Ideally, this is meant to be read alongside listening to China Ann McClain’s IGTV video of scientific evidence that god exists, but can also be read as a standalone piece of writing.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity, simply put, explains that massive objects create a distortion of space-time and this distortion is felt as gravity. Einstein, in his initial examination, assumed a static universe. In 1917 and prior, this was widely believed- that the universe was static. In cosmology, a static universe is one that is spatially and temporally infinite with space neither expanding nor contracting. In Einstein’s early proposed model of the universe, he assumed that the universe was temporally infinite but spatially finite, with a similar line of reasoning that Aristotle used. Employing this assumption, Einstein introduced a constant, lambda, to ensure the equations he developed for the theory of general relativity fit this assumption. This constant would later be known as the cosmological constant.
However, upon the discovery of the redshift-distance relationship and subsequent information brought about by Hubble and other astronomers, Einstein called this assumption and the cosmological constant his “greatest blunder” as these new discoveries pointed to an expanding universe rather than a static one.
Later in the video, McClain claims this constant was a “loophole” that Einstein attempted and then abandoned, but in modern physics it is still a relevant and important aspect of astrophysics. The cosmological constant is the simplest possible explanation for dark energy and is used in the current standard model of cosmology.
What are the implications of the expanding universe in regards to the conversation at hand? An expanding universe gives rise to the big bang theory. At one instant, the entire universe was condensed to a single point where the density of the universe and the curvature of space-time is infinite. The entire universe then expanded (and is still expanding) to become the universe we know today. Due to the nature of infinity, the math and physics break down in this instant. This point in time can be labelled t=0 and is known as a singularity; another singularity that exists in the universe is at the center of a black hole. Since physics breaks down at this point, we cannot predict or describe what happened at this instant and, thus, we also cannot predict or describe what happened prior to t=0. Because of this, according to Hawking, events before the big bang simply have no consequence on the current universe and thus, it can be negated from the current model of the universe. This leads to the understanding that, functionally, we can say that time had a beginning at the big bang.
The catholic church, notably, cited the big bang theory as evidence that god must exist, that there must be some divine intervention that there was a first mover (similar to the thought of Aquinas) or cause of the big bang, and that mover must be god. This is what McClain then references in the following statement; “every effect needs a cause.” This is often termed the cosmological argument- that god must exist due to universal causation or causality.
Astrophysically speaking, causality is the relationship between cause and effect such that the cause of any event must be in the event’s past light cone and is thus reducible to fundamental interactions.
McLain goes on to say that “Einstein clearly knew that if the universe had a beginning, it needed a cause. He found that information irritating, he said that himself.”… “He didn’t like the implications behind that.” After scouring the internet I could find no such proof of Einstein ever saying this or having this philosophy. The misquote and misinterpretation of his stance is concerning, if not predictable. Considering Einstein’s agnostic stance, he was not likely to have an adverse response to the beginning of the universe having a cause. After all, a cause of the beginning is not a direct indication that a god was behind it.
Oftentimes, religious biases lead us to believe that if we don’t understand something- if there is no substantial evidence or something is simply unknowable with our current technology and limitations- then it must be due to god. This is a version of the divine fallacy; a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes that a certain phenomenon (in this case the big bang) must occur as a result of divine intervention or a supernatural force because they don’t know how to explain it otherwise, or because science cannot yet explain it. This fallacy does not necessarily mean that the statement of “god caused the big bang” is untrue, but it does mean that the reasoning and logic of how you arrived at that conclusion is fallacious. However, as we will see later on, McClain will attempt to cover her basis on this front.
Further, she says “[Einstein] didn’t want to believe that the universe needed a cause.” It shows that she assumes that scientists, at the end of the day, must rely on belief rather than facts and evidence when this is not how science works at all. Additionally, the statement “needed a cause” brings about the assumption that there was no other way that the universe could come into existence; however, this is misleading. Since our universe is the only universe we have available for study, we do not know if the series of events leading to this universe is the only means to the development of any universe.
