Powerful New Scientific Evidence Supports Belief in God

In recent years the New York Times and L.A. Times ran front-page stories about a new movement among scientists called (I.D.) Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design has also been the subject of other media coverage. If you have not heard of it you need to become aware of it because Intelligent Design is rapidly becoming a very powerful Christian apologetic tool. I.D. argues that the universe and everything in it were created by an intelligent designer usually identified as God. It is in opposition to Materialism, the current wide spread belief that the universe and life came about through a random natural process. Materialists generally believed the universe to be eternal in age and infinite in size, therefore it needed no creator. While Materialism is still the dominant philosophy among scientists, there is a growing number who are turning to I.D. for answers. As Scientific American reported in its coverage of a 1998 Design conference, “many of these people are not junior scientists but, …are at the top of their fields.” These include people such as Nobel Prize winning physicist Charles Townes, Francis Collins (Director of the Human Genome Research Institute) and numerous other well-known scientists.

Many believe that there is a conflict between science and religion. Some even believe that science disproves the existence of God. But recent scholarship shows that science arose from Christianity. Science was originally called Natural Religion. Religious studies in the 17th to 19th centuries included Natural Religion, which was the study of God through his created world. It was not until the late 19th century that science separated from religion. But recent discoveries are now bringing this full circle and science is once again being used to support Faith in God.

There have been a number of major discoveries that contributed to this reversal. The evidence for the Big Bang theory in the 1960s had a big influence. Unfortunately the Big Bang theory is misunderstood by many Christians. It is actually one of the best evidences of I.D. The Big Bang showed that the universe was not eternal and infinite as Materialists believed, but rather that it came into being as the result of a creation event. It did appear exnilo as the Bible told us and, even more amazingly when combined with Einsteins relativity equations, showed that time itself also had a beginning just as the Bible said.

In the 1970s Brandon Carter an astrophysicist at Cambridge University put forward the Anthropic Principle. Carter noticed that a number of constants in nature seemed to be extremely finely tuned for the existence of life. Some are so finely tuned that changing them by even 1 part in a billion trillion trillion makes life of any sort impossible. Carters original observations have now grown to over 200 different finely tuned parameters needed for life.

It was also mistakenly believed that our galaxy, sun, and planet Earth are all rather average (nothing special). There is now powerful new evidence against this opinion. For example, it has been discovered that the rate of deadly super nova explosions in our galaxy is only 1/10th  of the rate for similar galaxies. Also our sun never emits deadly super flares. No other star of the same type has been found to be this stable. Planetary geologists are virtually unanimous in the observation that Earth is far more highly enriched with heavy metals than it should be and its atmosphere is only 1/40th as dense as it should be. The reason for these anomalies point to the uniqueness of planet Earth and the observation that the Earth is anything but an average planet orbiting an average star.

Recently it has been discovered that living cells contain molecular machines, yes real tiny machines. These include a wide variety of devices such as motors, vehicles, signals, roadways and much more. The list of shocking discoveries could go for pages.

As Christians this is very exciting stuff. It is great to see science coming back to its roots and taking its role in support of Faith in God. So keep your eyes open for stories on I.D. There are going to be many more amazing scientific discoveries, which demonstrate that this universe is Gods Creation.