Science and the God Hypothesis: Is There Evidence for a Creator in the Modern Scientific Age?

Testing the God Hypothesis

Unbelievable? has featured many recent shows focused on the compatibility of science and faith. It’s a topic that never ceases to fascinate me because it has been a recurring theme throughout my life as I’ve matured from a science kid to a biology major to a physician, and now to an apologist. Early in my career, my faith was like elevator music - pleasantly accompanying me from floor to floor as I rose through the scientific ranks - until one day I finally stopped to listen to the lyrics. The heavens I once thought were mute now declared, babbling brooks inspired streams of thought, and learning about photosynthesis made me pause and consider the lilies. I realized that what I once regarded as religious Muzak was actually a fully integrated orchestra composed of a theological string section, a philosophical wind section, and a scientific horn section—not trying to outplay each other, but beautifully harmonizing in a symphonic metaphysic.  

It wasn’t until my 40s that I began to critically examine what philosopher of science Stephen Meyer calls the “God Hypothesis.” Growing up in a Christian household, my understanding of my faith was fragile - a weakness that was exposed when my curious agnostic brother-in-law asked me to explain Christianity. I struggled to give a clear explanation, feeling embarrassed that I couldn’t articulate what I held most dear.

Our conversation revealed a stark contrast between how I practiced medicine and how I lived out my faith. As a neonatologist, I made medical decisions based on extensive scientific research. Yet, here I was, a Christian, believing in something without ever seriously evaluating the relevant literature. It became clear to me that I was professing a faith I had inherited but not truly earned. I was quite skilled at explaining medical intricacies to the parents of the babies I cared for, but I was incapable of giving reasons for the hope that was in me. I trusted science because it had been repeatedly tested in the neonatal unit, but I never bothered to investigate the “God hypothesis.” Ashamed of the lack of academic rigor I applied to my faith, I began rigorously testing it in the laboratory of life. What I found was that Christianity was not only scientifically coherent but also metaphysically profound.

No more excuses

Early in my career, to avoid conflict, I adopted Stephen Jay Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” model, in which science and faith coexist while respecting each other’s boundaries. It made my life awkward because I was always on the road, commuting back and forth between the two. Commuting, however, wasn’t without cost because I had to pass through the tollbooth of hypocrisy and was running out of spiritual change. I realized that if I couldn’t scrape up enough heavenly treasure to pay the toll, then I might as well stop draining my intellectual bank account. It was then that I came upon one of the most transformative verses on my journey. In the first chapter of the letter to the Romans, St. Paul wrote:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)

Paul combined empirical observation with spiritual insight, merging the two magisteria into a single Kingdom. He assured me that before God revealed Himself in scripture, He had revealed Himself in the things that have been made since the creation of the world. Therefore, nobody, from the simpleton to the scientist, has any excuse for not sensing His eternal power and divine nature. Science, rather than a foil to Christianity, is fuel; rather than an anti-religious polemic, is pre-evangelization.

How could St. Paul make such a claim?

The first chapter of Genesis describes God creating the world through speech, culminating in the creation of image-bearing beings capable of understanding what He just said. It is a powerful metaphor that uses our daily communication experiences to explain the comprehensibility of the natural world. It explains why we hear God’s words when the wind rustles through the trees and when particles crash into one another in the Hadron Collider. It explains why we hear a lecture on the cosmological constants every time the heavens declare, and why, when sequencing a genome, we feel like we are translating the language of God. Science, rather than silencing God, hands Him a megaphone, enabling His voice to go out through all the earth and His words to the ends of the world, inspiring the famous astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler to go so far as to describe science as “the process of thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

I suspect a small group of vocal atheists will see all this talk of a mind behind the universe as nothing more than a séance conducted by Christian charlatans. However, it is an intellectual stance that is becoming increasingly difficult for them to maintain because their scientific colleagues keep revealing layer upon layer of informational complexity that cannot be adequately explained by the naturally selected mutational ramblings of a mindless universe. As St. Paul would say, they are running out of excuses for not believing in God, which makes their critiques of the God hypothesis sound less like critical analysis and more like blasphemy.  

The haunting

Humans have been exploring an abstract realm with mind-like qualities for millennia. Confronted by order, design, and complexity, humans consistently look to the heavens for explanations. While early attempts to attribute natural phenomena to various gods seemed like an ignorant first step, it nonetheless revealed that even early humans believed that discerning minds were necessary if the universe was to be governed effectively. Although these gods often displayed questionable behavior, people were willing to overlook their moral failings as long asthey showed up for work.

Greek philosophers, however, were less forgiving and declared that the gods’ inappropriate behavior disqualified them from pushing the universe’s buttons. Their solution was to do away with the palace intrigue and enthrone a boring yet thoughtful logos who preferred to quietly contemplate the abstract realm of ideas, math, and forms - a quasi-deity more interested in crunching numbers than crashing parties. 

