بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The Case for a Creator
A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God
By: Lee Strobel
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2 The Images of Evolution
· “Science, as the only begetter of truth.” Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin [Review of: Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine, 1997) in the New York Review of Books (January 9, 1997). Emphasis in original.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 252-253). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· As Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education observed, “You can’t put an omnipotent deity in a test tube.” [Eugenie Scott, “Keep Science Free from Creationism,” Insight (February 21, 1994).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 287-288). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· When I read in 2002 about an Eagle Scout being booted from his troop for refusing to pledge reverence to God, I wasn’t surprised to find out he “has been an atheist since studying evolution in the ninth grade.” [Dean E. Murphy of the New York Times, “Eagle Scout Faces Ultimatum over Atheism,” Orange County Register (November 3, 2002).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 334-336). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· As Oxford evolutionist Dawkins said: “The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from an agnostic position and towards atheism.” [Richard Dawkins, “On Debating Religion,” The Nullifidian (December 1994).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 336-338). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Philosopher Michael Ruse, himself an ardent naturalist, answered the question, “Can a Darwinian be a Christian?” by declaring, “Absolutely!” In his view, “No sound argument has been mounted showing that Darwinism implies atheism.” [Michael Ruse, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 217, 128.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 344-346). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Biologist Jean Pond, who formerly taught at Whitworth College, proudly describes herself as “a scientist, an evolutionist, a great admirer of Charles Darwin, and a Christian.” [Richard F. Carlson, editor, Science and Christianity: Four Views (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 81.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 346-348). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· One recent textbook was very clear about this: “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of life processes superfluous.” [Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer, 1986), 3.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 353-355). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· For example, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr emphasized that “the real core of Darwinism” is natural selection, which “permits the explanation of adaption . . . by natural means, instead of by divine intervention.” [Ernst Mayr, foreword to Darwinism Defended, by Michael Ruse (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1982), xi-xii.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 384-386). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Another leading evolutionist, Francisco Ayala, who was ordained a Dominican priest prior to his science career and yet refused in a recent interview to confirm whether he still believes in God, 28 said Darwin’s “greatest accomplishment” was to show that “living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process, natural selection, without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent.” [John H. Campbell and J. William Schopf, editors, Creative Evolution?! (Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1994), 4–5.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 386-390). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Pulitzer Prize–winning sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson was adamant on this issue. “If humankind evolved by Darwinian natural selection,” he said, “genetic chance and environmental necessity, not God, made the species.” [Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 1. Emphasis added.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 394-396). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
3 Doubts About Darwinism
· Scientists who utterly reject evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities. . . . Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science. Larry Hatfield in Science Digest [Larry Hatfield, “Educators Against Darwin,” Science Digest (Winter 1979).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 505-507). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
Image #1: The Miller Experiment
· ‘What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth? The answer is that there is no evidence for it, but much against it.’ [See: Philip H. Abelson, “Chemical Events on the Primitive Earth,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 55 (1966), 1365–72.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 625-627). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “By the mid-1970s, Belgian biochemist Marcel Florkin was declaring that the concept behind Miller’s theory of the early atmosphere ‘has been abandoned.’ [See: Michael Florkin, “Ideas and Experiments in the Field of Prebiological Chemical Evolution,” Comprehensive Biochemistry 29B (1975), 231–60.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 627-629). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Two of the leading origin-of-life researchers, Klaus Dose and Sidney Fox, confirmed that Miller had used the wrong gas mixture. [See: Sidney W. Fox and Klaus Dose, Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life (New York: Marcel Dekker, revised edition 1977), 43, 74–76.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 629-630). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· And Science magazine said in 1995 that experts now dismiss Miller’s experiment because ‘the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation.’ [John Cohen, “Novel Center Seeks to Add Spark to Origins of Life,” Science 270 (1995), 1925–26.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 630-632). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute, ruled out the RNA-first theory very colorfully by saying, ‘You have to build straw man upon straw man to get to the point where RNA is a viable first biomolecule.’ [See: Gerald F. Joyce, “RNA Evolution and the Origins of Life,” Nature 338 (1989), 217–24; and Robert Irion, “RNA Can’t Take the Heat,” Science 279 (1998), 1303.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 678-680). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “No generally accepted theory exists, and the steps leading from a barren primordial world to the fragile chemistry of life seem imponderable.” [Gregg Easterbrook, “The New Convergence.”] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 706-708). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· In fact, he said: “I think people who believe that life emerged naturalistically need to have a great deal more faith than people who reasonably infer that there’s an Intelligent Designer.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, 108.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 711-713). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Then came that word: “Science, you might say, has discovered that our existence is infinitely improbable, and hence a miracle.” [John Horgan, “A Holiday Made for Believing,” New York Times (December 25, 2002).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 718-719). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Even biochemist and spiritual skeptic Francis Crick, who shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA, cautiously invoked the word a few years ago. “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going,” he said. [Francis Crick, Life Itself (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 88.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 720-723). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
