In a Times Op-Ed
piece entitled “God, Darwin and My College Biology Class” (NYT, 9/27/14), David
P. Barash, an evolutionary biologist and professor of psychology at the
University of Washington makes the following assertion: “The more we know of
evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including
human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no
indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.” Adding benevolent to the mix
complicates the argument. Let’s make it simple. Does science explain everything?
For instance, Thomas Nagel, a professor of philosophy and law at NYU and an
avowed atheist has asked how naturalism “can account for the appearance, through the operation of the
laws of physics and chemistry, of conscious beings like ourselves, capable of
discovering those laws and understanding the universe that they govern.” (“A Philosopher Defends Religion,” The New
York Review of Books, 9/22/12). The philosopher John Searle has remarked
that free will and quanta are unanswered questions. Add to that the question of how
something could be created out of nothing, an old favorite on the
disenchantment talk circuit. Everyone wants certainty. Those who believe don’t
like it that science diminishes or extinguishes God’s role. Those who hone to a rationalist and analytic view of the world quote the last proposition of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof must one be silent.” But such certainties are neither spiritual nor
scientific. Hamlet’s famous line, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” still points to the fact that
we may have to leave open items on our teleological agendas.
