The Scientific Revolution began sometime in the 17th century, but as with all such movements there is no specific date. Historians will often place the beginning of the Scientific Revolution with the end of the Renaissance, the period of European history often associated with great works of art by masters such as Giotto, DaVinci, Michelangelo, to name a few, but it was much, much more. Trade routes opened boosting the European economy with spices from the Far East, exploration not only of waterways but entire continents. It was a bold new world for Europe and a time in which the world became smaller as contact with others increased, the Indian Ocean the center of world-wide trade.
In concert with all of this came the notion of science, the idea of experimentation to solve the problems of the real world, problems vexing humans since the beginning. Where once the explanation was God, giving religious practice paramount consideration, now mankind began to re-embrace the Ancient Greek notion of reason…the idea we as humans could figure it out for ourselves. As a result, man looked to the stars, the heavens, for that is where God resides. If we could understand the movement of the stars, we might bring ourselves closer to God, revealing God before our very eyes and giving credence to being created in his image.
One of the greatest pieces of literature ever created celebrated this new humanism, entitled Oration on the Dignity of Man where the author, Pico Della Mirandola (Giovanni Pico dei conti della Mirandola e della Concordia) espoused the wonders of being human, being created in the image of God, but also how God himself placed man above even the angels themselves. To read Mirandola is to become witness to the wonders of being a human under the sight of God.[1]
Galileo turned his attention not only to the sciences, but the science of the sky as well, creating detailed drawings of the moon in various phases, the movement of the stars, as well as the Earth itself, disproving the earlier theory of geocentrism in favor of heliocentrism, where the former saw the Earth as the center of the universe, the latter the sun. Of course, neither was exactly correct, but Galileo was much closer in that the Earth itself moved. It took Kepler and his theory of elliptical orbits to give life to what we now know as the solar system close to its modern form, and all done by meticulous observation, mathematical calculation as well as the use of Galileo’s improved telescope, the concept of which was taken from the Muslim world, one of a variety of ideas shared among peoples of the Earth.
All of this lead in the 17th and 18th centuries toward the human condition, be it the discovery of the circulatory system (Harvey), the Scientific Method (Galileo and then Bacon), and the pendulum clock (Huygens) among a host of other discoveries. It seemed mankind was on the verge of discovering everything that could be discovered, and God, well, God was shrinking or at least becoming something much less than what the Church proclaimed. It was also during this time the teachings of the Catholic Church were called into question, the very interpretation of the Bible itself as espoused by the Church falling under scrutiny. Martin Luther excoriated the Popes, Papal power and biblical interpretation, as did John Wycliffe and John Calvin, the latter convinced the notion of predestination was the way to the truth rather than the pomp, ceremony, and circumstance of the Catholic Church. At the same time, Islam was spreading like wildfire, having taken the Middle East, spread into India, China and conquering North Africa. It would not be until the 1498 that Islam would be driven from Europe via Spain, but the die was cast—Islam was a force to be reckoned with and the Europeans, along with the Catholic Church would be in constant competition with it.
Still, there were answers sought, answers that vexed the human mind, answers for which we had little, the most pressing of which was life itself. How is life created? The most persistent answer was God, the most plausible was God, and the only one, despite the advancements of the day, was God.
Fast forward to the modern day. We’ve sent men to the moon, discovered cures for various diseases, some of which quite literally plagued humans for centuries causing untold numbers to die, today, defeated by a shot of penicillin. We have discovered the power of the atom, can traverse the entire earth in but hours, and even landed rovers on a distant planet, revealing a landscape similar to ours, firing the imaginations of storytellers worldwide. We’ve even sent a probe, the Voyager series, into the outer reaches of our solar system, Voyager 1 now traveling the interstellar void.
But we cannot create life other than by the mysterious method of sexual reproduction, the joining of two living parts, the egg and sperm, the sperm itself carrying the fire that ignites the egg, determines the sex and the creation of what will be a child. What we cannot do, and do not understand is how amino acids in any combination, become life. We don’t have the capability to do it, and we don’t understand it. The door, it seems, is closed shut, tightly, and locked, humans not possessing the key.
