V Religion and Science

Religion and Science says that the ascription of such events ‘to supernatural beings is merely due to man’s ignorance combined with his passion for some sort of explanation.’ He then sums up with: ‘If events are due to natural causes, they are not due to supernatural causes.’ (pp. 18-19) There is a serious weakness inherent in such arguments of the antireligionists, which can be best understood through illustrations. Think of the railway engine speeding along the track. How do its wheels revolve? If we attempt to answer this question by studying the different parts of the engine and their movements, we shall arrive at the conclusion that the movement of the wheels is an extension of the functioning of the locomotive’s mechanism. But would we be justified in believing that the reason for their movement is the engine and its various parts? Obviously, we would not. We should first have to consider the respective roles of the engineer who designed the engine and the engine driver who set it in motion. Without their instrumentality, the engine could neither exist, nor move. The engine and its parts are not then the final reality. The final reality is the mind, which has brought the engine into existence, and runs it at will. A Christian scholar, Cecil Boyce Hamann, has aptly said: “Nature does not explain, she is herself in need of explanation.” This is because, as he puts it, nature is a fact, not an explanation. Let us consider, for example, how a chick comes into this world. In embryo, it develops inside the smooth, hard shell of an egg, then it emerges when the shell breaks up. How does it come about that the shell breaks up at the right moment and the fledgling, which is no more than a small lump of flesh, finds its way into the outer world? In the past, the obvious answer was: “It is the hand of God.” But now, microscopic studies have shown that on the completion of twentyone days, when the chick is ready to emerge, there appears on its beak a small, hard horn with which this ‘lump of flesh’ is able to break through the walls of its cell. The horn, having done its job, falls off a few days later. This observation, from the point of view of the antireligionists, contradicts the old concept that it is God who brings the chick out of the shell, because the microscope has clearly shown that a