She claims that “The evidence backed up the fact that the universe was created.” This is completely untrue since all the big bang theory provides is that the universe, as we know it, started at t=0 as a singularity and subsequently expanded. None of the evidence points towards creation, it only shows us that we don’t yet know what the cause of the big bang was, or if there was an external cause in any case.
McClain briefly mentions the seemingly precise nature of the universe (also called the fine-tuning argument), but since she didn’t go into deep detail I will just reference the weak anthropic principle (WAP), the strong anthropic principle (SAP), carbon chauvinism and top-down cosmology as posited by Hawking. But again, all of these are simply ideas and suggestions, there is no way to be certain if the anthropic principle, either weak or strong, holds and they are certainly not to be taken as scientific evidence of a god. Although the strong anthropic principle rings of creationism, it is simply one suggested version of the anthropic principle and not to be taken as complete truth as there are many other, possibly more likely, concepts of the state of the universe.
She then describes how the universe itself came from nothing and thus god must have been the external driver of the universe coming into existence. However, as with pretty much all of this, it is not as simple as she describes. The complexities of this statement lies in the understanding of particle physics, grand unification, quarks, matter, antimatter and more. Since I don’t have a compelling background on particle physics, you can find salient explanations here and here. And again, I remind the reader of the divine fallacy. Just because we can’t explain a natural phenomena doesn’t mean we insert god as the only possible answer.
“We are left with an extremely powerful, extremely intelligent, precise, personal entity,” she goes on to claim after stating that nature, itself, could not bring about the universe (which in itself is not proven but if you misinterpreted the dawn of the universe, you would come to believe this to be true). Nothing so far stated has pointed towards an extremely powerful, intelligent, precise and personal entity being the sole and initial driver of the universe. These characteristics have been added into the conversation without citing the relevance with exception of the precise attribute; which she falls back to the fine-tuning argument to claim relevance. However, these characteristics aren’t proven to be necessary for the big bang, these are simply assumptions that she has made for her concept of the cause of the universe. These assumptions are carefully placed in her argument to lead the audience to think of the Christian (or otherwise Abrahamic) god, as these attributes are commonly ascribed to him. McClain then says that the creator must be personal as impersonal entities cannot make decisions and she cites the “very clear decisions” that “must have been made” to end up with a universe such as ours. Again, the fine-tuning argument comes up.
“[the creating entity] can’t be nothing but god,” she declares, again using the divine fallacy to drive her point. Interestingly, she almost considers the notion that the creator could be one of the gods of the thousands of other religions that exist, but she then asserts the existence of only one god with no proof or backing to it. Further, she cites the astronomer Robert Jastrow, a planetary physicist, NASA scientist and author. She describes his thought that the essential elements of the big bang theory line up with biblical creation and quotes his book, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe (1981).
However, Jastrow was a scientist of the belief that the big bang theory indicated the existence of some creator, not that he knew for certain that this was true. Additionally, Jastrow’s claims that the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world does not necessarily mean the bible is correct on all levels. Almost contrarily to his belief that there must be a creator and the astronomical evidence lines up with Christian teachings, Jastrow remained agnostic. McClain attempts to appeal to scientific authority, to point her audience to scientists who have the same beliefs as she does, but these are all just beliefs. Just because a renowned scientist believes something doesn’t automatically give the belief credence in the scientific landscape. In the same vain, can I not point to the numerous agnostic and athiest scientists and say then that since these people are scientists we must believe them automatically when they make any statements about any god?
She then goes on to talk about how we shouldn’t put science above god as science wouldn’t exist without god. “People think that science is somehow more reliable than god,” she goes on to say. I would ask, then, why she is appealing to scientific authority and attempting to use scientific arguments to prove that god exists. Reliability refers to the degree to which the results of any specification can be depended on to be accurate and is a key component of true science. The basis of science is to build and organize aggregate knowledge based on testable explanations and predictions of the universe. Science is constantly updating itself when new discoveries and technologies come about and thus the reliability is high. Science is predictable whilst the Christian (and Abrahamic) god acts unpredictably and erratically in many instances in the bible itself.
