My favorite subject in elementary school was science. I liked math too, even when my grades were low. The concepts made sense to me, but I worked slow and couldn’t memorize facts. In high school conceptual understanding proved more important than speed or memorization. I seemed to be blessed with natural analysis and problem-solving skills. That, combined with a persistent work ethic, always pushing to do my very best, helped me to transform from the bottom of the class in elementary school to valedictorian upon my high school graduation. My physics class voted me “Most Valuable Physicist,” and I still have the colorful stuffed dog emblazoned with “M. V. P.” and signatures from every student in the class.
At the USAF Academy I double majored in math and astronautical engineering and graduated 48th in a class of 1027. I went on to earn a master’s degree in physics. As an astronautical engineer in the USAF, I served at Cape Canaveral helping to launch satellites into orbit. As a physicist I worked on ground-based and airborne laser weapons technology, tactical missile signatures, night vision, and international cooperative research partnerships. For my final assignment in the USAF, I taught leadership and program management as a professor at the Defense Acquisition University.
My education and professional experience sharpened the analysis and problem-solving that my DNA seems to have gifted me with. It’s that analytical problem-solving nature that drove me to my evidential approach to faith and life. My love of science along with education and professional experience naturally motivated me to assess scientific evidence for a creator.
I found plentiful evidence pointing to intelligent agency in the material universe. Most scientific evidence doesn’t favor any particular religion that claims the universe was created, but some adds credibility to the Bible. Of course, many Bible passages clash with science if we hold to a literal application of those passages.
The Improbability Argument. According to science we should not exist. We are astronomically improbable on so many levels, our existence seems absurd. Yet, here we are.
Let’s start with fine tuning. The initial conditions at the beginning of time singularity (commonly referred to as the big bang) need to be so finely tuned that the probability of our universe’s existence is less than one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion—a number with hundreds of zeros after it.[18] So we have the huge bank of empirical data supporting the big bang theory on the evidence scale adding some weight for creation. The creator hypothesis is still uncertain with other competing ideas, so fine tuning alone doesn’t hold a lot of weight. Fine tuning is just the first astronomical improbability.
After this practically impossible universe somehow comes into existence, this planet we call earth, perfectly suited to sustain life, develops. Given the estimated 9-billion-year age of the universe when earth came on the scene, the probability of a planet forming that can sustain life as we know it is again, 1 in a number with hundreds of zeros after it. And that takes into consideration a possible 2 trillion galaxies in the universe.[19] The conditions necessary for intelligent life on a planet so well suited for scientific discovery make our situation even more remarkable.[20] Some people speculate that perhaps life can form under a variety of conditions, but that is pure speculation. Based on what we know, it appears the conditions necessary to begin and sustain life are extremely unique. Add the unique characteristics of our planet enabling life to the empirical evidence scale for creation.
Next, we need a self-replicating molecule to form by chance. The odds of this appear so remote that even if earth existed with just the right conditions for trillions of years, it would still be extremely unlikely, but the earth is only a few billion years old. That self-replicating molecule would need to mutate and make an abundance of very complex molecules that interact with each other until somehow forming into a cell that can reliably reproduce itself.[21] Now we have another practical impossibility involving a number with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of digits. Then that cell would have to survive long enough to mutate into a variety of cells capable of adaptation to initiate the process of survival-based evolution. Again, we face astronomical odds involving numbers with hundreds, perhaps thousands of digits.[22] Unknown material processes could reduce these improbabilities, but this assessment is based on what we know, not speculation about the unknown. Add organic chemistry and the complexity of DNA molecules to the empirical evidence scale for creation.
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“The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle; so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going.” –Nobel Prize winner Sir Francis Crick[23]
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Even from that point, things look extremely improbable without an intelligent creative force. Survival of the fittest evolutionary theory proposes a logical mechanism for all life to evolve incrementally through random mutations from that first cell of life, but when we examine the details, there are huge gaps in the process that intuitively seem impossible to bridge. To get from that first cellular life to the wide range of species existing today you have to faithfully embrace thousands, perhaps millions of seemingly impossible leaps in form and function within various living organisms. Incremental change through random mutation seems contrary to reality.
