The eternal tug-of-war between science and religion continues to be argued every day, but a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal by author Eric Mataxas has taken the internet by storm with one simple title: "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God."
The thought-provoking article, published on Christmas Day, walks us through the history of evolutionary theories in popular culture dating back to Time Magazine's famous cover story, "Is God Dead?"
Metaxas takes an in-depth look at how the world was beginning to believe at that time that there was no longer a need for God since science was becoming so advanced. That same year, Carl Sagan concluded that there were two important criteria for sustaining life on any planet: the right "kind" of star, and the planet's distance from that star.
Of course, since then, scienctists have greatly revised those two criteria to include over 200, but this realization only goes to further prove intelligent design as opposed to the amazingly improbable chance that a life-sustaining planet would form from nothing on its own.
"As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn't be here," Metaxas writes.
"Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life-every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth's surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing."
The government-funded Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) ran from the late 60s until 1993 when public funds were dropped, but the fact that it continues today through private funding shows that we, as humans, are more curious than ever about our existence and creation. As Metaxas points out, "here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing," which is a testament to our own intelligence that was created by a Supreme Being.
Metaxas asks the questions we all want to ask at this point. "At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn't assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?"
So the advancement of science is not only further making the case for an intelligent designer, but it's actually convincing atheist scientists of the existence of God.
Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who came up with the "big bang" term, admitted that his own disbelief in God was "greatly shaken" as scientific research continues to show that the universe couldn't have been created by two giant rocks smashing into each other. "A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology," Hoyle wrote. "The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."
Oxford professor John Lennox, the Christian mathemetician who leads the charge for nurturing the relationship between religion and science, pointed out that "the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here."
So will we one day meet at a crossroads where scientists can admit that an intelligent being has created life and the universe, and we can progress science from there instead of continuously butting heads? One can hope, but in the mean time, articles like Metaxas' are important to get our minds working toward that goal.
