This article is the first in a two-part series highlighting The Colson Center National Conference. You can read the second piece here.
Over a thousand attendees gathered in Indianapolis, Indiana last week for The Colson Center’s annual national conference to learn about God’s created order of the universe and His good design of life and family. The theme of the conference was “Earth Crammed with Heaven: An Invitation to Encounter God and His Mighty Works.”
One of the first plenary speakers was Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, a Christian, leading scientist and founder of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute – a nonprofit organization that advocates for intelligent design.
Dr. Meyer spoke about how Christians – especially young Christian adults – must be given good reasons to believe in Christianity. If they aren’t, these individuals will be given many reasons to doubt their faith by atheist or agnostic college professors and other individuals who are given platforms by the mainstream media to argue against the existence of God (Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, among others).
“This message that science makes belief in God implausible, untenable, unlikely and probably false, has been everywhere in the culture,” Meyer said.
Meyer cited a poll conducted by the Discovery Institute which explored why many young individuals are abandoning a belief in God. Some of the top reasons include:
- No scientific evidence for God.
- Theories of undirected evolution.
- The problem of pain and suffering in the world.
Meyer went on to explain that adherents of scientific naturalism – like the names listed above – frequently assert that the particles of the universe have existed from eternity past.
Yet, the great Johannine Prologue (John 1: 1-5, ESV) asserts that God existed in the beginning and then created the universe. Naturalism inverts this and asserts that particles have existed for all time, from which cells and life have emerged. One species of life, namely, human beings, then created the idea of God.
In other words, rather than God creating mankind, scientific naturalism asserts that mankind has created God.
Dr. Meyer went on to propose three modern scientific discoveries that challenge scientific naturalism and point to the existence of God. These arguments include:
- The argument from the beginning of the universe, i.e., the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
- The argument from the Fine Tuning of the Universe.
- The argument from Design.
Regarding the first argument, “One of the great things that has been discovered is that the universe had a beginning,” Dr. Meyer said. He argued in favor of the beginning of the universe primarily from the discovery of the expanding universe by Edwin Hubble, realized due to the redshift of the galaxies. If the universe is expanding, then it must have, in the distant past, had a single point of origin, i.e., a beginning.
And if the universe had a beginning, Dr. Meyer argued, then something – or someone – must have caused it to come into existence. And this cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial and extremely powerful (kind of like God).
Regarding the second argument, Dr. Meyer said, “There are many physical parameters of the universe that fall in this unbelievably improbable sweet spot. … All of these parameters fall in these narrow tolerances outside of which, not only would life be impossible, but even basic chemistry would be impossible.”
“It seems like the universe was fine-tuned for our existence, for human life,” Dr. Meyer said.
Lastly, Dr. Meyer explained that unbelievable complexity and enormous amounts of information exist within DNA. And human experience tells us that information does not spontaneously occur; it must have an intelligent cause.
All told, Dr. Meyer presented compelling arguments that point to the existence of God.
Christians do not have to check their brains at the door when discussing their faith. There are very good reasons to believe in God, and Dr. Meyer convincingly presented just a sampling of them.
Dr. Meyer concluded, “These three discoveries are very confirmatory, and even expected from the standpoint of the theistic worldview which affirms a master programmer, a Creator, an intelligent mind behind the universe.”
Then, quoting scientific historian Dr. Frederic Burnham, Meyer said, “The idea that God created the universe is a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last 100 years.”
Related articles and resources:
The Proof You Need to Believe in Jesus Christ (Part 1 of 2)
Harvard Scientist: Wonders of the Universe Point to a Creator
Photo from Shutterstock.