We have gaps in the fossil record where species and complex biological functions appear with no incremental steps.[24] We also have biological functions of irreducible complexity—more than just a few complex organs that are challenging to explain how they could have evolved incrementally. There are thousands of functions, some large and complex such as imagery vision, some small and relatively simple (but still very complex on a molecular scale) such as flagellum that bacteria use to swim. Even the molecular machinery within every living cell defies imagination as to how it could evolve incrementally. Evolution struggles to account for life because too much of it cannot be reduced to incremental change.[25], [26], [27], [28], [29]
So now we have empirical evidence from the fossil record along with a huge chunk of anatomy, physiology, and microbiology weighing in on our evidence scale for a creator.
Creation opponents try to diminish improbabilities in our existence with speculative proposals. One is that perhaps the initial conditions at the start of the universe are fixed and never vary for any possible universe. They cannot propose any reason for this or offer any evidence to favor their speculation, but if you strongly oppose belief in a creator, it is an alternative possibility. But it only addresses the improbability of the big bang. To dismiss the improbability of life, they speculate that things might not be as improbable as they seem. Perhaps life can form under a wider range of conditions than we realize. Perhaps there are unknown forces causing planets like earth to form and encouraging the formation of life-sustaining molecules. Perhaps there are evolutionary genetic mechanisms that enable rapid leaps beyond what random mutations can do. These are attractive speculations if you have a strong bias against the concept of a creator, but the more we learn about cosmological physics and organic chemistry, the less likely these speculations appear to be possible. The long-standing trend in science pushes our existence to be constantly less likely without a creator!
Another popular materialistic explanation for our improbable existence involves assuming there must be a nearly infinite number of universes. The only evidence for this assumption is that we know one universe exists, therefore others might exist. Since ours seems so ridiculously special, rather than embrace the idea that a designer made it this way, they assume ours is just one of many universes. Considering just a few more universes falls short. We need a very large number of universes, a number with millions, perhaps billions of digits, to make our existence likely. Even if that were true, it does nothing to disprove a creator. God could have created all of them.
It appears that some omnipotent being triggered creation of the universe and guided its progress for 9 billion years so earth could form, pieced together some DNA to start life, then guided the evolution of life for 3.5 billion years to bring us to where we are today. This is what science intuitively implies from the evidence. You need an irrational faith in the non-existence of a creator to believe it all happened by random chance.
This is where materialists accuse creationists of what they like to call “God-of-the-gaps” fallacy, but they are committing “materialism-of-the-gaps”[30] fallacy by assuming there is a material explanation for everything. There could be material explanations for these improbabilities, but an intelligent designer-creator seems much more likely based on current knowledge.
Skeptics are free to reject the hypothesis of a creator if they like, but with this knowledge they can no longer claim we lack empirical evidence to support such faith. Belief in a creator is a perfectly rational conclusion to the empirical evidence. My mental balance scale of evidence for and against a creator drops to the creator side with a resounding thud. And we have more.
[18] Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries Reveal God, 4th Edition (RTB Press, 2018), pages 25-31, 110-111.
[19] Ross, page 219.
[20] Travis, Melissa C. Science and the Mind of the Maker. (Harvest House, 2018), Chapter 3, A Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Scientific Discovery, Chapter 5, Habitable and Discoverable: A World Just Right for Scientists.
[21] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Faith. (Zondervan, 2000), Chapter 3, Assembling a Cell.
[22] Ross, page 220.
[19] Lee Strobel, 2000, Chapter 3, Assembling a Cell (Walter L. Bradley, PhD).
[24] Lee Strobel, 2000, Chapter 3, Primordial Detective Story.
[25] Strobel, 2000, Chapter 2, Real Acts of God; Chapter 3, A Primordial Detective Story.
[26] Behe, Michael J. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. (Touchstone, 1996).
