Universe 'too queer' to grasp: Dawkins

Only 78 years after his fellow evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane
suggested that "the universe is not only queerer than we
suppose, but queerer than we can suppose,"¹ Oxford
University's Professor for the Public Understanding of Science,
Richard Dawkins has told a global conference that the
"Universe may be just `too queer' to understand." The
reason, Dawkins explained, is that we are living in a "`middle
world' ... the narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal
as opposed to the queerness that we judge to be very small or
very large." He then asked, "Are there things about the
Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle,
ungraspable in any mind, however superior?"

But as Phillip E. Johnson commented on Haldane's
suggestion, "For some obscure reason, Darwinists like to quote
that statements although Darwinism asserts that the realm of
life is not queerer than we can suppose but at bottom very
simple and commonsensical. All it takes to make a world of
living things, according to the theory, is variation, natural
selection, changing environments and long periods of time. But
that is nineteenth-century science.... When biology finally has
its quantum revolution, our view of life and its origin will change
profoundly."²

Dawkins is but one among many rationalists who has poured
scorn on the famous statement of the early Church Father
Tertullian (c.160-220 AD), on the doctrine of the Trinity,
"I believe because it is absurd."³ Tertullian's point was
that because the Trinity seemed absurd from a human
perspective, no one would have invented it, so it must be
divinely revealed,"⁴ But if the Universe is "`too queer'
to understand," and there are "things about the
Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle,
ungraspable in any [finite] mind, however superior," as
Dawkins says, then Tertullian would be right, after all!

Then paradoxical doctrines of Christianity, like the Trinity,
while they may seem "queer" to rationalists, whose minds are
only reliable for the "Middle world," would be just what one
would expect of the "very large," that is, infinite. This
is in fact the teaching of the Bible, e.g. Isaiah 55:8-9,
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways
my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my
thoughts than your thoughts."

So Dawkins is unwittingly groping towards the Christian view of
reality. To paraphrase the agnostic astronomer Jastrow, "For
the [atheist] who has lived by his faith in the power of reason,
the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains
of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he
pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of
theologians who have been sitting there for centuries"!⁵

Stephen E. Jones
"Problems of Evolution"

References:
1. Haldane, J.B.S., "Possible Worlds: And Other Essays,"
[1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.286.
Emphasis in the original.

2. Johnson, P.E., "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds,"
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1997, p.95.

3. Dawkins, R., "A Devil's Chaplain: Selected Essays by
Richard Dawkins," [2003], Menon L., ed., Phoenix: London,
2004, reprint, p.164.

4. Erickson M.J., "Christian Theology," [1983], Baker: Grand
Rapids MI, 1988, Fifth Printing, p.342.

5. Jastrow R., "God and the Astronomers," [1978], W.W.
Norton: New York NY, Second Edition, 1992, pp.106-107.