The culture has been buzzing about Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Disclosure Day, which depicts whistleblowers releasing evidence about UFOs that the government has hidden from the public for decades. People often become angry when they realize the truth has been hidden from them. But could something similar be happening — and I am thinking specifically of the context of the church — not related to UFOs, but rather regarding the evidence revealing God’s design in nature?
One of the central teachings of the Christian faith is that God created everything seen and unseen, including humans, as a direct act of his will. For most of church history, Christians generally assumed that the careful study of nature reveals God’s hand in its creation. This conviction inspired many pioneers of modern science, such as Isaac Newton, to investigate nature and uncover its underlying order. They reasoned that because humans are made in God’s image, they possess the capacity to understand the laws and principles God designed in the world.
Life as an Unintended Accident
The long-standing harmony between faith and science fractured after the 17th century as influential philosophers and cultural power brokers sought to detach science from its theological foundations. Nature was increasingly reinterpreted as a closed system of natural causes requiring no creator. According to this view, the universe is eternal and self-existent, Earth is a mundane planet formed by chance, and life is an unintended accident. Those who continued to argue that nature reveals evidence of purpose and design were often dismissed as enemies of progress and reason.
Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, wielding the weight of scientific authority, proclaims that “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Similarly, biologist Jerry Coyne asserts that biological structures “embody an absurd, Rube Goldberg-like complexity that makes no sense as the handiwork of an engineer but makes perfect sense as a product of a long and unguided historical process.”
Many church leaders became too intimidated by the prestige of secular scientific institutions to challenge the atheistic assumptions increasingly embedded in modern accounts of nature. Instead, they promoted a compartmentalized faith in which religion was relegated to the realm of private belief, while intellectual leadership in major spheres of society, such as psychology and education, was ceded to those who regarded God as either nonexistent or irrelevant to the workings of the world.
A Self-Imposed Captivity
This self-imposed intellectual captivity naturally led many Christians to embrace a double life in which they interpreted reality through a Christian lens during Sunday services and through a secular lens the rest of the time, Monday through Saturday, as practical atheists. Yet this intellectual dark age may be coming to an end. Discoveries over the past several decades have demonstrated that the foundational assumptions of an atheistic understanding of nature are far less secure than many once assumed.
Scientific advances have pointed to the universe not being eternal and accidental but the creation of a “super intellect” who designed it for the purpose of supporting life. Our planet is increasingly recognized as not typical but highly privileged to foster not only life but also scientific and technological advancement. Life in general, and humans in particular, appear to be “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as the Psalm puts it, demonstrating what has been termed Ultimate Engineering. And the case for a mind behind our universe grows more forceful each year.
Disclosing the evidence for design in nature should become a priority for all Christians. It liberates those honestly pursuing the truth from the toxic lie that they are accidents of nature with no intrinsic purpose or value. It also enables Christians to integrate their faith into every sphere of life, replacing intellectual compartmentalization with confidence, joy, and wise public service.
Dignity, Responsibility, Flourishing
Many who have embraced this vision have become leaders in their professions and have improved the lives of countless individuals. If more actively proclaim and apply the truth about science and nature, they can help renew public institutions by grounding them in a vision of reality that leads not to despair, but to human dignity, moral responsibility, and genuine flourishing.
Romans 1 says that people “suppress the truth” regarding the evidence that makes God “clearly seen” in “what has been made.” But this suppression can be overcome. I have had the privilege of working with countless scholars and professionals committed to this mission, which has born much good fruit. Have the courage to initiate a design disclosure day in your community.
Cross-posted from Crosswalk.