[27] Behe, Michael J. “Darwin’s Breakdown: Irreducible Complexity and Design at the Foundation of Life.” In Signs of Intelligence, ed. William Dembski and James Kushiner. (Brazos, 2001).
[28] Behe, Michael J. “Evidence for Design at the Foundation of Life.” and “Answering Scientific Criticisms of Intelligent Design.” In Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, ed. Michael Behe, William Dembski and Stephen C. Meyer. (Ignatius, 2000).
[29] Behe, Michael J. “Intelligent Design Theory as a Tool for Analyzing Biochemical Systems.” In Mere Creation, ed. William Dembski. (Intervarsity, 1998).
[30] P. Copan, et al., (Angus J. L. Menuge). Dictionary of Christianity and Science: The Definitive Reference for the Intersection of Christian Faith and Contemporary Science. (Zondervan, 2017), pages 333-334.
First Cause. Science has demonstrated that nothing we observe in nature happens without a cause. As far as we know, every natural event humans have ever observed resulted from some force of nature. If something natural happened in time, something caused it.
Quantum mechanics includes the theoretical concept that matter and anti-matter can spontaneously come into existence without cause, but we have yet to observe this phenomenon. The sudden appearance of subatomic particles would not justify the sudden appearance of a universe without cause. Presuming that an intelligent creative power triggered the creation singularity (also known as the big bang) is a plausible explanation.
The scientific evidence that every observable event in nature has a cause favors the idea that something likely caused the universe to exist. Many theists hold this argument up as strong evidence for a creator. If I consider this argument in isolation, it seems evenly balanced between crediting God as the first cause or some unknown natural influence. In skeptical analysis I can’t justify giving God more weight than attributing it to an unknown natural influence. But we have other evidences that favor a creator, so it seems more likely that a creator-God triggered the singularity than to presume a material cause that comes with no evidence.
Then we have the question of what caused that material cause. Nature requires a first cause that transcends the bounds of natural law in time and space. By definition, this would be something super-natural because it extends beyond the limits of our natural universe. Is this supernatural first cause an intelligent being? There’s good reason to believe it is.
The first cause argument doesn’t hold a lot of weight on my does-God-exist balance scale due to uncertainty, but it does tip my scale in favor of a creator. We’re speculating in a realm we know nothing about, but using what we do know to infer what appears most likely in that realm, the argument of a first-cause creator makes sense.
Skeptics like to ask, “Who created God?” Only material events in this physical universe bound in time and space must have a cause. Outside our universe there could be things that have no beginning in time, even things that transcend all time. There’s no reason they would have a cause. There must be something that exists without cause, transcending time and space, that caused the first event in time and space. This could be a first-cause creator.[31]
[31] Holy Bible, Genesis 1:1; 21:33; Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalm 90:2; Isaiah 40:28; 44:6; Habakkuk 1:12; Romans 1:20; 2 Corinthians 5:1; Hebrews 1:8, 10; 7:3; 13:8; Revelation 1:8; 22:13.
Elegance. Complexity, organization, beauty, precision, and all forms of elegance generally come from intelligent sources. Some believers in a creator put a lot of stock in this argument, bringing in the scientific principle of entropy and giving impressive examples. These add credibility to the argument, but I still don’t give this one a lot of weight. There’s an element of subjectivity to it. Nature seems quite capable of organization based on the laws of physics, and beauty could be a natural byproduct of the organization in physics. But why are the laws of physics so organized and why do they create so much wonderous beauty? Even evolution seems to be an extremely elegant process engineered by an extremely intelligent designer. It makes sense that an intelligent designer made our universe, planet, and life the way they are.
Elegance doesn’t provide strong evidence for me, and it’s rather subjective. If I had a biased “extreme beliefs require extreme evidence” attitude I’d throw this one out from consideration, but when I try to look at it from a neutral perspective, without bias, it tips my scale gently in favor of a Creator. Dismissing this evidence requires a materialist presupposition.
