100 Sermon Illustrations on Intelligent Design

What would Darwin have said about the growing intelligent design controversy in Ohio? We can't ask him, of course. He's been dead for 120 years. But there are tantalizing hints in Darwin's writings that he might just have surprised, even shocked, his present-day followers. Darwin was a lot friendlier to intellectual freedom than many neo-Darwinists have been.

Fellows of the Discovery Institute made national headlines this week when they argued in open hearings before the Ohio state board of education for teaching intelligent design alongside evolution. Intelligent design is the scientific theory that natural objects, like organisms, display the hallmarks of a purposeful, deliberate cause -- an intelligent agent -- capable of effects that no natural law or chance process could produce.

The response in much of the press against the intelligent design proponents and the board members who favor it has been vicious. Editorial columns of most Ohio newspapers cried, "Nonsense!" "A dangerous and unwise move," warned worried scientists in Ohio and elsewhere. "There's no place in the science classroom even to discuss proposals such as intelligent design, which depart from the strict naturalism of modern science" -- or so the alarmed editorials have claimed.

What's fascinating is that not all media observers react so hysterically. Commenting in TIME magazine, for instance, science writer Robert Wright noted that intelligent design advocates "have raised productive doubts -- and, in science, being productively wrong is nearly as valuable as being right." Going further, Wright notes that "no one knows how DNA began to replicate or how the universe got built in such a way that replication was possible. It's not crazy to think that such initial conditions were set by some intelligence for an overarching purpose that is still unfolding."

Could an Ohio high school biology student bring this TIME magazine article into her science classroom for discussion? More to the point, could she bring in Darwin's classic, the ORIGIN OF SPECIES itself?

And here's where one can't help but wonder what Darwin would have said about the Ohio controversy. Not many people have read more than a few pages of the ORIGIN OF SPECIES, if they've opened the book at all. But on the last page, Darwin says that life itself was "first breathed by the Creator" -- a phrase that would today give fits to civil liberties lawyers.

And there are other passages in the ORIGIN that should worry the Ohio opponents of intelligent design. In fact, the passage I'm about to read should be posted on the wall of every science classroom in the nation, as a motto upholding the principles of intellectual freedom in science. "For I am well aware," Darwin wrote, "that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question."

Now that's intellectual fairness: fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of the question. That's what many citizens in Ohio are struggling for -- and what, if he were around today, Darwin himself would tell the school board to do -- sounds good to me.

For further reading and information:

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, DEVELOPING A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW OF SCIENCE AND EVOLUTION (Tyndale House, 1999).

Robert Wright, "Darwinian Struggle," TIME, 11 March 2002.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 020214, "Students and Intellectual Freedom."

BreakPoint Commentary No. 020213, "Darwin's God."

Learn more about the Ohio State Board of Education Science Standards here.

Charles Darwin's ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE can be read here.

Visit the Discovery Institute's website to learn more about Intelligent Design theory.

The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA) fosters conversation about intelligent design among students, educators, and other interested parties.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Astronomer Paul Davies, though an unbeliever, has recently said this:

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort

of DESIGN, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical

judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is 'something behind

it all' is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of

physicists. This rather diffuse feeling could, I suppose, be termed

theism in its widest sense.

Hayword, p. 201.

Scientists are having to crack the genetic code all over again.

Since the 1960s, scientists have known that the DNA molecule is like a written message -- that it contains instructions for every living structure, from fish to flowers. But in higher organisms, the DNA code is broken up by sections of what looks like sheer nonsense -- long DNA sequences that don't code for anything at all.

Scientists have dubbed these sequences "junk" DNA.

Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University, even uses junk DNA to attack the idea of divine creation. How could God have directly created us, Miller argues, if the human genome is littered with genetic trash? An intelligent Creator wouldn't write nonsense into our genes.

But one researcher's junk can be another's jewels. At the same time Miller was attacking the notion of creation, other scientists were discovering that junk DNA does important work after all. It functions to correct errors and regulate genes, turning them on and off at appropriate times.

Science is discovering that nonsense DNA actually makes very good sense.

Who wrote the DNA code?

It seems the foes of creation spoke too soon -- and put their feet squarely in their mouths. As Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton argue in The Soul of Science, DNA actually provides remarkable evidence for creation, giving a new twist to the classic design argument.

The classic argument goes like this: Suppose you discover a watch lying on the beach. Would you conclude that it was created by natural forces -- by the wind and waves? Of course not. The type of structure we see in a watch is clearly the product of human intelligence. And if gadgets like watches require an intelligent origin, then so do living things.

The design argument was presented nearly two hundred years ago by the English clergyman William Paley, and it rests on an analogy between the order found in manufactured gadgets and in living things. Later Charles Darwin attacked the design argument, countering that natural selection could create the same kind of order. And there the issue rested for more than a century.

But today science offers a much more striking analogy than any Paley knew about -- namely, the identical structure in written messages and the DNA molecule. Suddenly the design argument has become much more compelling. We could restate it this way: Suppose you discover not a watch but a book or computer disk on the beach. Are there any natural forces capable of creating written messages?

None that we know of.

Evolutionists say that the DNA molecule originated by purely physical-chemical forces. But that's like saying a book was written by chemical reactions in the paper and ink. Or that a computer program was created by the magnetic forces in a computer disk. Nonsense.

The truth is that the DNA code is powerful scientific evidence that life is the product of intelligent design. It's an argument that is simple, easy to explain, and based solidly on ordinary experience. In all our experience, messages are written only by intelligent agents.

That's why it's good news that "junk" DNA is not junk after all. Instead, it's bursting with information. Which is striking evidence that its message was "written" by an intelligent Being.

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Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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GENERAL REVELATION: NATURE’S TESTAMENT

Hugh Ross

Reasons To Believe

Revelation is information, not persuasion, however persuasive that information may be. Some information about God, His character, and His redemptive plan is necessary for a person to establish a saving relationship with Him, to be sure, but the information is not what saves. The spiritual transaction does. God's Spirit enables the individual to recognize the personal, eternal implications of the information God reveals; the individual responds by humbly submitting to God's authority; God's Spirit connects the individual to the body of Christ and seals the connection.

God alone knows what information, including what quantity of information, each individual requires. Amy Carmichael writes of a young Indian woman who surrendered her life to Christ after hearing just fragments of two Scripture verses. I know an astronomer who spent 35 years studying all the books of the Bible before he surrendered to Christ. With no written revelation available to him, Job (with the aid of God's Spirit) discerned his need of a Redeemer, found assurance of God's provision of a Redeemer, and preached his faith with conviction to skeptics. By contrast, I have met brilliant scientists, convinced through their own research that the Cause of the universe matches the biblical revelation of a personal, living, all-wise, all-powerful being, who nevertheless refuse to acknowledge that God exists and has authority over their lives.

I. Different Avenues of Revelation

God's revelation to man has traditionally been categorized as special and general, though some would add testimonial. The special revelation is information about God and His plan for humanity communicated by His Spirit to prophets and apostles and recorded for us in the 66 books of the Bible. Testimonial revelation is evidence of the truth and power of the Gospel that comes from observing the transformed lives of those who surrender to Christ. The general revelation is information about God and His plan for humanity that comes from considering the creation, or nature, the tangible expression of His divine nature and character. The universality of conscience, God's law written upon the hearts of all humans, is one aspect of the general revelation. The characteristics of the cosmos, from the largest scale to the smallest, reveal volumes of information about God. John's gospel declares that whoever "lives by the truth," not hiding or defending personal evil, "comes into the light" (3:21). In other words, whoever embraces truth with a humble heart receives more truth, specifically spiritual truth that can lead to salvation.

II. Commitment to Integrate

The scientific revolution has propelled us toward increasing specialization. This narrowing of focus carries certain consequences. Knowledge advances in one sense, but retreats in another as it becomes more and more isolated from other knowledge. Most scientists study one narrow aspect of nature with only some or little or no knowledge of other aspects. Worse yet, they study nature with only some or little or no knowledge of the biblical statements about it. Most theologians, likewise, specialize in one aspect of theology or Scripture with only some or little or no knowledge of others. Worse yet, they study theology with only some or little or no knowledge of science. The results have been disastrous. Most scientists now view theology as "emotional nonsense expressing nothing but our fear of death."1 Theologians disregard the importance of nature "to retain some intellectual territory forever protected from the advance of science."2 Scientists are becoming, in effect, high priests of a deified Universe, while "theologians are slowly becoming effective atheists."3

Psalms 19 and 50 explicitly identify the antidote: God's Word is written in the cosmos as well as in the pages of Scripture, and His Word is consistent. The Bible is inspired by God, and the universe is created by God. God's Word written in nature tells us that God is not capricious. Truth is discoverable. God's Word written in the Bible tells us that God does not lie. He is truth. He wants to be known. Yet, it is almost universally presumed today, even by most evangelicals, that science and theology cannot be — and should not be — reconciled. We seem to have forgotten that science is merely man's attempt to interpret the facts of nature while biblical theology is merely man's attempt to interpret the words of Scripture. The "irreconcilable" differences stem from faulty interpretations. The value, then, of integrating science and theology is that integration provides us with our best opportunity for testing truth and ferreting out faulty interpretations from science and theology.

In some academic circles, especially in astronomy and physics, I have seen a reluctant concession that science and theology may overlap to a slight degree. Theologians concede about the same miniscule overlap. I see an enormous overlap. Both science and theology give major attention to cause-and-effect relationships. It would be difficult to think of a significant scientific conclusion that does not have theological ramifications and just as difficult to identify a theological conclusion that has no scientific import. Furthermore, both western science and Christian theology are driven by the same hermeneutical principle — the testing of conclusions by a methodology (derived from the Bible) called the scientific method. The perceived gap between science and theology can surely be bridged if we have but the humility to test our interpretations and face our misinterpretations.

III. News from Nature

The primary database of theology, the Bible, has remained roughly the same for the last nineteen hundred years, though the secondary database, e.g. manuscript evidence, archeological research, and theological scholarship, has grown substantially. Since the close of World War II, the database for science has increased exponentially. In some disciplines, including cosmology and particle physics, the database is doubling every few years. Not surprisingly, the voluminous new information about the cosmos yields a long list of theologically significant facts. My attempt to document these facts, which represent new evidences for God's existence, power, character, and capacities, appears in two of my recent books, "The Creator and the Cosmos" and "Beyond the Cosmos." What follows is merely a sketchy overview of information recent research has uncovered.

Hulse and Taylor's 1994 Nobel prize winning work confirmed general relativity to better than a trillionth-of-a-percent precision. This confirmation relates to the work of Hawking and Penrose, whose space-time theorem rested on two conditions: 1) that the universe contains mass (no question about this one), and 2) that general relativity is a reliable theory. Their space-time theorem shows that the Cause of the universe must exist beyond all the matter and energy of the universe and beyond the space-time dimensions along which the universe is distributed. From general relativity and more recent physics research we learn that the universe began with ten space-time dimensions. Almost immediately, at 10 -43 [43rd power] seconds after the creation event, the ten split into six static dimensions (dimensions that can never unfurl) and four expanding dimensions, the ones we experience. These discoveries contradict virtually all religious and cultural teachings about creation — except the biblical doctrine of creation. As the atheist astronomer Geoffrey Burbidge complained, his peers in physics and astronomy are rushing off to "join the First Church of Christ of the Big Bang." He saw the connection.

At the same time as theoretical physicists and radio astronomers were discovering that the Creator must be transcendent, astrophysicists began to observe and document the "anthropic principle," the preponderance of evidence suggesting that the universe was designed precisely for the sake of the human race. In measuring the universe, they found more than two dozen characteristics that must be fined-tuned for any conceivable kind of physical life to exist at any time in the universe's history. In some cases the degree of fine-tuning required exceeds by trillions of trillions of times (and more) the epitome of human engineering capability, not to mention human power and intellect. For example, the mass density of the cosmos must be precisely fixed for physical life to exist. This fact means that the Creator built a hundred billion trillion stars and carefully guided their development for 16 billion years so that at this brief moment in the history of the cosmos we humans can exist and enjoy a beautiful, life-filled habitat. The expanse of space (and all the matter it contains) is not "wasted" on one life site; it is essential for one life site. These findings imply that the Creator is personal, not just a force. The Creator exhibits not only power, but planning and purpose fixed on the needs of the human race, i.e., the Creator expresses love. If the Creator is powerful, wise, and loving, then, indeed, we are face-to-face with the God of the Bible. Astronomers and physicists have not proved in an absolute sense that the Creator is Jesus Christ, but they have demonstrated the enormous probability that He is. The probability numbers are large enough to eliminate other possibilities from realistic contention.

Astronomers and geophysicists have found even more impressive evidence for purposeful design in the characteristics of the Milky Way galaxy and the solar system. To date, they have identified 66 distinct features that must be fine-tuned for physical life to exist. The probability that any given planet will manifest all 66 characteristics is less than 1 chance in 10 83[power]. Even if the universe contains as many as 10 22 planets, the probability of finding even one planet capable of life support remains enormous, 1 chance in 10 61[power]. These numbers imply that the Creator did not merely pick the best planet He could find and place life there, but rather, He must have specially crafted the earth, sun, moon, Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way, and the Virgo supercluster so that humanity could have a home today. As for life elsewhere in the cosmos, its existence is highly unlikely, to say the least.

The discovery of new design evidences for the universe and solar system continues at a rapid pace. Nearly every month, researchers add one or more characteristic to the list. For the skeptic who still doubts the Creator's existence and involvement, we can respond by saying, "If you are not convinced yet, wait one month."

Moving from the simple sciences, where everything is governed by differential equations, to the complex sciences, where we cannot even catalog the database, we find even more impressive evidence for design, providing we recognize the boundary conditions. In the past year, geochemists have traced life on Earth back to 3.86 billion years ago, almost to the beginning of the planet. Such an early appearance of life implies that life originated in a window of time much briefer than five million years. The minimum time required for a random, naturalistic origin — if the notion of cause is completely ignored — approaches infinity. God is the more reasonable explanation for the existence of physical life.

The fossil record powerfully supports special creation. The eras before the advent of humanity bear witness to intense speciation; since humanity, we see none. Referring to real-time biology, Paul and Anne Ehrlich write that "the production of a new animal species in nature has yet to be documented."4 Recent research shows that life in abundance recovered from the Cretaceous-Tertiary catastrophe (circa 65 million years ago) in only 5,000 years. Millions of species radically distinct from previously existing ones suddenly appeared on the planet. The Cambrian explosion tells the same story. While naturalistic explanations are crumbling, the Bible has a simple response: for six days God created; i.e., through six creation epochs, God introduced new species and supernaturally replaced the species that the changing conditions on earth destroyed. On the seventh day, the era from the creation of Adam and Eve until the final conquest of evil, He ceases from creating new species, in keeping with His redemptive plan.

The discovery of genetic clocks means that the date of human origin can now be tested. The latest mitochondrial DNA studies roughly date the most recent common ancestor of all women to sometime less than 150,000 years ago. Y-chromosome research yields a more precise date of 37,000 to 49,000 years ago for the common ancestor of men. Comparative studies consistently give earlier dates for mitochondrial DNA than for Y-chromosome DNA. Such a difference has baffled researchers, and yet the Bible predicts it. According to the Genesis flood account, the most recent common ancestor for males is Noah whereas for women, that common ancestor is Eve.

These DNA dates correlate increasingly well with the biblical date for God's creation of humans. Anthropological findings fit even more precisely. Research places the most recent expression of sophisticated (i.e., humanly produced) art at about 30,000 years ago. The creation date for Adam and Eve suggested by biblical genealogies (given the probability of gaps) ranges from about 10,000 to 60,000 years ago. All these dates are too recent to support any kind of gradualist descent-of-man-from-primates hypothesis. Human beings must have been specially created. Even the timing of other Genesis events, such as "the dividing of the world in the days of Peleg," can now be confirmed through research data.

IV. A Rising Tide

Today the entire spectrum of nature's record—mathematics, astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry, paleontology, biochemistry, botany, zoology, anthropology, etc. — provides us with overwhelming evidence for the existence and identity of the Creator, the biblically revealed God. The heavens and the earth still proclaim, indeed, they shout louder than ever, His glory. From the least educated to the most, each individual has been given ample reasons to trust His revelation, including those parts that speak of "things unseen," both physical and spiritual. The tide of evidence is steadily rising. No one can stop it. But we still have the choice whether to sandbag our hearts or to let the flood in, where it can change us and pour out through us to others.

Endnotes

1 Frank J. Tipler. The Physics of Immortality . New York: Doubleday, 1994, 5.

2 Frank J. Tipler, 7.

3 Frank J. Tipler, 10.

4 Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. Extinctions. New York: Ballantine, 1981, 23.

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RESPONSE TO HUGH ROSS ON "GENERAL REVELATION: NATURE'S TESTAMENT"

Thomas C. Oden

Drew University

Hugh Ross has given us new reasons to believe that the faithful in our time are being given extraordinary gifts not fully received in previous times to behold and celebrate the heavens declaring the glory of God and the firmament showing his handiwork.

I wish first to offer a critique of a few picky points, then focus on the anthropic principle as a very promising motif.

I. CRITIQUE

A. It is regrettable that Ross in his brief essay defines special revelation as "information about God and His plan for humanity communicated by His Spirit to prophets and apostles and recorded for us in the 66 books of the Bible." Similarly general revelation is defined as "information about God and His plan for humanity then comes from considering the creation, or nature, the tangible expression of His divine nature and character." But in both cases revelation is primarily viewed as propositionally transmissible material knowledge, information.

My question: Is not God's revelation first event, and only then knowledge? Does not revelation occur in history, and not first of all in ideation? Is not revelation the history of God's acts in time and space, and not merely as information. Information is data, facts, measurements, statistics, knowledge? While revelation yields information, it is not constituted by information as such but by God's disclosure of himself through historical events.

