For some reason the Telegraph has thrown in its lot with Intelligent Design creationism—and in the “News” section no less. The author of the piece below, ID creationist Stephen C. Meyer, the director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, has been hacking away at Darwin for decades, often declaring him dead. Sadly for Meyer, Darwin (represented here by Dawkins, the New Atheists, and naturalism), refuses to lie down.
And the arguments adduced by Meyer as “scientific” are nothing new, and have been rebutted over and over again. In fact, they’re pretty much the same arguments used by Ross Douthat in his new book Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious to not only dispel faith, but to conclude that the TRUE faith is Catholicism, which just happens to be Douthat’s faith. (Meyer himself is a pretty devout Christian.) The only ID advocate I’ve found who isn’t religious, and I’m not sure he isn’t really, is David Berlinski. One would think that if the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design were so convincing, belief in it wouldn’t have nearly a 100% correlation with religion. And surely some scientists would have defected from Darwinism to the hogwash called ID, but I can’t name any (and naming one or two doesn’t prove anything, anyway).
The Torygraph should have rejected this lame effort not only on the grounds that its arguments have long ago been rebutted, but also because it says nothing that hasn’t been said many times before. Click to read an archived link. I’m not going to engage in rebuttals, but will point you to some of them so you can investigate for yourself. And shame on the Telegraph!
First, though, Meyer has to take a few obligatory slaps at Dawkins (in the title and first paragraph) and the New Atheists:
But now, two decades on, the influence of the New Atheists has waned. Former adherents, most notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have repudiated atheism entirely and embraced the Christian faith. Others, such as Alex O’Connor, the hugely popular atheist YouTuber and Steven Bartlett, the businessman turned podcaster, have moderated their outlooks too. Ironically, even Dawkins admitted in 2024 he feels “at home” in the Christian “ethos” – though he still firmly rejects the existence of God.
As many atheist philosophers (such as the eminent John Gray) have noted, the New Atheists’ philosophical arguments were never very good. Moreover, their arguments seemed strangely anachronistic following many of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century.
Well, two atheists who have either become more moderate or become Christian, and Dawkins’s statement that his nurturing environment was Christian, don’t prove that the influence of New Atheists has waned. In fact, it you lump together atheists, agnostics, and “nones,” you see a rise from about 13% to 35%—nearly a threefold increase—between 2000 and 2020. And the “philosophical arguments” for atheism amount largely to the philosophical arguments for the Loch Ness Monster: hypothesis of huge, powerful being erected, evidence for said being not adduced, hypothesis rejected. As Victor Stenger wrote, the absence of evidence is evidence for absence [of God, too] if that evidence should be there. And it isn’t—not when it comes for God.
Here are Meyer’s tired old arguments, with links to rebuttals.
The Big Bang is evidence for God.
Consider first modern cosmology. Cosmologists have discovered that the universe, contrary to the expectations of those who long portrayed it as eternal, probably had a beginning. Multiple lines of evidence from observational astronomy support this conclusion. Developments in theoretical physics (such as the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which states that any universe that is expanding – as ours is – cannot be infinite in the past), also back it up.
Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, who helped make a key discovery supporting the Big Bang theory, noted the obvious connection between its affirmation of a cosmic beginning and the concept of divine creation. “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses…[and] the Bible as a whole,” he wrote in 1978.
You should know some of the rebuttals of this (multiverses, a cycle of expansion and contraction, physical explanations of the “big bang”), but just click here, here, and here.
And of course even if you think a divine being created the Universe, that doesn’t mean it was the Christian or Abrahamic God. It could have been Brahma or Zeus, or a giant, omnipotent squid.
The “finely-tuned universe” is evidence for God.
Second, physicists have discovered that we live in a kind of “Goldilocks universe”. In other words, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics are finely tuned against all odds to make a life-friendly universe. Even slight alterations of many independent factors – such as the strength of gravitational and electromagnetic attraction, the masses of elementary particles, or the initial arrangement of matter and energy in the universe – would render life impossible.
Not surprisingly, many physicists have concluded that this improbable “fine-tuning” points to a cosmic “fine-tuner”. As Cambridge astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, previously a staunch atheist, argued: “A common sense interpretation of the data suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics” to make life possible.
Again, you probably know some of the rebuttals, but go here, here, and here to see some.
The “digital code” of the DNA molecule, which are like letters in a language, prove God.
Third, discoveries in molecular biology have revealed digital code in even the simplest living cells. Francis Crick and James Watson elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. Crick then developed his famed “sequence hypothesis”. He proposed that chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language, or digital symbols in computer code.
