“In a book of magnificent sweep and daring, Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards drive home the argument that the old cliche of no place like home is eerily true of Earth. Not only that, but if the scientific method were to emerge anywhere, Earth is about as suitable as you can get. Gonzalez and Richards have flung down the gauntlet. Let the debate begin; it is a question that involves us all.”

Simon Conway Morris, former Chair of Evolutionary Palaeobiology, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge.

This thoughtful, delightfully contrarian book will rile up those who believe the ‘Copernican Principle’ is an essential philosophical component of modern science. Is our universe congenial to intelligent, observing life? Passionate advocates of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) will find much to ponder in this carefully documented analysis.

Owen Gingerich, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Full review coming soon……

De Fideli.

Over the last century, scientists have made the most remarkable discoveries about our universe. We have learned more about its vast size, its finite age, and that it is peppered with countless trillions of galaxies, which are like veritable “island universes,” each home to billions of stars and vast clouds of gas and dust ripe for the creation of future stars. In more recent years, cosmologists have unearthed a whole string of cosmic coincidences that are necessary to make life in general, and human life in particular, even possible. Such coincidences have caused quite a lot of philosophical disquiet in recent years among atheists, who have desperately tried to explain away our significance as a mere fluke – chance caught on the wing, as it were.

But other thoughtful scientists see this evidence as unmistakable signs of deliberate design by a mind far more powerful than ordinary human understanding. It was these remarkably fine-tuned properties that inspired the teaching of new university modules on the fruitful intersectionality of science with philosophy and even religion. This is where we pick up the story of one such scientist, Dr. Eric Hedin, a former professor of physics at Ball State University, who developed a course entitled ‘The Boundaries of Science’ for undergraduates in philosophy and the sciences.

After successfully teaching this interdisciplinary module to students for several years, Hedin’s teachings came to the attention of the outspoken atheist and evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who, together with lawyers from the militant atheist Freedom from Religion Foundation, pressured the university to shut down the course because it was allowing room for discussion of intelligent design-based ideas. Hedin and his colleague, astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, were subsequently denied tenure, which forced them to seek employment elsewhere. In the wake of these events, Hedin wrote a provocative book entitled Cancelled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See, which recounts his ordeal while also delivering some of the key ideas he had presented to his students at Ball State.

The Cosmic Beginning

The opening chapters discuss some of the main evidence for a cosmic beginning, such as Hubble’s Law, which established that the universe had a definite beginning around 14 billion years ago. And despite attempts by the greatest cosmologists to refute such a conclusion, the evidence of a beginning has only grown stronger. All matter, space, and even time itself had a definite beginning in the finite past, and that implies that the agent that caused this hot Big Bang event must exist beyond, or outside of, the space-time continuum of our universe.

But as Hedin explains, the ensuing expansion of the universe was no haphazard expansion. The rate of its inflation had to be highly fine-tuned. If it had been just a little slower, gravity would have eventually turned everything into black holes, and if it had been any faster, all the matter would have been hopelessly diluted, preventing stars and planets from ever forming. As Hedin concludes:

This opening act of our universe was anything but a random explosion. It was more like an orchestrated expansion, or like the opening of an elaborate “pop-up” book, in which a castle with turrets, moat, and drawings unfolds perfectly as the first page is opened.

“Balanced on a Knife-Edge”

Chapter 4 discusses the constituents of our universe with its odd mix of ordinary matter and so-called dark matter and dark energy. Hedin explains that while we are still unsure regarding the nature of both dark matter and energy, the latter component had to be fine-tuned to within one part in 10^120 to enable life to eventually flourish in the universe. This extremely fine-tuned property prompted the physicist Paul Davies to declare that “the cliche that life is balanced on a knife-edge is a staggering understatement.”

Hedin makes it clear that the universe is old and vast. Furthermore, he offers some compelling reasons why the cosmos must be the age it is (about 13.8 billion years old), since it takes a considerable amount of time to create the heavy elements needed for planets and life to eventually come into existence. And while many atheist astronomers see the size of the universe as an indicator of our insignificance, Hedin turns this suggestion on its head by asserting that the universe’s vastness actually “underscores our significance.”

The “Thorny” Question of the Origin of Life

In chapters 7 through 10, Hedin provides a fascinating overview of the incredible sequence of events that made Earth habitable. Central to his arguments is the notion that life appears to be an extraordinary addition to our universe that defies all attempts to explain its origins and subsequent flourishing on Earth. Hedin casts his critical physicist’s eye over the thorny issue of the origin of life using several arguments from the physical sciences to highlight the highly improbable emergence of the first living cells from inanimate matter. In Hedin’s words:

As technology has advanced to where we can observe the inner workings of living cells, we are confronted with a shockingly high-tech arrangement of atoms and molecules. The biomolecular metropolis inside a cell is unlike anything observed anywhere else in nature. The arrangement of atoms in a cell is neither a random atomic jumble, nor a simple, repetitious, crystalline pattern … Neither chance, nor law-like processes, nor chance and natural selection together possesses so much novel information, even granting the entire history and breadth of the Universe.