B. Ross argues that if there are irreconcilable differences between science and theology, they stem from what he calls "faulty interpretations", not from the will, not from idolatry, not from sin, but from "faulty interpretations." This reminds me of Kierkegaard's quarrel with Hegel, who thought that any obstacle to reason could be overcome by logic, by rational reflection through the antithesis toward a rational synthesis. Rather, says SK in Practice in Christianity, reason can only stand in awe of the mystery of God's incarnate coming, revelation. If so, Christianity begins as a scandal and offense to reason. What God does in coming as a babe is a scandal to reason. To treat it as a matter of inadequate interpretation is to deflect the offense. What God does in the resurrection is folly to reason. To treat it as a matter of miscalculation is to miss the deeper offense to human reasoning of God's humiliation in Jesus Christ.

This is not, however, an irreconcilable difference, and I applaud Ross for attempting the reconciliation, but it is more than a faulty interpretation.

C. Is it not an exaggeration to say that evangelicals have "almost universally presumed" that "science and theology cannot be — and should not be — reconciled"? Assuming that Thomas Torrance and Bruce Demerest and Alister McGrath and Alvin Plantinga are evangelicals, as I would suppose, then should not this be qualified? While evangelical investigations of current science have been laggard, they have not been altogether vacuous.

D. Is it the best evangelical use of language to say that the Spirit connects the individual to the body of Christ? "Connect" is an instrumental term. To connect is to attach, combine, join, affix two entities into one. It is not an organic metaphor such as vine and branches, but essentially a mechanical metaphor. The Spirit does not merely connect me with the body of Christ but draws me personally into the body of Christ, as branch to vine (John 12:32).

II. THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE

Ross's paper stimulates further reflection especially on the question: Did God provide the magnificent work of creation for humanity alone or primarily? I want to take one tiny part of Ross's larger contribution and speak more extensively of its theological implications. I wish to grant Ross his empirical arguments for the time being, and examine what some of their theological consequences might be.

Let us suppose that an almost inconceivable number of characteristics need to be "fine-tuned for any conceivable kind of physical life to exist at any time in the universe's history." If "the mass density of the cosmos must be precisely fixed for physical life to exist"; and if the "degree of fine-tuning required exceeds by trillions of trillions of times (and more) the epitome of human engineering capability": then it seems plausible to conclude that "the Creator built a hundred billion trillion stars and carefully guided their development for 16 billion years so that at this brief moment of the history of the cosmos we humans can exist and enjoy a beautiful, life-filled habitat. The expanse of space (and all the matter it contains) is not ‘wasted' on one life site; it is essential for one life site. These findings imply that the Creator is a person, not just a force." While physicists are less prone to examine the consequences of such a statement, theologians are rigorously called to such an examination.

If "The probability numbers are large enough to eliminate other possibilities from realistic contention," and if there it has been established that there are no less than "66 distinct features that must be fine-tuned for physical life to exist" in the Milky Way, and if "the probability that any given planet will manifest all 66 characteristics is less than 1 chance in 10 to the 83rd power," and that "Even if the universe contains as many as 10 to the 22nd power planets, the probability of finding even one planet capable of life support remains enormous, 1 chance in 10 to the 62nd power," then theologians have a major task ahead of them to assimilate and assess what this means for creation, Christian anthropology, ethics, aesthetics, and the order of salvation.

Insofar as scientific evidences and probability theory are drawing us to conclude that "the universe was designed precisely for the sake of the human race," then to that extent we are being invited to reclaim scriptures long neglected which point to the human story as the center of God's intent in creation.

A basic classic locus of theology is anthropos as recipient of revelation. Humanity is God's constant concern throughout scripture: the creation of humanity, the fall of humanity, the redemption of humanity, and the final glorification of humanity. The Christian study of scientific evidences cannot neglect God's own prevailing interest in this history of salvation: the redemption of humanity. In Genesis, the creation of human beings is the decisive and crowning act of divine creation, in which human creatures are provided with a capacity for communion with God exceeding all other embodied creatures. It is not an exaggeration to say that revelation is for human salvation, insofar as that salvation tends toward the glory of God.

If God is to become revealed to any creature, that creature must have some grace-bestowed capacity to receive revelation. Why would God bother to speak to a stone or a galaxy of stones to which God has not given the capacity to hear and understand? Humanity is, far more profoundly than trees or animals, uniquely the recipient of revelation.

Creation is given, according to scripture, to glorify God through free, companionate rational beings, who when freedom falls into sin, are redeemed by merciful divine grace. Creation is in order to redemption. The fall breaks the order of creation. Redemption redeems what is fallen in creation.

Yet it remains a fixed habit of older science to say that man is an accident waiting to happen, even if it takes billions of years. The naturalistically reductive way of looking at humanity says that humanity is not the purpose of creation but merely an incidental spinoff, an accident, with no purposeful teleology.

For Jews and Christians, God gives the world for humanity. What is the level of evidence scientifically and the range of probabilities mathematically that this is the case? However debatable may be the scientific inquiries that hinge on probability calculus, there can be little doubt about the clarity of scripture in this regard: It is unique to humanity that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Of no other embodied creature is this said. And to this one form of creaturely existence a special place is given: "God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'" Then God gave seed bearing plants to human creatures, that "they will be yours for food...And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." The goodness of the non-human creation is compared with the exceptional goodness of human creation which is called to stewardship and dominion over creation.

This anthropic principle may be the most stunning and promising idea in this phase of research and dialogue on science and theology.

A. RELEVANCE FOR AESTHETICS

If the levels of probability are such that there is very little likelihood of life anywhere else, within these specific parameters that life requires, there are vast consequences for reflection on beauty, goodness and truth.

There are first aesthetic consequences: It is astonishing that all this is a gift of God not just to animals and rocks, but especially to and for those rational creatures most capable of beholding the beauty of God's holiness in creation: humanity and angelic creation.

"The world itself, by its well-ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearance of all visible things," wrote Augustine in the City of God , "bears a testimony of its own, both that is has been created, and also that it could not have been created except by God, whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible" (CG XI.4, NPNF 1 2:207). "The Deity is in very substance Beautiful," wrote Gregory of Nyssa in On the Soul and the Resurrection , "and to the Deity the soul will in its state of singleminded purity have affinity." Hence "the soul copies the life that is above" (NPNF 2 5:449). Although this recognition is expected fully and finally in the resurrected life in the celestial city, it may be anticipatively experienced in the present by sanctifying grace, wherein "enjoyment takes the place of desire, and the power to enjoy renders [inordinate] desire useless and out of date." In the resurrection the soul will "know herself accurately, what her actual nature is, and should behold the Original Beauty reflected in the mirror" (ibid).

If the world is indeed created for humanity, that infuses each time and space of creation with potential aesthetic attractiveness and delight shining through even the history of sin. Hence the faithful delight to "gaze upon the beauty of the Lord" (Ps. 27:4).

B. RELEVANCE FOR ETHICS

Second, this anthropic premise long known in Jewish Christian scripture, and now being potentially grasped as a scientific premise, has immense moral consequences . The whole universe would become, if this premise is indeed true, an arena for the nurturing of virtue, a theater for engendering the good life, and the redeemed life when fallen.

Here is the if/if/then syllogism: a) If God creates all the cosmos specifically for humanity, b) and if a central feature of human awareness is moral awareness, c) then to stand in the presence of the Giver is to become aware of the grace of repentance. In this way the anthropic premise reverberates in every moral choice. In this way created life corresponds to and refracts the goodness of God, even through the veil of sin.

If God gives creation for humanity, then some sufficient reason must be posited. That reason is to bestow glory on humanity by God's own becoming human when humanity is fallen, and to redeem what is fallen in creation. In this way the anthropic principle constitutes a plausible motive for doing good, as God is good.

To realize that the whole expanse of creation is ordered for the eliciting of virtue is to correlate a scientific finding with moral purpose. The cosmos does not have simply a zero purpose.

Hence there is a magnificent moral consequence of the anthropic principle, if it is indeed true scientifically. I need to do more study in physics and probability theory to assess that, but I have the simple intuition that this is right, and it surely corresponds with classic Christian exegesis on scripture passages on creation and the moral life.

Just as relative moral necessity cannot be required of the will except by that which is relatively good, so absolute moral necessity cannot be caused by any good less than the insurmountable good. A sense of absolute obligation can only come from One to whom absolute moral authority is fittingly and legitimately ascribed. It is to this transcendent ground of obligation that conscience witnesses. For conscience does not pretend to make the laws that it dictates (Clement of Alex. Christ the Educator , III.1, FC 23:199; Calvin Inst. 3.19.15).

No other creatures excepting angels can behold the goodness of God. Even angels, lacking bodies and sense perception, cannot behold the creation in the same way and with the same sensory immediateness that humans can. Humanity is honored by God above the angels because of the incarnation. God did not become embodied as an angel to save humanity because angelic being is not embodied.

The anthropic tendency is seen in the arguments about the low probability of life on other planets. Its all for humanity.

C. RELEVANCE FOR THE TRUTH QUESTION

There is third level of potential relevance for the anthropic principle: the truth question. If it should be a true and demonstrable fact based on scientific evidence that God has created the full extent of the cosmos for the benefit and redemption of man, for the moral formation of man, for communion with man, if so, then that which is most true about the world is the truth of God's incarnate coming and will to become man, a particular man. The truth is God's own coming as a man, in the One who said, I am the truth.

The power of the argument from design is best grasped by trying to take its opposite hypothesis seriously, that there is no cause of order. For then one would be forced to attribute order to chance, which in the long run would still leave the order unexplained. To say that order occurred by chance means either that we are unable to ascertain what the cause is while nonetheless affirming that some cause must exist, or that there is no cause and events occur without any reasonable or possible explanation. Both of these ways of viewing chance fail to account for the primary evidence — order in the world, an order which required human consciousness to be understood, which implies a revelation that requires a recipient to be received—which demands some sufficient explanation.

Hence the Psalmist sings: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet; all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the sea" (Ps. 8:3-8).

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Intelligent Design Responds to Its Critics: Part 2

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century, loved to read detective stories. In fact, he told friends that one could learn more from a murder mystery than from most philosophy articles.

Scientists who study our origins could also learn a thing or two from the great sleuths. Sherlock Holmes often warned his assistant, Dr. Watson, not to rule out any possibility before they had carefully sifted through all the evidence -- because the truth can turn out to be highly surprising, going against commonly-held assumptions. Unfortunately, many scientists today ignore this excellent advice. And that's bad news for discovering the truth about human origins.

Here's an example of the problem. Robert Pennock is a philosopher of science at the College of New Jersey. He's recently published a book, Tower of Babel, attacking the theory of intelligent design -- the view that the best explanation for our origins is an intelligent cause, a Creator.

Pennock's main argument is that the theory of intelligent design violates the rule of methodological naturalism.

Methodological naturalism sounds like a mouthful, but it's a very simple rule. It says that science works only if scientists employ natural causes -- and nothing else. A Creator may exist, but science could never discover that the Creator did anything in the history of the universe -- even if he actually did do something. Sorry, says Pennock, but the only causes science may legitimately infer are strictly natural.

Seems like an odd sort of rule, doesn't it? What would Sherlock Holmes say?

I don't know, but I can guess. He'd probably agree with William Dembski, an intelligent design theorist at Baylor University. In his new book, Intelligent Design, Dembski points out that science can use intelligent causes, and indeed it does so every day.

There's more to the universe than natural causes, and if science is going to discover the truth, then -- as Holmes warned Watson -- it can't rule out any possibility prematurely. But that's exactly what methodological naturalism does.

Philosophers of science like Robert Pennock, Dembski explains, are hung up on a flawed distinction. They see natural causes, like gravity, and assume that the opposite of these "natural" causes must be "supernatural." And since we can't test for the supernatural, says Pennock, we have to exclude it from science.

Wrong, Dembski argues. The correct distinction is natural versus intelligent causes. There's nothing supernatural about my voice coming out of your radio right now, but no strictly physical cause explains what is behind this pattern of sounds. Rather, I'm acting intelligently to convey a meaning to you.

When you send email to a friend, you're not violating any law of nature, but no law of nature alone will ever explain the complex pattern of symbols in your message. Only an intelligent cause -- namely, your mind -- provides a sufficient explanation.

Science can handle intelligent design, because it does so all the time. And Christians ought to be excited about the potential of this theory. Design promises to restore to science a vital tool that it needs to crack the mysteries of the universe: the reality of, yes, intelligent causes.

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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Not all scientists are atheists. The late Nobel laureate Paul Dirac stated, “God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.” Contemporary astronomer Allan Sandage, Edwin Hubble's successor at Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar observatories, asked why the world was describable in terms of differential equations. And he told the New York Times, “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God, to me, ... is the explanation of the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.” On another occasion, Sandage said, “If God did not exist, science would have to invent Him to explain what it is discovering at its core.”

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #3272]

According to the conventional wisdom, creation is religion while evolution is science. Cornelius G. Hunter delivers a fresh critique of this common assumption. Hunter shows that religious concerns lay at the root of Darwin’s case for evolution and that they drive the scientific arguments for evolution even to this day.

Hunter challenges many conventional thoughts about evolution on both sides of the debate. Creationists often argue that evolution presupposes the nonexistence of God, while evolutionists commonly claim to be convinced of evolution independent of any religious presuppositions. According to Hunter, neither claim is true: “Evolution is neither atheism in disguise nor merely science at work.” [1] Rather, the theory of evolution formulated by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book, ORIGIN OF SPECIES, presupposed a specific concept of God that was common in Victorian society.

As the book’s subtitle indicates, Darwin’s theory of evolution was actually devised as a solution to the problem of evil. The crux of his argument was that life in the real world is not the pretty or pleasant existence a good God would make it. Darwin could not persuade himself that God intended “that the cat should play with mice.” [2] Modern thinkers from Milton to Leibniz resolved the problem of moral evil — the bad things that humans do — by distancing God from human events: God made human beings autonomous and cannot be blamed for their imperfections. Darwin resolved the problem of NATURAL evil — the “bad” things that occur in nature — by distancing God from natural events: God made nature autonomous and cannot be blamed for ITS imperfections. In this way, Darwin defended God’s goodness at the cost of denying His sovereignty.

The seemingly neutral argument of Darwin’s ORIGIN OF SPECIES, then, turns out to depend on metaphysical, religious presuppositions. Hunter shows that the main evidences for evolution depend on the assumption that if God had created living things directly He would not have made them the way they are. In three chapters, Hunter summarizes the purported evidence for evolution from comparative anatomy, observable small-scale changes in living things, and the fossil record. Along the way he points out various problems with the evidence and exposes the metaphysical arguments underlying the scientific considerations. For example, he quotes evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould as saying, “Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution — paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.” [3] In this same vein, Darwin once joked that he found it hard to believe that “the shape of my nose was designed.” [4] In a later chapter, Hunter explains that “nature’s failure to fulfill our ideals and expectations was considered clear proof of evolution. All birds should fly, but since some don’t, there must be a crude law of nature rather than a Creator behind such incompetence.” [5]

To a great extent, then, Darwin’s theory of evolution was prompted by the inadequacies of creationism as understood in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Having proved that species are not the immutable, optimally designed creatures that creationists purported them to be, Darwin concluded that creationism was false. Hunter writes: “Evolution is supported by the premise that God must make species absolutely fixed — beaks must not get longer and coloration must not change. And since beaks do get longer and coloration does change, we know that God must not have created them” (p. 64). In Darwin’s day, creationists assumed that God would never allow any species to become extinct. The revelations of extinct species in the fossil record seemed, therefore, to disprove creation.

DARWIN’S GOD, while provocative and insightful, is lacking in one respect. Again and again Hunter makes the crucial point that Darwin’s theory of evolution was an attempt to explain how God could have created a world with suffering and death. Darwin’s explanation is ultimately at odds with the biblical view of God as Creator and providential Caretaker of His world. Unfortunately, Hunter does not clearly offer an alternative. Granted that Darwin’s solution to the problem of natural evil is biblically unacceptable, Christians need to offer a fully developed, positive alternative that is BOTH biblically sound and scientifically credible.

Robert M. Bowman, Jr. is president of the Institute for the Development of Evangelical Apologetics (IDEA), in Pasadena, California. Mr. Bowman is co-author with Kenneth D. Boa of Faith Has Its Reasons: An Integrative Approach to Defending Christianity (NavPress, 2001).

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1. “Darwin’s God,” by Cornelius G. Hunter, p. 8.

2. ibid., p. 12.

3. ibid., p. 48.

4. ibid., p. 63.

5. ibid., p. 105.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18783]

"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit." – D. Elton Trueblood

Several years ago Jim Bishop wrote in the Miami Herald an article entitled, “There Is No God?”

There is no God. All of the wonders around us are accidental. No almighty hand made a thousand-billion stars. They made themselves. No power keeps them on their steady course. The earth spins itself to keep the oceans from falling off toward the sun. Infants teach themselves to cry when they are hungry or hurt. A small flower invented itself so that we could extract digitalis for sick hearts.

The earth gave itself day and night, tilted itself so that we get seasons. Without the magnetic poles, man would be unable to navigate the trackless oceans of water and air, but they just grew there.

How about the sugar thermostat in the pancreas? It maintains a level of sugar in the blood sufficient for energy. Without it, all of us would fall into a coma and die.

Why does snow sit on mountain tops waiting for the warm spring sun to melt it at just the right time for the young crops in farms below to drink? A very lovely accident?

The human heart will beat for 70 or 80 years without faltering. How does it get sufficient rest between beats? A kidney will filter poison from the blood, and leave good things alone. How does it know one from another?

Who gave the human tongue flexibility to form words and a brain to understand them, but denied it to all other animals?

Who showed a womb how to take the love of two persons and keep splitting a tiny ovum until, in time, a baby would have the proper number of fingers, eyes, ears and hair in the right places, and come into the world when it is strong enough to sustain life?