Image #2: Darwin’s Tree Of Life
· “It hasn’t happened after all this time, and millions of fossils have already been dug up. There are certainly enough good sedimentary rocks from before the Cambrian era to have preserved ancestors if there were any. I have to agree with two experts in the field who said that the Cambrian explosion is ‘too big to be masked by flaws in the fossil record.’ [See: James W. Valentine and Douglas H. Erwin, “Interpreting Great Developmental Experiments: The Fossil Record,” in: Rudolf A. Raff and Elizabeth C. Raff, editors, Development as an Evolutionary Process (New York: Alan R. Liss, 1987), 84–85.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 782-785). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
Image #3: Haeckel’s Embryos
· As British embryologist Lewis Wolpert said, the resemblance is only illusory. [Lewis Wolpert, The Triumph of the Embryo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 185.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 904-905). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
The Legend Of Java Man
· And I believed it all. I was blithely ignorant, however, of the full Java man story. “What is not so well known is that Java man consists of nothing more than a skullcap, a femur (thigh bone), three teeth, and a great deal of imagination,” one author would later write. [Hank Hanegraaff, The Face That Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution, 50.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1089-1091). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· ‘To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.’ [See: Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life (New York: The Free Press, 1999).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1121-1123). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “In fact, a paleoanthropologist named Misia Landau wrote a book in which she talked about the similarities between the story of human evolution and old-fashioned folk tales. She concluded that many classic texts in the field were ‘determined as much by traditional narrative frameworks as by material evidence’ and that these themes ‘far exceed what can be inferred from the study of fossils alone.’ ” [See: Misia Landau, Narratives of Human Evolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1133-1136). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
4 Where Science Meets Faith
· I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for an intelligent person to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. Physicist Steven Weinberg, [Steven Weinberg, “A Designer Universe?” The New York Review of Books (October 21, 1999), adapted from a talk given at the Conference on Cosmic Design of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C., April 1999 (emphasis added).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1206-1209). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Science and religion . . . are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there’s a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don’t agree. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if people in this so-called “scientific age” knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they’d find it easier to share my view. Physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne [John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1994), xii.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1210-1214). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science,” he would later tell a reporter. “It was only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.” [Sharon Begley, “Science Finds God,” Newsweek (July 20, 1998).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1231-1234). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Isn’t it dangerous to mix science and faith that way?” I asked. “A lot of scientists follow the lead of the late Stephen Jay Gould in saying that science and faith occupy distinctly different ‘magisteria’ or domains. “He called this philosophy NOMA, which is short for ‘non-overlapping magisteria.’ He said: ‘The net of science covers the empirical universe . . . [while] the net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.’ [Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (March 1997). See also: Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages (New York: Ballantine, 1999).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1312-1315). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· As Nobel Prize–winner Arno Penzias said about the Big Bang, ‘The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the first five books of Moses, the Psalms and the Bible as a whole.’ [See: Malcolm W. Browne, “Clues to Universe Origin Expected,” New York Times (March 12, 1978).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1370-1372). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “As Sir Fred Hoyle commented, ‘A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.’ [Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophyics 20 (1982).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1379-1381). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· In the opinion of physicist Paul Davies, ‘The impression of design is overwhelming.’ [Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 203.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1382-1383). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· The vertebrate retina provides an excellent example of functional—though non-intuitive—design. The design of the retina is responsible for its high acuity and sensitivity. It is simply untrue that the retina is demonstrably suboptimal, nor is it easy to conceive how it might be modified without significantly decreasing its function. [George Ayoub, “On the Design of the Vertebrate Retina,” Origins & Design 17:1, Winter, 1996.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1552-1555). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
5 The Evidence of Cosmology: Beginning With a Bang