The End of Neo-Darwinism

In chapter 10, Hedin launches a robust attack on Darwinian ideology, raising his suspicions that it’s just not sufficient to explain the evidence. He writes:

Modern Darwinism seeks to establish that random mutations, however generated, coupled with natural selection, changed a single original species of life into every species of life that has ever existed on Earth. This theory corresponds with some evidence, but conflicts with other evidence, and the conflicts are substantial. There are still no observed examples of one species gradually evolving into a distinctly different one, as Darwin envisioned.

Hedin brilliantly likens the sorry state of the so-called Neo-Darwinian synthesis with the final stages of the old geocentric model of the solar system stubbornly held onto by Renaissance astronomers despite new and compelling evidence for the heliocentric model now universally adopted:

The theory of evolution shares characteristics in common with the geocentric model of the solar system. The geocentric model explained some things tolerably well, but it had to be jury-rigged more and more to explain away contrary evidence that continued to accumulate … for the geocentric model, it was the convenient idea of epicycles, messy add-ons to the geocentric model that became necessary to get it to fit the data. For evolutionists, it’s punctuated equilibrium, or co-option, or a dozen other highly strained just-so stories.

Wisdom is Older than Nature

In Chapter 11, Hedin defines human consciousness as yet another manifestation of design. Our world and the wider universe are arranged in such a way that it is comprehensible by the human mind, which sifts the chaos and brings out if it order, creating beautiful abstractions in the forms of music, art, mathematics and science. He points out that beauty is a reliable indicator of truth. In his own theoretical work, Hedin has argued that if a system of equations he’s working on don’t converge on something simpler and deeper, he’s probably not on the right track. Moreover, the surprising success of mathematics in describing the inner workings of nature strongly points to the existence of a great mind that must have existed, before space, time, and matter came into existence.

Hedin draws on the work of philosophers such as Richard Swinburne, C. S. Lewis, and Alvin Plantinga to effectively argue that materialistic accounts of how human consciousness arose frankly don’t stack up. Moreover, if rational thought was really the outworking of a mindless evolutionary process, we would have no reason to trust rational thought to begin with.

All in all, Cancelled Science is an inspiring and thought-provoking story of intellectual courage, powerfully demonstrating that the latest findings from origins science boldly proclaim a universe that was exquisitely designed from the bottom up by a masterful artist and Creator, whom Hedin implicitly identifies as the God of the Bible. It’s a must read for all Christian apologists.

Dr Neil English is that author of eight books on amateur and professional astronomy. His latest book is Choosing & Using Binoculars, a Guide for Stargazers, Birders and Outdoor Enthusiasts(Springer Publishing, 2023).

Title: Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished

Author: Robert F. Schedinger PhD

Publisher: Discovery Institute Press

ISBN: 978-1-63712-037-8

283 pages

Price(Softback): £14.99

Tune in soon for a full review……

De Fideli.

Title: Cancelled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See

Author: Eric Hedin PhD

Publisher: Discovery Institute Press(2021)

ISBN: 9781637120002

250 Pages

Price(UK): £12.34

Published in Salvo Blog 2024

Title: The Binocular Handbook: Function, Performance and Evaluation of Binoculars.

Foreword by Neil English, author of Choosing & Using Binoculars

Publisher: Springer Nature

Author: Holger Merlitz

ISBN: 978-3031444074

218 Pages

Price UK: £39.99(Hardback)

It was with a great sense of anticipation that I finally got my hard-back copy of Holger Merlitz’s new book, freshly and expertly translated into the English language. Anyone who has expressed even a cursory interest in binoculars will be familiar with Holger’s accumulated writings on his website(http://holgermerlitz.de), where he has built up a formidable portfolio of work covering all aspects of binocular optics, reviews and theoretical speculations. His new book, The Binocular Handbook: Function: Performance and Evaluation of Binoculars, represents the culmination of many years of work.

Holger presents a full treatise on binocular optics in this book, covering everything from the design and execution of theoretical optics and their applications to building binoculars, a detailed overview of how the eye-brain interfaces with the binocular before launching into some fascinating chapters covering the testing and evaluation of binoculars during field use. In total, 9 chapters arranged in 3 distinct parts, walk the reader through pretty much everything you need to know about the fascinating world of binocular optics.

Instead of exhaustively covering the material, I would like to highlight just a few interesting topics covered in the book. I was most impressed with Holger’s use of an aeroplane’s ride from the North Pole round the world as a way of explaining why phase coatings are needed in roof prism binoculars. I also enjoyed his inclusion of discussions on unusual, cemented prism formats, such as the Uppendahl and the Perger (page 51-54) arrangements, the latter of which doesn’t require a phase correction coating and is used in the design of the third-generation Leica Geovid. Holger believes there are no binoculars containing Uppendahl prisms, but I have heard it on good authority that the little Leica Ultravid 8x and 10 x 25 may still be using such prisms. 

I found section 4.8 to be particularly amusing when Merlitz discusses sealing and gas purging. The use of the noble gas, argon, in particular, has been touted as being superior to molecular nitrogen owing to its greater molar mass. But as Holger astutely points out on page 97, the very low ambient concentration of argon in air(less than 1 per cent) would create a powerful concentration gradient causing the argon to diffuse out faster than if it were filled with nitrogen under the same circumstances. But it’s worse than that: a binocular filled with argon will cause nitrogen to diffuse inward and increase the pressure enough to eventually damage the seals! It neatly explains why all the big European binocular manufacturers have stuck with nitrogen purging.