Growing Gap Trend. Astrophysics and cosmology have some gaps that our current understanding of science can’t explain. Life on earth has countless gaps that seem to defy the laws of nature and cry out for some deliberate, guiding power. Science has been filling in gaps in human understanding of nature for centuries that were formerly attributed to God. Materialists erroneously assume science has been closing the gap between human knowledge and the mysteries our existence. The reality is just the opposite. In an exponential game of science whack-a-mole, for every question we answer, a dozen more pop up. The number and difficulty of these gaps seems to be increasing with knowledge, not decreasing. Some creationists presume that God is the answer to all these gaps. Some materialists presume there’s a natural answer to all these gaps. There may be natural explanations for many of these difficult questions, but the possibility of an intelligent agent somewhere behind it all appears strong. By itself, this line of reasoning wouldn’t push the evidence scale forcefully, but it adds some weight to the many other evidences.
Cosmology Confirming Genesis 1. The first chapter of Genesis identifies numerous events of cosmological history in remarkable fashion. Nine points appear in an order that matches conditions of cosmological history.
1. Genesis 1:2, formless and empty (nothing before time)
2. Genesis 1:3, sudden appearance of light (electromagnetic radiation after the singularity event, big bang)
3. Genesis 1:4, darkness separates from light (shadow casting bodies form)
4. Genesis 1:5, day and night (rotating earth)
5. Genesis 1:7, separation of waters (clouds and ocean)
6. Genesis 1:9, formation of land mass
7. Genesis 1:11, appearance of plants
8. Genesis 1: 20-25, appearance of animals
9. Genesis 1: 26-27, appearance of humans
A few other events appear out of order, such as the sun, moon, and stars in Genesis 1:14-18 but these do not discredit the remarkable correlation. The mere mention of these cosmological events in an ancient origins story gives it credibility.
The first chapter of Genesis stands in striking contrast to all other creation myths. Nothing else comes close to it in literature style, but even more important, no other origins myth even begins to identify cosmological events or align with cosmological history as revealed by recent scientific discoveries. The authors of Genesis could not have written such a match over 3000 years ago to align with cosmology revealed within the last century, unless they had supernatural assistance.[32]
You may have noticed that I compare Genesis 1 to “other creation myths” as if Genesis 1 is also a creation myth. Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the universe is almost 14 billion years old and life on earth began more than 3 billion years ago. The hypothesis that Genesis 1 is historically and scientifically literal is unsupportable. Textual analysis indicates that Genesis 1-11 falls into a different genre than the rest of Genesis, indicating that it is neither history nor science.[33] The evidence of supernatural revelation in Genesis 1 qualifies these stories as divine allegory. I think treating them as science or history leads to error.
[32] Ross, pages 22-25.
[33] Longman, Trempter, III. Introducing the Old Testament, (Zondervan, 2012), page 11.
Scientific Evidence Against God. Now I need to put evidence against God’s existence on the other side of the scale to see which carries the most weight. People often assume that science has disproven God and all supernatural claims, but science can only study nature. Science cannot prove or disprove anything supernatural. Still, it can support or disprove theological claims related to the material world.
For example, science played a huge role in theological debates between heliocentrism and geocentrism. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler were devout Christians who believed the Bible was an authoritative message from the Creator,[34] but they also believed that the earth orbited the sun. This clashed with certain Bible passages like Psalm 104:5, “He set the earth on its foundations, it can never be moved.”[35]
Galileo argued that, “If the natural philosopher or mathematician could conclusively prove the heliocentric theory true … then both sides would agree that the literal remarks in the Bible that seemed to contradict it would need to be reinterpreted as figurative in order to maintain the unity of truth.” Galileo believed, “God is the common and always truthful author of both the book of special revelation (the Bible) and the book of nature (general revelation)” and he invoked Cardinal Cesare Baronio’s perspective that “the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”[36]
Unfortunately, Roman Catholic church leaders (along with most astronomers of the time) rejected these ideas in favor of their traditional idea that everything in the universe orbited the earth. This geocentric concept had been popular since Aristotle proposed it many centuries earlier. The church embraced it because it seemed compatible with certain scripture passages. They convicted Galileo of “strong suspicion” of heresy in 1633. Many today see this as evidence that Christianity and science are fundamentally incompatible, but the problem is human error in the church. Eventually the church succumbed to scientific evidence, conceded that Galileo was right, and revised their theology to accept that certain Bible passages were divine metaphor, not science.