· Set aside the many competing explanations of the Big Bang; something made an entire cosmos out of nothing. It is this realization—that something transcendent started it all—which has hard-science types . . . using terms like ‘miracle.’ Journalist Gregg Easterbrook [Gregg Easterbrook, “The New Convergence,” Wired (December 2002).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1644-1647). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Perhaps the best argument . . . that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas . . . being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory. Astrophysicist C. J. Isham [C. J. Isham, “Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process,” in: R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, and G. V. Coyne, editors, Physics, Philosophy, and Theology (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1988), 378, quoted in William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, revised edition, 1994), 328.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1647-1651). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “The third main piece of evidence for the Big Bang is the origin of light elements. Heavy elements, like carbon and iron, are synthesized in the interior of stars and then exploded through supernovae into space. But the very, very light elements, like deuterium and helium, cannot have been synthesized in the interior of stars, because you would need an even more powerful furnace to create them. These elements must have been forged in the furnace of the Big Bang itself at temperatures that were billions of degrees. There’s no other explanation. [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1888-1891). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “You see, the Big Bang was not a chaotic, disorderly event. Instead, it appears to have been fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a complexity and precision that literally defies human comprehension. In other words, the universe we see today—and our very existence—depends upon a set of highly special initial conditions. This phenomenon is strong evidence that the Big Bang was not an accident, but that it was designed. Theorists who are uncomfortable about this want to avoid the problem by trying to explain how you can get a universe like ours without these special initial conditions. Inflation is one attempt to do this.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1900-1904). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· So in a sense, inflation isn’t something that is motivated by the scientific evidence; it’s motivated by a desire to avoid these special initial conditions that are present in the standard model. [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1908-1909). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Stephen Hawking has said, ‘Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.’ ” [Stephen W. Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 20.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1920-1922). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· American astronomer Robert Jastrow was forced to concede that although details may differ, “the essential element in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis is the same; the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply, at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.” [Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W.W. Norton, revised edition, 1992), 14.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1936-1938). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· For instance, atheist George Smith says, ‘If everything must have a cause, how did god become exempt?’ [George H. Smith, Atheism (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1989), 239 (emphasis in original).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1943-1944). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· In The Necessity of Atheism, David Brooks says: ‘If everything must have a cause, then the First Cause must be caused and therefore: Who made God? To say that this First Cause always existed is to deny the basic assumption of this theory.’ [David M. Brooks, The Necessity of Atheism (New York: Freethought Press Association, 1933), 102–103, quoted in: Ibid.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1945-1947). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Well, that just misses the point!” he exclaimed. “Obviously, they’re not dealing with the first premise of the kalam argument, which is not that everything has a cause, but that whatever begins to exist has a cause. I don’t know of any reputable philosopher who would say everything has a cause. So they’re simply not dealing with a correct formulation of the kalam argument. [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1948-1950). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “What’s Ockham’s razor?” “It’s a scientific principle that says we should not multiply causes beyond what’s necessary to explain the effect. Since one Creator is sufficient to explain the effect, you would be unwarranted in going beyond the evidence to posit a plurality.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 1955-1957). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· the kalam argument can’t prove everything about the Creator. [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Location 1959). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
6 The Evidence of Physics: The Cosmos on a Razor’s Edge
· It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in numbers, has been rather carefully thought out. . . . The seemingly miraculous concurrence of these numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design. Physicist Paul Davies [Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 189.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2230-2233). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose? Sir John Templeton. [John Templeton, The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 1998), 19.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2234-2235). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Gradually, I realized that in the twenty years since I opted for philosophical atheism, a vast, systematic literature had emerged that not only cast deep doubt on, but also, from any reasonable perspective, effectively refuted my atheistic outlook. . . . Today, it seems to me, there is no good reason for an intelligent person to embrace the illusion of atheism or agnosticism, to make the same intellectual mistakes I made. [Patrick Glynn, “The Making and Unmaking of an Atheist,” in: God: The Evidence (Rocklin, Calif.: Forum, 1997), 1–20.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2249-2252). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact,” he said in his book The Mind of God. “I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.” [Paul Davies, The Mind of God (New York: Touchstone, 1992), 16, 232.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2278-2281). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Edward Harrison has come to this conclusion: “The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design.” [Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier, 1985), 263, 252.