(This is an abbreviated version of my review on Goodreads.)
This book is about evidence from science that can be used to confirm faith in God. Specifically, it provides evidence, reason, and argument to persuade the reader that the theistic worldview is legitimate and does not violate scientific evidence.
It is worth noting that Stephen Meyer’s book begins with an incident during a debate with Lawrence Krauss that led him to write Return of the God Hypothesis. This was a significant turning point for Meyer because up until this book, he has consistently referred to the scientific evidence as support for Intelligent Design and has sidestepped the question about the designer’s identity.
Meyer offers three main lines of scientific evidence for theism. None of this evidence is new to those who have followed the conversation between science and faith. However, Meyer enlivens his presentation of the evidence with personal narratives of his experiences with scientists. He also includes biographical stories about the scientists who participated in these discoveries and their attitudes towards faith. The three main lines of reasoning are (1) evidence for the creation of the universe, (2) evidence for the fine-tuning of the universe for life, and (3) evidence for the creation of genetic code in the cells of all life.
The evidence for the creation of the universe consists of what has been called the Big Bang, some 13.7 billion years ago. This is a well-accepted theory. The Cosmos had a beginning; therefore, it had a creator. Since the Big Bang was the beginning of space and time, the creator had to transcend space and time. The reasoning Meyer uses to make these conclusions is named abduction; that is, inference to the best hypothesis. His possible hypotheses are Materialism, Pantheism, Deism, and Theism.
The evidence for fine-tuning is the extraordinary selection of physical constants and laws necessary to create a universe conducive to life. There are many such constants. One is the specific ratio for the strength of the gravitational force compared to the strong nuclear force. One way to summarize the evidence for fine-tuning is the number representing the likelihood that our universe was created by chance. This number was first proposed by the 2020 Nobel Laureate, Roger Penrose. Penrose estimates that there was one chance in 10^(10^123) that our universe was created with incredibly low entropy. (“^” means exponentiation.) Low entropy means a high degree of specified order. And that means that our universe was created to create and sustain life. Penrose’s number is so large that there has not been enough time since the Big Bang to write it down as a string of digits. The colossal size of the number implies a very, very low probability that our universe was created by chance.
Finally, the genetic code found in all life contains specific information for the composition of proteins necessary for life. Meyer’s first book, Signature in the Cell, describes the amazing appearance of life on earth more than 3.5 billion years ago and likens the DNA code to a signature from its creator. In his latest book, the DNA code is like a computer program that specifies the molecular machinery necessary for life. Chemistry can’t explain the sequence of the DNA units because any chemical bonds between the DNA coding units would preclude some of the required combinations from forming. There are no materialistic explanations for the appearance of specified information inside the living cell. What is crucial to understand is that the information cannot be explained even if the material composition could.
The presentation of solid scientific evidence takes up the first half of the book. If you are familiar with the discussion of the relevant science, this part of the book will go quickly. I required more study in the second half of the book. Here, Meyer delves into some of the challenges to Intelligent Design and some of the support he has received from unexpected sources.
The first challenge comes from alternative materialist theories for creating life, such as the “RNA World” hypothesis. In that scenario, RNA was the first molecule and not DNA. But RNA encounters criticism from biologists as well. And Meyer claims that even if the molecular claims were proven, that still would not explain the information contained in the molecule.
But Meyer also confronts challenges from evolutionary theists, for example, BioLogos. Evolutionary theists believe that God is using the evolutionary mechanism without specific intervention in the creation of life. Therefore, one could believe the laws of nature were “front-loaded” for the existence of life. That hypothesis would support deism.
Meyer gets unexpected support from the atheistic philosopher Thomas Nagel. Nagel wrote Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. He wrote that book to explain why he doesn’t think random mutation can explain how nature works. He calls for a teleological principle to give a direction to the laws of nature. In his view, an undirected process cannot result in the world we live in.
The most significant challenge to the creation of the universe comes from what Meyer calls “Exotic Naturalism.” These are speculative hypotheses that attempt to circumvent the fine-tuning evidence and the evidence for a finite age of the universe. Included here are multiple universe proposals, chaotic-inflation theories, quantum cosmology, and the string theory landscape. If you haven’t run into these arguments before, you may need more study to understand the debate.
Meyer presents these exotic theories somewhat independently. As espoused by proponents, however, they are often woven together into a coherent hypothesis. Lawrence Krauss, for example, presents a view including the multiple universes, chaotic inflation, and the string theory landscape. Meyer likens the proposals for a multiverse creation scenario to believing in ten unproven scientific postulates.
