Damon Linker questions a recent attempt to prove the existence of God using science:
The timing was perfect. Published on Christmas Day, Eric Metaxas Wall Street Journal column, “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God,” was bound to be a blockbuster.
Secularism might be on the rise, but the United States remains among the most religious nations in the world, and certainly the most religious nation in the Western world. Yet America is also an incorrigibly modern nation — its people mobbing Best Buy and Apple stores at holiday time to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ by showering the latest technological fruits of science on each other, like manna from a digital heaven.
No wonder, then, that Metaxas’ essay has been liked hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook. What’s not to like? If Metaxas is right, there is abundant good news for believers. Not only can they confidently dismiss the New Atheist party poopers who prefer to treat science and religion as mortal enemies, forcing the faithful to choose one or the other. But they can also take comfort in the thought that science — that most authoritative of modern ways of knowing — is on the verge of confirming truths long preached by the churches.
There’s just one problem: The column doesn’t come close to establishing what Metaxas claims it does.
Interesting. I generally steer clear of proving God.