There is no God — or is there?

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #26595]

How well can you translate psychobabble? Here’s a test from Budziszewski’s book, WHAT WE CAN’T NOT KNOW. Not many years ago a physician wrote an article for a medical journal about a certain condition that affects only women. This condition, he wrote, should be regarded as an “illness” which is “almost entirely preventable.” He said that the illness had “an excellent prognosis for ... spontaneous recovery if managed under careful medical supervision,” but that it may also be “treated” through “evacuation of the uterine contents.”

What “illness” did the physician have in mind? Why, pregnancy, of course. Yes, you read that right. He thought pregnancy should be defined as an illness. He didn’t mean something that can go wrong in pregnancy — he meant pregnancy itself. Most people see instantly that defining pregnancy as an illness is crazy. Pregnancy isn’t something that goes wrong with a woman; it is provided for in her nature, her God-given design. It’s something that goes right.

Budziszewski argues that you can learn a lot by studying the design of human nature. Not just our physical design, but our behavioral design as well. For example, we are designed for families. No mere human invented the family; no mere human could. Yet it exists everywhere, and for nurturing children, nothing can take its place.

Not only were we designed for families, but we were also designed for one-man, one-woman marriages. As sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur observe, “If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s basic needs were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent ideal. Such a design ... would provide a system of checks and balances that promoted quality parenting. The fact that both parents have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to sacrifice for that child, and it would reduce the likelihood that either parent would abuse the child.”

At some level, everyone recognizes facts like these. Marriage and family have been cherished in every society on earth, even places where God’s Word has never reached. And this isn’t an accident. As the Apostle Paul says in Acts 14, “God has not left Himself without witness,” even among the pagans. And one of His witnesses is the way He designed us and made us.

Budziszewski points out that even in polygamous societies, love poems are addressed from the lover to the beloved — just two people. A love song “to my darlings, Mary, Ellen, Susan, Penelope, Martha, Hortense, and Gwen” would be recognized everywhere as farce.

Even the pagans knew that when we fight against the creational design for human nature, design wins. The Roman writer Horace wrote, “You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but it always comes running back.” We were made for marriage between a man and a woman and for family. These are things we can’t not know.

To find out more about our creational design, I suggest that you read J. Budziszewski’s new book, WHAT WE CAN’T NOT KNOW. You will find great apologetics material to use in defending the Christian faith with nonbelieving friends.

FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

Warren M. Hern, M.D., “IS PREGNANCY REALLY NORMAL?“ FAMILY PLANNING PERSPECTIVES 3, No. 1 (January 1971) — available at the website of the author’s abortion facility.

Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, GROWING UP WITH A SINGLE PARENT: WHAT HURTS, WHAT HELPS (Harvard University Press, 1994), 38.

J. Budziszewski, WHAT WE CAN’T NOT KNOW: A GUIDE (Spence, 2003).

J. Budziszewski, “‘LITTLE PLATOONS’: GOD’S DESIGN FOR OUR RELATIONSHIPS,” BREAKPOINT WORLDVIEW, March 2003.

Roberto Rivera, “NO OTHER KIND: FOREGOING FULFILLMENT,” BREAKPOINT ONLINE, October 22, 2002.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 021230, “SO CLOSE ... SO FAR: THE BLANK SLATE AND HUMAN NATURE.”

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Copyright (c) 2003 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #16500]

According to one recent report, the common tick may be ready for a Ph.D. degree. At least, if statements in a New York Times story are true, the tiny arachnid that bites hikers along our roadsides ought to receive a doctorate, because it knows things researchers still don't understand.

Dr. Jose Ribeiro, a parasitologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, says, "Ticks know everything we know and don't know about pharmacology..... Biologically, a tick is a box inside a box inside a box."

What impressed the researchers? Dr. Daniel E. Sonenshine, biology professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, says, "Ticks are very finicky, like ... brats who will only eat cookies. The tick has ... a big cafeteria of cells, muscle, other tissue. But it says no thanks. Just give me red blood cells."

Dr. Stephen Wikel, entomologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center, studies Ixodes scapularis -- the deer tick, the main carrier of Lyme disease. Instead of eating on the run like mosquitoes, the tick establishes residence on the body of its host -- camping there for a feast that continues intermittently for five to seven days!

To that end, the tick has dozens of elaborate chemical weapons in its saliva. Instead of immediately gorging itself, it drinks only a little blood at first. It concentrates on injecting enough saliva into the wound to avoid detection, stay attached, disable the immune system and keep the blood flowing.

How does a little parasite do all of that? For one thing, it injects anesthetic so the host won't feel it and interrupt the meal.

Normally the host's clotting mechanism would limit the amount of blood an invader could extract. And the immune system would fortify the invasion site with white corpuscles.

But the arachnid's saliva contains compounds to disable the clotting system and to trick white cells into staying away. As a result, the tick has an undiluted diet of red cells, to provide globin molecules that enable it to mature and reproduce.

Dr. Wikel hopes to discover how this complex process works, and to find a vaccine to counter Lyme disease. I hope he does. He and his students have already dissected some ten thousand ticks, but he says, "We probably have a lifetime of work ahead of us."

But reading their statements, I was most struck by the worldview of the researchers: They said things like, "evolution carried on and ticks ... developed ways to keep the blood flowing," and "They have a very ancient wisdom." Dr. Ribeiro said, "Ticks know everything we know and don't know about pharmacology."

Well, they may do some amazing things, but does anyone really believe the tick's minuscule brain comprehends the chemical cocktail that it carries in its saliva? Even if so, could mere natural processes have engineered this incredible biological interaction?

No, the logic here is perfectly clear to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. We don't need to award a Ph.D. to the tick, and we don't need to praise the creature for what it does instinctively. Even in the case of the minuscule tick, we see infinite complexity, something that could not have come about from random processes -- only from a Creator, one who everyday surpasses our understanding and makes fools of the wise.

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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Nature documentaries like the BBC’s “Planet Earth,” “Blue Planet,” and most recently, “A Perfect Planet,” are amazing masterpieces of modern videography, displaying creation in detail and majesty. Every creature soaring through the sky, or streaking through the deep, or thundering over the savannah exhibits power, beauty, and unmistakable purpose. David Attenborough’s grandfatherly narration and Hans Zimmer’s moving musical scores only add to the childlike awe these films induce.

All of which makes it even more odd when Attenborough declares that all of this glory lacks purpose, or that it arose by chance and natural selection, and that none of it bears witness to any meaning or Mind beyond itself.

A recent article on atheism, also from across the pond, reminded me of this contradiction. In The Guardian, Harriet Sherwood described a new project from the University of Kent that seeks to discover whether disbelieving in God makes people less spiritual overall. According to the project’s authors, atheism “doesn’t necessarily entail unbelief in other supernatural phenomena.” Nor do unbelievers lack for a sense of purpose, despite “lacking anything to ascribe ultimate meaning to [in] the universe,”

In the article, Sherwood profiled several unbelievers, from an agnostic to a “free thinker” to Positivist pastor and Satanic priest (who makes it clear he doesn’t believe in a literal Satan). All of them insist that life can be deeply meaningful and even moral without God.

“We can determine for ourselves what is meaningful,” said one. “The meaning of life,” suggested one woman, “is to make it the best experience you can, to spread love to those around you.” “Beauty and tradition are at the core of my philosophy,” said another. One self-identified atheistic Jew explained, “Being part of a religious community offers music, spirituality and relationships ... it reminds me I’m on a journey to understand myself better and motivates me to help others.”

Hearing outspoken unbelievers proclaim that meaning and morality aren’t accidents is about as jarring as hearing David Attenborough proclaim that the world’s most amazing creatures are accidents. There is an inability of atheists to let go of the transcendent.

In his book, “Miracles,” C.S. Lewis wrote about the passionate moral activism of a famous atheist of his day, H.G. Wells. Moments after men like Wells admit that good and evil are illusions, Lewis said, “you will find them exhorting us to work for posterity, to educate, to revolutionise, liquidate, live and die for the good of the human race.”

But how do unbelievers, “naturalists” as Lewis calls them, account for such ideas? Certainly, nature is no help. If thoughts of meaning and morality find their origin in arrangements of atoms in our brains, then they can no more be called “true,” Lewis observed, than can “a vomit or a yawn.”

Lewis concludes that when Wells and other unbelievers say we “ought to make a better world,” they have simply forgotten about their atheism. “That is their glory,” he concludes. “Holding a philosophy which excludes humanity, they yet remain human. At the sight of injustice, they throw all their Naturalism to the winds and speak like men and like men of genius. They know far better than they think they know.”

I’d love to ask the people behind masterpieces like “Planet Earth,” or the unbelievers profiled in The Guardian, about this contradiction. Years ago, I had a similar conversation with a woman I was seated beside on an airplane. She had very strong moral opinions about all kinds of things, but scoffed at me, “How can you believe in God!” I gently asked her why she believed in right and wrong. It was a fun conversation, and it made me realize that it is possible to affirm the human gut-level intuition about beauty and wonder and morality, while questioning where all of those things come from.

And if you haven’t read Lewis’ masterful book “Miracles,” add it to the list. If it’s been a while, it’s worth revisiting. Fair warning: unbelievers should beware. As Lewis himself said, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”

RESOURCES

“A Perfect Planet – BBC,” YouTube, December 19, 2020

“‘I only know one god – and that’s me’: non-believers on the meaning of life,” by Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian, January 23, 2021.

“Miracles,” by C.S. Lewis

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Copyright (c) 2021 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould has died. His career was devoted to bedeviling creationists. Now he's one himself, though surely not a happy one.

It is a great shame that Professor Gould has gone out into eternity unprepared to meet his maker. Imagine the blessing that would have flowed his and our way had he thrown himself on the mercies of Christ and embraced God's Word, the Bible. Instead of reading, "It is hubris to argue that (man) is special," we would have enjoyed the Christian brotherhood of a man pleased to proclaim that man is created in the image of God.

The obituaries call him "the Carl Sagan of biology" and "paleontology's public intellectual." University of Chicago paleontologist David Jablonski eulogized, "It's hard to think of another scientist who was as visible, articulate or skilled at helping the public see the world view of an evolutionist." Jablonski's colleague Jerry Coyne put it simply, "He was the best publicist we had."

Turns out evolutionary theory needs all the publicists it can get these days. It's a smoking, wheezing, backfiring jalopy that scientists are increasingly embarrassed to drive around town. They're using yards of duct tape to hold the contraption together. Indeed, Gould himself used a bunch of it in the form a theoretical adjustment he called "punctuated equilibrium." Lacking evidence of gradual transition, he introduced the notion of occasional "fast forward" evolution to get us over the embarrassing spots.

Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, has shown that evolution just won't wash at the microbiological level. You can no more produce blood-clotting mechanisms by incremental gain than you could a mousetrap. Neither the base, the hammer, the spring, the catch, or the holding bar will nail a mouse. You can't get there in bits and pieces. It's a package deal ("irreducible complexity"), and evolution can't deliver that package.

Behe is joined by William Dembski, who argues that signs of intelligent design are overwhelming and make a mockery of chance. Patterns which would have the SETI folks (radio astronomers involved in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) turning back flips are routinely dismissed by evolutionists. Many of his Baylor colleagues have snubbed him for his anti-evolutionary zeal, but his influence grows.

And then there's Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley law professor who dared to observe that the emperor, evolutionary theory, had no clothes. He's the one who publicized the delicious quote from the January 9, 1997, New York Review of Books, one uttered by Gould's Harvard colleague, Richard Lewontin. It bears repeating and repeating:

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of

some of its constructs, ... in spite of the tolerance of the

scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because

we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is

not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel

us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but,

on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to

material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set

of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how

counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a

Divine Foot in the door."

Indeed.

In the popular mind, scientists are distinguished for their objectivity, and certainly there is more evidentiary accountability in physics than in astrology, in biology than palmistry. But scientists are quite human, and career interests, pride, loyalty, irreligion, inertia, and contempt can color and even determine their work. Thomas Kuhn's landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has opened the door wide to considering these influences.

Kuhn argues that scientists are loath to give up on their pet theories, even when "anomalies" (un-lawlike phenomena) come to their attention. They just get a bigger hammer and try make things all fit together. After all, they've made their names promoting and developing these ideas. Generations of students have gone out from their tutelage and are now passing along the same teachings. From learned journals to talk shows to international conferences to countless hours in the lab, study, or field, they've identified themselves with one way of thinking. And it's almost impossible for them to simply say, "Never mind."

How do things change when old theories break down and new ones take their place? Well, forgive the bluntness, but the key old guys have to die. Kuhn quotes physicist Max Planck in this connection: "...a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." It happened when Darwinism came in. It's happening as Darwinism goes out.

Which brings us again to Stephen Jay Gould. I see his passing as another nail in the coffin for evolution. For ideas are not free floating clouds that hover over succeeding generations. Rather, their life depends upon the hospitality and enthusiastic presentation of individuals. (A word to the church.) And as those hosts and presenters die off as individuals, the vitality of the idea is accordingly diminished.

As evolution's vitality wanes, the rhetoric of evolutionists escalates -- heat to compensate for the lack of light. Whether at Chicago's Field Museum or in the pages of National Geographic, they're doing their best to beautify evolution and denigrate its critics. But it's a cut flower.

Of course, atheists, agnostics, and such will always have their naturalistic theories. They have no choice. But we can enjoy their transition from swagger to anxiety as the theory takes its blows, another of which was landed this past week with the death of Stephen Jay Gould.

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After earning a Ph.D. from Caltech at age 20, Stephen Wolfram founded the corporation that produces MATHEMATICA, the world's leading technical mathematics software.

For nearly ten years, Wolfram has -- by his own description -- been "an almost complete recluse." Wolfram became a recluse because he wanted to spend time thinking about a problem that science had failed completely to explain: the origin of complexity -- the vastly intricate systems, especially in biology, which so excite our curiosity.

Now Wolfram thinks he's found the answer to this puzzle, and he's published it in an encyclopedic book, A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE. Almost overnight, A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE shot to the top and stayed at the top of the Amazon.com rankings.

Wolfram is convinced that it's only a matter of time before the rest of the scientific community grasps that the puzzle of complexity requires an entirely new approach. And this is especially the case, Wolfram argues, in biology.

Ask nearly any evolutionary biologist what assembled the human eye, or the three billion base pairs of DNA in our genome, and that biologist will answer, "Natural selection, of course."

But Wolfram is not entirely persuaded by this answer. "No clear understanding has ever emerged," he writes, "of just why such processes should in the end actually lead to much complexity at all." After twenty years of studying the problem, Wolfram no longer views natural selection as a wonder-working process. "I have increasingly come to believe," he argues, "that in fact its power is remarkably limited."

Does this mean that Wolfram accepts the theory of intelligent design? No -- not yet anyway. Although he writes, "Just how complexity arises was never really resolved" by Darwinian evolution, and "I have come to have some sympathy for the creationists," Wolfram thinks all the complexity in nature will arise naturally from simple rules. He illustrates this by "cellular automata," pattern-generating systems that churn out complexity from a handful of rules. Because cellular automata can make complex patterns, Wolfram thinks he's solved the complexity puzzle.

But other scientists are skeptical. Scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, for example, points out that we aren't interested in complexity simply as complexity. The exact pattern of jellybeans in a bag of candy is exceedingly complex, but no one really cares to explain it. We do want to explain what design theorist Bill Dembski calls "the specified complex patterns" -- the patterns that do things.

On that score, Kurzweil argues, Wolfram's cellular automata fall short. "They do not evolve," he says, into "insects, or humans, or Chopin preludes, or anything else that we might consider of a higher order of complexity." Wolfram's cellular automata, Kurzweil concludes, "are not capable of solving interesting problems." To do that, Dembski and other design theorists argue, intelligence is absolutely necessary.

The book, A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE, starts with an important problem: Science has not explained the origin of biological complexity. Wolfram's solution may fall short, but at least this brilliant man acknowledges the immensity of the puzzle. And in time, he may join others in seeing that intelligent design means an intelligent Designer.

Additional reading and resources:

Stephen Wolfram, A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE (Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media, 2002).

William Dembski, SIGNS OF INTELLIGENCE: UNDERSTANDING INTELLIGENT DESIGN (Brazos Press, 2001).

Raymond Kurzweil's review of A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE, available at:

"Is this man bigger than Newton and Darwin?" TELEGRAPH (UK), 15 May 2002.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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"Design," write Union University professors, Dr. Jimmy Davis and Dr. Harry Poe, "has generally been regarded as a code word for Christianity, though ... it is one of those rare features of faith common to virtually all religions."

Davis and Poe make a great team of writers on the intelligent design of the universe. Poe, a theologian and the first Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union, examines how philosophers and religions have recognized the design features of the world from ancient times and helps the reader understand how worldview has often been an important, if unrecognized, influence in scientific inquiry.

Davis, professor of chemistry and associate provost of Union, guides the reader through the complexities of cosmology, math, physics, chemistry, and biology, pointing out the difference between actual science and the worldview behind the science.

They begin with religion and philosophy, showing that design arguments for the existence of God go back at least as far as Plato in Western thought and are common throughout the world. Design arguments, however, fell out of favor after Darwin offered a naturalistic explanation for the variety of living things. But in the last decade, the old argument has gained new life in what is being called today intelligent design.

Davis and Poe go on to show how intelligent design is based on the implications of recent scientific discoveries and has arisen among scientists working in a number of fields. There are evidences of design throughout creation. Davis and Poe examine topics from the atomic structure of carbon to the shape of birds' beaks and from pollination to DNA. They point out the irreducible complexity and sheer beauty of all creation.

My favorite example of theirs is water. The water that's everywhere has a unique molecule and unexpected characteristics. Using chemistry principles, they point out, we would expect water to be a gas at room temperature, not a liquid. We would expect ice to sink rather than float. And we would expect water to be toxic and/or corrosive.

