John West’s new book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, is out today and it addresses the social anxiety of many evangelical Christian leaders. The anxiety is to be accepted by secular materialists, who hold most of the prestige in our culture. It leads these Christians to deform the messages of their own faith in order to be more pleasing to secularism. Of course, the same dynamic obtains in other religious communities, non-evangelical ones and non-Christian ones. A topic that provokes particular anxiety is anything to do with science.

When looking back on their faith’s past — let’s say, its role in the history of science — do Christians really have anything to be embarrassed about? Dr. West addressed that question in a recent presentation at The Lyceum, in Cleveland, “The Bible, Intelligent Design, and the Rise of Modern Science.” 

According to the myth of the “warfare thesis,” Christianity has long been locked in battle with science, going back to the scientific revolution, and earlier to the misnamed Dark Ages. West rebuts the myth in detail, but goes further with an important point. Intelligent design not only inspired scientific discovery in the past, it does so today, not just among scientists who are openly ID proponents but across the board of natural science.

Don’t Look So Surprised

What goes by the name of ID is a minority view. But as West explains, science is dependent on assuming that nature is intelligible, orderly, and rational. He asks, 

Does this biblical idea that nature reflects the intelligent design of an all-wise Creator still have any relevance to the practice of science, or is it just an obstacle? Well, I would argue that it does even today and this is an absolutely critical point: even today scientific investigation proceeds because scientists assume for the sake of their research that what they are studying is orderly and reflects a rational purpose. In other words, scientists have to treat what they are studying as if it was intelligently designed in order to understand it. [Emphasis added.]

West gives the example of molecular machines in the cell, which cannot be understood without the premise that each is rationally engineered for a purpose.

The God Hypothesis

Of course, atheist scientists would deny that. They would reject the word “engineered.” But the reality is their work would come to a halt without the — unacknowledged — premise of intelligent design, the scientific field that openly studies the engineering that extends throughout nature. It’s not great that they fail to admit as much…but they’re not alone. 

To Dr. West’s comments, I want to add those of Peter Biles who wrote here yesterday about a book, out next week, by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. The book is Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. That sounds good! Evidently, Douthat, who is Catholic, points to the surprising intelligibility of nature and the fine-tuning of the cosmos, among other things, to support what he has called in the past, the “God hypothesis.”

The God hypothesis… Where have I heard that phrase before? Douthat used it — twice — in an interesting essay for the Times, “A Guide to Finding Faith.” Casey Luskin asked here, “Did the New York Times Just Give a Covert Nod to Meyer’s ‘God Hypothesis’?” That was August 2021. Meyer’s book, Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe, had been published five months earlier, in March. Is it possible that Douthat had not heard of Meyer’s book, or Meyer, or intelligent design, and that’s why he didn’t mention any of them in his essay? Sure, it’s possible.

Is it possible that he still hasn’t heard of any of those, despite having a book on the way sporting the thesis that it does? I hope he has, and as I said to Peter, I hope that Douthat has done the right thing in his new book and acknowledged ID by name. As I mentioned, it hasn’t been published yet, so I don’t know. But we’ll see!