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

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Exhibiting deep and broad research, familiarity with recent developments, and forged in a life of debate and dialogue with those with whom Meyer differs, it is hard to imagine a more important book on this topic. Stephen Meyer is one of those generational thinkers whose courage, thought and influence are pervasive on the world-stage. Dr. JP Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University; Author, Scientism and Secularism. Then we get to the science. Meyer asserts, based on three “scientific discoveries,” these key ideas underlying his argument: Stephen Meyer has written a masterpiece. The evidence for God is extensive, and now much more accessible due to his lucid exposition. Scientists and philosophers who wish that God did not exist will hate this book. Newton would have loved it. Michael Newton Keas, Ph.D. in the History of Science, University of Oklahoma; author of Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion.

Let’s now assume that some form of life did come to exist by chemical evolution. Things do not get any better for the evolutionist. In fact, some evolutionists have admitted as much, as observed by Meyer: In any case, the fact that Meyer’s hypothesis doesn’t actually answer the questions science asks, and that it opens up a universe of new questions (where did God come from, how does God do what God does, what does the mathematics of God look like, etc.) in the process of not answering them, should give us reason to pause, at least. the genetic coding in DNA represents a kind of “functional” information that is unlikely to have arisen by chance. This is the core argument Meyer makes, and it can be compelling: accounts of extraordinarily improbable-seeming things can be powerfully persuasive. Meyer’s second claim is, I think, his strongest, and its defense constitutes the largest portion of his book.Your initial representation of his argument was fine, I daresay. But this is a very different argument you’re describing here. from the beginning (or shortly thereafter), various physical constants have had values that are unlikely to have arisen by chance – that the universe appears to be “fine-tuned”; and The error seems too obvious to be overlooked, too often emphasized by Meyer to be accidental, and, frankly, too flagrant to be wholly innocent. Again, perhaps I am misunderstanding his argument in some way which will be immediately evident when it’s explained to me. 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.

But no, we aren’t sure that the universe had a beginning. We admit that things – matter, energy, physical laws, the nature of space and time itself – were likely very different when the stuff of a billion trillion stars occupied a volume vastly smaller than a pinhead. (How many stars can dance on the head of a pin? All of them, it seems.) But we don’t know how they were different. Nor do we know what came before, nor what prompted the expansion, nor whether it happened exactly once or infinitely many times, or indeed whether or not it’s happening right now elsewhere in our own universe. We speak informally of the Big Bang as the beginning of our universe, but all we really know with confidence is that it was a moment in an evolving series of physical states. We don’t know what states came before, nor what states will follow our own.Moreover, it turns out that we live in precisely the kind of universe that can allow living things to exist in the first place, not to mention allowing human life to flourish. Specifically, if the strengths of the various forces of nature or the properties of the particles comprising the material universe were only very slightly different, we simply wouldn’t exist at all. This is known as the fine-tuning problem. Meyer reminds us that some of the best minds in the industry have been thinking deeply about it. Meyer’s book provides an especially valuable analysis of biological and cosmological fine-tuning arguments in a single, coherent narrative. Dr. David Snoke, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh

Our experience with all of these is that they are the product of intelligence. Specifically, they are the product of human intelligence.Over the past three decades, many evolutionary biologists have challenged a key tenet of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, namely, the idea that small-scale microevolutionary changes can be extrapolated to explain large-scale macroevolutionary innovations. For the most part, microevolutionary changes (such as variation in colour) merely use or express existing genetic information, while the macroevolutionary change necessary to assemble new organs or whole body plans requires the production of new genetic information. Recognizing this and other problems, in 2008 a group of sixteen evolutionary biologists met in Altenberg, Austria, to express their doubts about the creative power of the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection. They are known as the ‘Altenberg 16’…” (p. 195). Natural selection does not create biological novelty: the problem of specified complexity remains Premise Two: Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information. Put simply, Meyer’s argument here is based on the observation that the genetic code – the encoding of information in the DNA of living things – represents a particular kind of “functional” information storage mechanism that is unlikely to have arisen through purely natural processes. I find this the most unsatisfying of Meyer’s claims. 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. Some evolutionists have downplayed the role of new genes in the putative formation of new animal body plans and have instead focused on the supposed power of ‘rewired’ dGRNs in this role. This is especially claimed for the sudden appearance of novel animals during the Cambrian explosion.

What are we to make of this? The ‘self-reproducing molecule’, a pillar of evolutionistic imagination, is already dead on arrival. The self-reproducing molecule does not exist, and neither does the natural selection of molecules, let alone the prebiotic evolution of the first life. Meyer quips: “First, the process of natural selection presupposes the differential reproduction of already living organisms and thus a pre-existing mechanism of self-replication” (p. 179). Evolution does not explain the origin of novel biological information Any electrician or electrical engineer—indeed, anyone who works with actual circuitry and a power supply with current passing through the circuit—knows that successful rewiring requires well-informed decisions, that is, both information and intelligent design. What rewiring manifestly does not allow is random changes. That’s a great way to burn down your house or blow out the mother-board of your computer [emphasis in original]” (p. 317). The nylonase novelty that is not We are aware of numerous examples of the encoding of “functional” information in a structured form, from computer programs to grammars to all sorts of artificial symbolic schemes. I’m not going to play word games with SA, but I’m going to make a comment about arguments from ignorance, and why what Meyer is doing should be considered an example of such an argument.I think your parallel is not a very good one, because it ignores some pretty important differences between God and man, and between the known and the unknown. Try this: This thinking-person’s tour of the universe visits all the important discoveries without losing the reader in facts. Meyer pulls this off brilliantly by keeping it personal, putting faces to names and displaying each not only in historical context but also within his own search for meaning. Above all, his answer is personal — not blind, pitiless forces, but a Creator who is intimately involved in our lives. Douglas Axe, Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering Caltech; Maxwell Professor of Molecular Biology, Biola University, author of Undeniable: How Biology Conforms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed