More Than the Natural World

Naturalism asserts that nature is the result of unguided, impersonal forces, and there is nothing beyond the natural world. A naturalist believes that order came from chaos and life arose by chance. Men are mutated monkeys with no future beyond their funerals. We come from something far from perfect, and the perfection by which we measure everything isn’t real.

But does naturalism adequately explain the existence of life and the human experience, or is there more to existence than the natural world? Should we agree with the nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that “God is dead”, or does existence make more sense if he’s alive?

The other day, while walking through my neighborhood, I listened to an episode of the podcast ID the Future, featuring an interview with David Berlinski — a philosopher and mathematician — about a collection of essays he compiled into a book critiquing the claim that natural forces fully explain our existence. For though scientific naturalists would have us believe men are the products of molecules coming together one at a time without the guidance of a mind, they don’t have any real grasp of which came first: the chicken or the egg, let alone DNA or protein (3). Man is physically made of and can’t live as we know him without trillions of cells, and these cells are chalk full of purposeful activity conducted by molecular machines called proteins, and this nano technology is directed by a code called DNA to keep us alive and well. As it turns out, the chain of nucleotide bases which make up the genetic code is put together by proteins, but the structure and function of proteins are determined by the instructions found in DNA, and so the system necessary for one cell to exist and self-replicate is irreducibly complex (4). Indeed, the essence of life is not reducible to a simple, singular substance, as Darwin mistakenly assumed it was, but it is fundamentally a functional and complex interdependency of parts coordinated by code. The egg doesn’t sufficiently cause the chicken, neither the chicken the egg, so what explains this pattern of birth to growth, and from growth to new birth? What explains the complex interdependency of genetic instructions and molecular production that undergird life?

Irreducible complexity and code are characteristics we never see produced by undirected processes but commonly found in intelligently designed products, like when engineers make microscopes and computer software, so that scientists can analyze the basic building blocks of life or the cause of someone’s death. The same telltale marks of intelligent design found in tools engineered for scientists to study life and death have also been discovered within the cell, but I wonder why scientists should care about life and death in the first place, if in the end, we all die and there will be no one around to care that we once lived?

At the close of the interview, David Berlinski mentioned that he had dedicated his book Science After Babel to his friend Stephen Meyer — a former geophysicist with a doctorate in the philosophy of science from Cambridge — who has often been professionally and publicly disparaged for arguing that man’s existence is better explained by mind than by impersonal natural forces. Berlinkski may hold his tongue from emphatically saying God is the best hypothesis for the origin of man, and yet he used his pen to dedicate his book to the man who does — a man he calls his friend (5). Where are the laws of nature to explain the meaning behind this friendship? If I’m reducible to the present moment and my physical environment, how have I been moved by the friendship of men nowhere near me? If something impersonal and uncaring made all that exists, and nothing exists beyond the natural world, then what am I to make of friendship and its unnatural impact on me?

And what am I to make of the man who is willing to give up his reputation to argue that men are more than mutated monkeys, and mindful creatures didn’t emerge from mindless matter without a guiding intellect? If there is no fundamental difference between the monkey and the man, why does the man wonder if he’s any different than the monkey and the monkey makes no fuss about the matter? Is the essence of man — which ponders where he comes from and inspires another man to write and dedicate a book to a friend — comprised of the same materials found in monkeys? Or is man clearly the outlier in this world? Why does only man engage in politics, write poems, and record podcasts for metaphysical purposes? If a man wishes he is more than the natural world and not the product of and predestined to be something that cares nothing of him, his longings are quite clearly beyond the natural world, so logically the natural world can’t adequately explain them.

