Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe

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Desperate attempts have also been made by influential cosmologists to avoid the obvious theistic implications of a universe that had a definite beginning. In particular, Meyer uses his considerable skills in philosophy to debunk the lofty-sounding proclamations of celebrity cosmologists such as Lawrence Krauss, the late Stephen Hawking, and others, who have sold millions of books with headline-grabbing titles like A Universe from Nothing and The Grand Design. Meyer provides the following analogy to rebut the canned GOTG contention that is nowadays used against the proponents of Intelligent Design. He comments: The likes of atheist Richard Dawkins have written computer programs that purportedly show how natural selection is supposed to act on random mutations, over countless generations, to create biological information. They do no such thing. Far from it. The computer program constantly selects sequences against a final, preselected target. This includes iterations of random letters culminating in the phrase ‘Methinks it is a weasel’.

Meyer relates how many of the great astronomical minds of the era found such origin stories “philosophically repugnant” and went to great lengths to repudiate them. In fact, the distinguished British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle coined the phrase “Big Bang” as a term of derision. He countered the idea of the universe having a definite beginning with his own “steady state” theory of a universe that was infinitely old. This was the conservative view among scientific materialists at the time. Although they changed the enzymatic reaction a bit, this comes very close to being what Meyer tells the reader has not been done. He goes on from there to approvingly quote Christian de Duve as he discussed the biochemical challenges in the study of life’s origin: “Hitching the components together in the right manner raises additional problems of such magnitude that no one has yet attempted to do so in a pre-biotic context.” The footnote shows that this quote is from a book published in 1996. Perhaps, no one was carrying out such studies in the mid-1990’s but that is not true today.Since his Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer has been a beacon of humility, humanity, and courageous thinking in that ever-changing interface between science and religion. His new book does not prove the presence of a designing intelligence or supermind, but it certainly renders the “God hypothesis” more plausible, coherent, and respectable. Thoughtful people need no longer assume materialism, mechanism, and meaninglessness. Turns out: anything but. Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice University, author of The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge. This seems to be such an obviously poor and illogical argument that I find myself wondering if I am missing something profound. But let’s break it down. Meyer’s core argument is that our universe and the life in it are improbable – so statistically improbable as to defy any explanation other than that God designed and created it. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this: Meyer’s thesis hinges entirely on that alleged improbability. There will always be things we haven’t yet figured out. There will always be a precipice, beyond which is something mysterious and seemingly impenetrable. And there will always be those who stand on the edge and give up on the process and think, I guess God did it. Then we get to the science. Meyer asserts, based on three “scientific discoveries,” these key ideas underlying his argument:

Every scientific assertion of an explanation declares false other explanations which have not yet been falsified. That’s what assertions of explanation normally do–they assert that other things aren’t the explanation. A hundred years ago our best and brightest argued over whether our galaxy was the only one, and whether the universe was older than we now know our own planet to be. We knew a lot – and, it turns out, we knew almost nothing. Meyer’s challenge to the current consensus is comparable in magnitude to that of Copernicus’ in 1543.Like Copernicus, Meyer compels us to rethink our entire understanding of the cosmos. His book provides overwhelming evidence in supportof “the God hypothesis. Leonard Sax, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania; New York Times bestselling author. Meyer is a science historian, and his account of the evolution of scientific theory regarding the origin of our universe is readable, detailed, and interesting. Most of what we think of as modern cosmology is quite modern, much of it less than a hundred years old, and some of it only a few decades old. It’s sobering to realize how much of what we know we figured out in just the last 50 years.Meyer’s book is a masterclass, lucidly exploring every alternative from multiple points of view. It persuasively shows that the God Hypothesis is the best explanation of the fine-tuned, information-laden universe.The book does irreparable damage to atheist rhetoric. John C. Walton, PhD, DSc, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Research Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews In the future, some young person is going to laugh when someone mentions “God,” because he read Stephen Meyer and knows how that turned out. The dGRNs govern the timing and expression of genetic information during animal development. As Meyer explains, “These networks of genes and gene products function much like integrated circuits and ensure that the developing organism produces the right proteins at the right times to service the right types of cells during embryological development” (p. 311). Some critics have argued that religious belief is a drag on scientific thinking, effectively a science stopper, and that the achievements of early modern scientists only came when they separated their religious beliefs from their studies. Others have asserted that there is no relationship between science and the Christian worldview. After all, religion was dominant at the time, so it is hardly surprising that most scientists also were religious. He realizes that the presence of God was not incidental; it was part and parcel of the everyday scientific reasoning of the early modern scientists.