In Meyer’s conclusion, he considers philosophical challenges to his arguments for theism. The foremost challenge has been the “God-of-the-gaps” accusation. This accusation is an accusation that Meyer is committing the fallacy of an argument from ignorance. An argument from ignorance simply supplies a possible cause for unexplained phenomena without providing evidence that the proposed cause has the power to do what is claimed.
Meyer’s consistent claim is that the specified complexity of information present in DNA is sufficient to show the presence of a creating mind. If you come at this argument from a materialist perspective, you will have difficulty with the proposition for a disembodied mind. Meyer is a mind-brain dualist. He believes that consciousness does not arise only in material brains. This is a legitimate view on philosophical grounds. Still, many people will have trouble buying into this line of thinking.
In an essay titled “Of Minds and Causes,” published in Debating Darwin’s Doubt, Meyer insists that he doesn’t need to show how a disembodied mind can cause material actions. While that may be true, I think his thesis would be even more compelling with such an explanation.
The final chapter of Meyer’s book is titled “The Big Questions and Why They Matter.” Here, Meyer describes the reason theism is vital for human society. There are inspirational aspects to theism that are not present in materialist explanations. Attempts have been made to expound on the wonder and awe-inspiring nature of our material universe. Still, these fall short, in my view, in a universe without God, in a universe based only on random chance. Some have attributed many of our social problems on the despair resulting from an impersonal, materialist ideology.
Meyer gives a very persuasive reason for believing in theism even without the scientific evidence for support. If the forces controlling the universe are random, we have no assurance that our cognitive faculties are sound. We may have evolved to survive and reproduce, but that alone does not guarantee that we can perceive the truth about the universe.
Meyer states several times in his book that modern materialist ideologies actually undermine the legitimacy of science. Lawrence Krauss admits as much in A Universe from Nothing. “If instead the laws of physics as we know them are merely accidents correlated to our existence, then that fundamental goal [of an intelligible universe] was misplaced.”
Krauss ends his book with a bleak picture of our future in a dying universe. He offers us a thin strand of hope. “The universe is far stranger and far richer—more wondrously strange—than our meager human imaginations can anticipate.”
Meyer responds to Krauss in his conclusion:
"Nevertheless, this book has better news: neither of the widely offered responses to the death of God—angst or Sisyphean resistance—is in fact necessary. Not only does theism solve a lot of philosophical problems, but empirical evidence from the natural world points powerfully to the reality of a great mind behind the universe. Our beautiful, expanding, and finely tuned universe and the exquisite, integrated, and informational complexity of living organisms bear witness to the reality of a transcendent intelligence—a personal God."
Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars | 1,952 ratings
Price: 30.7
Last update: 08-22-2024
About this item
The New York Times best-selling author of Darwin’s Doubt presents groundbreaking scientific evidence of the existence of God, based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology.
Beginning in the late 19th century, many intellectuals began to insist that scientific knowledge conflicts with traditional theistic belief - that science and belief in God are “at war”. Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer challenges this view by examining three scientific discoveries with decidedly theistic implications. Building on the case for the intelligent design of life that he developed in Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, Meyer demonstrates how discoveries in cosmology and physics coupled with those in biology help to establish the identity of the designing intelligence behind life and the universe.
Meyer argues that theism - with its affirmation of a transcendent, intelligent and active creator - best explains the evidence we have concerning biological and cosmological origins. Previously Meyer refrained from attempting to answer questions about “who” might have designed life. Now he provides an evidence-based answer to perhaps the ultimate mystery of the universe. In so doing, he reveals a stunning conclusion: the data support not just the existence of an intelligent designer of some kind - but the existence of a personal God.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Top reviews from the United States
D. Rice5.0 out of 5 stars
A Major Turning Point for the Intelligent Design Debate
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021Steven Willing5.0 out of 5 stars
Dr Meyer ups the ante in his newest contribution to the science of origins
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2021
In this extensively researched, meticulously documented 450-page tome, Dr. Meyer zeroes in on three of the most challenging questions in the science of origins: 1) If the “Big Bang” caused the universe, what caused the “Big Bang”? 2) What accounts for the incredible fine tuning in physical laws and the parameters of early expansion necessary for matter, stars, planets, and life to even be possible? and 3) What explains the origin of life and the information encoded within DNA necessary for any form of life, particularly the highly advanced forms which appeared “suddenly” (on a geological timescale) in the Cambrian explosion (ca. 540 Mya)? In each case, Meyer demonstrates quite clearly - and accurately - that there is no viable natural explanation. After explaining the current state of science on these questions, Meyer frames them within the much broader context of epistemology, logic, metaphysics, Bayesian analysis, and information theory to conclude that among all possible options, Theism offers the most probable, coherent, and intellectually satisfying answer to otherwise intractable mysteries.