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2283-2284). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Though man is not at the physical center of the universe, he appears to be at the center of its purpose.” [Robert M. Augros and George N. Stanciu, The New Story of Science, 70.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2295-2297). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· As Discover magazine marveled: “The universe is unlikely. Very unlikely. Deeply, shockingly unlikely.” [Brad Lemley, “Why Is There Life?” Discover (November 2002) emphasis added.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2437-2438). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Weinberg once spent an entire chapter explaining how the criteria of beauty and elegance have been used to guide physicists in formulating the right laws. [See: “Chapter Six: Beautiful Theories,” in Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York, Vintage Books, 1992).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2646-2647). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· The theoretical physicist Alan Guth said that the original construction of the gauge theories of fundamental particle physics ‘was motivated mainly by their mathematical elegance.’ [Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe (New York: Helix, 1997), 124.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2647-2649). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “One of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century, Paul Dirac, the Nobel Prize winner from Cambridge, even claimed that ‘it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.’ ” [Paul Dirac, “The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature,” Scientific American (May 1963).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2650-2652). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· A common reaction among physicists to remarkable discoveries . . . is a mixture of delight at the subtlety and elegance of nature, and of stupefaction: “I would never have thought of doing it that way.” If nature is so “clever” it can exploit mechanisms that amaze us with their ingenuity, is that not persuasive evidence for the existence of intelligent design behind the physical universe? If the world’s finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature, how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance? . . . Uncovering the laws of physics resembles completing a crossword [puzzle] in a number of ways. . . . In the case of the crossword, it would never occur to us to suppose that the words just happened to fall into a consistent interlocking pattern by accident. [Paul Davies, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 235–36.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2672-2678). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Even Weinberg, who’s an atheist, conceded that ‘sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.’ [Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, 250.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2680-2681). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
7 The Evidence of Astronomy: The Privileged Planet
· As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather, Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit? Astronomer George Greenstein [George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe (New York: William Morrow, 1988), 27.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2760-2763). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say “supernatural”) plan. Nobel laureate Arno Penzias [Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, editors, Cosmos, Bios, and Theos (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1992), 83.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2763-2766). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “The data imply that Earth may be the only planet ‘in the right place at the right time.’ ” [Jimmy H. Davis and Harry L. Poe, Designer Universe (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2002), 107.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2839-2840). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· . . . a gigantic but delicately balanced heat engine fueled by radioactivity. . . . Were it running more slowly . . . the continents might not have evolved to their present form. . . . Iron may never have melted and sunk to the liquid core, and the magnetic field would never have developed. . . . If there had been more radioactive fuel, and therefore a faster running engine, volcanic dust would have blotted out the sun, the atmosphere would have been oppressively dense, and the surface would have been racked by daily earthquakes and volcanic explosions. [Frank Press and Raymond Siever, Earth (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986), 4.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2850-2854). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· When you really think about it, Christian theology never actually put man literally in the center. We have a very important role to play in this cosmic drama, so much so that God even becomes incarnate. But it was never the case that everything was literally created solely for us. [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 2936-2938). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· The creation of ores and their placement close to the Earth’s surface are the result of much more than simple geologic chance. Only an exact series of physical and chemical events, occurring in the right environment and sequence and followed by certain climatic conditions, can give rise to a high concentration of these compounds so crucial to the development of civilization and technology. [“The Genesis of Ores,” Scientific American, May, 1991.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3349-3352). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cossetted, cherished group of creatures; our Darwinian claim to have done it all ourselves is as ridiculous and as charming as a baby’s brave efforts to stand on its own feet and refuse his mother’s hand. If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in. [John A. O’Keefe, “The Theological Impact of the New Cosmology,” in Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 118 (emphasis added).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3476-3479). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
8 The Evidence of Biochemistry: The Complexity of Molecular Machines