If water followed the trends of similar chemicals, life on earth would be impossible. If water were a gas at room temperature, the atmosphere would be too dense. If ice didn't float, aquatic life would die in the winter. And if water were toxic, earth would be a wasteland. Does that prove intelligent design? No, but the uniqueness of water is just one indication of a world carefully balanced to sustain life.

Most Christians are not in a position to appreciate the research on which intelligent design is based. As a result, we tend to cave in as soon as someone with scientific credentials speaks to the issue. And we don't recognize that there always comes a point where the scientist stops talking about science and starts talking about philosophy or theology. Our job is to see where his basic presuppositions kick in.

Davis and Poe make a great case, explaining why increasing numbers of scientists believe in intelligent design. Their book, DESIGNER UNIVERSE, will definitely stretch your thinking. But with a topic so central to biblical worldview and so many issues facing our culture, the stretch will do you -- and the neighbors you talk to -- good.

For further information:

Jimmy H. Davis and Harry L. Poe, DESIGNER UNIVERSE: INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (Broadman & Holman, 2002).

Learn more about intelligent design by visiting the Discovery Institute's website.

The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA) fosters conversation about intelligent design among students, educators, and other interested parties.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Did paleontology just fill in a gap in the human family tree? That's what you'd think from reading the headlines this month. "A fossil unearthed in Africa pushes back human origins," reported The New York Times on page one.

But, as is often the case with scientific discoveries relating to the theory of evolution, you've got to read more than just the headlines. The details point to a much less triumphalistic picture.

The new fossils, unearthed by a French team in Chad, included a nearly complete skull, which has been dubbed "Toumai." Dated at between six and seven million years old, Toumai has been given the formal scientific name Sahelanthropus, after the harsh Sahel Desert where the fossil was found. Sahelanthropus has been classified as an entirely new genus of primate -- something scientists do only when those fossils have features that don't fit into any existing group.

That's where the Toumai puzzle begins. Paleontology is an interpretative science. Fragmentary fossil remains don't announce what species they are or their lineage. Paleontologists have to figure that out, if they can. Since nearly all fossil groups are extinct, there's plenty of room for disagreement about the correct interpretation.

And that's exactly what happened with Toumai. No sooner was the discovery announced than another French paleontologist, Dr. Brigitte Senut of the National History Museum in Paris, said that she doubted any link to humans. The features of the skull that the Toumai team had interpreted "hominid," Senut claimed, would be better explained if the skull actually came from an extinct species of gorilla. Toumai had a short face and small canine teeth, and Senut thinks that these are the characteristics "of the skull of a female gorilla," not a human ancestor.

On hearing of Senut's dissenting interpretation, the Toumai team called a news conference to denounce her view. Such strong disagreements mark the history of paleoanthropology. It's an enterprise where leading researchers have had long-running feuds with each other, and where conflicting scenarios for human evolution come and go with remarkable frequency.

Why the conflict? Well, think of the fossils themselves as bricks -- the building materials for a scientific theory. These bricks are, however, too few in number and, in most cases, poorly preserved. Nevertheless, evolutionary paleoanthropologists want to make a building out of them, the story of human evolution. So they patch the bricks together with a lot of mortar of their own making.

With Toumai, for instance, anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University said that the discovery may show many other fossil hominids are not human ancestors at all. Wood locates Toumai in evolutionary history by ripping out the theoretical mortar others have used in the past and adding some of his own.

What's a thoughtful onlooker to conclude? That the fossils are real, but their interpretation is very much up for grabs. The theories of relationships between extinct groups have short lives. Keep that in mind next time you read the science headlines, or your neighbor tells you scientists have found the "missing link" -- not so. It's pure conjecture, nothing more.

FURTHER READING & INFORMATION

Daniel Lieberman, "Upending the Expectations of Science," The New York Times, 14 July 2002. (This piece by Lieberman, an anthropologist at Harvard, is especially good, as he points out how the discovery of Toumai overturns accepted evolutionary theories.) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/opinion/14LIEB.html

Claude Canellas, "Man or Gorilla?: Experts at Odds over Ancient Skull," Reuters, 12 July 2002. (Original story on Brigitte Senut's differing interpretation.) http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=search&StoryID=1196368

Bernard Wood, "Palaeoanthropology: Hominid Revelations from Chad," Nature 418, (11 July 2002): 133-35. http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v418/n6894/full/418133a_fs.html

Jimmy Davis and Harry Poe, Designer Universe: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God (Broadman and Holman, 2002).

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, Developing a Christian Worldview of Science and Evolution (Tyndale, 1999).

Learn more about evolution and intelligent design by visiting the Discovery Institute's web site. http://www.discovery.org/

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Designer Universe: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God by Jimmy Davis and Harry Poe describes how advances in scientific knowledge during the twentieth century have raised new questions.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

“What difference does it make? As long as I'm not hurting anyone else, I should be able to live with my girlfriend.” “I never loved my wife. Don't I deserve to be happy?” “I needed that money more than he did, so it’s okay that I took it. Besides, he owes me for the time when...” Justification for sin comes easily to most people — including Christians. However, conscience has an ally: physics. Observation and personal experience suggest that physical laws work on the side of obedience to God’s laws.

When I began studying physics at the age of seven a particular dilemma plagued my mind. I wanted to know WHY the laws of physics were set up in their prescribed manner. In spite of serious study over the following twelve years, no satisfying answers came forth. Not until I became a Christian at age 19 (the year I also began formal education in classical and statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism theory), did I recognize that the physics of the cosmos reveal not only God’s existence but also God’s delight in elegance and beauty. Through the physical design of the cosmos, God richly endows a home for humanity.

This answer helped resolve some of my questions about the structure of physics, but it still left me with some major unanswered perplexities. Why didn’t God create a different kind of cosmos for humanity — one elegant and beautiful in its design yet without the hard choices, pain, and suffering produced by evil? God does, in fact, promise a radically different, perfectly wonderful home for humanity after His final judgment against evil (referred to in Revelation as The Great White Throne Judgment).1 So why didn't He make the universe “perfect” in the first place?

These questions led me to search the Bible for God’s expressed purpose(s) in creating the cosmos. I found these three, among others:

• God chose to express His glory through creating the universe, creating life in general, and creating humanity in particular.

• The whole of the universe and all life on Earth were created for the benefit of humanity.

• God chose to initiate an eternal love relationship with humans.

As a corollary to these three purposes, God gives humans every assist and incentive to turn away from evil’s empty enticement (autonomy) and toward His love. This corollary helps explain why Genesis 1-3 identifies this world and Eden not as God’s “perfect” creation, but, rather, as His “good” or “very good” creation.

Many Christians (and others) believe the Garden of Eden was perfect and that God will one day permanently restore people to an Eden-like paradise.2 An inability to imagine anything better than what Adam and Eve enjoyed in the Garden of Eden (before they sinned) makes this viewpoint understandable. However, the Bible reveals a transcendent Creator who made the universe of matter, energy, space, and time from beyond the universe, completely unconfined by it. Therefore, belief in a transcendent reward becomes a reasonable consideration.

Because of Satan’s rebellion, and because free will must be real for love to be real, the potential for sin necessarily existed in Eden. That potential alone made Eden an insecure environment and, therefore, an imperfect one. The “new heavens and new earth” described in Revelation 21 and 22 remain perfectly secure, because no possibility for sin exists there. This transcendent reward awaits Christ’s followers (see the “New Laws for the New Creation”sidebar).

ADVENT OF SIN — AND PHYSICS

The idea that sin (rejection of God’s rightful authority) began with Adam’s rebellion in Eden ignores the fact that at least in one context the fall into sin predates Eden. Satan clearly fell into sin before he entered Eden to beguile Eve. Exactly how much before that time the fall of Satan occurred is unclear. Job 38:7 states that the angels watched as God laid down the foundations of the Earth. Therefore, Satan likely existed at the time when Earth was formed some 4.6 to 3.9 billion years ago.3 His rebellion against God could have occurred either before or after this event.

ADVENT OF PHYSICAL LAWS

Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, which brought estrangement from God, others, and self, occurred some time after Satan’s rebellion and impacted the entire human race and, thus, the world. Genesis 3 explains that sin leads to MORE work and MORE pain, implying that Adam and Eve experienced both work and pain before their rebellion against God. Genesis 2 explicitly states that Adam worked and ate in Eden before he sinned.Such work — including the digestion process — implies that the physical laws of gravity, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics took effect before Adam’s fall. These same physical laws remain in effect today.4

Are work and pain inherently bad? I think not. According to the book of Ecclesiastes, God designed work to be productive and enjoyable. Sin, however, destroys both the productivity and joy of work. This destruction forces individuals to work much harder than would otherwise be necessary. Pain has value, too. It is a necessary partner to physical pleasure. Pain also warns of impending danger. The introduction of sin, however, causes every person to experience more pain than would otherwise be necessary. MORE work and MORE pain were part of sin’s curse on humanity.

The existence of stars both before and after Eden tells me that physics did not change as a result of Adam’s sin. Those laws were already in place, prepared in advance to fulfill their important role in God’s grand plan. According to Genesis 1, stars predated the creation of humanity. Stellar burning involves virtually all the laws of physics and is extremely sensitive to the constant and continual operation of those laws.5 Even slight changes or interruptions in those laws mean that stable burning stars of the type necessary for the support of physical life cannot exist, and metabolic reactions, protein synthesis, and protein function become impossible. According to Revelation 20-21, the replacement of the laws of physics (see sidebar, “New Laws for the New Creation”) occurs at that moment when evil is finally and permanently eliminated (the Great White Throne Judgment). This timing suggests that the physical laws were intended to be part of God’s strategy for conquering sin.

SPIRITUAL PURPOSE OF PHYSICAL LAWS

God’s design of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, and thermodynamics yields this result: the more a person sins, the more work he must perform and the more pain he must experience. All of these laws contribute to the breakdown of a person's body and the breakdown of everything he builds (e.g., a home, a relationship, or a career). Gravity results in increasing sag and stress over time. Electromagnetic radiation corrodes the surfaces of all structures. Nuclear laws cause change in the fundamental building blocks.

Because of their propensity to defy God, individuals need discipline. God’s act of ejecting Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to the world outside, where they had to plant their own gardens and deal, for example, with “thorns and thistles,” helped set in motion the discipline they needed to understand that God's ways are best. The propensity to do things their own way (as opposed to following God's wisdom), consigned Adam and Eve and their descendents to experience much more work and much more pain.

The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that whatever a man organizes, whatever he designs, and whatever information he accumulates becomes increasingly disordered. However, sin speeds up the breakdown. For example, if a man abuses his tools, they become less productive and wear out faster, leading him to experience more pain and more work when he uses them. If he abuses his animals, his employees, or a woman who might become his spouse, their response to the abuse causes him more work, less pleasure, and more pain.

God designed the laws of physics to gently but firmly encourage humankind to depart from sin. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, not all sins bring identical harm. Some sins defile more than others. The way God designed the laws of physics, the more defiling the sin, the more pain and/or work it generates. And the more sin an individual commits, the more pain and work he experiences. The laws of physics, unlike parents, teachers, and supervisors, allocate consistent and timely retribution. Moreover, physics discipline never misses, never forgets. By God’s design, it is neither too much nor too little.

UNIVERSALITY OF THE PHYSICAL LAWS

Jeremiah speaks about the fixity of the laws that govern the universe.6 Paul, in Romans, states that the entire creation has been subjected to the law of decay,7 an apparent reference to the second law of thermodynamics. Because the space-time dimensions of the universe are inextricably woven together, the time dimension of the universe cannot be separated from its space dimensions.8 Or, to put it another way, the geometry of the universe is such that time behaves as a space dimension subjecting the entire universe to the law of decay. This fact implies that the entire universe from its very beginning, from the beginning of time itself, experienced decay.

Many references elsewhere in the Bible confirm 1) the ongoing expansion of the universe from the beginning, 2) solar and stellar burning both before and after Adam’s fall, and 3) metabolic function in plants and animals.9 All of these phenomena are physically impossible without the continual operation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Gravity and electromagnetism, too, must be in continual operation since the cosmic creation event. The Bible states that the Sun, stars, Earth, and moon existed both before and after Adam. Likewise, Scripture states that electromagnetic light existed from the beginning of creation and remains the same. It also implies that the Earth and Sun maintain a stable configuration with respect to one another.

Straightforward astrophysics demonstrates that the kinds of stable burning stars essential for physical life cannot exist in this universe unless both gravity and electromagnetism retain their current values and operation for the entire history of the universe. Similarly, stable orbits of planets about stars and of electrons about the nuclei of atoms require the stability and constancy of both gravity and electromagnetism. Physical life also requires that all galaxies, stars, and planets, in fact, all matter and energy in the universe be situated on a three-dimensional surface. That surface must be very large and rapidly and continuously expanding. And thermodynamics require the complementary action of gravity and electromagnetism.

The fact that gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics have continuously functioned since the cosmic creation event implies that God prepared, or preprogrammed, the universe to deal with sin. This occurred billions of years before sin became an issue in the physical universe; that is, billions of years before God allowed Satan to invade Eden. Further evidence, both scientific and biblical, suggests that God’s plan works in the most efficient manner possible.

The nature of the universe and the physical laws limit the maximum longevity of the human species on planet Earth as several thousand years only. Natural phenomena such as supernova eruptions, asteroid and comet collisions, accelerated cosmic expansion, and the inevitable termination of the silicate-carbonate cycle10 guarantee a relatively rapid extinction of the human species. In fact, scientists now see evidence that the pursuit of education and technology, crucial elements in the rapid advance of civilization (thus in fulfilling Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations) actually shortens the extinction time of the human species by escalating the deleterious mutation rate.11 And, increasing affluence produced by educational and technological advances has a negative impact on the human birth rate.

EXTENT OF SIN’S IMPACT

The connection between the laws of physics and sin explain sin’s far-reaching impact. The groaning of creation in anticipation of release from sin has lasted fifteen billion years and affected a hundred billion trillion stars. The effective and efficient conquest of sin mandates a certain set of physical laws. These physical laws dictate that the universe manifests a certain space-time manifold and an even more highly specified expansion rate. That space-time manifold and expansion rate serve to limit the geographical realm for humanity. With great effort humans can make forays into different parts of this solar system. Visiting planets around other stars, however, is out of the question.12 Likewise, the physics of this present universe put a severe constraint on the window of time in cosmic history during which human existence is possible.13

Sin’s impact extends beyond the space-time manifold (or envelope) of the universe. For about four billion years (at least) of Earth’s history, at least a hundred million angels have witnessed the damage wrought by sin.14 This patient witness is part of God’s teaching the angels about His grace. Given their unique perspective on the breadth and depth of sin’s devastation, the angels can see and understand — more than you and I yet can — how costly Christ’s redemption of humanity is.

When God planned for His ultimate love relationship with humans, He chose to open Eden’s gate to Satan, the most magnificent and powerful of his angelic creations. After facing and — by God’s grace — overcoming Satan’s temptations, humans will never encounter a greater foe. Humanity’s exposure to sin (as devastating as it has been and continues to be) paves the way for Christ's followers to receive and enjoy the rewards of the new creation and to fulfill their roles there. Without the training and maturation offered by exposure to sin and its consequences, humanity could look forward to nothing better than paradise, the pleasures of Eden. While paradise may seem wonderful compared to this sin-marred universe, it utterly pales in comparison to the future home provided by God for all who choose the redemption from sin Christ makes available through His death and resurrection.

BETTER THAN EDEN

God promised His worshippers a reward far beyond what anyone can imagine or comprehend.15 This second creation of God will one day (on an eighth creation day) supplant the first creation. (See “New Laws for a New Creation” sidebar.)

The Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and subsequent journey to the Promised Land offers a helpful analogy. Paradise (Eden) may be likened to Egypt at Moses’ time. Humanity’s journey through life’s trials and temptations resembles Israel’s wilderness (Sinai) wanderings. The new creation is roughly analogous to the land of promise (Canaan). Just as the Israelites struggled to imagine and anticipate the blessings of the Promised Land, people everywhere struggle to imagine and anticipate the rewards of the new creation.

The Israelites grumbled about their suffering in the wilderness and yearned to return to Egypt. People today complain about the training and discipline of this life and long for a return to Eden. Egypt was a land of plenty but also a land of slavery. Eden surely seems idyllic, but it holds humanity captive to electromagnetism, gravity, etc. During the aging process, individuals observe that joints and muscles gradually lose the battle against gravity. Skin and other cells break down under long-term exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

On a spiritual level, perpetual insecurity plagued Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. At every moment they were capable of the willful choice that would shatter their unique oneness with the Creator. In the new creation, everyone who has a relationship with Jesus Christ will forever enjoy perfect security. People will live safely beyond the severe testing of their free will, the testing faced in God’s first creation. It is past. No tougher test can confront them.

Adam and Eve and all humankind had to be confined to a single time dimension, one that can neither be stopped nor reversed so as to limit the fallout from their sin, including the number of people damaged by it. All who enter the new creation will be free from such time restrictions. The time confinement that limits each individual to just a few close relationships will be lifted.

Jesus often refers to believers in the new creation with singular nouns and pronouns.16 Those who join Him in the new creation are called His bride, and He says that all who live there will be one as He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are one. The aspect of the oneness of God is illustrated in that the Father, Son, and Spirit are in continuous communication and fellowship with one another.17

For humans to experience this type of oneness, each person will be granted continuous communication and fellowship with one another. It appears somehow that all individuals will possess the capacity to communicate and relate simultaneously, intimately, and harmoniously with billions of others.

Our current dimensional limits (and sinful nature) make such communication and fellowship impossible. And yet for now, such limits are essential. One time dimension (in which time can neither be halted nor reversed) currently confines the impact of humans’ sin to only a limited number of people for a limited time. (In the equivalent of two time dimensions or more, a person’s sin could simultaneously impact billions of other people in an undiminished manner for an unlimited period of time.) With the new heavenly capacity for knowing and being known, loving and being loved by all other human beings simultaneously, the need for marriage and the nuclear family will be fully satisfied.

