Multiverse, Aliens, but no God?

The following is a quote from Neil Shenvi's book, Why I Believe,

Yet, no matter how counterintuitive, shocking and bizarre the constructs of modern physics become, many in our culture continue to insist that whatever it portrays is "ordinary" while the supernatural is "extraordinary." We balk at the existence of immaterial realities but seem seriously unconcerned with the proliferation of ten-dimensional strings, parallel universes, closed-time loops, and nonlocal entanglement. You can even see this inconsistency in our science fiction, where magical plot devices are barely concealed by a thin patina of scientific jargon. The presence of actual angels or ghosts in Star Trek would be exceptionally jarring. But if the captain announces that a "hyperdimensional tachyon-based life-form has materialized on the bridge," we can suspend our disbelief. Why the disconnect?

 As a Sci-fi fan, I have had this same thought a number of times, while watching Star Trek, Stargate, or Fringe. Why are scientific-minded people willing to believe in the possibility of aliens & multiverses but not even consider the possibility of God?

I have theorized at least these two reasons for this skepticism. First, like Neil says, the God explanation sounds like magic or an appeal to an illogical "faith," whereas the other sounds scientific and they desire to think themselves logical and/or grounded in "reality" by which them mean physical things that they can feel and explain. Of course, the problem highlighted in these shows is that there are many areas of life that are not strictly physical and for which we do not yet have any good explanations, such as morality, origins or destiny. Thus the writers often propose sciency-sounding explanations that are far-fetched or that appeal to some long-forgotten or distant alien culture that knows more than us. I believe that for many scientifically minded people a possible naturalistic explanation, no matter how unlikely, is still better than proposing God might be involved because they believe that God is like Santa or the Tooth Fairy, namely a being that can do anything necessary to fill whatever gaps we have in our understanding. Having "faith" in this kind of God is indeed like magic with no need for evidence, and unfortunately, some Christians behave as if God does desire us to have this kind of faith in Him.

Christians should counter this by explaining that God as described in the Bible is not illogical, nor does He demand faith without evidence. In fact, even in Hebrews 11:1 where faith is described as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," it is still not a faith based on no evidence. In fact, in each of the stories described in Hebrews 11, the individuals had evidence of God's existence and plan, but they still needed to trust Him for the future. All over the Bible, God encourages people to examine the evidence for the truth of who He is and even to compare Him to other gods to see that He is real. He points to the order of the universe as evidence for Himself. Many early Christian scientists believed in the order of the universe because they believed in a God of order who had created with a purpose. The writers of the Bible do understand that humans are limited and do not fully understand the spiritual realm, but they never describe it as chaos or a magical place without rules. Rather it is a place where we do not have access to all the information yet.

But should we fail to believe in something just because we cannot fully understand it yet? Why should a spiritual realm where there exist creatures with purpose and will, not at least be one of the options for helping to explain phenomenon here? I do not assume subatomic forces do not exist or are disordered just because I cannot explain them. Likewise, I do not assume God is capricious or random, just because I cannot yet explain all of His actions. 

Therefore, as Christians, I think we can and should undertake to help skeptics see their inconsistent thinking when they propose theories like aliens or multiverses which have no evidence and really do not have any explanatory power, and at the same time reject even the possibility of a supernatural realm. We can do this by reframing the biblical understanding of supernatural realm from a magical mystical place with no rules, to one which is like another dimension where there are rules, but ones that we cannot access yet.

Unfortunately, even if we could help skeptics reframe their understanding of the supernatural, many would likely still reject God as a possible explanation for anything, because of a second reason which is spiritual and psychological. If God exists, then He not only created the universe with order and purpose, but it also means He created humans with order and purpose. Therefore, if we really wanted to understand ourselves and how we should function in the world, we might have to figure out if God has told us anything about that. In other words, God's existence might impact our existence and how we live our lives. To live our best lives, we might have to learn from and obey someone other than ourselves. Often, people are either afraid of a bad authority, or they simply do not want anyone to be an authority over them. Very few skeptics are likely to admit this kind of psychological prejudice, but often in conversation, I have heard experienced a level of anger at God that seems completely unjustified if the skeptic really did not believe He existed. What about the possibility of God's existence would cause them to be so emotional toward Him or toward believers in God if they did not have some much more personal reasons to doubt His existence. 

The most vocal critics of any belief system are those who have been hurt within that system, and if you hear the personal stories of many skeptics, you will hear many such stories. I am not suggesting that person hurt is the only reason for disbelief, any more than the only rationale for believing is psychological benefit, but it is clear that personal experiences play a large role in determining what we explanations we might accept as possible. 

In conversations with skeptics, Christians can help overcome this barrier in two ways. First, to be transparent about our own biases. If personal experience, such as dreams or some fantastic worship time, is one of the reasons we believe, we need to admit that. If God is real, than having such an experience should not be discounted, but that sort of evidence is not transferable to others, so we should be willing to also have and be willing to discuss other reasons to believe, which is exactly what Shenvi is doing in his book. If we can admit our biases and bring more neutral evidence, we can perhaps help the skeptic to be willing to examine their personal biases and how those might influence their conclusions. 

Knowing these reasons or any others for why someone might not consider believing in God will not necessarily overcome someone's disbelief, but they might help us further the conversation. If we think of sharing our beliefs with someone as gardening or farming, which is a metaphor the Bible uses, then we might simply be tilling the soil making it possible for someone to later on consider believing in Jesus. Ultimately God uses many different means to draw people to Himself, and the more we learn about the world, ourselves, and other people will help us to be available to be one of the tools God uses in the lives of others.

Origin of Life: A Proof of God's Existence

I originally wrote this to a friend who does not believe there is any good evidence for the existence of God. He has many times also questioned various aspects of my faith and stories from the Bible I think it is legitimate for him to send me stories that question biblical stories like the exodus or the flood. I think it is perfectly fine to deal with objections to our understanding of the world, but I think it needs to go both ways. Often those people who think matter and energy are all there is do not honestly face the problems with their own understanding of the world. 

The origin of life is one area where I think the explanation of a creator is so much more reasonable than a natural explanation. The astronomical numbers involved in trying to think how material could organize on its own into such incredible complexity are mind-blowing and they simply defy belief. And it is not just one type of organization, there are many different chemical reactions, compounds, and then interactions between those compounds to get the simplest cell and at each step of the way, the "chance" of it happening naturally is virtually impossible. So impossible in fact that no one can even propose a possible realistic way for many of these steps. It seems impossible for chance or nature alone to "create" the organization needed for even the simplest of cells, and the only other option is that an intelligence was involved. Cells have many compounds and processes that look like engineered machines, and in any other field, we would simply say that intelligence must have been involved to get to this level of complexity. 

For me, the primary reason to deny the possibility of a creator being involved is philosophical and not scientific. The science clearly points to the fact that nature alone cannot and could not create such complexity. 

 Here is a video by Jim Tours, a world-class chemist who makes nanomachines, that explains the incredible/impossible odds of this happening naturally. 

 If you watch through it, you will notice that he never refers to his Christian faith or the Bible, rather he is a hard scientist who knows the field and numbers inside and out. As I listen to these types of numbers and odds the impossibility of a random/ chance/ exclusively natural explanation is evident, his words about needing faith (as you define faith, which is belief without or in spite of the evidence) that somehow science will discover how to overcome these odds through some supposed law, ring true to me. For me, this is one of the many areas where a much more reasonable and rational explanation of the data points to a creator.