Nature and Science Speak about God

Nature and Science Speak about God

1990 8 August 20-24 Nature and Science Speak about God (1689)

Take oxygen, for example. It is the source of life and is not obtainable from any source other than the atmosphere. But had it formed 50% of the atmosphere or more, instead of the present 21%, combustibility of all matter on the earth’s surface would have been so high that even if just a single tree caught fire, whole forests would at once explode. Similarly, had the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere been as low as 10%, life might conceivably have adjusted to this over the centuries, but it is unlikely that human civilization would have taken its present form. And if all of the free oxygen instead of only a part, had been absorbed by the matter present on the earth’s surface, no animal life would have been possible at all.

Along with oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon gases in their free form as well as in the form of different compounds are the most important ingredients of life – the very foundations, in fact, on which our life rests. There being not even one chance in a hundred million that all these elements should have assembled in such favourable proportions on any other planet at anyone given time, we have to ask ourselves how it came about that such freely moving gases formed themselves into a compound and remained suspended in the atmosphere in exactly the right proportions to sustain life. As the noted physicist, Morton White puts it, ‘Science has no explanation to offer for the facts, and to say it is, accidental is to defy mathematics.1

1. The Age of Analysis, p. 33.

We have to concede that there is a formidable array of facts in this world, in the universe, which cannot be explained unless we admit the intervention of a superior mind. For instance, the density of ice is less than that of water, because, as it freezes, its volume increases in relation to its mass. It is because of this that ice floats instead of sinking to the bottom of lakes and rivers and gradually forming a solid mass. On the surface of the water, it forms a layer of insulation to maintain the water below at a temperature above freezing point. Fish and other forms of marine life are thus permitted to survive throughout the winter, and, when spring comes, the ice melts rapidly. If water did not behave in this way, all of us in general, and people in cold countries in particular, would face severe calamities. Clearly this property of water is tremendously important to life.

In the world of arboriculture there are also numerous examples of nature aiding man. In the first two decades of the century, a chestnut blight, caused by the pathogen Endothia, spread rapidly across the forested regions of the U.S.A. It was widely felt that the holes it made in the forest canopy would never again be filled. This was highly regrettable because of the large number of useful things the chestnut tree yielded: high-grade, rot-resistant timber, wood pulp, tannin, nuts – not to speak of its shade. It also had the special advantage of being able to grow on mountain ridges with scanty soil as well as in rich fertile valleys. The unique position occupied by the American chestnut was unsurpassed by any other species and, until the arrival of Endothia from Asia around 1900, it had truly been king of the forest. Now it is almost extinct. But the holes in the forest canopy were eventually filled. Tulip-trees were already there, waiting for just such openings as would provide sufficient light for that shade – intolerant species to develop. Up till then, these trees had been minor denizens of the forest, only occasionally developing into valuable timber trees. Now, chestnut trees are hardly missed where dense groves of tulip trees have become established, these often growing as much as one inch in diameter and six feet in height per year; as well as their growth being rapid, their wood is of superior quality. Can we in all conscience say that the master plan of nature is merely a set of accidental Circumstances?

In the present century too, a crisis of a different but more alarming nature developed in Australia when a certain species of cactus was grown on an extensive scale to provide fencing for the fields. Cressy Morrison writes:

The cactus had no insect enemies in Australia and soon began a prodigious growth. The march of the cactus persisted until it had covered an area approximately as great as England, crowded the inhabitants out of the towns and villages, and destroyed their farms, making cultivation impossible. No device which the people discovered could stop its spread. Australia was in danger of being overwhelmed by a silent, uncontrollable, advancing army of vegetation. The entomologists scoured the world and finally found an insect which lived exclusively on cactus, would eat nothing else, would breed freely, and which had no enemies in Australia. Here the animal conquered the vegetation and today the cactus pest has retreated, and with it all but a small protective residue of the insects, enough to hold the cactus in check forever.1

1. Man Does Not Stand Alone, pp. 78-79.

Can such a great scheme of checks and balances as is found in Nature develop without any deliberate planning?

