Return of the God Hypothesis: Breakthroughs in Physics, Cosmology, and Biology Seeking Evidence for the Existence of God

by Stephen C. Meyer

In fact, one finds evidence of this concern to check human insight and intuition against empirical evidence going back farther, into the late Middle Ages. As early as the thirteenth century, the Oxford theologian and philosopher Robert Grosseteste, along with his famed student Roger Bacon,66 developed scientific methods of inference

such as the method of “Resolution and Composition” and methods of testing causal hypotheses such as “Verification and Falsification.” The latter closely resembled the modern scientific method of “isolation of variables.”67 These methods reflected both an early interest in the systematic study of natural phenomena and a recognition of the limits of human reason unaided by observation of the world. Scientists today use both these methods of hypothesis testing. Accordingly, the distinguished Oxford University historian of science Alistair C. Crombie calls Grosseteste “the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford, and in some ways, of the modern English intellectual tradition.”68 Grosseteste was also one of those theologians who helped to recover and reemphasize the doctrine of creation during the late medieval period. He lectured on numerous biblical books and especially on the book of Genesis.69

Ockham’s Razor Another thirteenth-century theologian who contributed to the development of scientific method was William of Ockham (Fig. 1.7). He is best known today for his famed “razor”—the methodological principle that encourages scientists to avoid multiplying unnecessary explanatory entities and, in that sense, to favor simpler hypotheses. William of Ockham also emphasized the contingency of creation and its dependence on the will of God, its creator.70 Ockham’s razor and his famed dictum—“Never posit pluralities [many explanatory enti...

Time and time again scientists writing during the scientific revolution and the philosophers and theologians writing in the centuries leading up to it likened nature to a book, a clock, or a law-governed realm (Fig. 2.1).

Three metaphors used to describe nature during the scientific revolution: A book. A clock. A law-governed realm.

The Book of Nature Early in the Christian era, theologians began referring to nature as a book, one that they likened to the Bible in its ability to reveal the attributes of God. Just as the book of scripture told of God’s character and plan, so too did the book of nature

reveal God’s power and wisdom.1 As early as the third century, the Christian monastic Anthony the Abbot referred to “created nature” as a “book,” one always at his “disposal” whenever he wanted “to read God’s words.”2 Another early church father, Basil the Great, similarly argued, “We were made in the image and likeness of our Creator, endowed with intellect and reason, so that our nature was complete and we could know God. In this way, continuously contemplating the beauty of creatures, through them as if they were letters and words, we could read God’s wisdom and providence over all things.”3 Other influential Christian theologians including Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, and later Thomas Aquinas routinely employed the metaphor of two books.

Moreover, scriptural texts such as Psalm 19, in the Old Testament, and Romans 1, in the New Testament, seemed to support this common usage. Psalm 19 affirms that “the heavens declare th...

pour forth speech.”6 In Romans 1, St. Paul argues that “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature [sometimes translated ‘wisdom’]—have been clea...

Nevertheless, since nature and scripture issued from the same source, namely, God, the early modern scientists assumed that both sources of revelation would ultimately align in either convergent or complementary testimony. Thus, Boyle, for example, never considered the possibility that the study of nature would undermine belief in God, but instead regarded devotion to the study of nature, like devotion to the study of scripture, as “an act

of Piety,”12 especially since he thought God desired “to have his Works regarded & taken Notice of.”13

As Boyle described nature: “’Tis like a rare Clock, such as may be that at Strasbourg, where all things are so skillfully contriv’d, that the Engine being once set a Moving, all things proceed according to the Artificer’s first design.”

In addition to rejecting appeals to substantial forms, Boyle discouraged appeals to the direct and singular activity of God to explain natural regularities. He did so because he thought such appeals subverted the attempt to understand the God-given causal powers of natural entities and thus the true, if only proximate, causal explanation for the regularities of nature.20

Intellectual historians and historians of science typically identify the shift away from the theistic foundations of modern science with three major developments in Western intellectual history: first, the Enlightenment idea that human reason could replace and function autonomously from religious belief;1 second, the increasing skepticism about the existence of God, or at least about the soundness of arguments for God’s existence, among many Enlightenment philosophers; and third, the rise of scientific materialism and with it both new norms of scientific practice and a worldview allegedly based on science that affirms matter and energy, rather than God, as the fundamental reality from which everything else comes.

and human beings had never observed any exceptions to them. As he noted: “Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happened in the common course of nature.”

