evolution did I have recourse to “divine intervention” as an explanation. Indeed, to explain everything in terms of God is precisely not to explain anything—it is to cut all inquiry dead, to stifle any intellectual curiosity, to kill any scientific progress. To explain the wonderful and awesome variety and complexity of living organisms as “miracles” is not to give a very helpful, least of all a scientific, explanation. To quote Dawkins, “To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like ‘God was always there,’ and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say ‘DNA was always there,’ or ‘Life was always there,’ and be done with it.”
Darwin made the same point about his own theory in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, the famous geologist: “If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish…. I would give nothing for the theory of natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.” Quoting the above letter, Dawkins comments: “This is no petty matter. In Darwin’s view, the whole point of the theory of evolution by natural selection was that it provided a non-miraculous account of the existence of complex adaptations. For what it is worth, it is also the whole point of this book [
As for the big bang and modern cosmology, Stephen Hawking makes the same point. Trying to make amends for their treatment of Galileo, the Vatican organized a conference to which eminent cosmologists were invited.
At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference—the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. (Hawking, Chapter 14)
Elsewhere in his best-selling book,
The quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behaviour at the boundary. There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time. One could say: “The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.” The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just
A little later. Hawking asks, “What place, then, for a creator?”
Einstein observed that “the man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events…. He has no use for the religion of fear.”
Similarly, more recently, Peter Atkins argues, “That the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations.”
Theories that explain the big bang by reference to God answer no scientific questions. They push questions of ultimate origin back one step, prompting questions about God’s origins. As Feuerbach said, “The world is nothing to religion; the world, which is in truth the sum of all reality, is revealed in its glory only by theory. The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life; but religion knows nothing of the joys of the thinker, of the investigator of Nature, of the artist. The idea of the universe is wanting to it, the consciousness of the really infinite, the consciousness of the species.”
It is only the scientist with a sense of wonder who feels that life’s awesome complexity needs explaining, who will propose refutable and testable scientific hypotheses, who will try to unravel the so-called mysteries of the universe. The religious man will content himself with the uninteresting and untestable remark that “it” was all created by God.
It is rather unfortunate that the Koran gives the example of the elements as signs of God’s munificence since they are as much a cause of misery as happiness. Rain, we are told in sura 7.56, is a harbinger of God’s mercy. Yet floods claim the lives of thousands of people in, ironically, a Muslim country, namely, Bangladesh. The cyclone of 1991, with winds of 200 kilometers per hour, resulted in floods that left 100,000 dead and 10,000,000 without shelter. Despite the omnipresence of water, Bangladesh goes through a period of drought from October to April. Thus, the wretched population, among the poorest in the world, is submitted to both periodic floods and drought. All the work of God, as sura 57.22 tells us: “No disaster occurs on earth or accident in yourselves which was not already recorded in the Book before we created them.”
Indeed, all natural catastrophes from earthquakes to tornadoes seem hard to reconcile with a benevolent God, especially as they seem to be visited on particularly poor, and often Muslim, countries. During the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 literally thousands of people died, many in churches as they prayed, and these deaths had a profound effect on the eighteenth century, particularly on writers like Voltaire. Why were so many innocent people killed? Why were the brothels spared, while pious churchgoers were punished?
Eighteenth-century deists, as we saw earlier, exaggerated Islam’s rationality, pointing to the fact that Muhammad did not perform any miracles. It is true: throughout the Koran Muhammad says he is a mere mortal unable to perform miracles, he is only God’s messenger (suras 29.49, 13.27–30, 17.92–97). Despite these disclaimers, there are at least four places in the Koran that Muslims believe refer to miracles:
1. The clefting of the moon: “The hour has approached, and the moon has been cleft. But if the unbelievers see a sign, they turn aside and say, ‘Magic! that shall pass away!’” (sura 54.1, 2).
2. The assistance given to the Muslims at the battle of Badr: “When you said to the faithful: ‘Is it not enough for you that your Lord helps you with three thousand angels sent down from high?’ No: if you are steadfast and fear God, and the enemy come upon you in hot pursuit, your Lord will help you with five thousand angels with their distinguishing marks” (sura 3.120, 121).
3. The night journey: “We declare the glory of Him who transports his servant by night from Masjidu ‘l-Haram to the Masjidul-Aqsa [i.e., Mecca to Jerusalem]” (sura 17.1).
4. The Koran itself, for Muslims, remains the great miracle of Islam (sura 29.48).
The traditions are full of Muhammad’s miracles, curing the ill, feeding a thousand people on one kid, etc.
As our knowledge of nature has increased, there has been a corresponding decline in the belief in miracles. We are no longer prone to think that God intervenes arbitrarily in human affairs by suspending or altering the normal workings of the laws of nature. As our confidence in our discoveries of the laws of nature has increased, our belief in miracles has receded.
David Hume argued in the following manner:
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air;…unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happens in the common course of nature…. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle….
The plain consequence is… “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.”
