image of our Creator, and the great loving care with which we were crafted. Our selfishness attempts to explain away the need for the genius behind it, but all of nature, all of science confess the creative energy and the tremendous love with which we and all the gifts we share were made. That God does not fit into our rules is not an argument that there is no God, but rather an argument that there is!