Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God, WSJ

Found this interesting, the fact that the Wall Street Journal ran this article.
It is something I have always believed, but maybe the fact it is in the WSJ will let others consider the possibilities.

In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.

Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.

What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.

Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a 2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . . . . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no longer be tenable.”

Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

Maybe some who would not consider ID will take a second look seeing as the people in BOLD above have.
Richard Dawkins thinks so.

Great, another "low probability of life developing correlates to intelligent design" threads... There are so many flaws in that reasoning it isn't even funny.

By the way, your OP is wrong, science isn't saying that design is inevitable. SOME scientists are saying that it is possible. There is a difference there. There is no presented evidence in the OP or from those scientists though to say that they are correct. So their opinions are just that, opinions. And you (well wsj) are using an appeal to authority fallacy by quoting them.

By the way, Fred Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang" as a derisive comment about it because he didn't believe the theory was true.

John Lennox is a Christian apologist. It isn't surprising that he'd argue in favor of design.

a reply to: stosh64

It's pathetic click-bait written by a non-scientist religious pundit with an agenda.

In fact…

Letter to the editor

By Lawrence Krauss

To the editor:

I was rather surprised to read the unfortunate oped piece “Science Increasingly makes the case for God”, written not by a scientist but a religious writer with an agenda. The piece was rife with inappropriate scientific misrepresentations. For example:

The summary points are…

We currently DO NOT know the factors that allow the evolution of life in the Universe...

We have discovered many more planets around stars in our galaxy than we previously imagined…

The Universe would certainly continue to exist even if the strength of the four known forces was different…

... we now understand, thanks to Charles Darwin that the appearance of design is not the same as design…


The Wall Street Journal is not what it once was. It's now a Rupert Murdoch vehicle just like Fox News.

It's too bad some people have claimed the wonder of creation and pinned it solely to a God (or Goddess). Maybe, maybe not, or maybe each one of us is creating the world as we live. I just know that for a long time I've been irked when I read something which calls a cell a 'simple one-celled organism'. The cell is as totally amazing as you can get with clothes on (if you don't count DNA or RNA), it's like building a full-scale city, populating it, putting it together with the most adaptable and functional machines imaginable, and then building it so that every once in awhile it makes a perfect side-by-side copy of all that and then tears itself in two. Whoever came up with that one, Mother Nature or the Goddess of Nature, thanks for all the fish!

Lets see. If we can get the heathens to at least admit the possibility of a creator, then we have our foot in the door, and they have to admit the possibility of a god, and maybe we can get them to listen to our schtick, and why we're the only ones who have it right.

WSJ is just perpetuating the state sponsored religion for the masses. We can't let atheism, or the non-religious, become a viable percentage of the population just yet. That's for down the road a ways.

These scientists are assuming the way that life evolved on our planet is the only way it can do so. This doesn't take into account the possibility of lifeforms based on different biochemistry.

The Dawkins vs Stein debate is just another fruitless philosophical argument.
The existence of God can't be proven scientifically. (In my opinion, anyway)
I think any rational person would at least agree that there could be a creator.
Some people simply believe that it's a more coherent argument that we came from a design
or an intelligence, as opposed to random events or Darwinian evolution.


I don't understand these atheists who foam at the mouth and get terribly offended at the very mention of God. Are they that weak and insecure?

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Great, another "low probability of life developing correlates to intelligent design" threads... There are so many flaws in that reasoning it isn't even funny.

By the way, your OP is wrong, science isn't saying that design is inevitable. SOME scientists are saying that it is possible. There is a difference there. There is no presented evidence in the OP or from those scientists though to say that they are correct. So their opinions are just that, opinions. And you (well wsj) are using an appeal to authority fallacy by quoting them.

By the way, Fred Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang" as a derisive comment about it because he didn't believe the theory was true.

John Lennox is a Christian apologist. It isn't surprising that he'd argue in favor of design.

Your argument is weak, the data is strong. Going from a 1 with 24 zeros down to a few thousand places in the universe where conditions are right for life doesn't leave much room for Dawinism to perform it's hokus pokus. The downward curve is very dramatic as more and more of the complex precise combinations of prerequisites required to have a life sustaining planet become known.

