Dawning light: Modern science was born out of religion.
> (Photo: John HritzFlickr)

All of the early scientists — Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton — were strong believers in God. Some historians have argued that science originated in the Christian West because of its belief that a rational creator would create rational laws to govern nature. This creator’s freedom to make any kind of world required that scientists carefully inspect the world to determine these laws. Thus was born the fertile cooperation of observation and theory that gave rise to science.

In the centuries after Newton, the rapidly expanding roster of sciences — geology, chemistry, biology — disclosed a marvelously designed world and this design was fashioned into an argument for a designer.

Darwinian evolution, however, undermined the design argument by calling attention to both bad design in nature, and mechanisms by which design could arise without a designer. Over the next century, many would argue that Darwin had so weakened the argument for the existence of a creator God that atheist zoologist Richard Dawkins could write in the 1980s that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Darwin’s biological work, however, didn’t touch upon the remarkably deep and
> intricate design of the physical universe. Elegant mathematical laws spoke quietly of a rational undercarriage to the universe. The big bang pointed to a mysterious and transcendent beginning to the universe. And the anthropic principle brought the ancient argument from design roaring back with a newly articulated vengeance. Was God the &ldquo;fine-tuner&rdquo; of the universe?<p>

Recent work on multiple universes, or multiverses, has weakened the anthropic argument by suggesting that there may be many different universes and some will appear designed for life. But critics point out that there is no evidence for these alternate realities, with some suggesting that the design of the physical universe is compelling evidence for the existence of God.

Karl Giberson is editor in chief at Science & Theology News.