Think About It

When I visited friends recently, I noticed a book by Neil Di Grassi-Tyson sitting on a table. I picked it up and was fascinated to discover that in it Di Grassi answers many of the questions I would like to ask him. Like so many self-proclaimed atheists, Di Grassi firmly believes that anyone who thinks the Bible contains necessary information to understand the universe and those who dwell in it is intellectually stunted. In one of his answers, he tells the questioner that the Bible is a fine piece of work for anyone who wants to let others do their thinking for them. I think that is what one might call a left-handed compliment.

In my opinion, it is Di Grassi who displays intellectual incompetence when he makes a statement like that. I would challenge him to read C. S. Lewis or Francis Schaeffer or R. C. Sproul and maintain that they are not competent thinkers. It is Di Grassi’s failure to think honestly about the claims and positions held by sincere Christian thinkers that weakens his own position. He creates a straw man that he can thrash with his superior intellect. If I were to mimic his tactics, I would declare that all atheists are mentally incompetent and therefore unable to hold a rational discussion. I could discount anything an atheist has to say on the grounds that it must be irrational.

However, Di Grassi and many outspoken atheists are not stupid; in fact, some are very bright. Their problem is either willful ignorance or selective knowledge. They either choose not to investigate the arguments of Christian thinkers at all, or they pick only arguments that they easily dismiss using their arsenal of preconceived notions. By starting with the presumption that a personal, highly intelligent being cannot possibly exist, they eliminate the option of debating whether such a being may have created what they see as the impersonal, accidental universe.

An honest debate with Di Grassi might start with the difficulty surrounding the concept of Darwin’s black box as presented by Michael Behe. Toward the end of his life, Charles Darwin said that further advances in the scientific knowledge of his day could create insurmountable problems for the whole scheme of his evolutionary theory. He knew that individual cells existed, but the science of microscopic investigation in his time was in its infancy. Darwin realized that if a living cell proved to be more complex that he thought, that if he could open the “black box” that was the cell, the complexity itself would rule out the possibility of evolutionary development through natural selection.

This is precisely what has happened. Our ability to peer into the inner workings of living cells has shown them to be incredibly complex. There are biochemical machines within cells that are made of numerous constituent parts that can only operate if all the parts are present and in the correct relationship to one another. Natural selection would insist that each time the parts of the machine came together partially correct but non-functional, the entire structure would be selected out in the next generation. Evolution teaches that only the strong survive; a useless cellular machine would not survive. The probability that all the machine parts could come together in the right order is so highly unlikely as to be impossible.

This type of honest thinking is what has forced many scientists to accept the idea of design. It has become obvious that no amount of time and chance evolution could explain the highly complex structures that make up living cells. The discovery and eventual decoding of DNA has added even more weight to the argument for design. There is no way that the millions of pieces of discreet information that comprise a single chain of DNA could fall into place accidentally. There is intelligence behind the composition of living and non-living things that cannot be explained by evolutionary theory. This does not prove that the God of the Bible exists, but it opens the door to believing some form of intelligence is behind the universe as we know it.

There is only one reason I can think of for an intelligent man like Neil Di Grassi-Tyson to flatly deny that a higher power might have been involved in the creation of the universe: the man does not want to give up his independence. To admit that there is something “out there” that is infinitely more intelligent than he is, and consequently that something may have a claim on Di Grassi’s life is an uncomfortable thought for him. If some higher power is making the rules, Di Grassi is no longer the master of his universe. If it can be logically and empirically proven that that higher power is also a personal, moral being, as Francis Schaeffer has done, Di Grassi is in worse trouble. He would be forced to admit that his life is not his own, and he would have to submit to the moral values of another being or suffer the consequences of failure to submit.

Submission to anything other than their own free will is the last thing moderns want to accept. Even Christians struggle with the concept of submitting their lives completely to their Creator. Yet this is the essence of what Christian thinkers have believed for centuries. Thoughtful Christians know the paradox of finding complete freedom in complete submission to God and His Word. Far from letting others do the thinking for them, this opens the universe and all that is beyond to think about. The submission necessary for true Christian thinking is what drives Di Grassi and his fellows to the illogical position* they attempt to defend. They are the ones who refuse to think with an open mind, and they allow an irrational presumption to do their thinking for them.

 

* I call the position of the atheist illogical because it asserts that God does not exist. To make this claim, the atheist is presuming to know everything and thereby concluding that God does not exist within his all-encompassing sphere of knowledge. This is an illogical position because it is not possible for any human being to know everything. The only sustainable argument on this issue is that of the agnostic who says honestly that he does not know whether God exists or not. This leaves the door open to the sincere agnostic thinker to examine the claims of the theist or those who suggest that intelligent design exists in the created realm.

Related articles: I Don’t Believe in God; Do We Really Need God?; Help My Unbelief; Don’t Ask Why