Science Affirms a Creator
By L. A. S.
THE claim so much put forward by atheists, that science is opposed to the teachings of Christianity, was recently emphatically denied by the most eminent scientist of Great Britain, Sir William Thompson, otherwise known as Lord Kelvin. In an address given at the University College, London, Lord Kelvin said that modern science, so far from being opposed to Christianity, is in thorough accord with it. A part of the report of his speech made by the London Times is as follows:— Science positively affirmed creative5power. Science made every one feel a miracle in himself. It was not in dead matter that they lived and moved and had their being, but in the creating and directive power which science compelled them to accept as an article of belief. They could not escape from that when they studied the physics and dynamics of living and dead matter all around. Modern biologists were coming once more to a firm acceptance of something, and that was a vital principle. They had an unknown object put before them in science. In thinking of that object they were all agnostics. They only knew God in his works, but they were absolutely forced by science to admit and to believe with absolute confidence in a directive power—in an influence other than physical, dynamical, electrical forces. Cicero had denied that they could have come into existence by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. There was nothing between absolute scientific belief in creative power and the acceptance of the theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Was there, he asked, anything so absurd as to believe that a number of atoms, by falling together of their own accord, could make a crystal, a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal? People thought that, given millions of years, these might come to pass, but they could not think that a million of millions of millions of years could give them unaided a beautiful world like ours. They had a spiritual influence, and in science a knowledge that there was that influence in the world around them. . . . Let no one, he urged, be afraid of true freedom. They could be free in their thought, in their criticisms, and with freedom of thought they were bound to come to the conclusion that science was not antagonistic to religion, but a help for religion. Lord Kelvin supplemented this report in the Times with the following statement:— In your report of a few words which I said in proposing a vote of thanks to Professor Henslow for his lecture “On Present-day Rationalism” yesterday evening in University College, I find the following: “Was there anything so absurd as to believe that a number of atoms, by falling together of their own accord, could make a crystal, a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal?” I wish to delete “a crystal,” though no doubt your report of what I said is correct. Exceedingly narrow limits of time prevented me from endeavoring to explain how different is the structure of a crystal from that of any portion, large or small, of an animal or plant, or the cellular formation of which the bodies of animals and plants are made; but I desired to point out that, while “fortuitous concourse of atoms” is not an inappropriate description of the formation of a crystal, it is utterly absurd in respect to the coming into existence, or the growth, or the continuation of the molecular combinations presented in the bodies of living things. Here scientific thought is compelled to accept the idea of creative power. Forty years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the country, if he believed that the grass and flowers which we saw around us grew by mere chemical forces. He answered: “No; no more than I could believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere chemical forces.” Every action of human free will is a miracle to physical and chemical and mathematical science. These words of England’s most eminent scientist have caused a great stir in scientific circles in that country. One man of note in making reference to them said: “Lord Kelvin, in effect, wiped out by a stroke of the pen the whole position won for us by Darwin.” Darwin denied the necessity of a Creator. Real science is truth, and Christianity is truth, and neither of these can be wiped out by the stroke of a pen. Christianity is, itself, the highest science.