ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part III Argument from History

principle, the theory which explains all the pertinent facts in the simplest way is adopted. This same principle was used, long ago, to decide between the Ptolemaic, or earth-centred theory and the Copernican theory which claims that the sun is the centre of the solar system. The Ptolemaic theory was so involved and so much more complicated than the Copernican that the earthcentred idea was discarded. Our modern minds have a sort of bias in favour of the materialistic explanation of the facts. Admittedly this argument would not be regarded as fool proof by many. The concept of God and religion will never fit into the narrow frame of their materialistic minds. Yet their dissatisfaction is not really due to any lack of sound reasoning behind religion. No, the actual reason for their disaffection is that their prejudiced minds are not prepared to accept religious reasoning. Sir James Jeans, at the end of his book, Mysterious Universe correctly remarked: ‘Our modern minds have a sort of bias in favour of the materialistic explanation of the facts’. In his book, Witness, Whittaker Chambers tells of how he was watching his little daughter one day, when he found that he had unconsciously become aware of the shape of her ear. He thought to himself how impossible it was that such delicate convolutions could have come about by chance. They could have been created only by premeditated design. But he pushed this thought out of his agnostic mind, because he realised that the next step in logical sequence would have to be: design presupposes God—a thesis he was not yet ready to accept. With reference to this incident, Thomas David Park, a research chemist, formerly Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, Stanford Research Institute, writes: ‘I have known many scientists among my professors and research colleagues, who have similar thoughts about observed facts in chemistry and physics.’ It is impossible to satisfy those scholars whose bias, in favour of materialistic reasoning is so strong that they are unable to keep their minds open to self-evident facts. There is a particular reason for the bias, about which George Herbert Blount, an American physicist has this to say: Conviction of the reasonableness of theism and the tenuousness of atheism usually in itself does not cause a man to accept practical theism. There seems to be an almost innate suspicion