Augustine Pamplany CST
Many modern day atheists take recourse to science to ground their atheism on logic and reason. However, there are many atheist-scientists who are led to faith by the rational compulsions of their science. American Scientist Michael Guillen (1959-) is one among them. Guillen is a Physicist, Mathematician and Astronomer. He was an Award-winning physics instructor at Harvard University and Emmy-winning science editor for ABC News. He appeared regularly on the popular television series, Good Morning America and he hosted the popular series Where Did It Come From? on the History Channel. He is a popular speaker on college campuses. His God is Not Dead events are very popular.
What makes his story interesting is his movement from atheism to faith in Jesus driven by science. Though his father was a Pentecostal minister, he grew up as a practical atheist until his scientific researches changed his worldview. For him “the words of Jesus sounded a great deal like the uniqueness of quantum physics.” His study of Christianity led to him to shed off his atheism completely. His latest book is titled, Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith. This book explains his fascinating journey from atheism to Christianity. The title of the books is a reversal of the popular formulation “seeing is believing,” as captured in St. Augustine’s famous saying, “I believe that I may understand (Credo ut intelligam).”
In this book, Dr Guillen lines up Science and Christianity along similar lines in regard to absolute truth. He opines that contrary to the popular claim that atheism is founded on reason, it is a matter of a kind of faith. “Atheism’s central conceit is that it is a worldview grounded in logic and scientific evidence. That it has nothing to do with faith, which it associates with weakness. In reality, faith is central to atheism, logic and even science.”
He considers the scientific knowledge about the world to be strange and mystifying. “Atheists commonly believe that science will ultimately demystify everything. But science’s worldview is becoming more mystical, not less. Witness supernatural-like concepts such as virtual particles, imaginary time and quantum entanglement. Even atheist Sam Harris admits: ‘I don’t know if our universe is, as JBS Haldane said, ‘not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.’ But I am sure that it is stranger than we, as ‘atheists,’ tend to represent while advocating atheism.’”
Dr. Guillen’s ultimate conclusion is that faith is the most powerful power in the universe and to some extent science is also dependent on faith.