I read books and listen to talks because I want to learn, but also perhaps, because I am trying to avoid facing my predicament. I have two small, active children who want me to run but it hurts to walk, for my left foot throbs from nerve damage, and so does my right hip from a torn labrum and degeneration. Who longs to think of this? But what I do long for is more than this natural world can give me, even if it could heal my foot and hip. I long for someone I’m not. There is a part of me that would prefer to deny his existence, but if he doesn’t exist, how does he have the power to show me that I should be lowly, even if I rise in this natural world? I read Senior Vice President on my new business cards, and while there is a part of me that wants others to see it, there is another part of me who wishes I was the sort of man who would remove it. There is nothing wrong with being given this title, of course, and yet I can see someone better than me in my shoes who never mentions his status in speech, signatures, and such — one who is superior to all but identifies as a servant. If there is nothing perfect above me, which makes me aware of something better than myself, then why am I always thinking of him? “The cause of something perfect cannot be less than perfect,” so my conception of perfection cannot come from my own imperfect self (6).

I can listen to a podcast about the brilliance of nature and see that nature must come from something brilliant, or I can listen to my conscience and deepest longings and find that I cannot be fully satisfied by anything in the natural world. Or I can listen to a song conceived by persons who believed in something supernatural, who with strings, cords, and voices cried out, “O my God, O my God, O my God, I need you,” and find tears in my eyes (7). This world is replete with design, which reveals that I exist for a reason, but then my existential questions and concerns make me feel estranged in this world — and then music and meaningful words being sung by beautiful voices move me to feel different than how I should feel if I was bound by my natural circumstances. If music doesn't point beyond space and time — toward something personal and eternal — then how can it move me to feel and believe, even if for just a moment, that nature and men come from something that had them both in mind, something which put the code in our cells and instructs our body to contain and be commanded by our consciousness, something in which we can put our hope? If we humans don’t have a higher purpose than monkeys, then why do we see that it is more honorable to be humble than haughty, and honest than honored, and why can music soften our hearts when the natural world tries to harden them?

The natural world is undeniable, but so is another world which I can’t see but am constantly feeling and thinking about. If we are reducible to thoughtless atoms, then how do we think about the natural world, and how does the natural world have characteristics which are best explained by foresight and purpose? Friends may one day die, but why should it make me cry if their lives aren’t more than their deaths? I am who I am and nothing more, but who is this who shows me who I should be, which is more than I choose to be? Sounds abound in the natural world, but if the natural world explains every sound, how does certain music uplift my soul above my natural circumstances?

In the beginning was … what? Something we wonder about but nothing wonderful? Or was it a Word of wisdom that made a world for men to wonder and wander so they might wish and grope for the love that made them and would come for them? Might you, O Lord, press upon me your perfection, which is how I know I was made for a purpose and am not perfect?

There is only one cause I know of that can create and arrange varied parts for a single purpose, and my reason intuits that something prior and superior to our intellect constructed us. There is only one person I know of who exceeds the perfection I sense above me, who does not share the imperfections of humanity, and he said he came to deal with our imperfections so his perfection can live within us. Perhaps the irreducible and interdependent parts necessary for us to have personalities come from united persons in eternity past. Perhaps God made man in his image so we could know God in the form of a perfect man who lays down his life for his imperfect friends. Perhaps God lived and then died so we could die and then live — so we could be born again with faith and hope and love that cannot be explained by naturalism.    

Footnotes and References

1. Spiritual Beliefs - Pew Research; Survey Results - Gallup International. It’s interesting that atheism isn’t prevalent in primitive, ancient, and medieval history or third world countries, but is mostly present in modern first world countries, where comforts and man-made contrivances abound.  

2. I don’t think humans are reducible to biology, but it is worth noting that the traditional claim that men and monkeys are ninety-nine percent genetically similar has been refuted by a recent study published by the science journal Nature which shows the genetic difference between people and primates to be roughly fifteen percent.

3. ID the Future: David Berlinski Challenges Prevailing Beliefs in Modern Biology and Physics

4. Irreducibly complexity, a term coined by biochemist Michael Behe, describes a system that has two characteristics: (1) it’s comprised of coordinated and well-matching parts, and (2) its function would be compromised if any part were removed. See Darwin's Blackbox for more details about and examples of irreducible complexity.

5. I highly recommend Stephen Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis, which is one of the clearest and most comprehensive and compelling scientific cases for theism I’ve read.

6. Kreeft, Socrates Children: Modern Philosophers, p. 18. summarizing Descartes argument from perfection

7. OMG by ONE HOUSE, Victor Thompson, and Morgan Williams