The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [35]
Sitting among the Dallas crowd that day, astounded by what he was hearing from Sandage, was a young geophysicist who had dropped by the conference almost by accident. Stephen Meyer had become a Christian through a philosophical quest for the meaning of life, but he hadn’t really explored the issue of whether science could provide evidential support for his faith.
Now here was not only Sandage but also prominent Harvard astrophysicist Owen Gingerich concluding that the Big Bang seemed to fit best into a theistic worldview. Later came a session on the origin of life, featuring Dean Kenyon, a biophysicist from San Francisco State University, who had co-authored an influential book asserting that the emergence of life might have been “biochemically predestined,” because of an inherent attraction between amino acids. 5 This seemed to be the most promising explanation for the conundrum of how the first living cell could somehow self-assemble from nonliving matter.
To Meyer’s surprise, Kenyon stepped to the podium and actually repudiated the conclusions of his own book, declaring that he had come to the point where he was critical of all naturalistic theories of origins. Due to the immense molecular complexity of the cell and the information-bearing properties of DNA, Kenyon now believed that the best evidence pointed toward a designer of life.
Instead of science and religion being at odds, Meyer heard specialists at the highest levels of achievement who said they were theists—not in spite of the scientific evidence but because of it. As Sandage would say, “Many scientists are now driven to faith by their very work.” 6
Meyer was intrigued. It seemed to him that the theists had the intellectual initiative in each of the three issues discussed at the conference—the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the nature of human consciousness. Even skeptics on the panels conceded the shortcomings of naturalistic explanations. Their main response was only to challenge the theists to provide “scientific answers” instead of merely invoking the idea of intelligent design.
That objection didn’t make much sense to Meyer. “Maybe the world looks designed,” he mused, “because it really is designed!”
As he walked away from the conference, Meyer was brimming with excitement over what he had experienced. Despite his background in science, he simply had been unaware of the powerful scientific findings that were supporting belief in God. All of this, he decided, was worth a much more thorough investigation.
He didn’t know it at the time, but his life’s mission had just crystallized.
INTERVIEW #2: STEPHEN C. MEYER, PHD
Already having earned degrees in physics and geology, Meyer went on to receive his master’s degree in the history and philosophy of science at prestigious Cambridge University in England, where he focused on the history of molecular biology, the history of physics, and evolutionary theory. He then obtained his doctorate from Cambridge, where his dissertation analyzed the scientific and methodological issues in origin-of-life biology—a field he first got excited about when he heard Kenyon speak at the Dallas conference.
In the past fifteen years, Meyer has become one of the most knowledgeable and compelling voices in the burgeoning Intelligent Design movement. He has contributed to numerous books—including Darwinism, Design and Public Education; Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design; Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design; Science and Christianity: Four Views; The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Creator; Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe; The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition; Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins; Darwinism: Science or Philosophy; and Facets of Faith and Science, and is currently finishing books on DNA and the Cambrian explosion.
He has spoken at symposia at