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

by Stephen C. Meyer

Of course, it does not follow from the truth of neo-Darwinism or some other materialistic evolutionary theory that a deity could not possibly exist. Even popular proponents of scientific atheism, including Dawkins and Nye, admit that science cannot categorically exclude that possibility.57 They do not deny the possibility of a designer whose creative activity is so masked in apparently natural processes that it escapes scientific detection. Yet for most evolutionary biologists such an undetectable entity hardly seems worthy of consideration. As Dawkins has argued, if the appearance of design can now be fully explained by natural causes, then surely it is simpler to attribute the appearance of design directly to such causes rather than invoking an additional factor, an undetectable designer.58 Although the existence of such a designer has remained a logical possibility, the vast majority of evolutionary biologists, and certainly New Atheists, have rejected the idea as an unnecessary and unparsimonious explanation. At the very least, neo-Darwinism makes “theological explanations” of life “superfluous,”59 as evolutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma writes.