The Case For a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God

In Chapters 4 through 6, Strobel introduces the evidence that he believes makes the most compelling case for a creator. In fact, in his conclusion to the book, he will declare that the subjects of these chapters alone would win the argument for theism: “Actually, in my opinion the combination of the findings from cosmology and physics by themselves were sufficient to support the design hypothesis” (283). These three chapters, then, offer an overview of the core arguments of the book. Whereas the first interview, in Chapter 3, sought to deconstruct classic Darwinian arguments, Chapter 4 turns its attention to positive arguments for intelligent design (here understood broadly as the hypothesis of an “intelligent designer,” not merely as a God who intervenes actively in evolution). In Chapter 4, Strobel’s interview with Stephen Meyer, one of the leading voices in the philosophy of science and the best-known modern exponent for the return of the “God hypothesis,” establishes not only a bird’s-eye view of the main arguments but also the epistemological foundations for using science as a means to point toward God’s existence. Then, in Chapters 5 and 6, the book’s interviews bring up the evidence of cosmology and physics—the apparently inescapable conclusion that the universe must have a transcendent cause of both time and space, and the many fine-tuning features of the universe that make it appear precisely calibrated to sustain life.

Here, the journalistic interview model is particularly integral, as Chapters 5 and 6 present the most intellectually challenging content in the book. Chapter 5’s contents touch on abstract matters of logical deduction and mathematical necessity, and Chapter 6’s contents draw in finely grained data and lesser-known scientific principles of astronomy and cosmology. By using his method of journalistic interviews, Strobel presents these ideas in a conversational form, as propounded by experts who specialize in popularizing these very arguments. As such, the interviewees are able to draw on a wide range of examples and illustrations, which makes the more difficult concepts accessible for readers without philosophical or scientific expertise. That said, the particularly specialized nature of the subject matter renders Strobel’s choice not to interview experts on the other side of the debate particularly significant, as Strobel’s own presentation of the alternative theories is necessarily constrained by his lack of deep knowledge.

This section of the book introduces one of Strobel’s main thematic areas of focus: The Fine-Tuning of the Universe as Evidence for Design. While this is the main topic of Chapter 6, it also receives significant treatment in Chapter 4 and continues to appear throughout the remainder of the book. The apparent fine-tuning of the universe has been widely known in physics and cosmology for decades, leading to the formulation of explanations like the anthropic principle, which holds that it is the very fact that humans are here to observe the universe that explains why it has the properties it does: If it had other properties, humans would not be here to take note of them, so it is no great surprise to find that the universe is fine-tuned as it is. However, according to Collins, this skeptical scientific position misses the point. Borrowing an analogy from philosopher John Leslie, Collins argues that this is like a condemned man, on surviving unscathed from a point-blank execution attempt by the world’s best-trained firing squad, claiming that the result is entirely unsurprising since he wouldn’t otherwise have been there to remark on it: The survival itself would still demand explanation. Such comparisons render the basic claims more concrete than they would otherwise be, serving Strobel’s rhetorical case, although the chapter does not comprehensively consider the counterarguments—for instance, the view held by some scientists that constants like gravitational forces could not be other than what they are.

Another theme that receives close treatment in this section is that of The Scientific Method as a Means of Assessing Evidence for Supernatural Realities. In Chapter 4, Stephen Meyer frames the epistemology upon which the intelligent design argument functions, first challenging the notion that truth emerges only from verification through the scientific method: This assertion, he says, is not verifiable, resulting in internal contradiction. That said, Meyer does not deny the value of science. Rather, he claims that the intelligent design argument proceeds by building a cumulative case on evidence from multiple fields of scientific knowledge and then reasons from this to an inference for the best possible explanation. This is a common form of reasoning in scientific inquiry, which is often not open to deductive methods of discovery and must rely on inductive reasoning instead. Intelligent design’s epistemological model, Meyer argues, is simply the same method that many scientists use: marshalling the full span of evidence that can be gathered from the best data and then reasoning from that to the most likely explanation.