Recently I finished a book by Dr. David Berlinski, Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. Entitled The Devil’s Delusion, Berlinski shows how atheist scientists constantly go beyond science to claim things that science does not show and indeed sometimes shows the opposite of what is being claimed. Berlinski says he is not religious, but he shows himself fed up with the ridiculous and incoherent statements of scientists that are mere assertions of an atheistic faith that are based on nothing. The book is brilliant, and Berlinski shows himself adept at dealing with mathematics, physics, theoretical physics, and biology. The book is similar to recent books especially by one atheist and one former atheist. The first is by Thomas Nagel who in Mind and Cosmos, argues that the Darwinian theory of evolution in its classical and its revisionist forms (punctuated equilibrium-Gould, and the selfish gene-Dawkins) are incoherent. It is the preferred myth of atheists. For Nagel, mind in some way that we do not understand, must be inherent in the universe. He counsels us to look for a new theory, though he is trying to stay an atheist. The famous atheist philosopher of science, Antony Flew, went farther, and after being the dean of atheist thinking concluded on the basis of biological systems that God must exist.
The advantage of Berlinski’s book is that it shows in illustration after illustration how atheist scientists leave the realm of real science for pseudo-science philosophy which not only has no basis but is incoherent, and really is only faith assertions. He especially shows this on the implications of what is known as the anthropic principle. In 1974 Brandon Carter gave a famous lecture at Oxford that presented in detail the extraordinary precision of the nature of the universe as so precisely fine-tuned, that it appeared as if it was purposely arranged to support human life. Many others have written on this, atheists and believers in God. Paul Davies and Michael Denton are two of the best. Atheist scientists, therefore, sought to overcome the implications of the origin of the universe from the big bang (really the original singularity) and the existence of a fine-tuned universe that was impossibly improbable for fr that beginning. It looks as if it the universe is designed to produce human life. The idea of all this being by chance is no longer credible.
What can the atheists do to counter the overwhelming implication? They posit a multi-universe, which is multiple universes also called landscape theory. The totality of the universes, the landscape, is a chance system that is everlasting and throws up every possibility so that even the most impossible will exist. The theory is total mythology that shows that the atheists are running an alarm from the idea that God might exist. Of course, no one can show form any set of ideas on a material substratum for any universe how time, plus change, plus matter would produce human beings. The problem is no way solved by the landscape. Berlinski then shows that human life, the mind, values, and even the biology can in no way be explained by physical material concepts. And indeed, the cell itself cannot be explained by any evolutionary hypothesis. As I noted in my apologetics text, The Biblical World View, naturalistic evolution is a theory that puts words into an explanatory syntax but which do not really explain at all.
Berlinski’s book does have a fine quality of good quips and little statements that show the absurdity of the atheists and bring a smile to one’s face.