Whether God grants the capacity for continuous simultaneous communication and intimate fellowship with all other believers through the equivalent of two time dimensions or some other dimensional or transdimensional means is not revealed. However, we can know that with the elimination of sin, shame, embarrassment, and physical, mental, and spiritual defects, intimacy becomes safe and enjoyable in a manner impossible in this creation. The risk of being hurt or damaged in relationships will be gone forever.

People will no longer need to focus relationship resources on only one marriage partner, one nuclear and extended family, and a few dozen friends. Continuous enjoyment of all other members of the heavenly family provides something far superior to the pleasures of the very best of earthly relationships, including marriage.18 All this, and much more, awaits.

One day God will release humankind from the “playpen” of this universe with all of its restrictive dimensions and physics. He will usher those who worship Him into a new creation replete with physics and dimensions or transdimensions that permit ultimately satisfying relationships with Him and with one another. We will be rewarded to a degree far beyond what anyone can yet think or imagine.19 Until that time, each person can thank God for the discipline of physics.

REFERENCES:

1. Revelation 21-22, THE HOLY BIBLE; Hugh Ross, BEYOND THE COSMOS, 2d ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1999), 217-228.

2. Anthony Hoekema, THE BIBLE AND THE FUTURE (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979, 1991), 274-87; Finis Jennings Dake, GOD’S PLAN FOR MAN: REVEALING GOD’S PERFECT PLAN FOR ALL CREATION (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1977), 972-1000; David Chilton, PARADISE RESTORED: A BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF DOMINION (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1985); Kenneth L. Gentry, HE SHALL HAVE DOMINION (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), 275-306; Hank Hanegraaff, RESURRECTION (Nashville, TN: Word Publishing, 2000), 85-92; Doug Phillips, “An Urgent Appeal to Pastors,” BACK TO GENESIS, No. 119, November 1998, p. c.; Henry M. Morris, “The Coming Big Bang,” BACK TO GENESIS, No. 101, May 1997, p. c.; Henry M. Morris, “The Finished Works of God,” BACK TO GENESIS, No. 136, April 2000, p. b.

3. Hugh Ross, THE GENESIS QUESTION (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1998), 30-36, 39-42.

4. Genesis 2:15-17, THE HOLY BIBLE; Hugh Ross, THE CREATOR AND THE COSMOS, 2d ed.(Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995), 111-21.

5. R. Kippenhahn and A. Weigert, STELLAR STRUCTURE AND EVOLUTION (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994), 64-76, 118-136, 248-70; Martin Schwarzschild, STELLAR STRUCTURE AND EVOLUTION OF THE STARS (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), 30-44.

6. Jeremiah 33:25, THE HOLY BIBLE.

7. Romans 8:18-22, THE HOLY BIBLE.

8. Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose

9. “Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology,” PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, SERIES A 314 (1970), 529-48.

10. Genesis 1:1, 1:11-12, 1:14-16, 1:20-28, 4:2-4,15:5, Job 9:8; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24, 45:12, 48:13, 51:13; Jeremiah 10:12, 51:15; Zechariah 12:1; THE HOLY BIBLE.

11. Lawrence M. Krauss and Glenn D. Starkman, “Life, the Universe, and Nothing: Life and Death in an Ever-Expanding Universe,” ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL 531 (2000), 22-30; Hugh Ross, “Can Science Test a ‘God-Created-It’ Origins Model? Yes!” FACTS FOR FAITH 2 (Q2 2000), 46; Hugh Ross, THE GENESIS QUESTION, 43-44.

12. James F. Crow, “The Odds of Losing at Genetic Roulette,” NATURE 397 (1999), 293-94; Adam Eyre-Walker and Peter D. Keightley, “High Genomic Deleterious Mutation Rates in Hominids,” NATURE 397 (1999), 344-47.

13. Hugh Ross, “Aliens From Another World?” FACTS FOR FAITH 6 (Q2 2001), 24-32.

14. Hugh Ross, “Can Science Test a ‘God-Created-It’ Origins Model? Yes!” 40-47, 55-58.

15. Revelation 5:11, THE HOLY BIBLE.

16. 1 Corinthians 2:9, THE HOLY BIBLE.

17. Revelation 21:9, THE HOLY BIBLE.

18. Revelation 22:12-17, THE HOLY BIBLE.

SIDEBAR: NEW LAWS FOR THE NEW CREATION

Revelation 21 declares that the law of decay (i.e., the second law of thermodynamics) will no longer exist in the new creation. The apostle John records that death, mourning, crying, and pain — four consequences of the decay law — will have no place in the new creation.1 In the new creation, people will apparently consume without incurring cost, further evidence of decay’s absence.

The description of a new Jerusalem suggests the absence of gravity (as we know it) in the new creation. This “city” (or structure) measures roughly 1500 miles long by 1500 miles wide by 1500 miles high, and it has corners.2 Thus, the New Jerusalem’s shape (a cube or pyramid) violates the law of gravity. Gravity forces any body larger than about 150 miles across into a spherical shape.

With electromagnetic radiation, light casts shadows and eclipses. In the new creation hot bodies such as the sun and the stars, the primary sources of light in the present universe, will no longer exist.3 Light will pervade all of the new creation, but not electromagnetic light, for there will be no darkness, no shadows.

The limitations of the space-time manifold of the universe are lifted in the new creation. Relationships are nonlinear (see subhead, Better Than Eden, and the paragraphs that follow). Nor will people be geographically limited as they are in the present universe. Physics and space will no longer confine individuals to the environs of one tiny planet. The common yearning to be in more than one place at a time as well as to be unrestricted by time will be fulfilled.

REFERENCES:

1. Revelation 21:4, THE HOLY BIBLE.

2. Revelation 21:16, 17, NIV.

3. Revelation 22:5, THE HOLY BIBLE.

A pilot flying his plane over the South Pacific sees an uncharted island in the distance and circles downward to take a closer look. As the plane descends, the pilot spots large rocks on the island’s shore arranged to spell out SOS. Beyond the reach of waves, he notices a grass hut. Without hesitation, the pilot radios for help.

Is this pilot behaving rationally? No one would question the point. He recognizes the improbability of wind and waves acting on the rocks along the shore to spell SOS.1 Experience has taught the pilot that intelligible messages must come from intelligent sources. SOS, though not a word in the English language, represents the code for the universal distress message. The island inhabitant spelled out not just a word, such as “help,” but a special code, SOS, on the beach knowing that anyone seeing it from the air would recognize its meaning.

The grass hut also convinces the pilot to radio for help. It provides further evidence that the rocks' arrangement on the beach is not the effect of chance, but rather the work of someone stranded on the island. Encoded information coupled with additional evidence for intelligent activity provides support for design that goes beyond the mere presence of information. It requires an intelligent agent to choose and employ the code. And, encoded information carries an implied sense of purpose.

Over the last 40 years, scientists have found the same type of evidence inside the cell that prompted the pilot's radio call for help. They have discovered that the cell’s biochemical machinery is an information-based system. Moreover, the chemical information inside the cell exists as encoded information. The genetic code (the rules used to encode the cell’s information) defines the cell’s biochemical information system.

By itself, the cell’s encoded information offers powerful evidence for an Intelligent Designer. And, like the islander's grass hut, recent discoveries provide additional proof validating the premise. Molecular biologists studying the genetic code’s origin have unwittingly stumbled across profound evidence for Intelligent Design — a type of fine-tuning in the rules that form the genetic code. These rules impart to the genetic code the surprising capacity to minimize errors.

Error-minimization properties in the genetic code allow the cell’s biochemical information systems to make mistakes and still communicate critical information with high fidelity. It’s as if the stranded island inhabitant could arrange the rocks as SSO or OSS and still communicate the need for help.

BIOCHEMICAL INFORMATION

PROTEINS

Much as the islander's message began with the rocks, the description of cellular information begins with proteins. Proteins, the “workhorse” molecules of life, take part in essentially every cellular and extracellular structure and activity. They help form structures inside the cell and in the cell’s surrounding matrix. Among other roles, proteins catalyze chemical reactions, harvest chemical energy, serve in the cell’s defense systems, and store and transport molecules.2

Molecules called polypeptides make up proteins. One or more of the same and/or different polypeptides interact to form proteins. Polypeptides are chain-like molecules folded into precise three-dimensional structures. The polypeptide’s three-dimensional architecture determines the way one polypeptide interacts with other polypeptides to form a protein. The structure of the polypeptide consequently dictates its function.3

Polypeptides form when the cellular machinery links together (in a head-to-tail fashion) smaller subunit molecules called amino acids.4 The cell employs 20 different amino acids to make polypeptides. The amino acids that make up the cell’s polypeptide chains possess a variety of chemical and physical properties.5 In principle, the 20 amino acids can link up in any of the possible amino acid combinations and sequences to form a polypeptide.

Each amino acid sequence imparts the polypeptide with a unique chemical and physical profile along its chain. The chemical and physical profile determines how the polypeptide chain folds, and, therefore, how it interacts with other polypeptide chains to form a functional protein. Because structure determines the function of a polypeptide, the amino acid sequence ultimately defines the type of work the polypeptide performs.

A polypeptide’s amino acid sequence contains information. Just as letters form words, amino acids strung together form the “words” of the cell, polypeptides.6 In language, some letter combinations produce meaningful words and others produce gibberish. Amino acid sequences do the same. Some produce functional polypeptides, whereas others produce gibberish polypeptides that serve no role inside the cell.7

Treating amino acid sequences as information has become a fruitful approach for researchers seeking to understand the origin of proteins.8 It has also helped them characterize the functional utility of different amino acid sequences.

DNA

DNA, like polypeptides, contains information. In fact, DNA’s chief function is information storage.

Like proteins, DNA consists of chain-like molecules known as polynucleotides.9 Two polynucleotide chains align in an antiparallel fashion to form a DNA molecule. (The two strands are arranged parallel to one another with the starting point of one strand located next to the ending point of the other strand, and vice versa.) The paired polynucleotide chains twist around each other forming the well-known DNA double helix. The cell’s machinery forms polynucleotide chains by linking together four different subunit molecules called nucleotides. The four nucleotides used to build DNA chains are adenosine, guanosine, cytidine, and thymidine, familiarly known as A, G, C, and T, respectively.

DNA stores the information necessary to make all the polypeptides used by the cell. The sequence of nucleotides in the DNA strands specifies the sequence of amino acids in polypeptide chains. Scientists refer to the amino-acid-coding nucleotide sequence (for constructing polypeptides) along the DNA strand as a gene.10 Through the use of genes, DNA stores the information functionally expressed in the amino acid sequences of polypeptide chains. The DNA strands’ nucleotides function as alphabet letters and the genes as words.

CENTRAL DOGMA OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

No discussion of biochemical information systems would be complete without considering information “flow” inside the cell, known as the “central dogma of molecular biology.”11 This concept describes how information stored in DNA becomes functionally expressed through the amino acid sequence and activity of polypeptide chains.

Found inside the nucleus of complex cells, DNA can be compared to the reference books found in a library. The information stored there cannot be removed but must be copied, or transcribed. DNA does not leave the nucleus to direct the synthesis of polypeptide chains. Rather the cellular machinery copies the gene’s sequence by assembling another polynucleotide, messenger RNA (mRNA).12 This single-strand molecule is similar, but not identical, in composition to DNA. One of the most important differences between DNA and mRNA is the use of uridine (U) in place of thymidine (T) to form the mRNA chain. Scientists refer to the process of copying mRNA from DNA as transcription.

Once assembled, mRNA migrates from the nucleus of the cell into the cytoplasm. At the ribosome, mRNA directs the synthesis of polypeptide chains.13 The information content of the polynucleotide sequence is translated into the polypeptide amino acid sequence –– much like translating Spanish into English.

The analogical language used to describe the flow of information in biochemical systems is no accident. Biochemical systems are information systems.

THE GENETIC CODE

LIFE’S ENCODED INFORMATION

One may wonder how the sequence of nucleotides in DNA translates into the sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide. There seems to be a mismatch between the storage and functional expression of information in the cell. A one-to-one relationship cannot exist between the four different nucleotides of DNA and the 20 different amino acids used to assemble polypeptides. The cell overcomes this mismatch by using a code comprised of groupings of three nucleotides to specify the 20 different amino acids.14

The cell uses a set of rules to relate these nucleotide triplet sequences to the 20 amino-comprising polypeptides. Molecular biologists refer to this set of rules as the genetic code. The nucleotide triplets, or “codons” as they are called, represent the fundamental communication units of the genetic code. In the same way that the stranded islander used three letters, SOS, to communicate his plight, the genetic code uses three nucleotide “characters” to signify an amino acid. The genetic code is essentially universal among all living organisms.

Sixty-four codons make up the genetic code. Because the genetic code only needs to encode 20 amino acids, some of the codons are redundant. That is, different codons code for the same amino acid. In fact, up to six different codons specify some amino acids. Others are specified by only one codon.

Interestingly, some codons, called stop codons or nonsense codons, code no amino acids. (For example, the codon UGA is a stop codon.) These codons always occur at the end of the gene, informing the cell where the polypeptide chain ends. Stop codons serve as a form of “punctuation” for the cell’s information system.

Some coding triplets, called start codons, play a dual role in the genetic code. These codons not only encode amino acids, but also “tell” the cell where a polypeptide begins. For example, the codon GUG not only encodes the amino acid valine, it also specifies the starting point of the polypeptide chain. Start codons function as a sort of “capitalization” for the information system of the cell.

THE GENETIC CODE AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Observed information on the island leads the pilot to reasonably conclude that an intelligent agent designed it with a purpose. The information content of DNA and proteins, the molecules that ultimately define life’s most fundamental structures and processes, leads to the inescapable conclusion that an Intelligent Designer with purpose in mind is responsible for life. This conclusion is as rational as the one made by the pilot when he spotted the message on the beach and radioed for help.

The genetic code, the set of rules that translate the stored information found in DNA into the functional information of proteins, provides further support for an Intelligent Designer. All codes require an intelligent agent to develop the set of rules defining the code.

The set of rules that define the genetic code, universal to all life, reveals still more amazing evidence for design. The genetic code displays a fascinating capacity to resist the errors that naturally occur as the cell uses information or transmits information from one generation to the next. Qualitative inspection of the code only partly exposes its fine-tuning. Recent studies employing methods to quantify error-minimization properties in the genetic code bring this new evidence for Intelligent Design squarely into focus.

MUTATIONS

Why does the error-minimization capacity of the genetic code provide such a powerful indicator for Intelligent Design? Translating the stored information of DNA into the functional information of proteins is the genetic code’s chief function. The genetic code's failure to transmit and translate information with high fidelity can be devastating to the cell. Briefly considering how mutations affect cells facilitates understanding.

A mutation refers to any change that takes place in the DNA nucleotide sequence.15 DNA can experience several different types of mutations. Substitution mutations are one common type. In a substitution mutation, one or more of the nucleotides in the DNA strand is replaced by another nucleotide. For example, an A may be replaced by a G, or a C may be replaced by a T. This substitution changes the codon that the nucleotide is part of. The amino acid specified by that codon changes, leading to an altered chemical and physical profile along the polypeptide chain. If the substituted amino acid possesses dramatically different physicochemical properties from the native amino acid, the polypeptide folds improperly. This improper folding impacts the polypeptide, and hence yields a protein with reduced or even lost function. Most mutations harm cellular health because they significantly and negatively impact protein structure and function.

QUALITATIVE DESIGN EVIDENCE

The genetic code’s redundancy appears to be well thought out rather than haphazard. Genetic code rules incorporate a design that allows the cell to avoid the harmful effects of substitution mutations. For example, six codons encode the amino acid leucine (Leu). If at a particular amino acid position in a polypeptide, Leu is encoded by 5' (pronounced five prime, a marker indicating the beginning of the codon). CUU, substitution mutations in the 3' position from U to C, A, or G produce three new codons, 5' CUC, 5' CUA, and 5' CUG, all of which code for Leu. The net effect produces no change in the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide. For this scenario, the cell successfully avoids the negative effects of a substitution mutation.

Likewise, a change of C in the 5' position to a U generates a new codon, 5’UUU, that specifies phenylalanine, an amino acid with similar physical and chemical properties to Leu. A change of C to an A or to a G produces codons that code for isoleucine and valine, respectively. These two amino acids also possess chemical and physical properties similar to leucine. Qualitatively, the genetic code appears constructed to minimize errors that result from substitution mutations.

QUANTITATIVE DESIGN EVIDENCE

Recently, scientists from the University of Bath (U.K.) and from Princeton University worked to quantify the error-minimization capacity of the genetic code. Early work indicated that the naturally occurring genetic code withstands the potentially harmful effects of substitution mutations better than all but 0.02 percent (1 out of 5000) of randomly generated genetic codes with codon assignments different from the universal genetic code.16

This initial work overlooked the fact that some types of substitution mutations occur more frequently than others in nature. For example, an A-to-G substitution occurs more frequently than does either an A-to-C or an A-to-T mutation. When researchers incorporated this correction into their analysis, they discovered that the naturally occurring genetic code performed better than one million randomly generated genetic codes. They also found that the genetic code in nature resides near the global optimum for all possible genetic codes with respect to its error-minimization capacity.17 Nature’s universal genetic code is truly one in a million — or better!

The genetic code’s error-minimization properties are actually more dramatic than these results indicate. When researchers calculated the error-minimization capacity of one million randomly generated genetic codes, they discovered that the error-minimization values formed a distribution where the naturally occurring genetic code’s capacity occurred outside the distribution.18 Researchers estimate the existence of 1018 possible genetic codes possessing the same type and degree of redundancy as the universal genetic code. All of these codes fall within the error-minimization distribution. This finding means that of 1018 possible genetic codes, few, if any, have an error-minimization capacity that approaches the code found universally in nature.

