the truth shall set you free

I’m currently working on an article (or series of articles) on the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate. I agree with detractors which say “Intelligent Design claims to be science and is not.” That is true, Intelligent Design is not “science” any more than the Big Bang is; neither can be tested, recreated or falsified. But, I will deal with that soon enough.

In the meantime, I would like to address the claim by atheists and evolutionists that there are no serious scientists who are questioning the validity of evolutionary biology insofar as it claims that productive mutations occur by chance. That is simply not true. I am including below several quotes from reputable scientists (astrophysicists, mathematicians, biologists, etc.) that indicate a degree of doubt concerning atheistic origins. I am including the sources of these quotes so you can check the context.

RICHARD DAWKINS, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST

The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Super-ficially the obvious alternative to chance is an intelli-gent Designer. (Richard Dawkins, “The Necessity of Darwinism,” New Scientist, April 15,1982)

2. The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn’t agree that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I give up! (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton, New York, 1986, preface)

JOHN O’KEEFE, NASA ASTRONOMER

We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures… 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 O’Keefe, from an interview with Fred Heeren, Show Me God, Searchlight Publications, Wheeling, Illinois, 1995, p. 200)

ROBERT JASTROW, ASTROPHYSICIST

1. That there are what I, or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact… (Robert Jastrow, “A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths,” Interview with Bill Durbin, Christianity Today, August 6, 1982, p. 18)

2. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, W.W. Norton, New York, 1978, p. 116)

MICHAEL DENTON, BIOCHEMIST

1. Whether one accepts or rejects the design hypothesis…there is no avoiding the conclusion that the world looks as if it has been tailored for life; it appears to have been designed. All reality appears to be a vast, coherent, teleological whole with life and mankind as its purpose and goal. (Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998, p 387, emp. in original)

2. Because this book presents a teleological interpretation of the cosmos which has obvious theological implications, it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science — that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes…

The aim of this book is, first, to present scientific evidence for believing that the cosmos is uniquely fit for life as it exists on earth and for organisms of design and biology very similar to our own species, Homo sapiens, and, second, to argue that this ‘unique fitness’ of the laws of nature for life is entirely consistent with the older teleological religious concept of the cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its primary goal and purpose.

Although this is obviously a book with many theological implications, my initial intention was not specifically to develop an argument for design; however, as I researched more deeply into the topic and as the manuscript went through successive drafts, it became increasingly clear that the laws of nature were fine-tuned on earth to a remarkable degree and that the emerging picture provided powerful and self-evident support for the traditional anthropocentric teleological view of the cosmos. Thus, by the time the final draft was finished, the book had become in effect an essay in natural theology in the spirit and tradition of William Paley’s Natural Theology… (Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998, pp. xvii-xviii,xi-xii)

SIR ARTHUR EDDINGTON, ASTROPHYSICIST

The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory. (Sir Arthur Eddington, as quoted in Fred Heeren, Show Me God, Searchlight Publications, Searchlight Publications, 1995, p 233)

GEORGE GREENSTEIN, ASTRONOMER

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? (George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, 1988, p 27)

FRANK TIPLER, MATHEMATICIAN & PHYSICIST

When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics. (Frank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, Doubleday, New York, 1994, Preface)

FRED HOYLE, ASTRONOMER

1. The chance that higher life forms have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein. (Fred Hoyle, “Hoyle on Evolution,” Nature, November 12, 1981, 294[5837]:105)

2. Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make the random concept absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favourable properties of physics on which life depends, are in every respect deliberate… It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect in a valid way the higher intelligences…even to the extreme idealized limit of God. (Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space, J.M. Dent, London, 1981, pp. 141,144, emp. in orig.)

3. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.
(”The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: 20:16, 1982)

PAUL DAVIES, PHYSICIST, ASTROBIOLOGIST

1. 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… Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor by-product of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. (Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992, p h3232)

RICHARD LEWONTIN, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST

1. Our willingness to accept scientific claims against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to naturalism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow com-pel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we can not allow a Divine Foot in the door. (Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review, January 9, 1997, p 31, emp. in orig.. Article is a review of Carl Sagan’s book, Billions and Billions, Random House, New York, 1997.)

2. Life forms are more than simply multiple and diverse, however. Organisms fit remarkably well into the external world in which they live. They have morphologies, physiologies and behaviors that appear to have been carefully and artfully designed to enable each organism to appropriate the world around it for its own life. It was the marvelous fit of organisms to the environment, much more than the great diversity of forms, that was the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer. (Richard Lewontin, Scientific American, September 1978, p. 213)

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