Everything in the universe is life period.

Science is about to totally change in my opinion. When we stop looking at objects as things and start looking at them as beings apart of ourselves then well start seeing things change.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Great, another "low probability of life developing correlates to intelligent design" threads... There are so many flaws in that reasoning it isn't even funny.

By the way, your OP is wrong, science isn't saying that design is inevitable. SOME scientists are saying that it is possible. There is a difference there. There is no presented evidence in the OP or from those scientists though to say that they are correct. So their opinions are just that, opinions. And you (well wsj) are using an appeal to authority fallacy by quoting them.

By the way, Fred Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang" as a derisive comment about it because he didn't believe the theory was true.

John Lennox is a Christian apologist. It isn't surprising that he'd argue in favor of design.

Your argument is weak, the data is strong. Going from a 1 with 24 zeros down to a few thousand places in the universe where conditions are right for life doesn't leave much room for Dawinism to perform it's hokus pokus. The downward curve is very dramatic as more and more of the complex precise combinations of prerequisites required to have a life sustaining planet become known.

First off, learn scientific notation. It is 1 * 10 ^24 or 1 e 24 not 1 with 24 zeros (this just shows how unscientific this article is for using such stupid notation). Second off, the amount of places that can sustain life hasn't been reduced to a few thousand places in the universe. That wasn't even said in the article, you just made that number up in your head. We have no idea what the exact conditions are for life, not to mention the exact number of planets or life habitable locations in the universe. In fact the number of known planets that can support life has increased, not decreased. You apparently haven't been staying up to date with science, namely astronomy.

Using probability to prove god is ridiculous since if the odds aren't 0%, then it WILL happen given a large enough space and large enough timespan. Heck, it can even happen more than once. Which means that according to probability there could totally be another earth somewhere out in the universe with humans on it having this same conversation. The universe is SO vast that even the smallest probabilities are destined to happen at some point.

a reply to: stosh64

Um...

Ok full disclosure. I believe in Jesus. I am a Christian.

However, it seems to me that the source material that the WSJ used to create this article is somewhat dated. For example, the number of exoplanets that have been discovered continues to grow a pace, and of that number a certain amount could potentially harbour life. The scale of the universe being what it is, and the increasing number of exoplanets being discovered, mean that if anything the probability of life having come about in other locations in the universe is greater given what we know now, than ever!

One of the quotes used in the article for the WSJ was nine years old. Much has been discovered since then, including extremophile life forms which forced scientists to think again about how limited the circumstances necessary to support life are. There are organisms which need no air, bacteria which literally live off radiation, and organisms which can exist in cold vacuum with no ill effects.

The conclusions reached by the writer of this article, appear to have been reached by way of their ignorance of all such discoveries, and to be rather ill thought out as a result.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

No one knows how this all started..
No one knows how you create time and space, without time in which to create it.. OR that otherwise something was always there..

So given that. Proof for either case is lacking.

I think there had to be some beginning, and something somehow before that to start it. OR has eternity always existed and the universe is just a falling into space time from an eternity..

Still I can't make any of that make any sense. And anyone who tells me it makes sense to them doesn't understand the problem. Anyone who tells me it's more likely it's god and not random, and anyone who says it's more likely random and not god isn't using statistics. One may feel more likely to you, but it's based on suppositions.

For me I cannot for the life of me figure out how I can be here, and I do believe in god, but only from my own experiences, nothing scientific. And that doesn't really answer any questions for me, because well, we're back where we started, except instead of me wondering how all this happened, now we have god wondering how he exists...


I don't see how any data on planets and life is at all relevant to god in any case... Random or not there is life.. Whatever, whatever..

It's turtles all the way down for sure of course..

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: TinfoilTP

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Great, another "low probability of life developing correlates to intelligent design" threads... There are so many flaws in that reasoning it isn't even funny.

By the way, your OP is wrong, science isn't saying that design is inevitable. SOME scientists are saying that it is possible. There is a difference there. There is no presented evidence in the OP or from those scientists though to say that they are correct. So their opinions are just that, opinions. And you (well wsj) are using an appeal to authority fallacy by quoting them.