Judaism moved closer to the truth by presenting a single God who was far from dull—a God who was intelligent, good, beautiful, and passionate about His creation. Christianity then put some flesh on His Jewish bones and explained that once He put boots on the ground, we could trace His historical footprints in the Middle Eastern sand.  

The Enlightenment then arrived and started treating the natural world like a household appliance, naively believing that because scientists had deciphered the operator’s manual, they no longer needed an Operator. They tried to exorcise the ghost from the machine, but, ironically, found themselves haunted by the rattling chains of an underlying intelligence that their colleagues jangled with each new scientific discovery.

Atheist scientists, recognizing that the death of God didn’t make design go away, began to channel their inner James Kirk and began to boldly go where no one (or scientist) has gone before—suggesting that we live in an alien computer simulation, that life evolved from the building blocks of life delivered to our planet on meteors seeded by extraterrestrials, or, ignoring intelligence altogether, and suggesting that the chances of it randomly happening are greatly enhanced if you give the cosmos an infinite number of rolls of the multiverse dice. The first two theories provide the necessary “intelligence” without having to say the “G—” word, but rather than eliminating a mind, they only succeeded in exiling it to a strange new world, where they hoped that out of sight, would be out of mind. 

The third possibility proposes that chance, no matter how small, is enough to rule out the God hypothesis. Advertised as probabilistically brilliant, it seems to have more in common with the famous line uttered in the movie “Dumb and Dumber” by Lloyd Christmas, the character played by Jim Carey, who is told by his love interest that the odds of them getting together are “not good…like one in a million.” Lloyd, initially silent, then got a big grin on his face and enthusiastically blurted out, “So, you’re telling me there’s a chance, Ya!”  Unfortunately, for the advocates of this idea, the odds of winning the cosmic lottery are far worse than the chance of Lloyd’s romantic dreams being realized. 

Thankfully, most scientists are down-to-earth enough to recognize that the presence of information and design in the natural world must be addressed and opt for “third ways” that retain aspects of evolutionary theory while still paying homage, however veiled, to intelligence.  

Pursuing the suspect

J. Warner Wallace has written several excellent books applying the science of detective work to explorations of faith. In “God’s Crime Scene: A Cold Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe,” Wallace makes the case that the natural world is like a crime scene littered with pieces of evidence pointing to a creating intelligence. 

While it is easy to be impressed by scientific evidence that includes fine-tuning, biological information, and ecological order, we cannot ignore the far more profound fact that 7 billion people believe it’s a “Whodunnit.” While concluding that a “mind” is behind it all is provocative, it’s hardly a satisfactory final scene for a laity steeped in crime dramas who are on the edge of their seats waiting for the guilty party to be identified and apprehended.

Unbelievable? has gathered a team of highly qualified scientific detectives to help analyze the crime scene evidence. Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer examined the scene and suggested that it was the work of a Master Mind, while his discussion partner, physicist Brian Keating, was hesitant to make a conviction until each piece of evidence had been thoroughly tested in the lab. Theoretical astrophysicist Luke Barnes noted that the crime seemed to have been in the planning stage for billions of years, while his counterpart, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, argued it was a victimless crime that required no further investigation. The late paleontologist Gunter Buechly analyzed the fossil evidence and concluded that it was a staged crime executed with time-sensitive precision, while his interlocutor, computational biologist Joshua Swamidass, believed God was guilty but clever enough to leave no biological fingerprints.

It Takes One to Know One

Sadly, we focus so much on the crime scene that we overlook the detectives. St. Augustine was similarly concerned.

Men go to gape at mountain peaks, at the boundless tides of the sea, the broad sweep of rivers, the encircling ocean, and the motion of the stars, and yet they leave themselves unnoticed; they do not marvel at themselves. (Augustine)

We are the only creatures on the planet who look at the world and believe a full-scale investigation is warranted. We have the unique ability, found nowhere else in nature, to step outside the circle of life not only to observe how it spins but also to notice when it wobbles. 

Why is the world ordered and comprehensible, and even more intriguing, why are we the only beings capable of understanding it? It was a question that puzzled Einstein as well.

“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility…The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”

I suspect the reason we sense a mind behind the universe is that, every time we explore our increasingly complex natural world, we can’t help but feel as if we are looking in the mirror. In a memorable Big Conversation episode featuring Paul Davies and physicist Jeremy England, Davies pointed out how surprising it is that the planet is filled with “comprehending organisms.”However, if you believe humans are image bearers, then it isn’t surprising at all that a scientist would try to rethink God’s thoughts since it takes one to know One.

Turn the Page

Humans throughout history have entertained the God hypothesis because they have read the Book of Nature. General revelation, however, only takes us so far. If we genuinely wish to identify the deity behind it all, then we must turn to special revelation. The Book of Nature isn’t a separate story but a preface to a larger revelatory tome. The reason most people are spiritual seekers is that they have read the preface and sense God’s eternal power and divine nature in the things that have been made, and find it so compelling that they want to turn the page. Therefore, the question every seeker wants answered is which worldview story completes the narrative arc begun in the preface.  

