There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

By Auguste Meyrat. The fine-tuning argument for God, which details how a multitude of physical variables come together to enable human existence, is among the strongest an apologist can make from the facts of science. The odds of such a universe arising randomly are infinitesimal and thus strongly point to an omniscient and omnipotent Intelligence. Some people misconceive God as an anthropomorphized myth (or "Sky Daddy") like Zeus or Odin, flying around and performing miracles, not as a Prime Mover outside time and space with the capacity to affect physical reality. Many skeptics reject the fine-tuning argument, however, because of a misconception of science itself. They believe that some expert or sophisticated robot will eventually show that the universe is the product of impersonal forces. Surely, some physicist will prove that our universe was the product of currently unknown natural phenomenon, not an Intelligent Designer. Writer and classicist Spencer Klavan argues in his new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith, that not only does this rebuttal fixate on secondary causes instead of primary ones, it also betrays an understanding that is completely out of sync with modern physics. The notion of a scientific method where phenomena can be observed and tested has largely been superseded. Rather, we have reached a point where the lines between objectivity and subjectivity have become blurred, and human participation in creation ends up playing a large role. Before Klavan reaches this epiphany, he begins with a brief but beautiful history of Western science, starting with sages of the ancient world, who came up with theories (not myths!) that would account for the cosmos. In their vigorous deductions and speculations, early Greek philosophers like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Empedocles effectively laid the groundwork for giants like Aristotle to develop a comprehensive model of the cosmos. For centuries, this model was sufficient. But in the Middle Ages, it came under renewed scrutiny and eventual criticism by men like Jean Buridan and Nicholas Oresme who wondered about the forces that led to the movement of bodies. Those movements were attributed to various spirits that "flew about on invisible wings of desire to get where they were going." During the Renaissance, Copernicus and Galileo finally produced a model of the world that accounted for the actual position of bodies and followed a discernible pattern. This idea was then refined and expanded by other legendary scientists such as Kepler, Bacon, and especially Newton who finally solved the mystery of the movement of bodies. Although a devout believer himself, Newton inadvertently inspired the many ideological iterations of Scientism that came to constitute the foundation of modern industrialized culture. Every aspect of life was reinterpreted through a materialist lens and subjected to ostensibly scientific principles. Soul and spirit were cast aside, resulting in some of history's most inhumane - and murderous - social systems. Meanwhile, physicists continued to make new discoveries, specifically in the areas of electricity and atomic theory. In addition to matter, scientists like Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell would demonstrate how energy played a key role in physical laws: "Maxwell's electromagnetisim was making impossible demands on the Newtonian physics that was supposed to govern objects, straining the older system to its breaking point." Einstein would finally usher in a new era in science when he "proceeded to take physics down to the studs and rebuild it" by declaring that "Matter could become energy." According to Klavan, the significance of this idea lay in its "changing [the physical world] from an empty grid of space containing matter into a seething ocean of fluctuating energy." This in turn led to a generation of physicists studying the behavior of atoms, atomic energy, and light. Again, familiar...