The science and doctrines of origins have been a hotbed of controversy for many decades. Both emotions and overconfidence run high and thoughtful dialogue is far too rare. Dr. Meyer is no hard-charging polemicist. Almost to a fault, he approaches his critics with gentleness and respect. And there have been critics, indeed. Indeed, one might frame his new work as an extended response to the most salient criticisms of the last several years.
So what are those criticisms? Well, according to Wikipedia “Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God” - revealing mostly an intense, if unsophisticated, ideological bias among editors at Wikipedia. Nonetheless, Meyer thoroughly and effectively disassembles that characterization with chapter upon chapter of careful reasoning and irrefutable evidence.
More thoughtful criticisms come from the scientists affiliated with BioLogos, a group founded by Francis Collins who identify themselves as evolutionary creationists. They have been frequently critical of the Discovery Institute and Intelligent Design (ID) for reasons that are more philosophical than scientific. To really understand Meyer’s argument and why he frames it as he does, it helps to understand debates of the last decade in which Meyer has been a central figure. BioLogos figures prominently in that story.
In his autobiographical testimony, “The Language of God”, NIH director and former head of the human genome project describes his coming to faith after being deeply influenced by the “moral argument” for God, famously recounted by C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”. Yet in Chapter 3, “The Origins of the Universe”, Dr. Collins specifically invokes Meyer’s first two arguments as convincing scientific evidence in favor of - if not completely proving - God. BioLogos mostly takes issue when Meyer steps into biology, not surprising since that was the focus of Meyer’s first two books and they primarily identify as Christians who embrace the complete evolutionary paradigm.
On the matter of design, it is not as though Meyer and ID proponents have been fundamentally refuted. That would be easy if the evidence existed. One must simply account for the origin of life out of inorganic precursors, and the origin of biological information encoded in DNA, and the case would be closed. (For anyone who can do that, there is a $10,000,000 prize for the taking). The ID movement is famous for promoting the idea of “irreducible complexity” in biological structures. This has been a source of much contention and in some instances their examples have not been so compelling as first thought, but those arguments amount to little more than quibbling over examples, not the underlying principles. BioLogos has been very critical of the idea of “irreducible complexity”, but in “Return of the God Hypothesis” it is conspicuous mostly for its absence apart from the origin-of-life discussion.
Another objection from the BioLogos community is that ID is guilty of a “God of the gaps” fallacy for invoking shortcomings of evolution as evidence for God. (More than one observer has noted that the same objection could be raised against the moral and cosmological arguments preferred by BioLogos). Obviously concerned with that accusation, Meyer dedicates an entire chapter (“Acts of God or God of the Gaps?) to that challenge. In this Meyer acquits himself admirably, though more could be said. Given the current state of origin-of-life research, we have not a “gap” but a massive glaring void. In “The End of Science” agnostic science writer John Horgan identified the origin of life as a problem that likely never would be solved. Twenty years later, Horgan remains just as doubtful .
Now, BioLogos is concerned that the faith of some is shattered when it is based on particular “gaps” that ultimately are explained. Such would be a shallow faith indeed. They are quite correct that the faith of many has been shipwrecked on the rocks of science - sometimes by bad science, and often just because they were taught very bad science. But there’s little or no evidence that anyone’s faith has been undermined by an approach resembling that of Meyer.
In principle, BioLogos objects to seeing design in biology and invoking that as evidence for God, as Meyer consistently has done. Yet sometimes their own position doesn’t come off as fully thought out. BioLogos scientists unashamedly declare themselves as believers in creation. While they explicitly reject Deism and affirm God’s subsequent intervention in human affairs and incarnation in Christ, their view of creation is such that undirected evolution is sufficient to explain the complexity and diversity of life - and ultimate appearance of humans. (“Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required” - Collins, Language of God). Meyer notes that this necessarily imposes teleology upon evolution - itself a principle decisively rejected by almost all evolutionary biologists and for which there is no evidential support. [Although many Christians think evolution is unacceptable in any form, in practice our disagreements are really more over the scope of evolution rather than its existence. Here, for example.]
Denis Lamoureux of St Joseph’s College in Alberta holds PhD’s in both theology and evolutionary biology and is credited with coining the term “evolutionary creation” (EC) favored by BioLogos. Officially he is not a part of the organization, but there is a definite symbiosis and mutual respect. As Meyer notes, Lamoureux argued that God’s plan for creating life and humans was embedded within the design of the universe from the instant of creation.