Computer code depends upon a precise sequence of zeros and ones. Similarly, the DNA molecule’s ability to direct the assembly of crucial protein molecules depends upon specific arrangements of chemical constituents (called “bases”) along the spine of the double helix.
As Dawkins has acknowledged: “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.” Or as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates explains: “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”
This seems to me prima facie dumb: the DNA code comprises four bases (“rungs”) on a phosphate-and-sugar ladder, but it’s not zeroes and ones. It’s the way that nascent life found could help build proteins. Yes, it’s complex, but many aspects of life are far more complex than anything than humans can create, including a simple cell. But for better refutations of this idea, go here, here, and here (a video).
Th-th-that’s all, folks. No new arguments here. The Telegraph should have its tuches paddled.
This paragraph shows that the real object of ID, as stated in their founding document, is not evolution itself but materialism, of which evolution is one example. This program is laid out in the 1998 “Wedge Document,” long kept secret, that led to the foundation of ID and the antecedents of the Discovery Institute. IDers hate materialism and naturalism because they believe in the supernatural. If you don’t need the supernatural to explain the universe, their program falls apart.
Materialists also reject the idea of a designing mind because no such entity can be directly observed. Yet scientists often infer unobservable entities – physical fields, subatomic particles, past evolutionary events, subsurface geological features, the Big Bang – based upon the explanatory power of those postulated entities or events.
h/t Christopher, Julie
The scientific development of ID has taken such a high flight that they use a geologist/lawyer as their commentator/critic on genetics.
It’s Ground Hog Day, over and over and over again. While there are still those who are susceptible to this kind of stuff, they’re becoming fewer and fewer. It’s frustrating. There are bumps in the road. But the long term trajectory is clear.
The moral arc of the discourse bends towards evolution!
It always amazed me that the obvious rebuttal of the strong anthropic principle (“fine-tuning” of the universe for life as we know it) never seemed to make an impact on ID crowd: That they had it backward, The more parsimonious argument is that life as we know it was fine-tuned for the universe in which it emerged and thrived. How could it not be? Wesley Elsberry and Victor Stenger both called this the “anthropic coincidence” in Scientists Confront Creationism, Intelligent Design and Beyond.
Stenger’s “Toy Universe” (aka “Monkey God”) simulations were amazing, but have disappeared from the Internet (AFAICT). The program created multiple variants of the fundamental physical constants that are the basis of the universe we inhabit (and the argument FOR a universe designed for life). Most outcomes failed; his criterion for success was that the “universe” had to be sufficiently stable to last 10 billion years (the time it took life to appear on OUR planet). The program generated multiple examples—thousands if I recall properly, but maybe more). The upshot was that life would have had time emerge with these other physical constants, but that it would look a lot different from life as we know it because that life would be fine-tuned to the conditions of those universes (and not the other way around).
It might have been the Toy Universe that resulted in an interesting figure that Stenger produced in his book The Fallacy of Fine Tuning. I am not going to recall details, but yes, he used that figure to claim there were other combinations of constants that could produce life.
If I recall correctly, the constants in our universe were pretty much in the middle in that figure, which recalls an amusing statement called The Principle of Mediocrity: That which is randomly chosen from a group, probably was chosen because it is common.
Indeed, I would have thought Douglas Adams’s puddle analogy would have put paid to this argument: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70827-this-is-rather-as-if-you-imagine-a-puddle-waking
In addition then to having the sequence backwards (the universe wasn’t fine-tuned for life; life was fine-tuned for the universe) they also have the proof-of-God backwards. What would really make us sit up and take notice is the existence of life under conditions which are in no way capable of supporting that life.
Exactly! Why would a god-created universe even NEED to have the features that we consider necessary to support human life. God could certainly have created creatures who don’t need to breathe air, drink water, or eat food. Other supposedly god-created beings — such as angels — don’t require those things.
The freethinker https://freethinker.co.uk/2026/09/new-faitheism-all-of-the-sanctimony-none-of-the-conviction/ has an article on these Christian attempts to rebut the New Atheists. It claims that these new Christians are not Christians in any meaningful sense, but are simply offering it as a life-style choice.
The freethinker has a long history of putting the boot into religion and it’s archive is online at it’s website for those interested.
This fits with the observation that linking the Big Bang to God and other arguments says nothing about the Virgin Birth or the Ressurction — and other dogma in the Nicene Creed.
Thanks for the link, John. A great article within a great source (Posted in a great comments section within a great blog).
