Return of the God Hypothesis – Book Review – Grant Corriveau

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Return of the God Hypothesis – Stephen C. Meyer.

Within one lifetime (i.e. my own) the dominant worldview within our (western) culture has shifted from “It is written!” to “Science says!”  Our standard assumptions have more from a presupposition of a Creator Being to one where this view is declared Delusional!  Worst of all, the strongest proponents of either viewpoint take great umbrage at anyone daring to question the basic ‘tenants of the faith.’  Happily, heretics have always existed who (despite the very real risks to their professional reputations) are willing to keep asking the pertinent questions.

Meyer is one such ‘heretic.’ In the opening section of this book he plainly illustrates how the Scientific Method, by which our culture has made great strides forward for a couple of centuries now, was originally envisioned and invented by researchers who presumed a Creative Intelligence behind the universe. The fact that our minds are capable of logical thinking meant that we are able to discern our surrounding world – and the mind that created it. The three most common paradigms for our universe included: “a book, a clock and a law-governed realm.” And, of course, these all implied an intelligent, creative, author/ inventor/ law-giver.

Meyer asks:

“How, then, did we get from Newton to Dawkins? … How did the idea that nature displays the handiwork of the creator — central to the vigorous program of natural theology advanced by scientists such as Kepler, Boyle and Newton — get completely overturned, so that the world’s bestselling science popularizer in the twenty-first century could write a book claiming that science properly understood renders belief in God so “incredibly improbable” as to be effectively a “delusion”?

It’s a fascinating, well-written, well-researched book (including bibliography, annotations and index) and I look forward to the next section to discover Meyer’s answer to this question – and comparing it to my own experience of how our predominant worldview has shifted during my own lifetime.

Grant Corriveau is a retired airline pilot living in British Columbia, Canada, who now, among other pursuits, has turned his attention and focus to writing.  “Uplift – A Pilot’s Journey” is Captain Corriveau’s chronicle of experiences, insights and sometimes humorous stories of his life in the air.