The Case for a Creator
Ever wonder if you heard everything you should hear in your first year biology classes? Let author Lee Strobel help you to fill in some of the blanks.
Entering university my first year as a science major, I was looking forward to the biology classes. I thought that the biology labs would also be a great time. After all, in high school we got to dissect frogs and pigs; what would we get to dissect in university? And besides that kind of fun, I was interested in the topic of origins. I thought I would be able to inch closer to discovering the beginnings of human beings and life in general.
But slowly, as I attended my classes and labs, I found that my questions were not really being answered and that more difficulties seemed to arise. Like most students, I accepted evolution as not only the “facts of life” but also as the cool thing to believe. Eventually, the amassing of problems all came to a head in my mind when my biology lab played a game that was supposed to mimic the rules of evolution.
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During the game the rules just didn’t make any sense. I had a deep feeling of dissatisfaction with where this evolution stuff was going. I had to dig deeper and see what was going on under the surface. The ultimate question that I found needed to be answered was, “Are we simply the result of an unguided and blind process known as Darwinism? Or is there a ‘Someone’ to credit for everything we see?” A similar question that surfaced was, “If evolution were true apart from that ‘Someone’, how could nothing plus nothing produce something?”
“There is an answer,” they told me. “It just isn’t God.”
Similar to my own experience, author Lee Strobel found himself amazed by the theory of evolution while in high school. Recognizing that an essentially unguided random process leaves no room for an intelligent designer, Strobel’s road to atheism was paved by Darwinistic evolutionary theory. In his book, The Case for a Creator, Strobel revisits the evidence that initially led him to atheism when he was a teenager.
The author recalls a number of evidences that were particularly striking to him at the time. There was the 1951 Stanley Miller experiment that seemingly produced life from a primordial soup. Ernst Haeckel’s drawings of embryos suggested that as human foetuses we are essentially no different from other animals. Another famous evidence was the so-called “Missing Link” to the fossil record: the part reptile, part bird, Archaeopteryx. These “images of evolution” cemented in Strobel’s mind what is today so popularly accepted; namely, that evolution is a fact of life.
Years later, while working as an award winning legal journalist for the Chicago Tribune, Strobel’s wife came to him and told him that she had become a Christian. His first response was representative of his life as a journalist, always asking questions. Strobel asked his wife, “What has gotten into you?“ But as he saw the change in his wife’s life, for the better, he decided he had best look into what it was that was really bringing change into her life, as any honest inquirer of truth must do. This set Strobel on a path that would yield results that he was not expecting. It was at this time that he too became a Christian.
This new commitment brought change into his life as well. For one, it forced him to reconsider the old evidences for evolution. In revisiting his former views in The Case for a Creator, Strobel asks these foundational questions. First, “Is there a fundamentally different way to view the relationship between the spiritual and the scientific?” Second, “Does the latest scientific evidence tend to point toward or away from the existence of God?” And finally, “Are [the] images of evolution… still valid in light of the most recent discoveries in science?”(p.27)
Strobel’s approach to these questions is to “cross-examine authorities in various scientific disciplines about the most current findings in their fields…. [He seeks] doctorate-level professors who have unquestioned expertise, are able to communicate in accessible language, and… refuse to limit themselves only to the politically correct world of naturalism or materialism. After all, it wouldn’t make sense to rule out any hypothesis at the outset.”(p.28)
Using his skills as a legal journalist, Strobel probes the academics with piercing questions and seeks to go where the evidence takes him. He takes the time to prepare himself in six distinct scientific disciplines and then goes out to the interviews, ready to pose the tough questions and raise objections. Strobel revisits the images of evolution and seeks to know why many professionals in the scientific and philosophic community simply aren’t believing in them anymore.
With incredible simplicity and accessibility, yet also with rigorous probing, Strobel allows for the reader with a science background to hear from the professionals, and, at the same time, permits those without a science background to begin from the start, providing a work that is all-encompassing. The fact that the author is not a scientist, but a journalist and law specialist, increases the value of the book. Strobel seeks to learn and gain a clear understanding as though this case were being scrutinized in a court of law. This approach benefits the reader as he uses his analytical skills to bring an objective examination to this case.
This examination helped me get into the mind of some top scientists and academics. While no 300 page popular science book can address every issue thoroughly, I felt after reading the book that enough was established for me to stand in awe of the beauty of this world, all the way from the vastness of the universe down to the minuteness of the cell and into our DNA. The makeup of our DNA is supremely greater than any technology we have ever invented. The precise aligning of the more than 30 physical constants coming together in order to sustain life on earth is so improbable based on chance that mathematicians balk at the numbers.
Far from being a “God of the Gaps” argument from start to finish, however, Strobel deals with this objection in The Case for a Creator and shows that God is not invoked as an answer merely because we do not know enough. Rather, when we open up our minds to the possibility of explanations beyond naturalism, and consider the whole case, Strobel’s book points out that the existence of God makes the most sense of everything we do know.
Two time Nobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling, has said, “Science is the search for truth.” As the book progresses, the case for a Creator is continually built with evidence upon evidence as Lee Strobel uses science to search for that truth. Since the 1970s especially, more scholarship is coming out to counter the popular idea that to have faith in God means that you must check your brains at the door. The Case for a Creator is one of the most well written accounts of recent scholarship which reaches to the popular level with sophistication and ease of reading in surveying the hypothesis that there is an intelligent designer to credit for the complexity and beauty of this universe.
Visit the author, Lee Strobel’s website.