Elsewhere, Lamoureux has written: “The Creator loaded into the Big Bang the plan and capability for the cosmos and living organisms, including humans, to evolve over 10-15 billion years.” According to Lamoureux, “design is evident in the finely-tuned physical laws and initial conditions necessary for the evolution of the cosmos through the Big Bang, and design is also apparent in the biological processes necessary for life to evolve, including humans with their incredibly complex brains.” [italics added] Repeatedly, he affirms the principle (and terminology) of “intelligent design” in nature affirming the handiwork of a Creator.
Meyer fairly points the difficulty in seeing this position as more scientifically sound or palatable than some other version of evolution in which God is actively involved. To assume the information for life up to and including humans was embedded in the original design of the cosmos goes far beyond anything within the realm of known science. There is no known natural mechanism by which that information could have been encoded or transmitted. Meyer is silent regarding the actual scope of evolution as he sees it. But the concept of progressive creation vigorously opposed by the BioLogos community appears no less scientific or more miraculous than their proposed alternative. A crude analogy would be firing a pistol and hitting a dime on the far side of the universe. In the BioLogos view, God takes one shot and hits the target, whereas a progressive view would allow for mid-course adjustments. The latter solution is less demanding. (Of course, the analogy doesn’t account for the additional problem of how information is encoded and transmitted). Or, to look at it another way, a progressive view has God intervening in known scientific processes, whereas the EC view postulates unknown scientific processes for evolution to achieve its intended result in the complete absence of subsequent intervention.
Coming from a different place on the continuum, the Old-Earth Creationist ministry Reasons to Believe has criticized Meyer and the Discovery Institute for failing to name the designer and consequently having little apologetic or evangelistic impact. This objection seems to be resolved decisively in “Return of the God Hypothesis”, as the core theme and purpose of the entire work is to show that the designer is a personal and benevolent deity who is actively involved in the course of nature and human affairs.
Dr. Meyer is an exemplary writer and scholar and his new volume is a masterwork of apologetics. It will benefit students, scholars, pastors, and scientifically-minded believers who wish to strengthen their faith and those within their circle of influence. The case should be persuasive to agnostics and skeptics who are looking for honest arguments and not emotionally predisposed against theism. We should all pray that this approach will lead to more cooperation and less conflict in the arena of creation apologetics.
The science and doctrines of origins have been a hotbed of controversy for many decades. Both emotions and overconfidence run high and thoughtful dialogue is far too rare. Dr. Meyer is no hard-charging polemicist. Almost to a fault, he approaches his critics with gentleness and respect. And there have been critics, indeed. Indeed, one might frame his new work as an extended response to the most salient criticisms of the last several years.
So what are those criticisms? Well, according to Wikipedia “Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God” - revealing mostly an intense, if unsophisticated, ideological bias among editors at Wikipedia. Nonetheless, Meyer thoroughly and effectively disassembles that characterization with chapter upon chapter of careful reasoning and irrefutable evidence.
More thoughtful criticisms come from the scientists affiliated with BioLogos, a group founded by Francis Collins who identify themselves as evolutionary creationists. They have been frequently critical of the Discovery Institute and Intelligent Design (ID) for reasons that are more philosophical than scientific. To really understand Meyer’s argument and why he frames it as he does, it helps to understand debates of the last decade in which Meyer has been a central figure. BioLogos figures prominently in that story.
In his autobiographical testimony, “The Language of God”, NIH director and former head of the human genome project describes his coming to faith after being deeply influenced by the “moral argument” for God, famously recounted by C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”. Yet in Chapter 3, “The Origins of the Universe”, Dr. Collins specifically invokes Meyer’s first two arguments as convincing scientific evidence in favor of - if not completely proving - God. BioLogos mostly takes issue when Meyer steps into biology, not surprising since that was the focus of Meyer’s first two books and they primarily identify as Christians who embrace the complete evolutionary paradigm.
On the matter of design, it is not as though Meyer and ID proponents have been fundamentally refuted. That would be easy if the evidence existed. One must simply account for the origin of life out of inorganic precursors, and the origin of biological information encoded in DNA, and the case would be closed. (For anyone who can do that, there is a $10,000,000 prize for the taking). The ID movement is famous for promoting the idea of “irreducible complexity” in biological structures. This has been a source of much contention and in some instances their examples have not been so compelling as first thought, but those arguments amount to little more than quibbling over examples, not the underlying principles. BioLogos has been very critical of the idea of “irreducible complexity”, but in “Return of the God Hypothesis” it is conspicuous mostly for its absence apart from the origin-of-life discussion.