Humans have developed reasoning and logic to interact with one another and with the universe, and through reasoning, logic and repeatable experiments, we can come to objectively true conclusions. On the other hand, faith does not need logic and reasoning to stand; faith just asks you to believe and that’s it. So of course you don’t need science to prove faith; faith doesn’t need to be proven. And if faith could be proven, then it would simply be science. Science is more reliable than faith and, thus, science is more reliable than god.
When she speaks of how scientists discover things rather than create things, which is debatable in and of itself, she hints to the Watchmaker argument- a teleological argument that states that intelligent design implies an intelligent designer. The counter-argument to the watchmaker analogy is widely acknowledged and easy to come by, one example being in Dawkins’ 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker. You can find the in-depth counter-argument here.
“We can only survive under very narrow conditions,” she says, again alluding to her fine-tuning argument. She does not acknowledge the possibility of life outside of Earth and even if she did, I doubt that she would consider any other form of life to be relevant to the discussion apart from homo sapiens. She claims that god has given us Earth as “an oasis” and has given us science but neither of these statements are provably true. We can’t say if god has or hasn’t given us anything if we can’t prove he is real in the first place.
McClain seems offended that some people attempt to use science to disprove god’s existence in the same video where she attempts to use science to prove god’s existence. Science does not care about anyone’s biases or preconceived notions or what the experimenter wants the conclusion of their work to be. Science cares only about truth and the methodology used to arrive at that truth. Many times, Christians themselves have done significant scientific and theological research in an attempt to prove for once and for all that god exists and many times, these people arrive at the conclusion that the opposite is true. If you criticize the use of science to disprove god since, as you claim, science is unreliable, then why are you trying to use science to prove god if you know science is unreliable? Isn’t that the same level of offense against god? If god would be offended by people using something unreliable to disprove him, wouldn’t he also be offended by you using the same unreliable tool to prove him instead of taking his word on it and moving with faith alone?
On answering the question of ‘Who created god?’, McClain states that only things that came to be are subject to the law of causality and since god is eternal, he is not subject to this law. There is absolutely no evidence provided as to why she would think god is eternal other than circular logic and thus, there is no reason to take her claim that god is eternal at face value unless you refer to faith; which automatically negates the entire premise of attempting to prove god’s existence using science because science is not faith based. From this, we can say that it is possible if there is some external mover that caused the big bang, there is also the same possibility of a different external mover creating the initial one and so on and so forth, backwards into infinity.
To claim that science is looking for truth, but only the statements that you as a religious person deem as true, is laughable in and of itself. Especially considering, after making this statement, she goes on to note that humans always have biases, which she has been exhibiting every time she references her faith. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have biases, but as scientists, as logical beings, we have to be able to recognize our biases, understand where they come from, and be open to the fact that they may very well be wrong.
McClain does admit that she is speaking in scientific terms for the sake of her audience who wants more evidence and proof of god’s existence, but she also ensures the audience knows that at the base of it all lies her faith. As discussed previously, there is simply no way to prove one’s faith by using science and it’s okay to admit that you are driven by faith and not science. It’s not okay to use confirmation bias to present out of context, underexplained science to your audience as correct and as pointing to the unquestionable truth of your faith.
After some ramblings on objective truth and biases, McClain goes on to misunderstand atheism, defining atheism to be “a belief that god does not exist.” However, atheism is not centered around a belief at all, atheism is simply the absence of belief of any god. She claims that scientists teach with their biases (perhaps biases against women, biases against people of color, etc) on display but, historically, one of the most harmful educator biases is those based in religion.