Obviously concerned about the implications, some researchers have challenged the optimality of the genetic code.19 The teams from Bath, Princeton, and elsewhere, however, have effectively responded to these challenges.20

A FORCE BEHIND THE GENETIC CODE

Based on their research results, the Bath and Princeton scientists concluded that the rules of the genetic code could not be a frozen accident. A genetic code assembled through random biochemical events would not possess near ideal error-minimization properties. These researchers argue that a “force” shaped the genetic code. Instead of looking to a supernatural explanation for the genetic code’s origin, however, they appeal to natural selection. They believe random events operated on by “the forces of natural selection” over and over again produced the genetic code’s error-minimization capacity.21

CAN THE GENETIC CODE EVOLVE?

Other scientific work questions the likelihood that the genetic code evolved. In 1968 Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, in a classic paper, convincingly argued that the genetic code could not have undergone significant evolution.22 The rationale for Crick’s position is easy to understand. Any change in codon assignment leads to changes in amino acids in every polypeptide made by the cell. This wholesale change in polypeptide sequences would result in large numbers of defective proteins. Nearly any conceivable change to the genetic code would be lethal to the cell.

Even if the genetic code could change gradually over time to yield a set of rules that allowed for maximum error-minimization capacity, is there enough time for this process to occur? Biophysicist Hubert Yockey has addressed this question.23 He calculates that natural selection would have to explore 1.40 x 1070 different genetic codes to hit upon the universal genetic code found in nature. Yockey estimates the maximum time available for the code to originate as 6.3 x 1015 seconds. Put simply, natural selection lacks adequate time to find the universal genetic code. It would have to evaluate about 1054 codes per second.

Other researchers suggest that the genetic code’s origin coincides with the origin of life. Operating within the evolutionary paradigm, a team headed by renowned origin-of-life researcher Manfred Eigen estimated the age of the genetic code as 3.8 + 0.6 billion years.24 Current geochemical evidence places life’s first appearance on Earth at 3.86 billion years ago.25

THE SUPERNATURAL ORIGIN OF THE GENTIC CODE

The genetic code — the set of rules used by the cell to translate information stored in DNA into the information used by polypeptides — possesses a virtually unique optimality in its capacity to resist errors caused by mutation. The genetic code in every way defies explanation as a frozen accident produced by random biochemical events, or as the fortuitous outcome of an evolutionary process directed by the blind forces of natural selection. Genetic code evolution would be catastrophic for the cell. Given the rapidity of life’s origin, time is too short for natural selection to come across the well-designed universal genetic code found in nature. The genetic code seemingly originates at the time life first appears on Earth. All this evidence dictates the conclusion that an Intelligent Designer is responsible for the genetic code.

This conclusion becomes even more compelling when one considers that encoded information demands an intelligent agent not only to generate the information, but also to design and apply the set of rules that constitute the code. The remarkable fine-tuning of the genetic code provides cohesive corroborative evidence for the biblical Intelligent Designer. Like the SOS rock formation and the grass hut on the beach, the genetic code offers every indication that a Creator deliberately and purposefully shaped the message.

REFERENCES:

1. Peter Kreeft, FUNDAMENTALS OF THE FAITH: ESSAYS IN CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 25-26.

2. Robert C. Bohinksi, MODERN CONCEPTS IN BIOCHEMISTRY, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1983), 86-87.

3. Harvey Lodish et al., MOLECULAR CELL BIOLOGY, 4th ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2000), 54-60.

4. Lodish et al., 51-54.

5. Lodish et al., 52.

6. Michael Denton, EVOLUTION: A THEORY IN CRISIS (Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, 1986), 308-25; Walter L. Bradley and Charles B. Thaxton, “Information and the Origin of Life,” in THE CREATION HYPOTHESIS: SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER, ed. J. p. Moreland (Downers Grove, IL: InterVaristy Press, 1994), 188-90.

7. Lodish et al., 257.

8. Hubert p. Yockey, INFORMATION THEORY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen, THE MYSTERY OF LIFE’S ORIGIN: REASSESSING CURRENT THEORIES (Dallas: Lewis and Stanley, 1984), 127-43; Bernd-Olaf Küppers, INFORMATION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990).

9. Lodish et al., 101-05.

10. The gene structure is far more complex than portrayed here. Any biochemistry or molecular biology textbook can be consulted for a more thorough discussion of gene structure.

11. David Freifelder, MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, 2d ed. (Boston, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1987), 208.

12. Lodish et al., 111-116.

13. Lodish et al., 125-34.

14. Lodish et al., 117-20.

15. Lubert Stryer, BIOCHEMISTRY, 3d ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1988), 675-76.

16. David Haig and Laurence D. Hurst, “A Quantitative Measure of Error Minimization in the Genetic Code,” JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION 33 (1991): 412-17.

17. Gretchen Vogel, “Tracking the History of the Genetic Code,” SCIENCE 281 (1998), 329-31; Stephen J. Freeland and Laurence D. Hurst, “The Genetic Code Is One in a Million,” JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION 47 (1998): 238-48; Stephen J. Freeland et al., “Early Fixation of an Optimal Genetic Code,” MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION 17 (2000): 511-18.

18. Freeland and Hurst, 238-48.

19. Massimo D. Giulio, “The Origin of the Genetic Code,” TRENDS IN BIOCHEMICAL SCIENCES 25 (2000): 44.

20. Stephen J. Freeland, Robin D. Knight and Laura F. Landweber, “Measuring Adaptation within the Genetic Code,” TRENDS IN BIOCHEMICAL SCIENCES 25 (2000): 44; Stephen J. Freeland and Laurence D. Hurst, “Load Minimization of the Genetic Code: History Does Not Explain the Pattern,” PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON B 265 (1998): 2111-19; Terres A. Ronneberg, Laura F. Landweber and Stephen J. Freeland, “Testing a Biosynthetic Theory of the Genetic Code: Fact or Artifact?” PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, USA 97 (2000): 13690-95; Ramin Amirnovin, “An Analysis of the Metabolic Theory of the Origin of the Genetic Code,” JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION 44 (1997): 473-76.

21. Robin D. Knight, Stephen J. Freeland and Laura F. Landweber, “Selection, History and Chemistry: The Three Faces of the Genetic Code,” TRENDS IN BIOCHEMICAL SCIENCES 24 (1999): 241-47.

22. F. H. C. Crick, “The Origin of the Genetic Code,” JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY 38 (1968): 367-79.

23. Yockey, 180-83.

24. Manfred Eigen et al., “How Old Is the Genetic Code? Statistical Geometry of tRNA Provides an Answer,” SCIENCE 244 (1989), 673-79.

25. Fazale Rana, “Origin-of-Life Predictions Face Off: Evolution vs. Biblical Creation,” FACTS FOR FAITH 6 (Q2 2001), 41-47.

SIDEBAR

The scientists from the University of Bath and Princeton University, fully aware of Francis Crick’s work, still rely on evolution to explain the genetic code’s optimal design because of the existence of nonuniversal genetic codes. While the genetic code in nature is generally regarded as universal, some nonuniversal genetic codes exist — genetic codes that employ slightly modified codon assignments. Presumably these nonuniversal genetic codes evolved from the universal genetic code. Therefore, researchers argue that genetic code evolution is possible. For the most part, however, the codon assignments of the nonuniversal genetic codes are identical to that of the universal genetic code with only one or two codon assignments being different. It is better to think of the nonuniversal genetic codes as deviants of the universal genetic code.

Does the existence of nonuniversal genetic codes imply that wholesale genetic code evolution is possible? The answer is no. Careful study reveals that codon changes in the nonuniversal genetic codes always occur in relatively small genomes, such as mitochondrial genomes, and involve either: (1) codons that occur at low frequencies in that particular genome; or (2) stop codons. Changes in assignment for these codons could occur without producing a lethal scenario, since only a small number of polypeptides in the cell or organelle would experience an altered amino acid sequence. Thus, it appears that limited evolution of the genetic code can take place, but only in special circumstances.1

REFERENCE:

1. Syozo Osawa et al., “Evolution of the Mitochondrial Genetic Code I. Origin of AGR Serine and Stop Codons in Metazoan Mitochondria,” JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION 29 (1989): 202-7; Dennis W. Schultz and Michael Yarus, “On the Malleability in the Genetic Code,” JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION 42 (1996): 597-601; Eors Szathmary, “Codon Swapping as a Possible Evolutionary Mechanism,” JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION 32 (1991): 178-82.

The recent announcement that scientists have deciphered the human genome has secular scientists buzzing. And their editorials in the New York Times and elsewhere praise, not the Creator, but Darwinian evolution. We need to know, however, that these new discoveries are no threat to the Christian worldview. Rather, they are a bold verification of its coherence.

The human genome -- the molecular-biological blueprint of the human body -- is written in a language of four letters (A, C, T, and G), which represent the amino acids that produce the proteins that make up our biology. The arrangement of these letters in the genome account for things like hair and eye color and a host of physical traits. Even male pattern baldness has a genetic link.

But, much to the amazement of the translators of our genetic code, instead of the human genome consisting of 100,000 genes that account for biological traits, the human blueprint is only around 30,000 genes. Since the fruit fly possesses between 13,000 and 14,000 genes, scientists believed that, to account for all the differences between fruit flies and humans, our genome would have to be many times larger. Not so.

If their measurements are accurate, the human genome is just over twice the size of the fruit fly's. But all this proves, of course, is that the language of the genome is much subtler than scientists thought previously.

This shouldn't surprise us. The fact that our biology is written in a decipherable language testifies even more brilliantly to a God who speaks. That he created all living things from a relevantly similar blueprint is, likewise, no surprise. That the language of the human genome is close to that of other species is no surprise, either.

The latest research reveals that chimpanzees share 98.8 percent of our genes; mice share 85 to 90 percent; and bananas, 50 percent of our genes. Well, for Christians whose worldview includes the affirmation that we were made from the dust of the earth, this hardly comes as unsettling information. To go on to conclude, as evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould has done in the New York Times, that the similarities between genomes point to Darwinian evolution requires an act of faith that is simply breathtaking.

Subtle differences in the language of our genomes results in profound differences between us and other species -- and vive la difference!

The point is, interpreting the information in our cells requires a set of worldview lenses through which to view the information. A Darwinian sees through Darwinian glasses. But the more we learn about DNA, the more difficult it becomes for Darwinists to explain what they see.

How does information, through a process of chance evolution, become rational, coherent instruction for the building of a body? Well, this is why Gould and his colleagues talk about "blind watchmakers" and other oxymorons. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helical nature of the DNA molecule, has even declared, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved." It's as if reminding themselves of their own dogma will convince them that the evidence for a Designer is a mirage in the desert of scientific explanation.

Christians know that the Creator has left his fingerprints on everything he created. And the God who speaks, in his infinite wisdom, uttered the language that brought us all into existence.

For further reference:

Crick, Francis. What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1988; p. 138.

Gould, Stephen Jay. "Humbled by the Genome's Mysteries." New York Times, 19 February 2001.

_________________________

Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

(Talk delivered at CSICOP's Fourth World Skeptics Conference in Burbank, California, on 21 June 2002, during a Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal [CSICOP] discussion titled "Evolution and Intelligent Design." The participants included ID proponents William Dembski and Paul Nelson as well as evolutionists Wesley Elsberry and Kenneth Miller. Massimo Pigliucci moderated the discussion.)

This conference focuses on skepticism's prospects over the next twenty-five years. I want in this talk specifically to address skepticism's prospects for unseating intelligent design in that time. Though as a proponent of intelligent design I'm no doubt biased, I believe that over the next twenty-five years intelligent design will provide skepticism with its biggest challenge yet. I want in this talk to sketch why I think that.

A few years ago, skeptic Michael Shermer wrote a book titled WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS. Most of the weird things Shermer discusses in that book are definitely on the fringes, like holocaust denial, alien encounters, and witch crazes - hardly the sort of stuff that's going to make it into the public school science curriculum. Intelligent design by contrast is becoming thoroughly mainstream and threatening to do just that.

Gallup poll after Gallup poll confirms that about 90 percent of the U.S. population believes that some sort of design is behind the world. Ohio is currently the epicenter of the evolution-intelligent design controversy. Recent polls conducted by the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER found that 59 percent of Ohioans want both evolution and intelligent design taught in their public schools. Another 8 percent want only intelligent design taught. And another 15 percent do not want the teaching of intelligent design mandated, but do want to allow evidence against evolution to be presented in public schools. You do the arithmetic.

Perhaps the most telling finding of this poll is how Ohioans view the consequences for their state of having intelligent design taught in their public schools. According to the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER (June 9), "About three of every four respondents said including intelligent design in the curriculum would have either a positive effect or no effect on the state's reputation or its ability to attract new business." One could hardly imagine the same response if the question were whether to teach astrology, witchcraft, or flat-earth geology. Intelligent design has already become mainstream with the public at large.

Even so, the mainstreaming of intelligent design doesn't cut any ice with skeptics. Skeptics know all about logical and informal fallacies, and the ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM heads the list. Skepticism purports to keep a gullible public honest. Accordingly, just because intelligent design is acceptable to most Americans doesn't mean that it deserves acceptance (witness America's fascination with horoscopes). All the same, there's reason to think that the usual skeptical assaults are not going to prosper against intelligent design.

One of skepticism's patron saints, H. L. Mencken, remarked, "For every problem, there is a neat, simple solution, and it is always wrong." Yet in writing about Darwin's theory, Stephen Jay Gould remarked, "No great theory ever boasted such a simple structure." Intelligent design claims that Mencken's insight applies to evolutionary biology, overturning not just mechanistic accounts of evolution but skepticism itself.

Skepticism, to be true to its principles, must be willing to turn the light of scrutiny on anything. And yet that is precisely what it cannot afford to do in the controversy over evolution and intelligent design. The problem with skepticism is that it is not a pure skepticism. Rather, it is a selective skepticism that desires a neat and sanitized world which science can in principle fully characterize in terms of unbroken natural laws.

Indeed, why have a skeptical organization with a name like CSICOP? The "COP" in CSICOP is not accidental. CSICOP is in the business of policing claims about the paranormal. The paranormal, by being other than normal, threatens the tidy world bestowed by skepticism's materialistic conception of science.

No other conception of science will do for skepticism. The normal is what is describable by a materialistic science. The paranormal is what's not. Given the skeptic's faith that everything is ultimately normal, any claims about the paranormal must ultimately be bogus. And since intelligent design claims that an intelligence not ultimately reducible to material mechanisms might be responsible for the world and various things we find in the world (not least ourselves), it too is guilty of transgressing the normal and must be relegated to the paranormal.

There is an irony here. The skeptic's world, in which intelligence is not fundamental and the world is not designed, is a rational world because it proceeds by unbroken natural law - cause precedes effect with inviolable regularity. In short, everything proceeds "normally." On the other hand, the design theorist's world, in which intelligence is fundamental and the world is designed, is not a rational world because intelligence can do things that are unexpected. In short, it is a world in which some things proceed "paranormally."

To allow an unevolved intelligence a place in the world is, according to skepticism, to send the world into a tailspin. It is to exchange unbroken natural law for caprice and thereby destroy science. And yet it is only by means of our intelligence that science is possible and that we understand the world. Thus, for the skeptic, the world is intelligible only if it starts off without intelligence and then evolves intelligence. If it starts out with intelligence and evolves intelligence because of a prior intelligence, then the world becomes unintelligible.

The logic here is flawed, but once in its grip, there is no way to escape its momentum. That is why evolution is a nonnegotiable for skepticism. For instance, on two occasions I offered to join the editorial advisory board of Michael Shermer's SKEPTIC MAGAZINE to be its resident skeptic regarding evolution. Though Michael and I are quite friendly, he never took me up on my offer. Indeed, he can't afford to. To do so is to allow that an intelligence outside the world might have influence in the world. That would destroy the world's autonomy and render effectively impossible the global rejection of the paranormal that skepticism requires.

Skepticism therefore faces a curious tension. On the one hand, to maintain credibility it must be willing to shine the light of scrutiny everywhere, and thus in principle even on evolution. On the other hand, to be the scourge with which to destroy superstition and whip a gullible public into line, it must commit itself to a materialistic conception of science and thus cannot afford to question evolution. Intelligent design exploits this tension and thereby turns the tables on skepticism.

Skepticism's love affair with evolution predates Darwin. In fact, it is easily traceable to the atomist and mechanical philosophers of antiquity like Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. Evolution throughout the ages has taught that all aspects of nature, biological complexity included, result from material mechanisms. Within contemporary biology, these include principally the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation, but also include other mechanisms (symbiosis, gene transfer, genetic drift, the action of regulatory genes in development, self-organizational processes, etc.). These mechanisms are just that: mindless material mechanisms that do what they do irrespective of intelligence. To be sure, mechanisms can be programmed by an intelligence. But any such intelligent programming of evolutionary mechanisms is not properly part of evolutionary theory.

Intelligent design, by contrast, teaches that biological complexity is not exclusively the result of material mechanisms but also requires intelligence, where the intelligence in question is not reducible to such mechanisms. The central issue, therefore, is not the relatedness of all organisms, or what typically is called common descent. Indeed, intelligent design is perfectly compatible with common descent. Rather, the central issue is how biological complexity emerged and whether intelligence played a pivotal role in its emergence.

Suppose, therefore, for the sake of argument that intelligence - one irreducible to material mechanisms - actually did play a decisive role in the emergence of life's complexity and diversity. How could we know it? This question is a special case of a more general question, namely: If an intelligence were involved in the occurrence of some event or the formation of some object, and if we had no direct evidence of such an intelligence's activity, how could we know that an intelligence was involved at all? This last question arises in numerous contexts, including archeology, SETI, and data falsification in science.