Another objection from the BioLogos community is that ID is guilty of a “God of the gaps” fallacy for invoking shortcomings of evolution as evidence for God. (More than one observer has noted that the same objection could be raised against the moral and cosmological arguments preferred by BioLogos). Obviously concerned with that accusation, Meyer dedicates an entire chapter (“Acts of God or God of the Gaps?) to that challenge. In this Meyer acquits himself admirably, though more could be said. Given the current state of origin-of-life research, we have not a “gap” but a massive glaring void. In “The End of Science” agnostic science writer John Horgan identified the origin of life as a problem that likely never would be solved. Twenty years later, Horgan remains just as doubtful .
Now, BioLogos is concerned that the faith of some is shattered when it is based on particular “gaps” that ultimately are explained. Such would be a shallow faith indeed. They are quite correct that the faith of many has been shipwrecked on the rocks of science - sometimes by bad science, and often just because they were taught very bad science. But there’s little or no evidence that anyone’s faith has been undermined by an approach resembling that of Meyer.
In principle, BioLogos objects to seeing design in biology and invoking that as evidence for God, as Meyer consistently has done. Yet sometimes their own position doesn’t come off as fully thought out. BioLogos scientists unashamedly declare themselves as believers in creation. While they explicitly reject Deism and affirm God’s subsequent intervention in human affairs and incarnation in Christ, their view of creation is such that undirected evolution is sufficient to explain the complexity and diversity of life - and ultimate appearance of humans. (“Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required” - Collins, Language of God). Meyer notes that this necessarily imposes teleology upon evolution - itself a principle decisively rejected by almost all evolutionary biologists and for which there is no evidential support. [Although many Christians think evolution is unacceptable in any form, in practice our disagreements are really more over the scope of evolution rather than its existence. Here, for example.]
Denis Lamoureux of St Joseph’s College in Alberta holds PhD’s in both theology and evolutionary biology and is credited with coining the term “evolutionary creation” (EC) favored by BioLogos. Officially he is not a part of the organization, but there is a definite symbiosis and mutual respect. As Meyer notes, Lamoureux argued that God’s plan for creating life and humans was embedded within the design of the universe from the instant of creation.
Elsewhere, Lamoureux has written: “The Creator loaded into the Big Bang the plan and capability for the cosmos and living organisms, including humans, to evolve over 10-15 billion years.” According to Lamoureux, “design is evident in the finely-tuned physical laws and initial conditions necessary for the evolution of the cosmos through the Big Bang, and design is also apparent in the biological processes necessary for life to evolve, including humans with their incredibly complex brains.” [italics added] Repeatedly, he affirms the principle (and terminology) of “intelligent design” in nature affirming the handiwork of a Creator.
Meyer fairly points the difficulty in seeing this position as more scientifically sound or palatable than some other version of evolution in which God is actively involved. To assume the information for life up to and including humans was embedded in the original design of the cosmos goes far beyond anything within the realm of known science. There is no known natural mechanism by which that information could have been encoded or transmitted. Meyer is silent regarding the actual scope of evolution as he sees it. But the concept of progressive creation vigorously opposed by the BioLogos community appears no less scientific or more miraculous than their proposed alternative. A crude analogy would be firing a pistol and hitting a dime on the far side of the universe. In the BioLogos view, God takes one shot and hits the target, whereas a progressive view would allow for mid-course adjustments. The latter solution is less demanding. (Of course, the analogy doesn’t account for the additional problem of how information is encoded and transmitted). Or, to look at it another way, a progressive view has God intervening in known scientific processes, whereas the EC view postulates unknown scientific processes for evolution to achieve its intended result in the complete absence of subsequent intervention.
Coming from a different place on the continuum, the Old-Earth Creationist ministry Reasons to Believe has criticized Meyer and the Discovery Institute for failing to name the designer and consequently having little apologetic or evangelistic impact. This objection seems to be resolved decisively in “Return of the God Hypothesis”, as the core theme and purpose of the entire work is to show that the designer is a personal and benevolent deity who is actively involved in the course of nature and human affairs.
Dr. Meyer is an exemplary writer and scholar and his new volume is a masterwork of apologetics. It will benefit students, scholars, pastors, and scientifically-minded believers who wish to strengthen their faith and those within their circle of influence. The case should be persuasive to agnostics and skeptics who are looking for honest arguments and not emotionally predisposed against theism. We should all pray that this approach will lead to more cooperation and less conflict in the arena of creation apologetics.