By the way, Fred Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang" as a derisive comment about it because he didn't believe the theory was true.

John Lennox is a Christian apologist. It isn't surprising that he'd argue in favor of design.

Your argument is weak, the data is strong. Going from a 1 with 24 zeros down to a few thousand places in the universe where conditions are right for life doesn't leave much room for Dawinism to perform it's hokus pokus. The downward curve is very dramatic as more and more of the complex precise combinations of prerequisites required to have a life sustaining planet become known.

First off, learn scientific notation. It is 1 * 10 ^24 or 1 e 24 not 1 with 24 zeros (this just shows how unscientific this article is for using such stupid notation). Second off, the amount of places that can sustain life hasn't been reduced to a few thousand places in the universe. That wasn't even said in the article, you just made that number up in your head. We have no idea what the exact conditions are for life, not to mention the exact number of planets or life habitable locations in the universe. In fact the number of known planets that can support life has increased, not decreased. You apparently haven't been staying up to date with science, namely astronomy.

Using probability to prove god is ridiculous since if the odds aren't 0%, then it WILL happen given a large enough space and large enough timespan. Heck, it can even happen more than once. Which means that according to probability there could totally be another earth somewhere out in the universe with humans on it having this same conversation. The universe is SO vast that even the smallest probabilities are destined to happen at some point.

As a scientist, I must point out that the size of the data set does not mean small probability events are "destined" to happen.

That's incorrect and misleading. Nor does low probability mean that there is a God.

The entire premise of arguing philosophical beliefs based on a twisted and false application of statistical probabilities, for most of which we have insufficient data to even estimate, is dumb.

Which God are they talking about here? God the strange entity that creates matter/energy out of nothing and manipulates it according to some baffling plan? It doesn't sound like Jesus who loves everybody and helps you win a football game.

I guess that's what makes "God" such a popular answer to tough questions. If you narrow down the definition, it can fit almost anything.

(P.S. -- Time isn't linear, so the concepts of a single moment of "creation" or a "Big Bang" are off target right from the start.)

Some of us can deny ignorance to those that think they know or believe. How to relate what one knows verses belief is another story. We don't know what we don't know...Always keep an open mind.

a reply to: ColeYounger

I don't understand these atheists who foam at the mouth and get terribly offended at the very mention of God. Are they that weak and insecure?

I don't understand these religious people who foam at the mouth, and get offended at the very mention of no-god. Are they that weak and insecure?

Okay... Maybe I am just dense so can someone explain how the increase or decrease in the amount of planets which we think may sustain life in the galaxy influences the probability of an intelligent designer?


Last time I read an article on the amount of planets in the goldilocks zone mapped it was in the billions so if that number went up how does that affect the ID claim?

originally posted by: Grimpachi
Okay... Maybe I am just dense so can someone explain how the increase or decrease in the amount of plants in the galaxy influences the probability of an intelligent designer?


Last time I read an article on the amount of planets in the goldilocks zone mapped it was in the billions so if that number went up how does that effect the ID claim?

It doesn't.

There could be zero other planets in the universe, or trillions.

It has nothing to do with there being ID or no ID.

Honestly, it's one of the dumbest premises if you actually think it through. If we're alone in the universe it doesn't mean God created us. If there are billions of planets with life it doesn't mean they weren't created by God.

a reply to: Jamie1

I think it is a dumb premise as well but I am trying to figure out how those that think it makes sense are rationalizing the argument.

Usually I can at least understand how someone came to their conclusion even if I disagree with them but not in this case.

originally posted by: Klassified
a reply to: ColeYounger

I don't understand these atheists who foam at the mouth and get terribly offended at the very mention of God. Are they that weak and insecure?

Maybe for these religious people who foam at the mouth, and get offended at the very mention of no-god. Are they that weak and insecure?

I will readily admit that there's no shortage of judgemental, hypocritical phonies who call themselves Christians.
BUT...the atheists are the ones who claim superior logic, reasoning and intelligence. Why can't they simply accept
the idea that someone may believe in a creator? Why are they so offended? Why do they get so worked up?
They rant and rave about religious people being intolerant, yet they absolutely freak out if someone believes in something
different than they do. It's hilarious!