· We have always underestimated the cell. . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. . . . Why do we call [them] machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts. Bruce Alberts, President, National Academy of Sciences [Bruce Alberts, “The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines,” Cell 92 (February 8, 1998).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3492-3496). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity; but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations. Biochemist Franklin M. Harold [Franklin M. Harold, The Way of the Cell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 205.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3497-3500). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· One scientist described a single-cell organism as a high-tech factory, complete with: “artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction . . . [and] a capacity not equaled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours.” [Franklin M. Harold, The Way of the Cell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 329.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3518-3523). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “In Darwin’s day, scientists could see the cell under a microscope, but it looked like a little glob of Jello, with a dark spot as the nucleus. The cell could do interesting things—it could divide, it could move around—but they didn’t know how it did anything.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3558-3560). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Darwin said in his Origin of Species, ‘If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.’ [Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: New York University Press, sixth edition, 1998), 154.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3566-3568). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Life is actually based on molecular machines,” he replied. “They haul cargo from one place in the cell to another; they turn cellular switches on and off; they act as pulleys and cables; electrical machines let current flow through nerves; manufacturing machines build other machines; solar-powered machines capture the energy from light and store it in chemicals. Molecular machinery lets cells move, reproduce, and process food. In fact, every part of the cell’s function is controlled by complex, highly calibrated machines.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3595-3599). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “The point of irreducible complexity is not that one can’t make some other system that could work in a different way with fewer parts. The point is that the trap we’re considering right now needs all of its parts to function. The challenge to Darwinian gradualism is to get to my trap by means of numerous, successive, slight modifications. You can’t do it. Besides, you’re using your intelligence as you try. Remember, the audacious claim of Darwinian evolution is that it can put together complex systems with no intelligence at all.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3610-3614). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· For a more in-depth response to McDonald, see Michael J. Behe, “A Mousetrap Defended,” available at http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_mousetrapdefended.htm (accessed November 2, 2002). [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 6019-6020). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· In my book, I explicitly point out that some of the components of biochemical machines can have other functions. But the issue remains—can you use numerous, slight, successive modifications to get from those other functions to where we are? [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3626-3628). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Besides, look at what he’s doing: he’s starting from the finished product—the mousetrap—and disassembling it and moving a few things around to use them for other purposes. Again, that’s intelligent design! [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3631-3632). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “The question for evolution is not whether you can take a mousetrap and use its parts for something else; it’s whether you can start with something else and make it into a mousetrap. The problem for evolutionists is to start with a less complex system and build a more complex system. Even if every component could theoretically have a useful function prior to its assembly into the mousetrap, you’d still have the problem of how the mousetrap becomes assembled.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3632-3636). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “In other words, if you just had the components themselves without the ability to bring the other pieces into position, you’d be far from having a functioning mousetrap. Nobody ever addresses this problem in the evolutionary literature. If you do any calculations about how likely this could occur by itself, you find it’s very improbable. Even with small machines, you wouldn’t expect them to self-assemble during the entire lifetime of the earth. That’s a severe problem that evolutionists don’t like to address.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3642-3645). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· See: Edward M. Purcell, “The Efficiency of Propulsion by a Rotating Flagellum,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 94 (October 1997), available at http://www.impa.br/~jair/pnas.pdf (accessed July 1, 2003). [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 6022-6024). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· The whole system works really well—the flagellum’s propeller can spin at ten thousand revolutions per minute.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Location 3711). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Even the notoriously high-revving Honda S2000, with a state-of-the-art, four-cylinder, two-liter, dual-overhead-cam aluminum block engine, featuring four valves per cylinder and variable intake and exhaust valve timing, has a redline of only nine thousand rpms. [See: Joe Lorio, “Four of a Kind,” Automobile (August, 2003).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3713-3715). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “Not only that,” Behe continued, “but the propeller can stop spinning within a quarter turn and instantly start spinning the other way at ten thousand rpms. Howard Berg of Harvard University called it the most efficient motor in the universe. It’s way beyond anything we can make, especially when you consider its size.” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3716-3718). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Even evolutionary biologist Andrew Pomiankowski admitted: ‘Pick up any biochemistry textbook, and you will find perhaps two or three references to evolution. Turn to one of these and you will be lucky to find anything better than ‘evolution selects the fittest molecules for their biological function.’ [Andew Pomiankowski, “The God of the Tiny Gaps,” New Scientist (September 14, 1996).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3738-3741). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· It is astonishing to think that this remarkable piece of machinery, which possesses the ultimate capacity to construct every living thing that has ever existed on Earth, from a giant redwood to the human brain, can construct all its own components in a matter of minutes and … is of the order of several thousand million million times smaller than the smallest piece of functional machinery ever constructed by man. [Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 338.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3772-3775). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· See: Michael J. Behe, “A True Acid Test: Response to Ken Miller,” available at: http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_trueacidtest.htm (accessed July 3, 2003). [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 6032-6033). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· I’d agree with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger that ‘the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. . . . [They] point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before.’ [J. Ratzinger, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986), 56.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3913-3915). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· James Shapiro of the University of Chicago in his review of Behe’s book: “There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” [J. A. Shapiro, “In the Details . . . What?” National Review (September 16, 1996).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3927-3929). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle—an architect for believers, a mystery to be solved by science (even as to why) sometime in the indefinite future for materialist reductionalists. [Allan Sandage, “A Scientist Reflects on Religious Belief,” Truth: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Christian Thought, Volume 1 (1985). Available at http://www.clm.org/truth/1truthtml (accessed July 31, 2000).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3933-3937). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
9 The Evidence of Biological Information: The Challenge of DNA and The Origin of Life
· Human DNA contains more organized information than the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the full text of the encyclopedia were to arrive in computer code from outer space, most people would regard this as proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. But when seen in nature, it is explained as the workings of random forces. George Sim Johnson [George Sim Johnson, “Did Darwin Get It Right?” The Wall Street Journal (October 15, 1999).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 3952-3955). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· See: Fazale R. Rana and Hugh Ross, “Life from the Heavens? Not This Way,” Facts for Faith, Quarter 1, 2002, an account of a 1999 international conference on the origin of life, where the mood among Darwinists was described as full of frustration, pessimism, and desperation. [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 6060-6062). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· ‘The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information,’ [See: Bernd-Olaf Küppers, Information and the Origin of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 170–72.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4021-4022). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· “DNA is more like a library” [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Location 4066). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· If you can’t explain where the information comes from, you haven’t explained life, because it’s the information that makes the molecules into something that actually functions. [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4071-4073). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Information theorist Henry Quastler said as far back as the 1960s that the ‘creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity.’ [Henry Quastler, The Emergence of Biological Organization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 16.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4076-4077). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
· In fact, Jim Brooks wrote in 1985 that ‘the nitrogen content of early organic matter is relatively low—just .015 percent.’ He said in Origins of Life: ‘From this we can be reasonably certain that there never was any substantial amount of ‘primitive soup’ on Earth when pre-Cambrian sediments were formed; if such a soup ever existed it was only for a brief period of time.’ [See: J. Brooks, Origins of Life (Sydney: Lion, 1985).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4110-4113). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· ‘Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence.’ [Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 261.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4116-4118). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· As Theodosius Dobzhansky said, ‘Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.’ [See: S. W. Fox, editor, The Origins of Pre-biological Systems and of their Molecular Matrices (New York: Academic Press, 1965), 309–15.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4168-4169). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· For a summary of other arguments against the “RNA first” hypothesis, see: “Stephen C. Meyer Replies,” First Things (October 2000). [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 6074-6075). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Evolutionist Robert Shapiro, a chemistry professor at New York University, said the idea at this point “must be considered either a speculation or a matter of faith.” [Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth (New York: Summit, 1986), 189.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4186-4187). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Jay Roth, former professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of Connecticut and an expert in nucleic acids, said whether the original template for the first living system was RNA or DNA, the same problem exists. “Even reduced to the barest essentials,” he said, “this template must have been very complex indeed. For this template and this template alone, it appears it is reasonable at present to suggest the possibility of a creator.” [Jay Roth, “The Piling of Coincidence on Coincidence,” in: Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, editors, Cosmos, Bios, Theos (Chicago: Open Court, 1992), 199.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4192-4196). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Information theorist Hubert Yockey and chemist Michael Polanyi raised a deeper issue: ‘What would happen if we could explain the sequencing in DNA and proteins as a result of self-organization properties? Wouldn’t we end up with something like a crystal of salt, where there’s merely a repetitive sequence?’ [See: Michael Polanyi, “Life’s Irreducible Structure,” Science 160 (1968), 1308–12.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4220-4222). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· For a more detailed critique of this theory, see Hubert P. Yockey, “Self-Organization, Origin of Life Scenarios, and Information Theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology 91 (1981), 13–31, and Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA and the Origin of Life: Information, Specification, and Explanation,” in John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer, editors, Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State Univ. Press, 2003), 252–55.