Chapter 5 is written by Gerhard Eller, a fellow binocular enthusiast and engineering veteran, who describes the construction of a fascinating 12 x 62mm binocular using twin Leica Apo objectives and Porro II prisms serving up an impressive field of view of 113m@1000m.

The discussion on depth perception in chapter 7 and 8 proved to be fascinating entries, especially since I’ve cultivated a particularly strong fondness for compact Porro prism binoculars over their roof prism counterparts. Merlitz discusses the Japanese made RISO-1 7 x 40 instrument which were employed by the US navy during the Korean War. Indeed, he further informs us that specialised stereoscopic binoculars used in precision range finding measurements had enormous separations in their objective lenses of the order of several metres! That said, while the enhanced stereoscopic effects of Porro prism binoculars are greatly appreciated by yours truly, Holger also discusses some disadvantages of this design, such as inferior close focus performance and an optical illusion called the ‘cardboard effect,’ which was previously unknown to me.

The human eye takes centre stage in the final few chapters. With its 3-megapixel colour camera(cones) and 120 megapixel light detectors(rods), it can respond to changing ambient light levels and even alter the spectral response of the human eye. I’ve always wondered why, for example, many older glasses I’ve viewed through have a yellow tint. In discussing the differences between regular BaK4 and BK7 glass versus their HT equivalents, for example, companies like Zeiss have been able to increase the transmittance at blue wavelengths which helps in low light observations when the human eye becomes more responsive to shorter wavelengths (so called scotopic vision).

Sections 8.2 through 8.4 discuss the interesting topic of binocular efficiency and dim target detection as well as the factors – magnification, aperture, exit pupil and eye pupil size – that determine the outcomes in broad daylight, twilight and under darkness. Magnification alone determines efficiency in daylight, but the situation becomes far more complicated during twilight and full darkness, enabling binocular enthusiasts to experimentally determine the relative importance of these factors in target resolution and detection. Indeed, I’m currently busy comparing and contrasting my two main binoculars – the 8 x 30 and 10 x 35 Nikon EII – with their similar light transmission and exit pupil size – under twilight and true darkness based on Holger’s analysis, to determine if these predictions are validated.

Section 8.7 offers an excellent overview of atmospheric scattering and I really like how the author brings some basic physics such as Rayleigh scattering into the mix. Later in chapter 9, he discusses colour bias in binocular images, explaining why many binoculars having a so-called warm tone exhibit better contrast by (Rayleigh)scattering shorter wavelengths of visible light. On the contrary, he also explains why instruments delivering a cool colour tone are often better for low light work, when the eye becomes increasingly sensitive to shorter wavebands.

These are but a few invaluable nuggets of information presented in this book. The reader will note that much of this surmising is not just based in optical theory but derives from the rich storehouse of practical experience with many fine binoculars he has amassed over the decades. In short, The Binocular Handbook will prove invaluable to keen binocular enthusiasts eager to determine the best instruments to use in their arsenal, with the author gently encouraging active experimentation under real life conditions. Like most good books, it raises more interesting questions than it answers, but rest assured, there is enough content in this timely volume that will keep you thinking and looking for years to come.

Highly recommended!

De Fideli.

A Work Commenced September 1 2023

Title Britain’s Birds: An Identification Guide to the Birds of Great Britain and Ireland

Authors: Rob Hume, Robert Still, Andy Swash, Hugh Harrop & David Tipling

Publisher: Princeton University Press

ISBN: 978-0-691-19979-5

pp 576

Price(UK): £20.00

Though I certainly wouldn’t call myself old, I’m certainly old school, preferring traditional ways of doing things compared with modern ‘gee whizz’ techniques. And when it comes to birding, I enjoy the challenge of first seeing and studying a new species, taking some notes, and then doing some bookwork to make a formal identification. Up to now, I’ve been using the RSPB Handbook of British Birds, which has served me quite well. It’s packed full of details about bird behaviour, habitats and basic biological information, but the illustrations, while being decent, have sometimes lacked enough detail for me to nail the identification of many smaller birds, such as warblers and finches. But that’s where this new work, Britain’s Birds: An Identification guide to the birds of Great Britain and Ireland hits the mark. This new work is lavishly illustrated with excellent full-colour photographs – a total of 3,591 in all – of the birds of the British Isles in their various stages of life, which makes identifying species much easier. The subjects are presented in their natural habitats which can prove very important to making those final decisions on the identity of a target.

Unlike the RPSB Handbook, the accompanying text is very concise and, for me, achieves an excellent balance between providing enough information to achieve an identification but leaving out unnecessary extraneous details that can all too often side-track the reader. The field experience of this multi-author text is abundantly in evidence, with astute insights conveyed to craft succinct ‘word pictures’ that clearly reveal expert identification knowledge. Each bird species is accompanied by a map of the British Isles showing where they are most likely to be found, together with arrows conveying migratory routes from Scandinavia, central Europe and Russia, as well as where summer migrants to the British Isles depart these islands in the autumn.

Although Britain’s Birds is touted as a field guide, its substantial weight – a whopping 1.4 kilograms – precludes its regular use as a true resource that can be used in the great outdoors. But it has a good quality sewn binding unlike the glued pages of the RSPB Handbook, which will increase its longevity going forward.

