Recently a new donor to the Center for Science and Culture, whom we’ll call Aaron, included a touching comment with his gift: “Because you have the courage to speak out. Because you gave me back the hope after having lost it. Because of Hannah who died at age 17.”
At first, I didn’t know what to think about this poignant comment. Thankfully, Aaron was gracious enough to share more when I contacted him and has given me permission to relay his story.
Aaron was raised Catholic in Belgium. From baptism to confirmation, he went the whole nine yards and always attended church with his parents.
That was until school. There, he learned that science had proven that human life was essentially a big evolutionary coincidence without meaning or purpose. He accepted his descent from apes and shed his beliefs about God and life after death like a nursery tale.
With scientific atheism as his new religion, Aaron graduated, found a job, got married, and had two boys. Life went on, and he didn’t think about God anymore.
A Machine and the Meaning of Life
That all changed in 2015. A driver high on drugs crashed into a local family’s vehicle from behind, claiming two young girls’ lives. The first died at the scene, but the other, whom I have called Hannah, was rushed to the hospital. Two days later, her parents had to decide whether to keep the life support machine running. They chose to turn it off.
The next morning on his way to work, Aaron drove past the accident site. Something stirred in him, and he found himself crying intensely. Though he’d never known Hannah personally, he felt a deep, unexpected grief for her during the following months.
He thought of his own boys. What if one of them were to die? he asked himself. Would all that love have been in vain? Would he simply disappear into nothingness, his thoughts and memories extinguished forever, love itself vanishing into nothing? Would it all have had no meaning?
A Fresh Look at Science
Big questions hit him hard. Aaron grew desperate to know whether naturalist scientists truly had the final say on God, reunion after death, and love. He started reading scientific works, searching for a glimmer of hope.
As he read, he found some German scientists who argued that the nihilistic worldview he’d been taught was not as firmly established as it seemed. Expanding his reading, he found scholars with the CSC, starting with biologist Michael Behe and philosopher of science Stephen Meyer. He was impressed for multiple reasons. First, he saw in them the courage David summoned to stand against Goliath. In this case, Goliath was the mainstream narrative about biological origins that destroys the careers of those who speak out with a different message.
Proponents of intelligent design offered highly convincing arguments. “The chain of reasoning by Behe and Meyer is presented so eloquently and is truly eye-opening,” Aaron told me. “Reading their books was for me the final nail in the coffin of materialism.” With the evidence now pointing in a new direction, Aaron returned to faith.
In the years since, Aaron has been a daily reader of Science and Culture Today and a fan of ID the Future. He loves to discover new arguments, new evidence, and new sources of inspiration.
As a way of saying thank you for the valuable work of our scientists, Aaron chose to give. Now a donor, he is helping to make ID articles and podcasts free for people around the world. We’re grateful for the difference that CSC resources made in his life, for his giving, and for the continuing impact on millions of readers and listeners.