ABSTRACT

There is literally "no room for God" in a deterministic universe, which is why atheism and science were seen as conjoined during the nineteenth century- the heyday of deterministic physics. Divine agency simply did not fit in since it was understood to be an irruption into the mathematical laws and physical processes by which the universe ran. The atomic theory is in a way a source of comfort to scientists and materialists, because it provides a background noise for the materialist intellect- a steady hum of assurance that the world can ultimately be explained as no more than atoms and the void. The physical universe supports life, in particular, human life. This is self-evident from the fact that humans are the ones making this observation and since scientists are human, the fact of the existence of human life is sometimes interpreted as a scientific fact.