Consider the marvellous mathematical exactitude which is to be found in the universe. The behaviour even of inanimate matter is not in any way haphazard: on the contrary, it “obeys” definite “natural laws”. No matter in which corner of the world, at any given time the word “water” will invariably mean “a compound consisting of 11.1 percent of hydrogen and 88.9 percent of oxygen”. Whenever a scientist in his laboratory heats a beaker filled with pure water until it boils, he knows, without using a thermometer, that the temperature of the boiling water is 100 degrees centigrade as long as the atmospheric pressure is 760 mm of mercury. If the pressure is less than 760 mm., less energy will have to be applied in the form of heat to produce vapour or steam, so the boiling point will be correspondingly less than 100 degrees. Conversely, if the pressure is greater than 760 mm., the boiling point will be greater than 100 degrees. No matter how often this experiment is performed, by ascertaining the pressure, we can, with certainty, predict the boiling point of the water on each occassion. If there were no system and organization inherent in the working of water and energy, there would be no basis for scientific research and invention. Life in the laboratory, in the absence of immutable natural laws, would be a succession of quandaries; it would be a life fraught with uncertainty and doubt, rendering all scientific enquiry futile. Thomas Parks, a research chemist, writes:

One of the first things a freshman chemistry student learns is the periodicity or order found in the elements. This order has been variously described and classified, but we usually credit Mendeleev, the Russian chemist of the last century, with our periodic-table. Not only did this arrangement provide a means of studying the known elements and their compounds, but it also gave impetus to the search for those elements which had not yet been discovered. Their very existence was postulated by vacant spaces in the orderly arrangement of the table.

Chemists today still use the periodic table to aid them in their study of reactions and to predict properties of unknown or new compounds. That they have been successful is sound testimony to the fact that a beautiful order exists in the inorganic world.

But the order we see around us is not a relentless omnipotence. It is tempered with beneficence – a testimony to the fact that the good and pleasure are as much a concern of Divine Intelligence as the immutable laws of Nature. Look around you at the exceptions and deviations that do, in fact, defy the laws of cold rationality.

Take, for example, water. From its formula weight –18 –one would predict it would be a gas at ordinary temperatures and pressures. Ammonia – with a formula weight of 17 – is a gas at temperatures as low as minus 33o C. at atmospheric pressure. Hydrogen sulphide, closely related to water by position in the periodic table and with a formula weight of 34, is a gas at temperatures down to minus 59o C. The fact that water exists as a liquid at all, at ordinary temperatures, is something to make one stop and think.1

“On August 11, 1999, there will be a solar eclipse that will be completely visible at Cornwall.”

This is not a prediction based simply on conjecture. We know from calculations based on our observations of the solar system’s functioning that this eclipse is bound to occur. We tend to take it for granted that the innumerable stars we see in the sky, like pinpoints of lights, are part of a vast unchanging pattern. But these “pinpoints” of light are actually colossal balls suspended in the vastness of space and, since time immemorial, have been moving in the same fixed orbits with such perfect precision that their paths (and, more recently, that of artificial satellites) can be accurately predicted at any given moment. Right from a tiny drop of water to the greatest imaginable star, the whole range of natural phenomena evinces a wonderful system and organization. The behaviour of such objects is uniform to such a degree that we have been able to formulate laws on this basis.

1. Evidence of God, pp. 74-75.

Newton’s theory of gravitation explained the revolution of astronomical spheres. In accordance with this, A.C. Adams and U. Leverrier found the basis on which, without observation, they could successfully predict the existence of a hitherto undiscovered planet. As foretold by the two astronomers, when on a night in September 1846, the telescope at the Berlin observatory was turned towards the point indicated by their calculations, it was observed that such a planet did, in fact, exist in the solar system. This is the planet we now call Neptune.

(To be continued)