I found one entry that genuinely confused me. On page 474, the entry under ‘Nuthatches’ shows a map of the British Isles where you would come away with the impression that this species is not actively present in Scotland. This seems to be an anomaly. Nearly every passing day I’ve recorded two and sometimes many more of these birds in many different locations throughout Scotland. Nuthatches are alive and well in Caledonia!

Although published by Princeton University Press, 40 pence out of each purchase is donated to the RSPB. Undoubtedly, the RSPB, which is now approaching the 130th anniversary of its founding, has done a great deal of good in raising awareness about bird conservation and initiated many schemes across the country to conserve endangered species, there are worrying concerns that this charity has recently been infected by woke ideology, recently launching a scathing invective against the British government. I for one do not want any charity or public institution becoming politicised and promoting climate change alarmism and other ridiculous scaremongering claptrap. I don’t want to see the RSPB go down the dangerous road of virtue signalling- a path that has ruined numerous other charities. If you go woke, prepare to go broke!

That being said, Britain’s Bird’s is a tremendous work that deserves great success. Now in its second(2020) edition, it’s an indispensable guide that birders and naturalists will find invaluable. And at a retail price of £20, it’s an absolute steal!

Highly recommended!

De Fideli.

In this blog, I’ll be reviewing astronomer Dr Hugh Ross’ latest book, Designed to the Core.

Tune in soon for details…………………...

De Fideli.

A Work first Published in Touchstone Magazine March/April 2022

Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe

by Stephen C. Meyer

HarperOne, 2021

(576 pages, $29.99, hardcover)

Return of the God Hypothesis is the latest work from the distinguished philosopher of science, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, and one of the world’s leading proponents of intelligent design (ID). In it, Dr. Meyer shows that science at its most cutting edge has thoroughly vindicated those who have clung to a deeply held belief in a personal God who operates beyond space and time. From the earliest moments of the Big Bang, to the formation of the first living cells on earth, and on up to the present day, the extraordinary fine-tuning we observe in all realms of nature shows us that God has truly left his signature on the very large and the very small.

The thesis of this book is that modern scientific discoveries testify to the idea that a mind vastly superior to our own not only created the universe, but also purposefully arranged for it to have precisely the properties required for human life to exist and flourish. Meyer examines three seminal scientific discoveries to support his thesis: (1) that organisms contain biological information whose source cannot be merely physical or material; (2) that the laws of physics have been finely tuned to sustain life in general and human life in particular; and (3) that the universe had a specific beginning in space and time.

Building on his previous best-selling works, Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, which examined the implications of biological information, Meyer now brings cosmic fine tuning and the origination of the universe in a Hot Big Bang singularity into the discussion to argue persuasively that the single best explanation for all three phenomena is a personal God who transcends the spacetime continuum and has intervened throughout cosmic history to ensure that creatures shaped in his image would one day appear on earth.

Theistic Cosmology: The Big Bang

These three ideas were not birthed in a vacuum. The scientific revolution, Meyer asserts, began in Reformation Europe and was firmly moored in theistic principles. Quite simply, to study the universe was to get to know the mind of God. That’s why so many of the founding fathers of science—Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, and René Descartes, to name but a few—framed their scientific knowledge in terms of “understanding God’s thoughts after him.” They all saw within the pages of Scripture a God who set boundaries for the tides and the winds and ordained the orderly motion of the moon, stars, and planets, a law-giving God who limits human life span to curtail the spread of personal evil within any individual.

But as the Renaissance gave way to the Age of Enlightenment, scientists abandoned these theistic principles and sought instead to formulate a purely materialistic narrative of cosmogenesis. The great celestial mechanician, Pierre-Simon Laplace, declared in the eighteenth century that there was no need to invoke a deity to explain the complex motions of the celestial bodies, and Charles Darwin posited in the nineteenth that humans evolved from lower animals through a mindless process he called evolution. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw scientific materialism reach its zenith and even spill over into political and psychological discourse in the works of such atheists as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.

Yet with the inexorable march of science into the twentieth century, theism came back with a vengeance, starting with Edwin P. Hubble’s discovery that the universe was constantly expanding. This was followed by Georges Lemaitre’s discovery of evidence for a sigular cosmic event which brought the physical world—space, time, matter, and energy—into existence all at once at a particular point in the finite past. Lemaitre’s theory—for he was both a Catholic priest and a prominent physicist—came to be known as the Big Bang theory.

Meyer relates how many of the great astronomical minds of the era found such origin stories “philosophically repugnant” and went to great lengths to repudiate them. In fact, the distinguished British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle coined the phrase “Big Bang” as a term of derision. He countered the idea of the universe having a definite beginning with his own “steady state” theory of a universe that was infinitely old. This was the conservative view among scientific materialists at the time.

But as militant as Hoyle became in advancing his steady-state cosmology, the evidence for the Big Bang grew ever stronger as the twentieth century wore on. And some distinguished scientists, such as the Mount Wilson astronomer Allan Sandage, began to see the unavoidably theistic implications of a universe that had a beginning. Ultimately, the evidence for the Big Bang theory led Sandage to faith in Christ at the end of his life.

Theistic Biochemistry: Genetic Information

In exploring the current state of origin-of-life research, Meyer shows that despite the best attempts of materialist scientists to re-create the first chemical steps toward life, they have been unable to do so, but in the process have inadvertently shown that an inordinate amount of intelligent design—far in excess of current human capability—is required to bring a living organism into existence. Indeed, by calling on experts in organic chemistry, Meyer shows that even the first steps toward creating a biomolecular assemblage require many intervening stages that cannot be achieved naturalistically. He writes:

The discovery of the functional digital information in DNA and RNA molecules in even the simplest living cells provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living organism.

