God the Geometer: How Science Supports Faith

GOD THE GEOMETER: How Science Supports Faith by Thomas J. McAvoy. Resource Publications, 2024. 180 pages. Paperback; $23.00. ISBN: 9798385208272. *Thomas McAvoy, a chemical engineering professor for nearly forty years, chose to pursue how science supports faith in the years following the tragic death of his first wife. This left him seeking answers to questions about how God interacts with us and allows suffering. His Roman Catholic faith influences his writing and gives it a distinct style, different from typical Protestant books on science and faith. I appreciate many of McAvoy's insights. However, his goal of demonstrating that science truly supports Christian beliefs is a bold, wide-scope endeavor that may not be persuasive to every reader, since this concise book briefly summarizes McAvoy's thoughts on a range of topics: the big bang, fine-tuning of the universe, the solar system, and evolution, with digressions on free will and quantum indeterminacy, natural and moral evil, and miracles. *One expression that McAvoy often uses is the "design imperative," something his engineering mind has latched onto in reference to the design of something to "perform a specified task (subject to certain solution constraints) optimally." He repeatedly uses this phrase in his discussions of modern scientific findings and theological views, arguing that God created a physical universe with apparent order and laws that allow for free will. In such a universe, natural evil and thus human suffering will be inevitable. McAvoy is familiar with Harold Kushner's work, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and he finds common ground with the Rabbi, who experienced deep suffering from his own son's disease. Both view God as not personally responsible for human suffering from natural evils since God created a world in which free will is possible and thus random and chance events will take place. *McAvoy takes the reader through exciting findings of modern cosmology, that is, the confirmation of the big bang. Studies of cosmic microwave background radiation allow us to infer the earliest moments of the universe, beginning in a hot, dense state, rapidly expanding and cooling to yield a cosmos in which star and planet formation could take place only if many factors were finely tuned. Appealing to a multiverse to explain the fine-tuning is not very convincing to McAvoy, who claims that "God's design imperative" is a better explanation. In other words, he sees Christian belief in a Creator God aligning much better with scientific findings than appealing to numerous undetectable universes. *The most interesting part of the book for me is the discussion of biological evolution. It is obvious that McAvoy is well read in this area. He begins by critiquing Harvard paleontologist Stephen Gould's claim that if the history of evolution could be re-run, it would most likely not result in intelligent life. McAvoy is strongly persuaded by biologist Simon Conway Morris's arguments of convergent evolution. Morris holds that evolution is a process that leads inevitably to certain features, including intelligent life. McAvoy rejects Daniel Dennett's claim that evolution is a purposeless algorithm. Amazingly, he finds himself in agreement with Richard Dawkins on the claim that moral altruism arises naturally out of the evolutionary process. Unsurprisingly, he finds much in common with Michael Ruse, author of Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?, and who is quite critical of Dawkins's narrow views of Christianity. McAvoy's engineering mind leads him to emphasize that there are tradeoffs in a universe that allow free will, and one of those will be natural evil or human suffering. This is part of the "design imperative" view he emphasizes. For him, biological evolution fits neatly into this view. *McAvoy digresses to discuss intelligent design (ID), focusing on two competing authors: Michael Behe and Kenneth Miller. Behe is one of the best-known proponents of ID and has used the concept of irreducible complexity to argue in favor of design. Miller is a well-known proponent of theistic evolution and a critic of Behe. McAvoy finds Miller far more compelling and in alignment with his own views. He focuses on the example of blood clotting as an extremely complicated biological process that appears to be irreducibly complex. Yet Miller uses the work of molecular biologist Russell Doolittle to show how it could have evolved. Furthermore, the presence of pseudogenes in our DNA supports an evolutionary scenario and makes ID an unsatisfactory approach. McAvoy concludes that ID is not a valid science. *He then discusses how God intervenes in this world, often in ways that involve spiritual matters and rarely by overriding natural laws in the form of miracles. McAvoy claims that the latter must be rare for us to truly be creatures that have free will. He argues that if God often performed miracles, we would depend on those instead of accepting a natural world governed by physical laws and principles. His digression on free will and quantum indeterminacy is meant to establish how determinism is not possible in this universe. The fact that the microscopic realm is governed by probabilistic rules, rather than deterministic ones, allows for nondetermined outcomes, and thus allows for free will and limits how God interacts in the world. This argument is a bit unsatisfying to me, since it does not consider the role of our minds and consciousness, which still defy adequate scientific explanation. Nor does it allow for God interacting in other ways that we cannot understand. McAvoy is not a deist, but he does appear to limit how God works in this world. *I also found that the final two chapters on miracles diminish the thrust of the book, rather than add to it. While McAvoy wants to show that there is scientific evidence to support miracles having taken place, his choices of the Shroud of Turin, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Eucharistic miracles, and others reveal his deeply Catholic perspective and give a parochial twist in the book. I can appreciate that miracles have indeed occurred, because I am already a Christian who believes in miracles. But I doubt that skeptics will be impressed by the chapters on miracles. Most Christians believe that the greatest miracle is the Resurrection and our resulting salvation through faith in Christ. The author may agree, but that gets lost in his focus on other matters. McAvoy concludes by emphasizing once again the "design imperative" and how all the scientific evidence presented affirms it. God is the grand Geometer who designed this universe and science affirms faith in him. Overall, I recommend the book as a worthwhile read for anyone interested in science and faith and particularly in the topic of human suffering. *Note *1Joseph Shigley et al., Mechanical Engineering Design, 7th ed. (McGraw Hill, 2004), 5. *Reviewed by Steven Ball, professor of physics, LeTourneau University, Longview, TX 75602.