· As Crick, a philosophical materialist, has conceded: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” [Francis Crick, Life Itself, 88.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4276-4279). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· In fact, some experts believe that “all living phyla may have originated by the end of the explosion.” [See: J. W. Valentine et al., “Fossils, Molecules, and Embryos: New Perspectives on the Cambrian Explosion,” Development 126 (1999).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4339-4340). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· To put this incredible speed into perspective, if you were to compress all of the Earth’s history into twenty-four hours, the Cambrian explosion would consume only about one minute. [See: Chi Lili, “Traditional Theory of Evolution Challenged,” Beijing Review (March 31–April 6, 1997).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4341-4342). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
10 The Evidence of Consciousness: The Enigma of The Mind
· Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I am doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or deciding that I am just not worth the effort? No one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer to this. . . . The point is that there is no scientific answer. Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse [Michael Ruse, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2001), 73.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4459-4463). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Oxford University professor of physiology Sir Charles Sherrington, a Nobel Prize winner described as “a genius who laid the foundations of our knowledge of the functioning of the brain and spinal cord,” [The British Medical Journal (March 15, 1952), quoted in Arthur C. Custance, The Mysterious Matter of Mind, 51.] declared five days before his death: “For me now, the only reality is the human soul.” [Karl R. Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1977), 558.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4513-4516). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Nobel-winner John Eccles said he’s ‘appalled by the naiveté’ of those who foresee computer sentience. He said there’s ‘no evidence whatsoever for the statement made that, at an adequate level of complexity, computers also would achieve self-consciousness.’ [Quoted in Robert W. Augros and George N. Stanciu, The New Story of Science, 170.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4753-4755). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· How do the scientists know it isn’t actually my prayer life that’s causing something to happen in my brain, rather than the other way around? [For a further critique of “neurotheology,” the idea that the brain is wired for religious experiences, see: Kenneth L. Woodward, “Faith Is More Than a Feeling,” Newsweek (May 7, 2001).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4862-4863). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· They added: “The vain expectation that matter might someday account for mind . . . is like the alchemist’s dream of producing gold from lead. [Robert W. Augros and George N. Stanciu, The New Story of Science, 168, 171.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4945-4947). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
11 The Cumulative Case for a Creator
· The vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator. I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science. Werner von Braun, the father of space science [Quoted in Cal Thomas, “Gone Bananas,” World (September 7, 2002).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4961-4964). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Faith does not imply a closed, but an open mind. Quite the opposite of blindness, faith appreciates the vast spiritual realities that materialists overlook by getting trapped in the purely physical. Sir John Templeton [John M. Templeton, The Humble Approach, 115.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 4964-4967). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· underlying premise of naturalism, I would have to believe that: • Nothing produces everything • Non-life produces life • Randomness produces fine-tuning • Chaos produces information • Unconsciousness produces consciousness • Non-reason produces reason [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 5037-5041). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Biochemist Klaus Dose, one of the leading origin-of-life experts, conceded: “At present all discussions on principle theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.” [Klaus Dose, “The Origin of Life: More Questions than Answers,” Interdisciplinary Science Review 13 (1998).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 5044-5046). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Science writer Robert Roy Britt cast the problem more colorfully: “Have you ever had one of those dreams where you try to run from a monster and your legs go round and round but you don’t get anywhere? The quest to understand the origin of life isn’t much different.” [Robert Roy Britt, “The Year’s Top Ten Space Mysteries,” available at http://www.msnbc.com/news/851919.asp?vts=122820022235 (accessed December 28, 2002).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 5046-5049). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· As award-winning author Roger Lewin, a former editor with Science and New Scientist magazines, summarized a historic scientific conference on macroevolution: “The central question . . . was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomenon of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the position of some people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.” [Roger Lewin, “Evolutionary Theory Under Fire,” Science 210 (November 1980).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 5069-5073). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· Added nanoscientist James Tour of Rice University: “Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.” [See: Candace Adams, “Leading Nanoscientist Builds Big Faith,” Baptist Standard (March 15, 2002).] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 5219-5221). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
· For Polkinghorne, who achieved acclaim as a mathematical physicist at Cambridge before becoming a full-time minister, the same kind of thinking he uses in science has helped him draw life-changing conclusions about God: No one has ever seen a quark, and we believe that no one ever will. They are so tightly bound to each other inside the protons and neutrons that nothing can make them break out on their own. Why, then, do I believe in these invisible quarks? . . . In summary, it’s because quarks make sense of a lot of direct physical evidence. . . . I wish to engage in a similar strategy with regard to the unseen reality of God. His existence makes sense of many aspects of our knowledge and experience: the order and fruitfulness of the physical world; the multilayered character of reality; the almost universal human experiences of worship and hope; the phenomenon of Jesus Christ (including his resurrection). I think that very similar thought processes are involved in both cases. I do not believe that I shift in some strange intellectual way when I move from science to religion. . . . In their search for truth, science and faith are intellectual cousins under the skin.” [John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity, 98–100.] [Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Kindle Locations 5223-5232). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.]
الحمد لله الذي بنعمته تتمّ الصَّالِحات