The thorny question of life’s origin leads Meyer to explore an even more fundamental problem for scientists who hold to a strictly materialistic narrative of how we got here. He doesn’t shy away from asking where the stupendous amounts of new genetic information came from that are needed to build complex cells and new body plans. He shows that even the most hard-nosed evolutionary biologists duck that question time and time again because no rational answer is in sight.

Theistic Physics: Fine Tuning

Moreover, it turns out that we live in precisely the kind of universe that can allow living things to exist in the first place, not to mention allowing human life to flourish. Specifically, if the strengths of the various forces of nature or the properties of the particles comprising the material universe were only very slightly different, we simply wouldn’t exist at all. This is known as the fine-tuning problem. Meyer reminds us that some of the best minds in the industry have been thinking deeply about it.

The distinguished theoretical physicist Sir John Polkinghorne believes that cosmic fine-tuning provides very powerful evidence of design. Brian Josephson, another British Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has stated frankly that he is 80 percent confident that some kind of intelligent agency was involved in the creation of life. The same evidence caused the outspoken philosopher Antony Flew to reject his own long-time atheistic teachings, which he had clung to for most of his life, in favor of deism. As Christian astronomer Luke Barnes writes: “Fine tuning suggests that, at the deepest level that physics has reached, the universe is well put together. . . . The whole system seems well thought out, something that someone planned and created.”

Nevertheless, some materialist physicists have invoked an entirely speculative concept to explain away the creation of our fine-tuned universe: namely, the weird and wonderful “multiverse,” or as some refer to it, the “many worlds hypothesis.” Our universe appears the way it is, these advocates claim, because it is just one among an infinite number of universes whose physical laws and material properties are all different. Logic dictates that a small number of these universes must contain conditions that are ripe for the development of life and human intelligence, and ours just happens to be one of them. No creator God needed.

Meyer calls upon some towering figures in the philosophy of physics to demolish the multiverse hypothesis. Roger Gordon, for instance, has compared the attempt to promote the multiverse theory to “trying to dig the Grand Canyon to fill in a pothole.” Other intellectuals have delivered their own verdicts on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Richard Swinburne of Oxford University likes to invoke Occam’s Razor in deciding whether a theistic or multiverse worldview is more likely. Since theistic beliefs require only one explanatory entity, he argues, over the multitude of entities required for the multiverse, the theistic model is more rational and more likely to be true.

Cosmic Gerrymandering

Desperate attempts have also been made by influential cosmologists to avoid the obvious theistic implications of a universe that had a definite beginning. In particular, Meyer uses his considerable skills in philosophy to debunk the lofty-sounding proclamations of celebrity cosmologists such as Lawrence Krauss, the late Stephen Hawking, and others, who have sold millions of books with headline-grabbing titles like A Universe from Nothing and The Grand Design.

Meyer also examines the technical details of the real physics underlying their claims. For example, he notes that Hawking ducks the issue of a beginning by introducing “imaginary time” into the equations of general relativity. While these modifications do seem to avoid a singularity, his critics have pointed out that they are merely mathematical constructs that do not comport with physical reality. Hawking also introduces ad hoc treatments that appear simply to have been motivated by his philosophic disliking of a first cause.

Meyer lays out similar devastating arguments against other theorists who have waded in on this issue, especially Lawrence Krauss and Max Tegmark. Above all, Meyer shows that while these men may be brilliant scientists, they turn out to be very poor philosophers.

If God, Which God?

If, as Meyer asserts, the God hypothesis is the single best explanation for why the universe is the way it is, can we then infer anything about the nature of that deity? Meyer discusses the three main possibilities: pantheism, deism, and theism.

Pantheism asserts that God is the totality of all of nature, the Brahman of the Eastern religions. Meyer shows that pantheism cannot account for the cosmic fine-tuning we observe, because the deity that created the universe must necessarily transcend space and time. All the great religious texts of the Orient, however, describe a deity who must have begun to exist only after the universe came into existence.

Deism, on the other hand, posits a transcendent God, but it denies any involvement of that God in the workings of nature after the beginning. In other words, God somehow front-loaded the laws of nature so as to guarantee that creatures like us would some day emerge, but he then stepped back and let things proceed on their own.

The actual scientific evidence we have, however, indicates that God has played an active role in his creation throughout time. For example, vast amounts of new information had to have been introduced when the first complex animal body plans appeared during the Cambrian Explosion, some half-billion years ago. The fossil record shows clear evidence of mass extinctions followed rapidly by the appearance of entirely novel forms of life. That comports with a God who is always working, as the Lord Jesus said: “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17).

Although Meyer concentrates on just three issues in this book—fine tuning, the origin of biological information, and the singularity at the beginning of time—there are other natural phenomena that also point towards a creator God. The hard problem of consciousness, for example, is still a profound mystery, especially for those who hold to a materialistic or evolutionary world view, yet it fits neatly into a theistic framework.

Can scientific research go a step further and trace a path from theism to Jesus Christ? While Meyer is a Christian, he does not address that question in this book, at least not directly. Perhaps that discussion will become part of Meyer’s next literary project? If so, it will certainly be worth reading, too!