While hume has a degree of rationalism his position leaves out a vaste realms of common experience. Historic studies , interpersonal relationships, insight, frirndship, trust, law all bring to bear conceptions and real life examples significantly more of the order of faith and spirit. Those realities when dismissed leave humans dead to exoration and inspiritation which are real and powerful realities. But they pale in compaison to the far deeper reality of God who transcend all dimension and all physical senses.

violate the laws of nature, and the laws of nature cannot be violated; therefore, miracles are impossible.

A categoricl rational logic error

reason

Or better said: cause of the Godless

With these three great figures—Darwin, Marx, and Freud—science seemed to answer many of the deepest worldview questions that, heretofore, Judeo-Christian religion had answered for people in the West. As I’ve explained somewhat aphoristically in conference talks: “Darwin told us where we came from, Marx told us where we are going, and Freud told us about human nature and what to do about our guilt.” All three claimed to base their theories on scientific evidence and analysis.

In any case, I show that, if true, these models have unexpected theistic implications of their own. No proof can establish any conclusion with certainty, since all proofs must make some assumptions. For now, though, it’s worth noting that a proof (in the case of the BGV theorem) and a strong indicator (in the case of the Hawking-Penrose-Ellis singularity theorems) have reinforced the testimony of observational astronomy: as best we can tell, the universe did have a beginning.

We apparently live in a kind of “Goldilocks universe,” where the fundamental forces of physics have just the right strengths, the contingent properties of the universe have just the right characteristics, and the initial distribution of matter and energy at the beginning exhibited just the right configuration to make life possible. These facts taken together are so puzzling that physicists have given them a name—the fine-tuning problem.

The mathematician and philosopher William Dembski

book The Design Inference, Dembski

As the British biologist and philosopher J. B. S. Haldane once said, “If mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I [would] have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true . . . and hence no reason for supposing my brain to be made of atoms.”23

Within our capacity to reflect upon our own thinking lay the truth of our spiritual core . We are much more than we seem as viewed from the outside of our temporal physical being.

God and the Astronomers, Cosmos and Creator, and The Science of God

Other possible books to read

To avoid an untenable and excessive rationalism, many have adopted fideism—a religious epistemology that affirms the sufficiency of faith without

Faith in God without absent any indication or prospect of evidence

But with developments in the philosophy of science showing how evidence can provide strong support for a hypothesis without having to prove it absolutely, and with mounting evidence indicating the universe had a beginning, this defensive intellectual stance now seems unnecessary. The discovery that the universe had a beginning not only allows us to harmonize scientific and theological beliefs about ultimate origins; it provides strong epistemic support for theism. The scientific evidence and theoretical developments pointing to a beginning of the universe have helped to revive the God hypothesis.

Premise of this book as rendered by author.

In the United States, the currently reigning understanding of the separation of church and state has come to mean that the Constitution forbids any discussion of God in the public square. Some contemporary

Identification of current media a public culture opposing God.

advocates of strict separation go further. They react vehemently against any public discussion of ideas that might express a theistic perspective or, even more modestly, that might have implications supporting one. For this reason, our academic and media culture regards the possible theistic implications of the theory of intelligent design as a reason to reject it outright—and even to censor and stigmatize its proponents.

More concerning fear of God in media and American culture.

Unfortunately for proponents of naturalism, the laws of physics do not, and cannot, explain either the fine tuning of the constants of proportionality within the

laws of physics or the fine tuning of the initial conditions of the universe. Indeed, the fundamental laws of physics cannot, in principle, explain why the constants of proportionality have the values that they do.

As I explained in Chapters 7 and 8, (1) the structure of the laws allows them to have other values and (2) the specific values of the constants represent features of the laws themselves, not aspects of nature that the laws could conceivably explain. Similarly, the laws of physics do not explain why the universe had the precise set of initial conditions it did. The laws apply to those material conditions, and the laws must pre...

after the beginning of the universe. But the laws do not ex...