The Case for A Creator
By Lee
Strobel
Selected Excerpts
Because science had played such an instrumental role in propelling me toward atheism, I also devoted a lot of time to posing questions about what the latest research says about God. With an open mind, I began asking:
·
Are science and faith doomed to always be at war? Was I right to think that a science-minded
individual must necessarily eschew religious beliefs? Or is there a fundamentally different way to view the
relationship between the spiritual and the scientific?
·
Does the latest scientific evidence tend to point toward or
away from the existence of God?
·
Are those images of evolution that spurred me to atheism
still valid in light of the most recent discoveries in science?
When I first began exploring these issues in the early 1980’s, I found
that there was a sufficient amount of evidence to guide me to a confident
conclusion. However, much has changed
since then. Science is always pressing
relentlessly forward, and a lot more data and discoveries have been poured into
the reservoir of scientific knowledge during the past twenty years.
All of which has prompted me to ask a new question: does this deeper and
richer pool of contemporary scientific research contradict or affirm the
conclusions I reached so many years ago?
Put another way, in which direction—toward Darwin or God—is the current
arrow of science pointing now?
When I opened my mind to the possibility of an explanation beyond
naturalism, I found that the design hypothesis most clearly accounted for the
evidence of science. The “explanatory
power” of the design hypothesis outstripped every other theory.
Thanks to scientific discoveries of the last fifty years, the ancient kalam cosmological argument has taken on
a powerful and persuasive new force. As
described by William Lane Craig, the argument is simple yet elegant: first,
whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Second, the universe had a beginning. Therefore, the universe has a
cause. Even once-agnostic astronomer
Robert Jastrow conceded the essential elements of Christianity and modern
cosmology are the same: “the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly
and sharply, at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”
One of the most striking discoveries of modern science has been that the
laws and constants of physics unexpectedly conspire in an extraordinary way to
make the universe habitable for life.
For instance, said physicist/philosopher Robin Collins, gravity is
fine-tuned to one part in a hundred million billion, billion, billion, billion,
billion.
The cosmological constant, which represents the energy density of space,
is as precise as throwing a dart from space and hitting a bulls-eye just a
trillionth of a trillionth of an inch in diameter on Earth. One expert said there are more than thirty
physical or cosmological parameters that require precise calibration in order
to produce a universe that can sustain life.
This evidence was so powerful that it was instrumental in Patrick Glynn [Harvard-educated
academic and author of God, The Evidence]
abandoning his atheism. “Today the
concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis,” he
said. “It is the simplest and most
obvious solution to the anthropic puzzle.”
Similar to the fine-tuning of physics, Earth’s position in the universe
and its intricately choreographed geological and chemical processes work
together with exquisite efficiency to create a safe place for humans to live.
Numerous factors make our solar system and our location in the universe just
right for a habitable environment.
“If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we
could never have come into existence,” said Harvard-educated astrophysicist
John A. O’Keefe of NASA. “It is my view
that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.”
Complex microscopic contraptions, such as cilia and bacterial flagella,
are extremely unlikely to have been built piece-by-piece through Darwinian
processes, because they had to be fully present in order to function. Other examples include the incredible system
of transporting proteins within cell and the intricate process of
blood-clotting.
More than just a devastating challenge to Darwinism, these amazing
biological systems—which far exceed the capacity of human technology—point
toward a transcendent Creator. “My
conclusion,” said Dr. Michael Behe, “can be summed up in a single word:
design. I say that based on
science. I believe that irreducibly
complex systems are strong evidence of a purposeful, intentional design by an
intelligent agent.”
The six-feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body’s one hundred
trillion cells contains a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise
assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made. Cambridge-educated Stephen Meyer
demonstrated that no hypothesis has come close to explaining how information
got into biological matter by naturalistic means.
On the contrary, he said that whenever we find a sequential arrangement
that’s complex and corresponds to an independent pattern or function, this kind
of information is always the product of intelligence.
“Information is the hallmark of mind,” said Meyer. “And purely from the evidence of genetics
and biology, we can infer the existence of a mind that’s far greater than our
own—a conscious, purposeful, rational, intelligent designer who’s amazingly
creative.”
Many scientists are concluding that the laws of chemistry and physics
cannot explain our experience of consciousness. According to a researcher who showed that consciousness can
continue after a person’s brain has stopped functioning, current scientific
findings “would support the view that ‘mind,’ ‘consciousness,’ or the ‘soul’ is
a separate entity from the brain.”
Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse conceded that “no one, certainly not
the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer” to the consciousness issue.
Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist John C. Eccles concluded from the
evidence “that there is what we might call a supernatural origin of my unique
self-conscious mind or my unique selfhood or soul.”
But who or what is this master Designer? Like playing a game of connect-the-dots, each one of the six
scientific disciplines I investigated contributed clues to unmasking the
identity of the Creator . . . .
Unlike Darwinism, where my faith would have to swim upstream against the strong current of evidence flowing the other way, putting my trust in the God of the bible was nothing less than the most rational and natural decision I could make. I was merely permitting the torrent of facts to carry me along to their most logical conclusion.
The facts of science and history, then, can only take us so far. At some point, the truth demands a
response. When we decide not merely to
ponder the abstract concept of a Designer but to embrace him as our own—to make
him our “true God”—then we can meet him personally, relate to him daily and
spend eternity with him as he promises.
Excerpts from
By Lee Strobel
Published by Zondervan
Available April 2004
Interviews and information available from
McClure Muntsinger Public Relations
Jana Muntsinger, jana@mmpublicrelations.com,
804.754.2118