Dr. Neil English is busy writing his latest book, Choosing Binoculars: A Guide for Stargazers, Birders and Outdoor Enthusiasts, which will hit the bookshelves in late 2023.

De Fideli.

Declaring God’s majesty throughout the Universe.

Title: The Story of the Cosmos, How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God

General Editors: Paul M. Gould & Daniel Ray

Publisher: Harvest House Publishers

ISBN: 978-0-7369-7736-4

Price: US $22.99

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 19:1

The night sky is the last great frontier. From a dark country site, away from the lights of towns and cities, the full grandeur of the starry heaven can be enjoyed. It melts even the hardest heart and fills us with awe as we contemplate its vast size, its teeming multitude of effulgent hosts and its great preternatural beauty. But for the Biblical King David, the night sky also presented powerful evidence that a Creator had fashioned it all. As an avid stargazer from my youth and a committed Christian, I have always regarded the majesty of the night sky as a grand expression of the created order.

That’s why my curiosity was piqued when I came across a new book, The Story of the Cosmos: How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God, edited by former schoolteacher and amateur astronomer, Daniel Ray, and philosopher/apologist, Paul M. Gould, who have assembled a stellar line of some of the finest Christian minds across a multitude of disciplines from the sciences, arts, philosophy and theology, united in their conviction that the Universe at large displays the unmistakable hallmarks of order, design and foresight from the microscopic realm of the sub-atomic to the macroscopic world of stars and galaxies; the handiwork of an all-powerful God; the God of the Bible.

The Story of the Cosmos comes at an especially exciting time when Darwinian ideology is being toppled by an avalanche of new science. The origin of life is as mysterious as ever; the more we probe its depths the more complex it becomes.  So too is the nature of human consciousness. The book draws upon an exceptionally rich repository of intellectual thought from Aristotle, Plato and St. Augustine in the ancient world, to great Christian thinkers in the modern era including C. S Lewis,  Alvin Plantinga, John Lennox and others who have all formulated the same answer to an age old question; why is the cosmos intelligible, rational and ordered? Their answer, arrived at using various philosophic approaches, is that the universe is the way it is because its Creator is also rational and human beings, made in the image of God, are capable, to some degree, of thinking God’s thoughts after Him.

Three chapters in Part I of the book, written by distinguished scientists, Guy Consolmagno, Guillermo Gonzalez and David Bradstreet, respectively, explore another, related question. What was God’s purpose in creating a cosmos that is intelligible to humankind? Their answer is that God has allowed us to be active participants in unravelling the mysteries of His creation and delights in humans figuring things out through the dual virtues of deep, logical thought and scientific experimentation. Our God has spilled his grace upon humankind in such a way that it encourages us to explore the riches of the Universe and to delight in learning something new. Planetary scientist, Dr. Guy Consolmagno, imagines himself studying the precious meteorites in lock step with his Creator, who he imagines is ‘sitting across from him’ in his laboratory, watching as he stumbles on some new insight. Astrobiologist, Dr. Guillermo Gonzales, describes the fascinating details of how our planet, far from being an ordinary world lost in the immensity of space, shows all the hallmarks of super-intelligent design for life in general, but human beings, in particular. He offers fascinating insights into things few people would never even consider. Why can we see the stars? Why is the Earth just right for launching probes into space? Why are we located on the outskirts of an enormous spiral galaxy, where the night sky is dark and transparent? The answer, as Gonzalez explains so eloquently, is that our Creator had it in mind all along to allow humans to come to some understanding of the great power, majesty and glory of His creation. In this sense, when we express awe for the beauty of the night sky, we are, in a certain sense, offering up a prayer to the Almighty. The same kind of enthusiasm is conveyed by stellar astronomer, Dr. David Bradfield, who describes how studying the complex light curves of variable stars is an exciting way to unravel the machinery of God’s creation.

It is not only through the media of science, philosophy and theology that humans have reacted to the created order. Artists too have also responded with their delicate brush strokes. In a wonderful essay by Terry Glaspey, we learn how the great out of doors and the beauty of the night sky inspired artists throughout history to see both the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial realms as a “grand cathedral” wherein the presence of God is palpable.

But all of this naturally raises other questions; what happens when scientists do not pursue the evidence wherever it leads? That’s a fascinating question that is answered by astrophysicist, Dr. Sarah Salviander, who describes in some considerable detail, the consequences of abandoning what I would call Judeo-Christian ways of thinking. Salviander showcases the disputes that arose between the astronomer, Sir Arthur Eddington, and his brilliant Indian graduate student, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra). Although Eddington admired Chandra’s theoretical achievements, he refused to accept where those conclusions concerning the fate of massive stars (neutron stars and black holes in particular) would lead him. Salviander writes:

The answer is that Eddington fell victim to some combination of the four primordial barriers to understanding that are constantly at work in the minds of every person; limited perspective, misleading emotions, intellectual inertia, and excessive pride……………..Longstanding and popular ideas are often difficult to overcome even when compelling evidence like Chandra’s is presented. And, sometimes people like Eddington experience a lapse in humility that causes them to use their authority to oppose an idea they just don’t like.

pp 94-95.

