While mysteries and unsolved problems drive discovery and progress, greater advancement takes place when people have a common agreement about the fundamental foundation and design of life. Such an understanding provides context, meaning, and direction to human endeavors while also deepening people’s connection with each other. If we came to understand that we are all in the same lifeboat, no one would want to sink the boat before being rescued. That big picture consensus mitigates conflict and war and will certainly result in greater productivity and flourishing.
However, that has not happened for most of human history. People have simply not been able to agree on the big picture of life, because for many, events and developments seemed to evolve in random and unguided ways resulting in unpredictable outcomes.
Historically, there were, however, individuals who saw things differently. In 45 B.C. Cicero proclaimed that “the celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to confess that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.” There were also periods of purposeful life and cultural achievement, virtue, and efflorescence, such as in Periclean Athens, in the Florence of the Medicis, and in England under Elizabeth and Shakespeare.
Additionally, there were giants in the scientific revolution, like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle and Newton who contributed to the understanding of a universal order by their insight and conviction that there was an intelligent designer behind the universe that revealed patterns in nature and the heavenly bodies that we could understand because human minds had been made in the image and likeness of that designer who had built rationality, design and lawful order into everything.
What we find in the sweep of history are two great competing stories, or schools of thought about reality. The first posits that the universe, our planet, life as it continues, and especially we ourselves, are products of pre-existing intelligence, a purposeful mind or creator. The second school of thought posits that events, matter, and energy evolve and interact in undirected ways and arrange themselves randomly in our lives and in everything around us.
This second school of thought, broadly characterized as the philosophical idea of materialism, got legs during the 19th Century from the works of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Karl Marx, and others. And this became dominant in explaining how life came to be, driving a big wedge between science and religion through most of the 20th Century.
Now we find ourselves embracing a future driven by artificial intelligence (AI), even while the present advancements in that technology can lead to “AI Takeover,” in which AI systems end up making the most consequential decisions about the future, displacing human control, and even leading to suicidal dangers in which AI could turn on the very people who created artificial intelligence.
Rather than accepting the fate of self-destruction, we need to go deeper in our search and discovery of evidence that reveals design as a superior explanation for the laws of the universe and our personal lives in terms of how we should live. What we now know is that the theory of evolution and materialism have gaps in logic, sequence and consequence that may only be solved by theistic explanations.
Toward this end, a new film to be released on April 30, entitled, “The Story of Everything,” takes you on a journey through the biggest discoveries in modern science—cosmology, physics, and biology.
It turns out that discoveries from physics and astronomy reinforce a theistic view. Physicists have determined that the fundamental laws and parameters of our universe are "finely tuned," against all odds, to make life possible. Even slight alterations of many independent factors — such as the strength of gravitational or electromagnetic attraction, or the initial arrangement of matter and energy — would render life impossible. Thus, an increasing number of physicists no longer believe that chance and randomness provide ultimate answers.
Instead, they believe that life is only sustained by a cosmic "fine-tuning." And that of course implies that there must be a "fine-tuner."
Astronomers have also discovered that life on our planet depends upon many other "localized," fine-tuning parameters. The Earth must orbit the sun at just the right distance, with just the right axial tilt, in a right-shaped orbit, with the right planetary neighbors, including a moon of the right size at just the right distance. The solar system itself must also reside in a narrow life-friendly band of space within our galaxy called the "galactic habitable zone." The collective improbability of these and other factors suggests that the Earth came into being by design and for a purpose.
Biology may be even more important than astronomy in “proving” the design story and explanation. The structure of the DNA molecule contains chemical constituents that function like letters in a written language or digital symbols in a computer code, which is far more advanced than any software man has created. Software originates from programmers. Thus, the discovery of digital information in even the simplest living cell suggests a role of a master programmer in the origination and sustenance of life.
In summary, we are on the threshold of greater discovery and flourishing than ever because of a quiet, but growing reconciliation between science and belief in God.