I see this as a powerful lesson in history that when science contradicts theology, we should consider alternative theology.
Age of the Universe, Earth, and Life. The main scientific empirical evidence that people cite against Christianity relates to the age of the universe, earth, and life. This overwhelming body of evidence shows beyond all reasonable doubt that the universe, planet earth, and life are billions of years old, not less than 10,000 years as calculated by some Biblical scholars. Describing all the evidence would require numerous encyclopedic volumes so I just list a few categories of science and identify some of the evidences in those disciplines.
1. Cosmology: Cosmic expansion rate, cosmic cooling rate, cosmic background radiation, rate of formation of celestial bodies, cosmic density
2. Physics: radioactive decay, redshift velocities, magnetic field measurements, speed of light
3. Chemistry: formation of large atoms, relative abundances of hydrogen/deuterium/helium
4. Geology: age of rocks, layers in the earth’s crust, plate tectonics
5. Paleontology: fossil stratification
6. Archeology: signs of ancient human life
7. Biology: evolution
This list could be much longer, but it’s already sufficient. Some theories in this list have uncertainty issues, most notably evolution, but those uncertainties don’t challenge the billions of years age for the universe, earth, and life. Data from all these disciplines of science fit together very nicely under the billions of years paradigm. None of them work with a timeline anywhere near 10,000 years.
The weight of this data would overwhelm the evidence I presented for God if I believed young-earth theology was necessary for God’s existence. For me, a Christian who recognized the metaphorical nature of Genesis 1-11 when I was only 13-years-old, none of this evidence holds any weight against a creator. It overwhelms young-earth theology, but it doesn’t land on my imaginary balance scale for or against a creator at all. It’s irrelevant because I reject young-earth theology.
World-wide Flood. The world-wide flood described in Genesis 6-9 would have left a huge geological impact—a distinct layer of intermingled buried life forms, evidence of world-wide salt water contamination, massive movements of sediment all occurring at once, etc. The absence of evidence that should be there is overwhelming. The possibility of a large regional flood is scientifically viable, but not a global flood. This evidence weighs heavily against young-earth theories that presume a literal world-wide flood.
Since the Biblical account of a world-wide flood falls in the metaphorical genre of Genesis 1-11, this evidence also fails to carry any weight on my does-god-exist balance scale. It’s irrelevant to God’s existence even though it weighs heavily against historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11.
Archaeology. Archaeology supports accepting the Bible as historical documentation since many events, people, and places mentioned in the Bible have been confirmed by archeology. But some archaeology contradicts certain details in the Bible. The further back in time we go, the greater the disconnect seems to be. Even though the trend in archaeological discovery has been favoring biblical accuracy ,[37] there are still significant issues. Persistent disconnects between archaeology and the Bible weigh against the traditional theology that the Bible is the perfect, inerrant word of God. Archeological disconnects land on the side of the scale weighing against biblical credibility, but they have little relevance in the scientific case that the universe was created.
[34] Copan, pages 111, 298-299, 400.
[35] Holy Bible, NIV, Psalm 104:5.
[36] Gary B. Ferngren. Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction (2nd Edition). (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), page 102.
[37] John D. Currid. 10 Crucial Archeological Discoveries Related to the Bible. (Crossway, 2018), https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-crucial-archaeological-discoveries-related-to-the-bible/.
Science Conclusion. Scientific evidence carries little or no weight against God. The evidence most people cite only discredits certain theologies such as young-earth creationism and biblical inerrancy. Evidence in favor of God is compelling, with disputable levels of uncertainty. I discuss evidence for and against God more thoroughly at the end of the next chapter after considering historical evidence.