The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [103]
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. 48
And for humankind to explore. The findings of Gonzalez and Richards that the cosmos was designed for discovery have added a compelling new dimension to the evidence for a Creator. And frankly, their analysis makes sense.
If God so precisely and carefully and lovingly and amazingly constructed a mind-boggling habitat for his creatures, then it would be natural for him to want them to explore it, to measure it, to investigate it, to appreciate it, to be inspired by it—and ultimately, and most importantly, to find him through it.
For Further Evidence
More Resources on This Topic
Denton, Michael. Nature’s Destiny. New York: The Free Press, 1998.
Gonzalez, Guillermo and Jay Wesley Richards. The Privileged Planet. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2004.
Jastrow, Robert. God and the Astronomers. New York: W. W. Norton, second edition, 1992.
Sampson, Philip. Six Modern Myths. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000.
Ward, Peter and Donald Brownlee. Rare Earth. New York: Copernicus, 2000.
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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 1
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 2
Michael Behe was taught in parochial school that God had set up the universe, knew what was going to happen, and intended for life to come into existence, but from our perspective the entire process unfolded through Darwinian evolution. And that pretty much satisfied the young Behe.
Later as a student in biochemistry, when Behe would encounter enormously complicated biological systems, his response was to scratch his head and say, “Gee, I wonder how evolution created that? Well, somebody must know!” He always moved on, assuming someone did.
Then one day, while doing post-doctorate research on DNA at the National Institutes of Health, he and a colleague were pondering what it would take for life to begin by naturalistic processes. As they enumerated the components that would be needed—proteins, a genetic code, a membrane, and so on—they looked at each other and said, “Naaaaahhhhhh!” They knew there was no way life could have sprung into existence unaided. Seeds of skepticism were planted.
Subsequently, he read geneticist Michael Denton’s ground-breaking book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. For the first time, Behe was exposed to a well-reasoned scientific critique of Darwinism—and he was astounded. Until then, he only knew of “religious nuts” who doubted Darwin. Now, here was a thoughtful, agnostic scientist who was powerfully challenging whether Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection could really explain how life started and developed through the ages.
Spurred on by Denton’s book, Behe began scouring the scientific literature in search of the detailed Darwinian explanations he had always assumed