If there were an Almighty Creator--i.e. God--would we expect to find evidence for his creative activity in the natural world? That depends on what kind of God you might imagine. Theistic evolutionists expect to NOT find evidence of God in the natural world and argue to great extents to show why, on theological grounds, God would not stoop so low as to leave his fingerprints on anything. This fits nicely with the modern view of faith as a truly "blind leap" into the darkness. It also fits nicely with Richard Dawkins' caricature of faith as believing in something despite evidence to the contrary. All that is left is faith with no rational underpinnings.
In Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer actually refutes this theological position starting from a scientific position. After more than a century of amazing discoveries in cosmology, biology and physics, the scientific evidence points to the necessity of a very powerful Intelligence for the explanation of the origin of the universe, of life itself and the great variety of life we find on planet earth.
This book has something to make everyone uncomfortable. Young-earth Creationists will feel uncomfortable with the talk about millions and billions of years of star formation and Cambrian Explosions. Theistic evolutionists will balk at the notion that the theory of evolution is in serious trouble because it lacks a naturalistic mechanism to generate information. Materialistic evolutionists will--if they don't have a heart attack first--feel highly perturbed by the book's thesis that an appeal to a supernatural power is the best choice for explaining our existence. Intelligent Design proponents and Old-Earth Creationists will be the least troubled by the book, for obvious reasons.
The important question is, does Stephen Meyer get it right? His science looks good, though I am limited to a background in microbiology. He has researched an expansive field of literature and he puts his book into the public eye for the most and least favorable kinds of scrutiny. If there are scientific, historical, or logical errors, this is open to peer-review.
Critics can easily caricature Creationists of all stripes, "Ha, look at these people, they think you can find e=mc2 in the book of Genesis. So they say the Bible is supernatural? How ridiculous!" Well...yeah. This clearly isn't Meyer's argument. He is saying that any objective observer of the universe, armed with the most current information, is left with only some very unsatisfactory materialistic explanations OR a plausible theological explanation. Because today in our digital world, more than ever in history, we recognize the impossibility of information arising without the purposefulness of an intelligent programmer, we can then reasonably posit a willful intelligence as the best explanation our universe and ourselves. Scientific observation alone doesn't reveal who this intelligence might be....but the next step is the question of God revealing himself in the history of the Jewish and Christian story.
Thank you Dr. Meyer for giving us this rich and useful resource in the subject of science and faith.
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2021
- Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2021
Dr Meyers has once again gone to extreme and sometimes tedious lengths to make the case for what should easily pass for obvious...everything from nothing? Then dust becomes dreams through time and chance? Why do such smart people say such silly things? Dr Seuss would have had so much fun with it.
“Nothing, More or Less”
We live in a universe
That appears to be
14 billion
Years old
And if we can believe
What we are told
It came from nothing
Nothing at all
And not just no thing
This claim un-includes
All sorts of anythings
That ever were used
All matter and energy
Just for a start
All forces and fields
And every last quark
Every boson and muon
And gluon and screwon
Every photon, electron
Every neutrino
Every dimension, pretension
Every casino
Every force and attraction
Every quantum fluctuation
Every sucking black hole
Every Hawking Radiation
Just keep making lists
Until physics is gone
Take away all of it
Music and song
Leave a bunch of nice concepts
All floating in space
Then take away space
And take away time
Take away every
Single mind
Leave nothing to chance
Leave no thing behind
Leave a bunch of laws
With nothing to rule
A bunch of ideas
With no one to fool
A bunch of theories
With nothing to test
Nothing to attract or repel
Or connect
Nothing to be
And nowhere to go
Leave no-thing and no-where
And start with zee-ro
When we dream about nothing
We all make mistakes
Our nothing is something
Since we're wide awake
We think about nothing
As if it were actual
When the fact is
A nothing like that isn't factual
A nothing that's something
We're trying to think
Is really a subtly
Devious prank
Our thinking is something
Instead of a blank
But if we’d believe
That all came from nothing
We first must grasp nothing
As a thing-less something
So here's a solution
To get us to zero
To help us grasp
How it all became
To give us a little
Conceptual grammar
To fill this fine Blank
That preceded the Bang
Nothing is less than
What we insist it is
Absolute absence;
Complete nonexistence
Without potential
Or possibility
A one-sided equation
Equal to infinity
It just can't even be
Thought of at all
It can't be considered
Imagined, conceived
It can't be denied
Or ignored or believed
Nothing is never
Minus nil minus naught
Nothing is complete and utter
Without
Nothing is exactly
"What rocks dream about"
From this, we are told
Without even a blink,
That all this that is
And all that we think,
Suddenly happened
Without any cause
That the universe
And all it's laws
Simply happened somehow
Without reason or rhyme;
Every iPhone, quad-copter
Chainsaw, and time
Just happened to happen
By chance or by shuffle
By no cause or effect
Without any kerfluffle
Our brightest physicists
Can't get nothing right
They all start with something
Since nothing's elusive
And end up with conclusions
Much less than conclusive
But try to have nothing
Before you can start
And nothing's a difficult thought
To impart.
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Top reviews from other countries
- Carmel Paul Attard BScReviewed in Canada on July 22, 2023
A Clear, Deep, Scientific and Impeccably Logical Book
- ToméReviewed in Brazil on April 26, 2021
A 'tour de force' of contemporary scientific and philosofical writing
- JohnAReviewed in Australia on March 10, 2024
Thorough and complete demolition of the collective of un-intelligent design hypotheses.
-
Javier AlgaraReviewed in Mexico on February 18, 2025
Es una visión integral y minuciosa del estado del debate diseño inteligente vs puro azar