I want here to focus on data falsification because it will help point up the legitimacy of the techniques for design detection on which intelligent design depends. On May 23 of this year, the NEW YORK TIMES reported on the work of "J. Hendrik Schön, 31, a Bell Labs physicist in Murray Hill, N.J., who has produced an extraordinary body of work in the last two and a half years, including seven articles each in SCIENCE and NATURE, two of the most prestigious journals."

Schön's career is on the line. Why? According to the NEW YORK TIMES, Schön published "graphs that were nearly identical even though they appeared in different scientific papers and represented data from different devices. In some graphs, even the tiny squiggles that should arise from purely random fluctuations matched exactly." As a consequence, Bell Labs appointed an independent panel to determine whether Schön "improperly manipulat[ed] data in research papers published in prestigious scientific journals."

The theoretical issues raised in this case of putative data falsification are precisely those that my own work on design detection seeks to address. The match between the two graphs in Schön's articles constitutes an independently given pattern or specification. Moreover, the random fluctuations in the graphs are highly improbable. What's more, the randomness here is well understood. As a consequence, no unknown mechanism is being sought for how the graphs from independent experiments on independent devices could have exhibited the same pattern of random fluctuations. At issue is the question of data manipulation and design, and we resolve it by identifying what I define as "specified improbability" or, as it's also called, "specified complexity."

Regardless of whether specified complexity constitutes, as I claim, a sufficient condition for detecting design, it certainly constitutes a necessary condition. Essential to intelligent design is the ability to detect design in cases where the evidence is circumstantial and thus where we lack direct evidence of a designing intelligence. In the case of Schön's graphs, under the relevant chance hypotheses characterizing the random fluctuations in question, the match between graphs had better be highly improbable (if the graphs were merely two-bar histograms with only a few possible gradations in height, then a match between the graphs would be reasonably probable and no one would ever have questioned Schön's integrity). Improbability, however, isn't enough. The random fluctuations of each graph taken individually are indeed highly improbable. But it's the match between the graphs that raises suspicions. That match renders one graph a specification for the other so that in the presence of improbability a design inference is warranted.

By itself, detecting design by means of specified complexity does not implicate any particular intelligence. Specified complexity could show that the data in Schön's papers were improperly manipulated. It could not, however, show that Schön was the actual culprit (though as first author on these papers he, like the captain on a proverbial sinking ship, would be in deep trouble). To identify the actual intelligence would require a more thorough causal analysis (an analysis that in the Schön case is being conducted by Bell Labs' independent panel). [Holwick - in effect, he was found guilty and was fired from Bell Labs.]

I want now to bring this discussion back to the main question of this paper, namely, the prospects for skepticism to unseat intelligent design. To answer this question, let's first consider what intelligent design has going for it:

1. A METHOD FOR DESIGN DETECTION. There's much discussion about the validity of specified complexity as a method for design detection, but judging by the response it has elicited over the last four years, this method is not going away. Some scholars (like Wesley Elsberry here) think it merely codifies an argument from ignorance. Others (like Paul Davies) think that it's onto something important. The point is that there are major players who are not intelligent design proponents who disagree. Such disagreement indicates that there are issues of real intellectual merit to be decided and that we're not dealing with a crank theory (at least not one that's obviously so).

2.IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX BIOCHEMICAL SYSTEMS. These are systems like the bacterial flagellum. They exhibit specified complexity. Moreover, the biological community does not have a clue how they emerged by material mechanisms. The great promise of Darwinian and other naturalistic accounts of evolution was precisely to show how known material mechanisms operating in known ways could produce all of biological complexity. That promise is now increasingly recognized as unfulfilled (and perhaps unfulfillable). Franklin Harold, not a design proponent, in his most recent book for Oxford University Press, THE WAY OF THE CELL, states, "There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations." Intelligent design contends that our ignorance here comprises not minor gaps in our knowledge of biological systems that promise readily to submit to tried-and-true mechanistic models, but rather indicates vast conceptual lacunae that are bridgeable only by radical ideas like design.

3. CHALLENGE TO THE STATUS QUO. Let's face it, in educated circles Darwinism and other mechanistic accounts of evolution are utterly status quo. That has advantages and disadvantages for proponents like yourselves. On the one hand, it means that the full resources of the scientific and educational establishment are behind you, and you can use them to squelch dissent. On the other hand, and especially to the extent that you are heavy-handed in enforcing materialist orthodoxy, it means that you are in danger of alienating the younger generation, which thrives on rebellion against the status quo. Intelligent design appeals to the rebelliousness of youth.

4. THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN HIGH AND MASS CULTURE. It's the educated elite that love evolution and the materialist science it helps to underwrite. On the other hand, the masses are by and large convinced of intelligent design. What's more, the masses ultimately hold the purse strings for the educated elite (in the form of state education, research funding, scholarships, etc.). This disconnect can be exploited. The advantage that biological evolution has had thus far is providing a theoretical framework, however empirically inadequate, to account for the emergence of biological complexity. The disadvantage facing the intelligent-design-supporting masses is that they've had to rely almost exclusively on pretheoretic design intuitions. Intelligent design offers to replace those pretheoretic intuitions with a rigorous design-theoretic framework that underwrites those intuitions.

5. AN EMERGING RESEARCH COMMUNITY. Intelligent design is attracting bright young scholars who are totally committed to developing intelligent design as a research program. We're still thin on the ground, but the signs I see are very promising indeed. It's not enough merely to detect design. Once it's detected, it must be shown how design leads to biological insights that could not have been obtained by taking a purely materialist outlook. I'm beginning to see glimmers of a thriving design-theoretic research program.

What's a skeptic to do against this onslaught, especially when there's a whole political dimension to the debate in which a public tired of being bullied by an intellectual elite find in intelligent design a tool for liberation? Let me suggest the following action points:

1. CONFLATE INTELLIGENT DESIGN WITH CREATIONISM. I'm not sure how much longer this tactic will work because the public and press are now catching on to the difference, but as long as there's mileage to be obtained, go for it. Emphasize science as a great force for enlightenment and contrast it sharply with fanatical religious fundamentalism. Then stress that intelligent design is essentially a religious and political movement. Generously use the "C-word" to confuse intelligent design with creationism, and then be sure to liken creationism to astrology, belief in a flat earth, and holocaust denial.

2. ARGUE FOR THE SUPERFLUITY OF DESIGN. This action point is also getting increasingly difficult to implement simply on the basis of empirical evidence, but by artificially defining science as an enterprise limited solely to material mechanisms, one conveniently eliminates design from scientific discussion. Thus any gap in our knowledge of how material mechanisms brought about some biological system does not reflect an absence of material mechanisms in nature to produce the system or a requirement for design to account for the system, but only a gap in our knowledge readily filled by carrying on as we have been carrying on.

3. PLAY THE SUBOPTIMALITY CARD. For most people the designer is a benevolent, wise God. This allows for the exploitation of cognitive dissonance by pointing to cases of apparent incompetent or wicked design in nature. I believe intelligent design has good answers to this objection, but the problem of evil is wonderfully adept at clouding intellects. This is one place where skepticism does well exploiting emotional responses.

4. ACHIEVE A SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH. Provide detailed testable models of how irreducibly complex biochemical systems like the bacterial flagellum could have emerged by material mechanisms. I don't give this much hope, but if you could pull this off, intelligent design would have a lot of backpedaling to do.

5. PAINT A MORE APPEALING WORLD PICTURE. Skepticism is at heart an austere enterprise. It works by negation. It makes a profession of shooting things down. This doesn't set well with a public that delights in novel possibilities. In his PENSÉES, Blaise Pascal wrote, "People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive." Pascal was not talking about people merely believing what they want to believe, as in wish fulfillment. Rather, he was talking about people being swept away by attractive ideas that capture their heart and imagination. Poll after poll indicates that for most people evolution does not provide a compelling vision of life and the world. Providing such a vision is in my view skepticism's overriding task if it is to unseat intelligent design. Good luck.

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William A. Dembski is a member of the Wilberforce Board of Reference, associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University, and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute's CENTER FOR THE RENEWAL OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE in Seattle. His books include THE DESIGN INFERENCE: ELIMINATING CHANCE THROUGH SMALL PROBABILITIES (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and NO FREE LUNCH: WHY SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY CANNOT BE PURCHASED WITHOUT INTELLIGENCE (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). (After clicking on the link, scroll down the page to find the book.)

*

The late Carl Sagan wrote in his book COSMOS, “Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a noted astronomer: 'Wire collect five hundred words on whether there is life on Mars.’ The astronomer dutifully replied: Nobody knows, Nobody knows, Nobody knows ... “ 250 times.

But some people's desire to know is so intense that NASA and its British counterpart have spent nearly a billion dollars to find out. Rover 1 landed on the red planet last week, just nine days after the British landed Rover 2 on Christmas Day.

Why such extraordinary effort and expense to look for life on Mars? Well, scientists, of course, are always eager to explore the unknown, but there's another reason you might not hear much about. Evolutionary theorists have never been able to demonstrate that non-living substances evolved into the first living cell here on Earth. Some speculate that biochemical evolution took place here, but the evidence eroded away. So the theory goes: Let's look at Mars; maybe there they experienced the same thing, and we can find the fossil record. In fact, one NASA website says, “Mars may be a fossil graveyard, recording the chemical conditions that fostered life on Earth, where the record of ... life's first moment is likely to have been eradicated forever.”

Then there's another possibility. Some evolutionists speculate that Earth hasn't existed long enough for natural processes to produce the first living cell here. So life must have come from elsewhere. Project chief engineer Gentry Lee says, “Maybe life evolved first on Mars and was knocked off the surface and carried to the Earth. Maybe we're all Martians.”

The primary clue they're looking for, of course, is water that could indicate past or present life. But, of course, ingredients are not enough. As Carl Sagan himself acknowledged, “The essence of life is not so much the atoms and simple molecules that make us up as the way in which they are put together.” And that's where the evolutionary theory is in trouble.

Consider this analogy: Rover 1 required impressive engineering to travel 300 million miles at speeds of up to 12,000 miles per hour and to land within a few yards of its target gently enough not to damage the equipment onboard — it is extraordinary. Scientists and engineers designed, assembled, and tweaked thousands of components so that they could function together flawlessly. By analogy, would anyone imagine that all of that happened by random chance? No.

Finding life or evidence of it on other planets is essential to the evolutionist's case. Carl Sagan once said that if there's life on only one planet, it could be a miracle; if there's life on two, it proves that life is a natural evolutionary process, and atheists can sleep soundly. That is the motivation that drives this search for life on Mars and fascinates us with Little Green Men.

So as the images and data come in from the Rovers, and as they are interpreted breathlessly by NASA engineers on TV, be aware that there's another agenda that some folks have here. It's not just a fascinating space exploration. It's making a case for how life began without a Creator.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• “Is there anything out there?” The Times (London), 3 January 2004. (Subscription required.)

• Robert Roy Britt, “Earth vs. Mars: The Two Planets Weigh In,” Space.com, 19 August 2003.

• Visit the NASA information page on Mars.

• Visit PBS's NOVA page about exploration on Mars.

• Paul Katcher and Jeffrey Kluger, “Getting to Know Mars,” Time, 7 January 2004.

• Anne Applebaum, “Mission to Nowhere,” Washington Post, 7 January 2004, A21.

• Carl Sagan, Cosmos (Random House, 1980). (See the “Blues for a Red Planet” chapter.)

• Norman L. Geisler, Cosmos: Carl Sagan's Religion (Quest Publications, 1983).

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040108, “The Cosmic Drama: Does It Include E.T.?“

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 021003, “Water, Water Everywhere: Signs of Life in the Cosmos?“ (Archived commentary; free registration required.)

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 010109, “SETI and the Search for Design: Is There Intelligence Out There?“ (Archived commentary; free registration required.)

• Hugh Ross, Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men (NavPress, 2002).

• Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live without God? (Word Books, 1994).

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

One subject I enjoy reading about is the intelligent design movement and its arguments against natural origins. And believe me, there's a lot to read. Recent years have seen an explosion of books, articles, and websites on the subject of intelligent design. Scientists, philosophers, and theologians have all contributed valuable insights to the debate.

But I think I can safely say that, with all of this reading, I've never read a book by an eminent scientist and intelligent design advocate that ended with a presentation of the Gospel — never, that is, until now.

Henry F. Schaefer's book SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY: CONFLICT OR COHERENCE? does exactly that. As his book's title indicates, Schaefer, a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize, has spent a lot of time studying and teaching about the relationship between science and faith. So his writing is clear and compelling not just on intelligent design, but also on a whole range of other issues that are of interest to both people of faith and people of science. But I think his treatment of the intelligent design issue is one of the best parts of the book, because it shows Schaefer meeting nonbelieving scientists on their own ground and using their own observations to undermine their arguments.

Schaefer quotes the brilliant scientist and agnostic Stephen Hawking, who wrote that a good theory “must accurately describe a large class of observations” and “must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.” While acknowledging the strengths of the “standard evolutionary model” in the first area, Schaefer points out that it has serious weaknesses in the second area. He writes, “Over the past 150 years evolutionary theorists have made countless predictions about fossil specimens to be observed in the future. Unfortunately for these seers, many new fossils have been discovered, but the interesting ones almost always seem to be contrary to the 'best' predictions.” Schaefer then contrasts the theory of evolution with other theories, such as the atomic theory and the theory of gravity, which are able to make precise predictions of future events, such as when Halley's Comet would appear — predictions, Schaefer says, that turned out to be true in his lifetime.

So, contrary to what many believe, the theory of intelligent design isn't just something people believe because the Bible tells them so. It's something we believe because it makes sense and describes the real world far better than the alternative theory.

As passages like this demonstrate, Schaefer's book is a wonderful resource for the high school or college student interested in studying science. In fact, it's ideal for parents to go through with their high school or college-age kids. Schaefer's own story of coming to faith in Christ, his descriptions of many other prominent scientists who are Christians, and his desire to share his faith will be an encouragement to kids who are wondering if their love of science is compatible with their commitment to God. And his exploration of issues like intelligent design will not only demonstrate to them how God has manifested Himself through nature, but also provide them with an excellent example of how their own gifts can be used for God's glory.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Dr. Henry F. Schaefer III, Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence? (University of Georgia, 2003)

• Jonathan C. Rienstra-Kiracofe, “God Is in the Details,” Books & Culture, 23 February 2004.

• Lectures by Dr. Henry Schaefer -- http://www.leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/lectures.html.

• P. Moreland, “What is Scientific Naturalism?“ Boundless, 4 March 2004.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040105, “Scientists and Their Gods: The Question of Coherence.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040301, “Charles Darwin Knew: Science and Freedom.”

• Learn more about intelligent design at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

• See BreakPoint's “Worldview for Parents” pages: “Micro- and Macroevolution: Is There a Difference?“ and “Did Life Evolve?“

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

In 1966, Lee Strobel was a 16-year-old who liked science. He liked it because it fit in with his logical way of looking at the world. He liked it for another reason, as well: Science — the way he was taught it — allowed him to dismiss God from his life.

In his new book, THE CASE FOR A CREATOR, Strobel describes the link between what he was taught in biology class and the breakdown of his religious faith. Sad to say, Strobel's biology teacher was aided and abetted by his church. In Sunday school, Strobel writes, “my 'why' questions weren't always welcomed.” Instead of answering them, his teachers told him to memorize another Bible verse.

Meanwhile, Strobel's trust in science “had been shaped by growing up in post-Sputnik America, where science and technology had been exalted as holding the keys to the survival of our country.” That trust became rock-solid when Strobel encountered the images of evolution.

The most powerful image involved the Stanley Miller experiment. In 1953, Miller, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, attempted to artificially create the building blocks of life. Miller reproduced what he believed was the atmosphere of the primitive earth. He then shot electric sparks through it to simulate lightning. The result? Amino acids.

Strobel says that when he learned of this experiment, “My mind flashed to the logical implication: If the origin of life can be explained solely through natural processes, then God was out of a job! After all, there was no need for a deity if living organisms could emerge by themselves out of the primordial soup and then develop ... into more and more complex creatures.”

Strobel was delighted to put God out of a job, because no God meant he could behave exactly as he wanted. And that's how things remained for quite a few years. And then, one day, an unexpected witness led Strobel to reconsider the possibility that God might exist, after all: Strobel's wife Leslie announced that she had become a Christian. Strobel was horrified. He could not understand how a rational person could believe such nonsense.

But over the next few months, Strobel began to notice a change in Leslie's values and character. He was determined to investigate this change — and go wherever the answers took him. His two-year research into the claims of Christianity led him to a powerful faith in Christ.

Strobel's story is a warning of why Christians need to teach their kids how to apply worldview thinking to every aspect of their lives. We can start by telling them that much of the so-called evidence for evolution is fraudulent or has been proven false, like the Miller experiment that so influenced Strobel. Strobel discovered all of this when he began searching for answers.

His latest book, THE CASE FOR A CREATOR, explains how new findings in physics, astronomy, and biochemistry support the notion that God created the heavens and the earth. I'll be talking about this book over the next few days on BreakPoint.

I hope you'll keep reading, because if we don't give our kids answers to their questions, somebody else will — somebody who may be intent on putting God out of a job.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Zondervan, 2004). Visit the book's website.

• On September 26, CCN is broadcasting a special event on The Case for a Creator. Find out how your church can air the broadcast.

• Ryan Huxley, “Case for a Creator,” a review, IDEA Center.

• Trevor Stokes, “Intelligent design study appears,” The Scientist, 3 September 2004.

• John Wilson, “Unintelligent Debate,” Christianity Today, September 2004.

• See Chuck Colson's Ten Questions about Origins, a useful tool for the classroom.

• See the “Worldview for Parents” page, “More Than Coincidence“ (which includes links to other past “Worldview for Parents” pages on evolution and creation).

• See BreakPoint's Intelligent Design research page.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

The nose is smarter than we thought. In fact, it just won two Americans a Nobel Prize.

