In Name Only: Why Atheistic Scientists Must Believe in God

Hebrews 1:3
…and He upholds the universe by the word of His power…

In his book, Redeeming Science, Vern Poythress begins with this provocative statement:

All scientists—including agnostics and atheists—believe in God. They have to in order to do their work. It may seem outrageous to include agnostics and atheists in this broad statement. But by their actions people sometimes show that in a sense they believe in things that they profess not to believe in (13).

And why is belief in God necessary? Scientific laws/regularities. He writes,

The regularities that scientists describe are the regularities of God’s own commitments and actions. All scientists believe in the existence of such regularities. And in all cases, whatever their professed beliefs, scientists in practice know that the regularities are “out there.” Scientists in the end are all “realists” with respect to scientific laws. Scientists discover these laws and do not merely invent them (14, 16).

Given the existence of scientific laws, Poythress gives a list of “divine attributes” found in scientific laws, which are likewise found in God. I will summarize them here.

1. Omnipresence (all places) and eternity (all times) – A law holds for all times and all places (17).
2. Immutable (unchanging) – A law that holds for all times would mean that it is unchanging, because it is the same law throughout all time (17).
3. Ideational (immaterial/conceptual) – A law is immaterial and invisible. You can’t touch it, smell it, taste it, hear it, or see it. Yet, you know it by its effects (i.e. – jumping off of a skyscraper) (18).
4. True – Laws are absolutely true (18).
5. Omnipotence (all powerful) – The universe conforms to laws already there. Laws hold because they “have teeth.” Events do not escape their dominion or hold. Since laws are universal (# 1), they cannot be violated (this does not invalidate miracles, however) (18).
6. Transcendent and immanent – A law transcends the creatures of the world by exercising power over them, conforming them to its dictates. It is immanent in that it touches and holds in its dominion even the smallest bits of this world (19).
7. Personal - *See explanation below
8. Knowable and incomprehensible – We can know a law, yet we cannot know it exhaustively (for example, how? or why?) (20-21).
9. Good – Laws may be subtle, but they are not perverse. They “play fair” (23).
10. Beauty – Beauty can be found in their simplicity (23).
11. Righteousness – People may try to disobey laws, but will suffer for it (i.e. – jumping off of a building). This is a built-in righteousness in which laws lead to consequences (24).
12. Trinitarian – Law is a form of the word of God. The Father is the speaker, the Son is the word spoken, and the Spirit is the breath of God that carries the word out. Laws have both unity and diversity, just as the Trinity has unity (one God) and diversity (three persons) (25-26).

Given these 12 examples, Poythress writes,

Many agnostic and atheistic scientists by this time will be looking for a way of escape. It seems that the key concept of scientific law is beginning to look suspiciously like the biblical idea of God. The most obvious escape, and the one that has rescued many from spiritual discomfort, is to deny that scientific law is personal. It is just there as an impersonal something (19).

But why can a law not simply be impersonal?

1. Law implies a Law-giver. Someone must think the law and enforce it (19).
2. Laws are rational. They are accessible to human understanding. Rationality belongs to persons (unlike rocks, trees, or sub-personal animals). Therefore, if laws are rational, then they are personal (20).
3. Laws can be articulated, expressed, communicated, and understood through human language. Laws are able to be articulated, paraphrased, translated, and illustrated. Language is one of the characteristics that separates humans from animals. Language, like rationality, belongs to persons. Therefore, if laws can be communicated using language, then they are personal (20).

At this point in the chapter, Poythress has presented at least 12 divine attributes that exist in scientific laws, which also exist in God. Yet the question that next arises is this: “Are we divinizing nature? Are we turning the created into the divine?” Poythress begins answering by clarifying that laws are not a part of the created world. He writes,

Speech referring to the created world is not necessarily an ontological part of the world to which it refers (21).

So what exactly are laws then? And what does speech have to do with them? Poythress explains, writing,

In addition, let us remember that we are speaking of real laws, not merely our human guesses and approximations. The real laws are in fact the word of God, specifying how the world of creatures is to function. So-called “law” is simply God speaking, God acting, God manifesting himself in time and space. The real mistake here is not a matter of divinizing nature, but of refusing to recognize that the law is the law of God, nothing less than God speaking. We are confronting God (emphasis mine).

Cornelius Van Til wrote along the same lines when he once wrote,

The regularity of the laws of nature is due to the obedience of the facts of the created world to the behest of God…laws do not have their regularity in and of themselves without any act of God with respect to them. All force in the created universe acts in accordance with the forth-putting of the power of God that is back of it (Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 35).

Is this not what the writer of Hebrews tells us when he writes in Hebrews 1:3, “…and He upholds the universe by the word of His power?”

So in conclusion, atheistic/agnostic scientists know God and they don’t know Him. They have to assume His existence in order to do their work, yet they deny Him. However, Christians are not off the hook either. Poythress also writes,

Christians have sometimes adopted an unbiblical concept of God that moves him one step out of the way of our ordinary affairs. We ourselves may think of “scientific law” or “natural law” as a kind of cosmic mechanism or impersonal clockwork that runs the world most of the time, while God is on vacation. God comes and acts only rarely through miracle. But this is not biblical. “You cause the grass to grow for the live stock” (Ps. 104:14). “He gives snow like wool” (Ps. 147:16). Let us not forget it. If we ourselves recovered a robust doctrine of God’s involvement in daily caring for his world in detail, we would find ourselves in a much better position to dialogue with atheist scientists who rely on that same care (28).

Poythress concludes the chapter (p. 28-31) by providing various principles on how to witness to unbelievers in light of the fact that God confronts us in even the minute details of life, but I won’t list them here. Pick up a copy or download a free PDF version of the book from his website to read how to witness more effectively in this regard. If you purchase a copy, the first chapter alone is worth the books weight in gold.

Some concluding remarks:

Have you thought of this before–that scientific laws are God speaking? That gravity is not some impersonal force or law but the very immanent word proceeding from the mouth of God? Does this floor you? Humble you? Amaze you? Cause you to fall down and worship?