Contemporary Scientific Evidence

Atheist Richard Dawkins has said that “the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose … nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” According to Dawkins, careful observations about the universe provide strong reasons to reject the existence of God.

But is this correct? In this essay, Stephen Meyer argues to the contrary, examining three major scientific discoveries during the last 100 years that directly contradict the expectations of atheism. Instead, these discoveries—from cosmology, physics, and biology—provide scientific evidence for the existence of a transcendent, intelligent, and active Creator. Science, in short, strongly supports belief in God.

I live and work in Seattle, where, a few years ago, a prominent professor of evolutionary psychology, David Barash of the University of Washington, authored a startling New York Times op-ed. He described “the talk” he gives each year to his students flatly informing them that science has rendered belief in God untenable. Or as he explained, “As evolutionary science has progressed, the available space for religious belief has narrowed: It has… undermined belief in an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.”

Barash is not alone in popularizing this view. He follows in a long tradition dating back to the late 19th century. Since then, many powerful voices in Western culture—philosophers, scientists, historians, artists, and science popularizers—have attested to the “death of God.” Of course, by this, they do not mean that God once existed and passed away. Rather, they mean any credible basis for belief in such a being has long since evaporated.