In similar fashion, the distinguished nuclear physicist, Robert J. Oppenheimer fell victim to the same kind of cognitive dissonance:

A close friend of Oppenheimer’s, the Nobel laureate physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, believed that Oppenheimer’s abilities as a physicist suffered as a result of his turning away from the beliefs of the Old Testament in favour of the literature of Hindu mysticism. According to Rabi, Oppenheimer was scientifically blinded by an exaggerated sense of mystery and the boundary between the known and the unknown and became incapable of following the laws of physics to the very end.  pp 95.

The same resistance to wholly rational and reasonable conclusions about the nature of reality is explored by Christian apologist, Dr. William Lane Craig, who explores the mindset of atheist cosmologists such as Lawrence Kraus, who expects his readers to believe that the Universe came into existence out of nothing, with no material cause or need for a Creator. In particular, he focuses on what Kraus attempts to pass as ‘nothing’ and convincingly concludes, citing sonorous rebuttals by his own scientific peers, that Kraus’ concept of nothing is in fact, a whole lot of ‘something.’

Physicists, Luke Barnes and Alan Hainline, who take a decidedly neutral stance on Christian theism in the book, similarly debunk ill-thought-through statements made by Darwin-thumping atheists such as Richard Dawkins, who famously declared that;

The Universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares, DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

Unlike Dawkins, whose expertise is in zoology, Barnes and Hainline are actually qualified to comment on the notion of cosmic fine tuning, observing that, at every conceivable level, our Universe provides compelling evidence of being very special indeed. Why? Because if Dawkins’ statement were actually true, our Universe would simply not harbor life, especially conscious human life.

Given the overwhelming evidence for design and purpose in the Universe, how should the atheist or agnostic best respond to it? That question is explored in a thought-provoking essay by Paul M. Gould, who sets out a robust argument for theism based on the reasonable premise that naturalism cannot account for the flourishing of human life. Gould highlights the significant weaknesses of the so-called neo-Humean synthesis, which asserts that all of physical reality can be reduced to its micro-physical parts, in favor of what Gould calls the Aristotelian-Christian worldview, which much more robustly accounts for the properties of the Universe we humans observe in practice as image bearers of God’s character.

It was a great pleasure to read this beautifully composed work of Christian literature. It is timely, thoughtfully written and illustrated, reverent and inspiring, with great apologetic appeal. The Story of the Cosmos is a refreshing oasis for the human soul and deserves a special place in the library of all Christians, sky gazers and curious agnostics alike.

Dr. Neil English is the author of seven books in amateur and professional astronomy.  His large historical work, Chronicling the Golden Age of Astronomy, explores the lives of astronomers and how their work often re-affirmed their strong Christian convictions.

De Fideli

The Christian influence on Western Civilisation will never be erased.

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland

Little Brown 2019

(594 pages, Hardcover $20.79)

As I sat down to collect my thoughts for the review of the distinguished British historian and author, Tom Holland’s latest book, Dominion- How the Christian Revolution remade the World,  we are in lockdown, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the planet. Deprived of our usual liberties to roam where we will, humanity had risen above the drudgery of government imposed captivity, and shown its better side – if only for a while – helping those who are vulnerable, the sick and the elderly, the poor and the destitute, supporting our health care workers on the front line, raising countless millions of dollars for struggling charities, as well as lifting the spirits of families around the world with songs, stories, games and jests.

The irony of this predicament was not lost on me as I finished the final chapters of Holland’s latest tour de force. The thesis of Dominion is that, despite the west’s departure from Judeo-Christian values upheld for centuries and millennia, and though we largely live in a post-truth society more concerned with feelings than facts, the Christian message still casts a long shadow over the shared values of our contemporary, secular, civilisation. Acts of charity, selflessness, compassion and sacrifice – all of which are deeply anchored in the gospels of the New Testament- were abundantly on display in our societies during this time of crisis.

Drawing on 25 centuries of human civilisation, Holland calls upon a rich depository of ancient, medieval and modern history to drive his point home. Beginning with the Jews, who were the first people to receive instruction from the Creator God of the Bible, Holland contrasts the strict monotheism of Judaism to the polytheism of the surrounding nations. In addition, unlike the idols of silver, gold and fine polished stone used to characterise the gods of other nations, the Biblical God first revealed to the patriarchs was not to be worshipped in like manner. Drawing on the moral laws preserved in the Torah, Holland explores the implications of the Ten Commandments, the sabbath and laws establishing proper sexual relations in this ancient people. These laws and precepts, Holland convincingly argues, though resisted by the Persians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, gradually became written on the hearts of what we might call western civilisation in the aftermath of the fall of the Roman world.

The singular life of Christ – an itinerant preacher and healer born and raised in the Roman-occupied territories of Palestine, and subjected to a horrific execution on a Roman Cross – Holland argues, set in motion the greatest revolution in human cultural history the world has ever seen. Indeed, Holland goes so far as to suggest that the ideas conveyed in the New Testament effectively detonated the cumulative wisdom of the ancient world. We are not the benefactors of Greek and Roman civilisation, as many historians have asserted, but of Christendom.