Researchers Richard Axel of New York and Linda Buck of Seattle were chosen to receive this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their citation says “for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.” Stated more simply, they discovered important details of “how we smell” — how we detect odors via receptors in the nose and information processing in the brain and nervous system.

The press release points out the sometimes life-or-death importance of the sense of smell. Newborn pups use it to locate their mothers' milk glands. Humans use odors “to identify suitable food and to avoid putrid or unfit foodstuff.” Mosquitoes locate humans by detecting our odors, so the new research may someday prevent mosquito bites and malaria.

Nobel judge Professor Sten Grillner commented, “Until Axel and Buck's studies, the sense of smell was a mystery.” This year's laureates researched details of, in Axel's words, “how the brain knows what the nose is smelling,” how it equips organisms “to detect food, predators, and mates.” For two scientists, acting alone, to map one of the major human senses, from molecular to cellular level, is unique in the history of science.

A “diverse repertoire of odorous molecules” excite some of the five million receptor cells in the nasal cavity. These cells generate coded electrical signals and send them to the brain.

Ms. Buck adds an ironic observation: “You might have a rose and a skunk being recognized by some of the same receptors.” But the brain deciphers those signals and goes on to distinguish ten thousand separate and distinct odors.

Previous Nobel laureates have researched other senses and found equally stunning complexity. In 1981, laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel investigated the sense of sight. They discovered nerve cells that adjust contrast, detect motion, and perform numerous specialized functions. To explain how the brain makes sense of signals from the retina, their work uses the analogy, “ ... as if certain cells read the simple letters in the message and compile them into syllables that are subsequently read by other cells, which, in turn, compile the syllables into words, and these are finally read by other cells that compile words into sentences” which proceed to the brain, where the visual impression originates.

Nearly a century and a half ago, Charles Darwin conceded,”To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” He wrote botanist Asa Gray, “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.” And Darwin didn't know nearly as much as we do about the sophistication of the signal processing from the eye and the nose.

All of this leads to a logical closing question: If researchers earn Nobel Prizes for discovering such intricacies in our sensory organs, doesn't the Intelligent Designer of all of this intricacy deserve some recognition?

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Visit the Nobel web page for the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=7619&et=H&s=40730

• See the press release for the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=7620&et=H&s=40730

• Richard Axel, “Scents and Sensibility: Towards a Molecular Logic of Perception,” a lecture at Columbia University, 13 May 2004. (Adobe Acrobat Reader required.)

• Stephen Jones, “The eye: Darwin's 'cold shudder',” 7 February 1998. See Darwin's letter to Gray: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=7624&et=H&s=40730

• “Richard Axel and Linda Buck Awarded 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine,” Medical News Today, 25 October 2004.

• Nick Klagge, “Richard Axel Sniffs Out Nobel Prize,” Columbia Spectator, 5 October 2004.

• “Sci/Tech: Dr. Richard Axel & Linda Buck win Nobel Prize in Medicine,” Boredguru.com, 5 October 2004.

• “Sensing Smell,” Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

• See the research abstract of “Representations of Olfactory Information in the Brain“ provided by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

• Visit BreakPoint's intelligent design information page: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=7630&et=H&s=40730

• See Chuck Colson's Ten Questions about Origins: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=7631&et=H&s=40730

• Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Zondervan, 2004).

• The new DVD/video “The Privileged Planet” is a useful resource for students and teachers in learning about the evidence of design in the universe.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Antony Flew, a legendary British philosopher and atheist, has changed his mind about the existence of God in light of recent scientific evidence.

Flew -- a prolific author who has argued against the existence of God and the claims of Christianity for more than 50 years -- first revealed his change of mind in a video of a discussion with several others at New York University organized by the Institute for Metascientific Research. The video, released in December, is titled, “Has Science Discovered God?”

Flew said he is now best described as a deist -- a person who believes God created the universe but is not actively involved in people's lives today.

“I don't believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that,” Flew said in an interview for the winter 2005 edition of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. “But it seems to me that the case for...[a] God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence is now much stronger than it ever was before.”

Flew, 81, regularly attended the Socratic Club, a weekly religious forum led by famed Christian apologist C.S. Lewis while he attended college at Oxford. Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading universities in Britain. He also published numerous books and articles denouncing belief in God.

Flew credits his newfound belief in God to arguments from design such as those espoused by the “intelligent design” (ID) movement. ID argues that the universe operates in such a way that it points to the existence of an intelligent creator.

“I think that the most impressive arguments for God's existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries,” Flew said. “...I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.”

Although many atheists appeal to naturalistic evolution as a method by which the world could have come into existence apart from God, Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that the process of evolution requires a creator to start the process, Flew said.

“Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers,” Flew said. “This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account.”

While Flew said he does not believe in a God who is active in the lives of humans, he is “open to” the possibility of divine revelation. He also believes that Christians are intellectually justified in holding to their religion and that the resurrection of Jesus has more evidential support than any other reported miracle in history.

“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion,” Flew said. “It's outstandingly different in quality and quantity, I think, from the evidence offered for the occurrence of most other supposedly miraculous events.”

Gary Habermas, chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, told Baptist Press that Flew's decision to believe in God points to the strength of theistic arguments.

“His conversion is a testimony to the many, especially scientific figures, who are coming by way of intelligent design,” said Habermas, who conducted the interview with Flew in Philosophia Christi. “...The fact that he has become a theist is a testimony to the type of evidence we have for God's existence today.”

Flew's status as a world-famous atheist makes his conversion to belief in God particularly significant, Habermas said in an interview with Baptist Press.

“His conversion to theism is very valuable because of his stature,” Habermas said. “The reason this story is going around the world is that he, not just anybody, but he, has converted to theism. I think that's very significant.”

Despite his belief in the existence of God, Flew said it is unlikely that he will ever become a Christian. The major evidence against the God of Christianity is the problem of evil, Flew said.

The problem of evil refers to the apparent tension between the existence of a good God and the presence of evil in the world.

“The problem of evil is a problem ... for Christians,” Flew said. “The thesis that the universe was created and is sustained by a Being of infinite power and goodness is flatly incompatible with the occurrence of massive undeniable and undenied evils in that universe.”

Flew also argues that God does not have “any preferences ... about or any intentions concerning human behavior or about the eternal destinies of human beings.”

Although he does not accept Christianity, Flew emphatically denies the possibility that he would ever become a follower of Islam, citing Islam's commitment to conquer all of its opponents.

“I would never regard Islam with anything but horror and fear because it is fundamentally committed to conquering the world for Islam,” Flew said.

Flew will present a more fully developed explanation of his conversion to belief in God in a forthcoming edition of his book, “God & Philosophy.”

Earlier works by Flew include “Atheistic Humanism,” “Darwinian Evolution,” “A Dictionary of Philosophy,” “Introduction to Western Philosophy” and “How to Think Straight: An Introduction to Critical Reasoning.”

=============================

Version by Rev. Brett Blair:

A British philosophy professor who had been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century changed his mind last week. He now believes in God. His name is Antony Flew. You don’t know him but you have heard of the people he hung around with in 1950. In that year Professor Flew presented a paper called Theology and Falsification to a gathering of religious men called the Socratic Club at Oxford University. The club’s leader was C.S. Lewis. Another member of the club was JRR Tolkien. I don’t know how you stand in front of the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and the author of Lord of The Rings and argue that God doesn’t exist. But Professor Flew did and this is what he said. He began with this parable:

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last the Skeptic despairs, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”

That’s the opening and it’s a powerful parable. Dr Flew became as popular in atheist circles as much as Lewis and Tolkien did in Christian. His presentation laid out the case that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God. Nature doesn’t show us God. Science doesn’t prove God. Knowledge doesn’t conclude there is a God. There is no evidence for God. That was Professor Flew 54 years ago. But now at the age of 81 the professor has recanted. In a new presentation, not before the Socratic Club at Oxford, but before a distinguished gathering of scientist in New York last week, the atheist professor, after 50 years of reflection, surprised his audience in saying that science “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life) intelligence must have been involved.” Did you hear that last part? Listen again, science “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life) intelligence must have been involved.”

It’s funny isn’t it? 50 years ago Flew argued there was no proof of a Gardner. Now back in the same garden he says there must be a Gardner. What did he miss then that he now sees? It would be interesting to hear him reflect on that.

But before we get too caught up in Dr. Flew’s conversion, let’s consider... Professor Flew doesn’t believe in the Christian God or the Muslim God. Here is how he defines God, “I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins.” He goes on to say that God “could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.”

Here is what I would like to say to the Professor, “Dr. Flew, what you missed in the garden 54 years ago you have missed in Christianity today. The Christian God is no tyrant. He is no Saddam Hussein. He does not oppress his people. Rather, he saves them!

=========================================

"Atheist's turn toward God was a 4-year process, friend says," by David Roach.

Baptist Press, December 22, 2004.

Christian apologist Gary Habermas had just finished debating noted British atheist Antony Flew about the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The two friends rode an elevator together as they left the Californian university where the debate was held in January 2002. As Habermas exited the elevator, he extended his hand through the open door. “Tony,” he said, “this is it for now. I enjoyed talking with you. When you become a Christian, I want to be the first one to know.”

Flew laughed and responded, “I think you deserve that right.”

The doors closed.

Most observers of the debate never thought that Flew would take steps toward Christianity. The former professor at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading universities in Britain had argued against the existence of God for more than 50 years, publishing such books as “Atheistic Humanism” and “Darwinian Evolution.”

But in December 2004 the unexpected happened when Flew took a step toward Christianity, announcing that scientific evidence led him to a belief in God.

Habermas was among the first people he told.

Habermas, chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., had known that Flew was reconsidering his position since the fall of 2000 when Flew sent Habermas a letter in which the atheist acknowledged the strength of arguments for theism and Christianity.

“In September 2000, that's about the earliest indication that I had that he was changing,” Habermas said in an interview with Baptist Press. “He wrote me a long letter, quite an incredible letter, where at several points he conceded the evidence for [theism and Christianity].”

When Habermas received the letter, he knew something was happening in Flew's life.

“I distinctly remember reading that letter when it came in the mail and thinking, 'Wow, something huge is happening with this guy,'“ Habermas said.

Over a period of three years the two scholars corresponded about God. By January 2003 Flew began considering arguments from the “intelligent design” movement and was on the verge of belief in God.

Intelligent design is a theory arguing that some features of the natural world are best explained as the products of an intelligent cause rather than naturalistic evolution.

“He told me he was really rethinking theism and had corresponded with [naturalistic scientist Richard] Dawkins and was putting the ID arguments up against what Dawkins was saying and trying to compare the arguments,” Habermas said. “And he was going back and forth as to whether he should be a theist or not.”

By early 2004, Flew completed his transition to theism and indicated his change of mind to Habermas in a telephone conversation.

When media reports revealed Flew's belief in God in December 2004, some skeptics argued that the former atheist had changed his mind suddenly. But Habermas said such allegations are clearly incorrect in light of the four-year dialogue he had with Flew.

“The implications that he's just recently arrived at theism ... and that he hasn't had time to think through this aren't correct,” Habermas said. “The first sign that I've seen of him changing goes back to the fall of 2000. So he's been thinking about these things for four years.”

Flew currently holds a position known as deism -- the belief that God created the universe but is not actively involved in people's lives today, Habermas said. Because deism is traditionally a “tenuous” position, Flew could move closer to traditional Christianity in the days ahead, he said.

“Deism is a very tenuous position, and deistic belief is a short-lived movement in the history of philosophy over the last few centuries,” Habermas said. “One reason deism is a troubled position is that it usually moves one way or the other.”

Flew could revert back to atheism, Habermas noted. “Still, he has made a number of statements to me indicating that he is open, even to revelation,” Habermas said.

“Three weeks ago I received a letter from him where he said that he was rereading my arguments for the resurrection and was very impressed with them,'“ he said.

Despite his interest in the resurrection, however, Flew remains far from belief in Christianity, Habermas said.

“He's told me on many occasions that he was impressed with the arguments for the resurrection ... and he says it's the best miracle claim in the history of religions,” Habermas recounted. “So he's impressed with them. Enough to believe? I don't think so, certainly not right now.”

The dialogue with Flew highlights the need for Christians to engage non-believers in meaningful, caring friendships, Habermas said. Christian scholars in particular should bear in mind the need to build relationships with non- believing scholars, he said.

There are “benefits of carrying on a genuine friendship with people who do not agree with you on things,” Habermas said. “I mean a genuine friendship where you're there for them in season and out of season. You're there for them when they're having bad days. You can tell them things that are on your mind. ... It's not connected to whether the people convert or not.”

Christians should rejoice that Flew has adopted a belief in God but remember that mere belief in God falls short of the belief in Jesus Christ that Scripture requires for eternal life, Habermas said.

“His deism provides no relief for dying because he doesn't believe in life after death,” he said. “It's not ... an 81-year-old who is embracing God so that he can come out on the good side when he dies. If you said that to him, he would say, 'I'm just going where the evidence leads.'“

An interview conducted by Habermas exploring Flew's conversion to belief in God will be published in the winter 2004 issue of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

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"Famous Atheist Now Believes in God"

One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on

Scientific Evidence; The Associated Press, New York, December 9, 2004.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976

Antony Flew, the 81-year-old British philosophy professor who taught at Oxford and other leading universities, became an atheist at age 15. Throughout his long career he argued - including in debates with an atheist-turned-Christian named C. S. Lewis - that there was a “presumption of atheism,” that is, the existence of a creator could not be proved.

Flew told Habermas, “This is the creature, the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”

Flew has, thus, become a Deist - that is, he acknowledges God as creator but not as a personal deity. In his opinion, “There is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or any transactions between that God and individual human beings.” In fact, he told a group last May that he considers both the Christian God and the Islamic God to be “omnipotent Oriental despots - cosmic Saddam Husseins.”

“I don't believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that,” Flew said in an interview for the winter 2005 edition of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. “But it seems to me that the case for...[a] God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence is now much stronger than it ever was before.”

“I think that the most impressive arguments for God's existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries,” Flew said. “...I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.”

Flew, 81, regularly attended the Socratic Club, a weekly religious forum led by famed Christian apologist C.S. Lewis while he attended college at Oxford. Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading universities in Britain. He also published numerous books and articles denouncing belief in God.

Flew credits his newfound belief in God to arguments from design such as those espoused by the “intelligent design” (ID) movement. ID argues that the universe operates in such a way that it points to the existence of an intelligent creator.

Christians should rejoice that Flew has adopted a belief in God but remember that mere belief in God falls short of the belief in Jesus Christ that Scripture requires for eternal life, Habermas said.

“His deism provides no relief for dying because he doesn't believe in life after death,” he said. “It's not ... an 81-year-old who is embracing God so that he can come out on the good side when he dies. If you said that to him, he would say, 'I'm just going where the evidence leads.'"

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #26171]

A leading intellectual elaborates on why he abandoned atheism. But, surprisingly, he says his reasons were not entirely intellectual.

British philosophy professor Dr. Antony Flew has been the subject of several Weblog discussions recently. Born the son of a Methodist minister, he embraced atheism at age 15 and spent most of his life promoting unbelief. Recently, he announced that evidence is forcing him to admit that a creator-God probably does exist.

To the extent that the media have reported Flew's change of mind, they have emphasized his cerebral cogitations, the “argument to design” logic. He reasons that DNA and other intricacies — as distant as the galaxies and as close as our own bodily structures — overwhelmingly suggest a wise creator-God. Several news dispatches mention that the Intelligent Design concept that several of my friends and I have championed has played a part in stimulating him to recognize God's “characteristics of power and also intelligence.”

But another major factor in Prof. Flew's change of heart showed up in his interview with Liberty University philosopher and historian Dr. Gary Habermas, published in the journal PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI. Flew admires John and Charles Wesley, whose influence continues to uplift society more than two centuries after their deaths. Flew told Habermas, “Methodism made it impossible to build a really substantial Communist Party in Britain and provided the country with a generous supply of men and women of sterling moral character. ... [Methodism's] decline is a substantial part of the [cause for the] explosions both of unwanted motherhood and of crime in recent decades.” For Flew, God's reality demonstrates itself in the lives of people who follow biblical principles.

I have found that the work that we do in Prison Fellowship to be our most powerful apologetic and witness. People can see the Gospel lived out, as Flew has done.

Flew also had long-term personal contact with C. S. Lewis. He recalls that while they were both on the Oxford faculty, they attended the weekly meetings of the Socratic Club, chaired by Lewis. Although Flew disagreed with Lewis on many issues, he remembers Lewis as “an eminently reasonable man.” Instead of raising his voice or pounding the table, Lewis spoke softly and showed respect for Flew, earning Lewis the right to be heard.

What lessons can we learn from Prof. Flew's spiritual pilgrimage, about how to witness to atheists and skeptics? First, we need to avoid an arrogant triumphalism — a put-down attitude that comes across as “I told you so! What took you so long to recognize what has been obvious to me for years?” Second, we need to demonstrate the Gospel every opportunity we have, showing our secular friends how Christian efforts create a better society.

And finally, remember the principle of evangelism by increments. Many people do not accept Christ the first time they hear the Gospel. C. S. Lewis moved first from atheism to intellectual assent, and then later to saving faith in Christ.

Seldom does somebody move all the way from atheism to salvation, as a result of one person's presentation on one occasion. When God gives us the privilege to carry the ball a few yards, that's fine: He often gets someone else to carry it the rest of the way across the goal line.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Ted Olsen, “Weblog: Atheist No More, Flew Still Rejects Revelation,” Christianity Today, 10 December 2004.

• Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism (Doubleday, 2004).

• Art Lindsley, True Truth: Defending Absolute Truth in a Relativistic World (InterVarsity, 2004). Read more about this book in the commentary, “Absolutes without Absolutism.”

• C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Touchstone, 1996 version).

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Copyright © 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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