{Intended as a reply to comment #4 above.}
One silver lining of these foggy attempts to cloud the evolutionary landscape may be the Streisand effect. By drawing attention to the “shortcomings” of the sciences involved in particulars of their arguments, they spotlight their methods of deception targeting the audience of their agenda.
Stephen Meyer has a Ph.D in Philosophy of Science.
Nevertheless, when he uses the word “proving”, I can only think of the words of the eminent philosopher Inigo Montoya:
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
All old hat are those arguments.
I would point out that the claims cherrypick and distort various discoveries from science, while pointedly ignoring ginormous other discoveries — also from science –that says that life began naturally and that it evolved.
The ignored discoveries include…
a. The universe was made 13.8 billion years ago. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the fossil record shows that life began to evolve from microbial forms billions of years ago.
b. The universal biochemistry of life has remarkable deep homologies to the chemistry of alkaline vents and other environments that would be widespread on the early earth. Asteroid fragments also carry generous amounts of life’s building blocks, so it looks like life’s molecules have natural origins that readily form under solar-system-wide environments. Good arguments are made that biochemistry evolved as a thermodynamically favored means to drain free energy from these early systems. There are lots of books on this.
c. Living things show hierarchical genetic relationships that is illustrated by phylogenetic trees. These genetic relationships have nothing to do with anatomy, and yet anatomical relationships show the same hierarchy of relatedness. The fossil record also supports this tree. DNA meanwhile carries oodles of random junk that matches between species, and this has no explanation other than that species today share common ancestry — common ancestry that is also shown in the fossil record.
d. So the claim that life has a natural origin, that it evolved by known mechanisms that we see today, and that all life shares common ancestry, is cross-supported by independent lines of evidence. Meanwhile, claims of creation has no evidence other than innuendos made after omitting said evidence, and relying on the common human tendency to think that events have agency.
“Ironically, even Dawkins admitted in 2024 he feels ‘at home’ in the Christian ‘ethos’ – though he still firmly rejects the existence of God.”
OFFS. Richard Dawkins described himself as a “cultural Christian” back in 2007! And if I remember correctly he described himself that way in The God Delusion, without using that exact phrase.
“Ironically.” “Admitted.” Aaaargh.
What does ‘new atheism’ mean? What’s new about it? If there is any evidence for God as he says there is, it should count against atheism in general. Why the adjective?
The main point of new atheism was that atheists should not be silent non-believers. Rather, they should vocally speak up agains theism since theism is a source of societal harm and possesses power that it does not deserve.
Wikipedia to the rescue. 《The term New Atheism is usually traced to Gary Wolf’s 2006 Wired article “The Church of the Non-Believers”, in which he introduced the label in a critical context and portrayed writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett as unusually strident and combative critics of religion.》So it is a term applied by others. “If the shoe fits, wear it”
As I see it New Atheism isn’t a rebuttal to religion but a counterpoint to a different variation of atheism – Accomodationism. NA basically amounts to arguments that 1) there IS a conflict between science and God and 2) religious faith isn’t a virtue, but a vice. Those points are still valid.
Indeed, god is untrue, but the ethic that fits the bible stories, Greek Stoicism has been confirmed. It also fits the falsifications that were made in the ’90s to 2020. Because the feminists redid the same fraud done in the ’40s, but televised it.
I do not understand any of the three sentences here. How has stoicism been confirmed? What falsifications were made? And what fraud was committed by feminists?
Is Meyer’s piece not just a reprint of stuff he was writing over 20 years ago?
Why do they think the Universe was designed for life? It looks more like some unwanted slime mould on the surface of a few very large rocks.
Yes, but that doesn’t render it artifact-like. Roger Sansom has a good explanation of the (natural) evolvability of gene regulatory networks (GRNs), by analogizing them to the training of artificial neural networks:
( https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262195812/ingenious-genes/ )
For that matter, I have argued in print that gene regulatory networks are analogous to ‘production systems’, i.e., to unordered lists of simple conditional instructions, and not to von-Neumann like computers with preset schedules of execution. Perhaps Stephen Meyer is assuming that if something is computer-like, then it must have a schedule of execution, and therefore there must have been some scheduler who made the schedule. Not so. All computer-like instructions within a GRN are line-length, and logically independent from each other. The overall computer-like behavior emerges naturally from the interplay between the simple instructions.
( https://philarchive.org/rec/CAPMSO-2 )
Finally, of course programs with preset schedule of execution can also evolve without foresight, through genetic programming.