In the book “River Out of Eden,” Oxford biologist and atheist superstar Richard Dawkins famously wrote:
“The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
Dawkins and other “new atheists” have long insisted that science has excluded the possibility of a creator or has, at least, rendered it unnecessary. Turns out this belief may be scientifically out of date. According to a new book, the biggest discoveries of the last century challenge a materialistic worldview and call science back to its theistic roots.
Cambridge-educated philosopher of science Stephen Meyer wrote two books, “Signature in the Cell” and “Darwin’s Doubt,” that both argue against materialist accounts of biology. His latest book, “The Return of the God Hypothesis,” makes an even more ambitious claim. Three key 20th-century discoveries, argues Meyer, challenge materialist assumptions and point not just to an intelligent designer but to a transcendent God.
Not only were most of the founders of modern science devout Christians, the scientific method itself emerged from assumptions found only in a Christian worldview, such as the intelligibility of nature and the need to constantly test our fallen intuitions against the facts. Tracing science from its theistic beginnings, Meyer shows how it gradually lost its way and became tethered to materialism.