Back to the Books

Science, through ongoing research, continues to uncover fascinating new details that require periodic updates to the Book of Nature. The latest edition reveals a universe that had a beginning, which unfolded within precisely fine-tuned parameters. A world where life appeared unexpectedly and became increasingly complex and information-rich. Life that developed consciousness and the ability to contemplate itself. Life, which sadly, became so advanced that it acquired the ability to destroy itself. These insights have not only made the preface more engaging but also offered additional clues about which worldview satisfactorily completes the narrative. 

Creation myths that rivaled the Genesis story tried to write the story but failed to effectively connect observations from the Book of Nature with the Book of Life. They depicted primordial gods emerging from chaotic waters who multiplied through sex, sacrifice, or murder. Each deity was assigned a role in maintaining a different aspect of the universe. These mythologies portrayed a fragile cosmos that could collapse at any moment because of the gods’ laziness and unwillingness to cooperate with one another. Worship directed at these gods did not come from admiration or gratitude but from fear that the universe would fall apart if they didn’t persuade them, through sacrifice and ritual, to do their job.

Materialism has a less convincing story to tell because it treats the preface like an advertisement for a lottery prize, then makes the rest of the narrative about nature’s gambling addiction, constantly wagering mutations in hopes of hitting the jackpot. The problem is that the statistical improbabilities involved make it much more likely that the genetic bank account will be drained long before it can buy enough tickets to beat the odds. The materialist story is a tragedy because, as every gambler knows, when you spend your intellectual riches always betting on long shots, you will end up homeless, because the House always wins.

Speaking His Mind

Whether you interpret the Genesis account literally or not, you have to be impressed by how effectively it functions as a metaphor for the world around us. It not only explains how the cosmos was created but also assures us that no gods were harmed in the process. It provides an ordered narrative of change over time, from infrastructure to inhabitants, from non-life to life, from simple to complex, and from instinct to consciousness. It portrays a God who uses paleontological pauses for dramatic effect - day one, day two… It depicts a speaking God who imparts increasing amounts of complex biological information into the universe with each daily lecture - And God said… It clarifies why we find the natural world both ordered and good—God saw that it was good. It also explains why humans are the only beings capable of exploring, imitating, and artistically representing the cosmos - God created man in his own image. Finally, it shows why everything comes together in an ecologically sound way - And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Christianity is actually a Word-view and not a worldview. A Word-view that seamlessly incorporates all the major academic disciplines together into a metaphysical whole. Theology studies God’s thoughts, science studies God’s words, and philosophy studies His grammar. I think the power of Christianity to explain the world we live in can be summarized in this simple statement: 

God spoke, therefore, I am.

I hear, therefore, God is.

Speak When Spoken To

While many argue that a speaking God is an anthropomorphism, I believe it is a particularly notable one because it effectively describes the world we observe in the laboratory. It may not be literally true, but it is the only creation story that logically explains the orderly appearance of the information and complexity that scientists encounter daily in their work. 

Sadly, many scientists, threatened by a cosmos that proclaims God’s handiwork, instruct nature to speak only when scientifically spoken to, which seems odd, given that the very discipline that values intellectual rigor would deny intelligence at the other end of the microscope. Have we become so snobbishly smart that we feel the need to berate the universe for its stupidity? Science, ironically, tips its hat to intellect but then doesn’t allow it any say in the matter.

Return of the God Hypothesis

Science has shown that the universe is finely tuned, complex, organized, and information-rich, leading many scientists to wonder whether it is a thought experiment, with some even going so far as to tinker with the idea of a Thinker. It is for this reason that the once-popular God hypothesis has returned for our consideration. Physicist and mathematician, Sir James Jeans, made this very point.

“Today, there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the side of physics approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” (Sir James Jeans)

General revelation makes this hypothesis plausible, but uncovering His, Her, or Its true identityrequires special revelation. We should review all holy texts to determine which best integrates the book of nature within the broader story of life. The first chapters of Genesis provide the most harmonious link between science and religion because they depict a God who speaks an understandable universe into existence and then creates beings with divine voice-recognition software, not only able to hear what He said but also to ask what He was thinking. 

The crime scene is open for everyone to investigate, and Unbelievable? has assisted us by bringing in some of the world’s top detectives to analyze the evidence. The Book of Natureindicates that there is a mastermind behind it all, but we can’t stop there. If we want to take our sleuthing seriously, then we must gather all the divine suspects together, review their special revelation rap sheets, and make a conviction, because if we don’t pursue the leads, the universe will remain a cold case, and we will be left shivering in the bitter winter of our discontent.

If you’re interested in exploring the metaphor of God speaking creation into existence more deeply, check out Erik Strandness’s book: God Spoke: Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide with Divine Discourse. You can find more information at www.godsscreenplay.com.

because when we do, we risk having it bleed to death in our hands.

Erik Strandness is a physician and Christian apologist who practiced neonatal medicine for more than 20 years and has written three apologetic books. Information about his books can be found at godsscreenplay.com