On speaking about biases, she puts the following statement as a caption on the screen: “Einstein’s bias as a non-believer negatively affected his objectivity as a physicist, even though the evidence disproving his personal belief was irrefutable.” Here she gets a lot of things very wrong. There is a distinct difference between a belief system and a scientific assumption. Einstein made these relevant assumptions in and around 1917 while working on his theory of general relativity. These assumptions were based on the then scientific facts that were derived from what was known at the time with the available technology. In true scientific fashion, when more compelling evidence of the expansion of the universe became known, Einstein then used this to evolve his own theories and correct his own line of thinking. At the time these assumptions made there was no “irrefutable evidence” that the universe was expanding; that type of evidence only began breaking into the mainstream science in about 1922 with the Friedmann equations and later the Hubble-Lemaitre law. Following this was even more evidence from even more astronomers and scientists alike to the point we are at today, when the big bang theory is one of the most widely accepted theories of cosmology.
By this statement, McClain puts forward that Einstein was not wrong because of lack of evidence but he was wrong because of his position as a “non-believer [of Christianity]”. She paints a picture of Einstein being petty and wanting his own assumptions to be true to the point that he would be willing to mar his own equations to insert the constant lambda. She goes on to ask why must scientists “rearrange the truth to fit [their] own personal beliefs” when it is the religious person who would rearrange scientific truth in a desperate attempt to make it conform to their religion. Take, for example, the catholic church who, 400 years ago, prohibited the Copernican theory of the Earth’s motion to now endorsing the big bang theory with gusto as the latter aligns with their current beliefs. Apologetics paired with confirmation bias has always been the go-to response and will continue to be the go-to response for many religious folks attempting to reconcile their beliefs with science.
“If something doesn’t line up with the truth, that’s something that needs to be discussed,” she says. I agree that this is an absolutely correct statement, however, McClain’s “line up with the truth” means “line up with my beliefs about god”. Conflating absolute truth with one’s personal beliefs can hide the implied meaning behind statements like these. We cannot, as scientists, consider any one person’s beliefs to be truth unless the belief has gone through rigorous analysis (which, ironically, no longer makes it a belief if proven to be correct as it then becomes knowledge). There has most definitely been scientific concepts that have been cast aside by religious persons (or entire bodies) as they didn’t line up with their own personal beliefs.
Moreover, religious stances on science usually change with a changing global mindset. Take, for example, evolution. Until recent times many religious persons, particularly Christians, were taught that evolution was blatantly wrong and should not even be placed on school syllabi as it did not conform to the bible. But now, they would have you think that evolution was always part of their teachings because their mindset has changed with the scientific landscape. They can no longer blatantly deny certain things without the threat of people leaving the church. It leads to the question of why the church seems to evolve with science. If McClain is right, god would be annoyed at our use of science- something unreliable when compared to him- to change religion over time to reflect acceptance of scientific concepts that war with biblical beliefs.
“Evidence is needed when it comes to seeking the truth,” McClain says but immediately follows with, “Evidence is not a substitute for faith.” So, according to her, to find truth we need solid evidence but if that truth, backed up by solid evidence, does not line up with our faith, then it is trumped by that faith. At the very least, she is open about her position- that her faith is what truly leads her and not evidence. And for most, if not all, religious persons this is true, it is okay to have faith but you have to be honest about what that faith means to you. We cannot demand scientific evidence but when presented with scientific evidence revert to our faith as a trump card to dispel any uncertainty of our religion and, thus, god.
Do I think China Anne McClain intentionally presented her points this way? Not necessarily. I think she’s a bit out of her depth in the science realm and maybe shouldn’t be trying to explain cosmology and astrophysics that she doesn’t fully understand to her already largely biased audience. I also think that she has enough charisma to convince the layman of the points she attempts to make, even with the misinterpreted science and fallacies she presents. At the very least she is transparent with the position her faith in god has in her life, that is, above any evidence and above science.