Accordingly, Holland lays out the evidence for this startling conclusion, exploring how the early Christians followed the example of their Lord and Savior through great acts of charity, caring for the sick, the orphaned, the poor and the weak, not to mention heroic acts of martyrdom that shocked and horrified the pagans who lived alongside them. Surviving waves of persecution under tyrannical Roman Emperors, the blood of its martyrs sowed the seed of evangelism in the hearts and minds of both slave and free for the cause of Christ. And instead of stamping the new religion out, such heroism only served to swell its ranks across all tiers of society, from the mega-rich to the abject poor.

After Constantine the Great  granted his imprimatur to the Christian religion in the 4^th century AD, a golden age of Christian literature blossomed in its wake, including many of the writings of the early Church Fathers – Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo, in the western tradition, and Basil of Caesarea, Athanasius of Alexandria and John Chrysostom in the eastern tradition. And after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west in the late 5^th century AD, Christian ecclesia become synonymous with centres of learning. On the precipice of the known world, Christian monasteries preserved the knowledge passed down from classical antiquity and would eventually become the seedbeds for the establishment of the first university towns such as Padua, Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge and Madrid, to name but a few.

Holland explores the long ascent of what would emerge to be the powerful Roman Catholic Church, which came nearest to making the Christian religion truly catholic, or universal, but does not shy away from the problems within the Roman See which eventually led to its greatest schism; the Reformation and Protestantism. Holland displays a nuanced understanding of how key individuals of the Reformation such as Martin Luther, fanned the flames of antisemitism by equating Jews with vermin and calling for their extirpation for the rejection and murder of the true Messiah. How could Luther, who was in lockstep with the beating heart of so many ordinary people, turn out to be a hater of the original People of the Book? Are not all human beings made in the image of God? Whatever the reasons, antisemitism remained alive and well in the centuries that followed, as Holland explores in discussing the persecution of Jews by the Spanish Church throughout the 14^th and 15^th centuries, and culminating with the Nazi regime which ordered the extirpation of millions of Jews in the years leading up to and throughout World War II.

But antisemitism was just one aberration that emerged from what Holland couches more generally as muddled theology. The same could be said to have occurred with the problem of slavery and racism in general. Holland recounts stories about folk who could look you straight in the eye and tell you that their Bible – in both the Old and New Testaments – condoned slavery in its various forms. And yet, while it’s easy to take a few Biblical verses out of context to justify almost anything, most references to bondservants in the Old Testament do not have the same meanings we ascribe to slavery in our own society. Evidence of this is clear enough in Exodus 23:9 when the Lord warns the people of Israel not to oppress the ‘alien’ and the ‘foreigner’ in the land, and that to remember that they too were once under bondage. Furthermore, St. Paul boldly proclaimed that there is neither slave nor free, neither Jew nor Greek – all are one in Christ Jesus. It was with such convictions that prominent Christians such as William Wilberforce and others -curiously not mentioned by Holland – who provided the abolitionists with the political power to end slavery, first across the British Empire, and later in the New World,  especially through the monumental efforts of Abraham Lincoln in the aftermath of the American Civil War. The author revisits racism later in the book in his discussion of the late Nelson Mandela and the thorny issue of apartheid in the Republic of South Africa.

Holland also explores the radical effects of science on the Christian faith, particularly the works of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s dangerous ideas gave intellectuals who either hated or held the Christian worldview in contempt – Aldous Huxley, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Andrew Carnegie and Adolf Hitler – plenty of ammunition to show that blind, impersonal and implacable forces shaped the origin and development of all life on earth. And man, long held to be a special creation by God – was merely just another evolved animal. One idea united all these men; if nature was red in tooth and claw, where the fittest only survived, surely human societies had a duty to follow suit. Suddenly the centuries old Christian ideals of compassion, sympathy and charity, respecting all individuals as unique creations of the Godhead, were now being portrayed as vice – deluded and ‘pusillanimous’ – and certainly not how an enlightened mankind ought to behave. And yet, all the while, there were (and still are) Christians who came to accept evolution, they do so ignorantly, since the latest scientific advances, which sadly, are not investigated by Holland in this treatise, are now rapidly and firmly demolishing those claims.

The God of the Bible is the God of love. Shouldn’t love always win? Holland looks at some controversial manifestations of ‘love wins,’ including the rise of homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle in the modern world and the ordination of women clergy. If life-long monogamous relationships are the Christian ideal, Holland asks, what is so immoral about gay marriage? And if the Bible teaches that men and women are equal but different in the eyes of God, who shows no impartiality, why can’t women deliver sermons from the pulpit? Holland shies away from offering his own opinion on these questions but suffice it to say that a close reading of the Bible condemns all homosexual acts as gross violations of God’s plan for human beings. What’s more, such deviant behaviour has a strong destabilising influence on the nuclear family. And, as to the question of women clergy, St. Paul only offers his opinion (in the negative) rather than stating that it is a decree from Sovereign Lord, and thus is open to fresh debate.

Dominion is a book that deserves to be read by a broad cross-section of society, by people of faith and those of none. And while Holland maintains a decidedly agnostic tone throughout, he is certainly sympathetic to and, I suspect, somewhat in awe of the long shadow the Christian worldview has cast over human civilisation; a shadow that shows little sign of abating in the 21^st century.

Dr. Neil English is the author of seven books in amateur and professional astronomy. He also earned a Diploma in Classical Studies from the Open University. His latest historical work, Chronicling the Golden Age of Astronomy, demonstrates how the science of astronomy was profoundly influenced by observers fully committed to the Christian faith.

De Fideli.