Recently, on the Uncommon Knowledge podcast, two eminent scientists, James Tour (a synthetic organic chemist and professor at Rice University), and Stephen Meyer (the director of the Discovery Institute and author of Return of the God Hypothesis) were interviewed on precisely this topic…life. The interview, conducted by the Hoover Institute’s Peter Robinson was not only informative, but revealing. It was revealing in that these two eminent scientists not only debunked other’s claim of creating life (“It’s like taking a carburetor out of a car, replacing it with another carburetor and saying ‘look, we created life’”) but admitted we know nothing about the act of making amino acids come to life. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. And we are not close to finding out that secret ingredient, not at all.
In fact, it struck me the more I listened to these men discuss their own research as well as the research of others, the more they tried to find the spark of life and failed, the harder they worked to relegate God to the sidelines, the more they proved God himself. It was a fascinating dichotomy, and one that we see often in the world of team sports. The more one gives himself over to the team, the more the individual athlete shines. The more we cut federal taxes, the more revenue the government takes in. It doesn’t make logical sense on the surface, but it is quite true.
Neither scientist admitted “God” per se, for if they did, as one said, “We’d be drummed out of science altogether. The preferred term is “intelligent design,” a recognition there must be, at least to this point, something else that acted upon the amino acids sparking that life. These eminent men spoke of the cells themselves and their internal workings, the complexity of a single cell in concert with the billions that make a living being and how it all just fit and functioned baffled them, the amazement in their voices almost shouting at me as the podcast went on.
I thought quite a lot about what I’d listened to, about what those men had to say and the proof of their thoughts and ideas. I sat in silence for a time contemplating their words and thoughts as I drove the 9 hours back home to Tennessee. I also thought a lot about the fact both men stated if they brought up God as the answer, they would be laughed at and drummed out of scientific communities, their colleagues refusing to even consider the notion of God on any level, or at least the mention of God, preferring the term intelligent design.
We are not even remotely close to discovering the origin of life. The more than ancient notion of life emanating from a primordial ooze in some lake someplace tens of thousands of years ago is simply not supported by science. We can replicate all the conditions, including the amino acids mixing, but there is no spark…nothing.
Recently, the European Union pledged 40 million Euro to finding the answer to life…40 million, something both men said was not only a waste of money, but little more than chasing ghosts. 40 million Euro attempting to prove God doesn’t exist. Both were also quite adamant that while we have no clue, not a notion about life’s spark, we also didn’t think at one time we’d ever make it to the moon or anywhere else off the planet for that matter, so nothing is off the table. Maybe we will prove God doesn’t exist sometime in the far distant future, but for the present and foreseeable future, it seems God and his intelligent design have the upper hand.
Occam’s razor states the simplest explanation is usually the best one. Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe we simply don’t know. It is not in human nature to simply accept the notion we don’t know something. There must be an answer, a solution, we cannot simply attribute it to God for that is not something the modern mind is willing to accept. God has been almost completely purged from our universities and our schooling[2] in the modern Western world. In fact, the pushback against anything related to God is not only pushed back, but shoved back, met with force as though someone is trying to hide something. Thou dost protest too much!
As stated earlier, the more we attempt to disprove the existence of God, the more it seems we have no choice but to accept his existence. Maybe that’s the goal all along…maybe that’s the end game for God…force us to exhaust all our resources, all of our brilliant ideas until there is nothing left, no other answer. Maybe we’re supposed to search things out, to arrive at answers on our own to a point, and then realize in the end there is but only one answer…God.
Then, again, I could be wrong.
[1] Should anyone wish to read Mirandola, click this link.
[2] Interesting that the separation of Church and state was meant to keep the government from forcing a particular religion on the people, not from keeping religious practices out of schools. It is one of the great misunderstandings of the Constitution as that phrase is not found in the Constitution. Rather, it comes from a letter from Thomas Jefferson and a Supreme Court decision in 1947: Everson vs. The Board of Education, and then codified further in the 1962 case Engle vs. Vitale.
