A Dangerous Delusion
A Dangerous Delusion
We have in recent weeks been learning how the U.S. spacecraft, Voyager II, is sending back messages from a distance of 139.26 AU (20.8 billion km; 12.9 billion mi.) from Earth as of May 2025. It was launched in 1977 and is in its extended mission of studying the interstellar medium. It has largely surpassed the scientists’ expectations. In fact, some of its findings are sending the astrophysicists back to the drawing boards.
In view of man’s extraordinary advances in the natural sciences over the past few centuries, and especially in the 20th century, it is perhaps not surprising that some thinkers would conclude that we no longer need a supernatural Creator, that the universe is all that ever was and is and will be.
One such atheist scientist is Richard Dawkins, a brilliant Oxford University professor emeritus of evolutionary biology and author or five best-selling books on genetics and evolution. Dawkins set up The Ricard Dawkins Foundation in 2006 to promote the cause of removing religion from science.
One of his best-sellers is titled The God Delusion1 in which he calls belief in God “…a pernicious superstition.” He is convinced that “…the belief in a supernatural Creator, a personal God, almost certainly does not exist; that this is a delusion, a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.”
But does Dawkins really have the last word?
Dawkin’s view is not a foregone conclusion. I was especially interested in reading a rebuttal to The God Delusion written by the brilliant scholar of philosophy and mathematics, Dr. David Berlinski. His witty and humorous rebuttal is titled The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions.2
What follow is an excerpt from what he has this to say about Neo-Darwinian Causality:
Sheer Dumb Luck:
Although biologists are unanimous in arguing that evolution has no goal, fixed from the first, it remains true nonetheless that living creatures have organized themselves into ever more elaborate and flexible structures. If their complexity is increasing, the entropy that surrounds them is decreasing. Whatever the universe-as-a-whole may be doing... biologically things have gone from bad to better...as a counterexample to the prevailing winds of fate.... The structures of life are complex, and complex structures get made in this, the purely human world, only by a process of deliberate design. An act of intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being; why should the artifacts of life be different? Darwin’s theory of evolution rejects this counsel of experience and intuition. Instead, the theory forges, at least in spirit, a perverse connection with the Second Law [of Thermodynamics] itself, arguing that precisely the same force that explains one turn of the cosmic wheel explains another: sheer dumb luck.
If the universe is for reasons of sheer dumb luck committed ultimately to a state of cosmic listlessness, it is also by sheer dumb luck that life first emerged on earth, the chemicals in the pre-biotic seas or soup illuminated and then invigorated by a fateful flash of lightning. It is again by sheer dumb luck that the first self-reproducing systems were created. The dense and ropy chains of RNA—they were created by sheer dumb luck, and sheer dumb luck drove the primitive chemicals of life to form a living cell. It is sheer dumb luck that alters the genetic message so that, from infernal nonsense, meaning for a moment emerges; and sheer dumb luck again that endows life with its opportunities, the space of possibilities over which natural selection plays, sheer dumb luck creating the mammalian eye and the marsupial pouch, sheer dumb luck again endowing the elephant’s sensitive nose with nerves and the orchid’s translucent petal with blush.”3
Moreover, Dr. Dawkins does not consider that many other scientists do not share his view. Henry H. Morris has listed hundreds of pioneers of new fields of science were believers in the Creator God of the Bible.4 Among them are Werner Von Braun, the Father of Space Science, and Isaac Newton, who is regarded by many scientists as the greatest scientist ever.
There are, furthermore, many contemporary respected scientists who have disagreed in writing with scientism and consider themselves creationists. The root of this debate has to do with “historical science,” versus “observational science:”
Observational Science:
This is science that’s directly testable, observable, and repeatable. It’s this kind of science that builds our technology and results in advancements in space science, medical fields, etc. This is the kind of science that deals with the present and involves the scientific method, experimentation, and observation.
Historical Science:
which attempts to extrapolate from present science back to the past and is based on speculations and interpretations. It is not directly testable, observable or repeatable. This assumes billions of years of history as well as cosmological, geological, and biological evolution. Evolution is a theory which is still in search of conclusive evidence after two centuries.
This scholarly battle isn’t over the evidence. It’s a battle between two worldviews and the evolutionary worldview is foundational for such “isms” as Communism, Nazism and Fascism. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and his colleagues, and Benito Mussolini all found in evolutionary thinking the scientific justification for their jaded philosophies and dictatorships.
My book titled Twilight of Darwinism: An Information-Age Evaluation of Unintelligent Design was published to help refute unfounded assumptions that undermine the Biblical Truth which gives us true meaning and purpose in life. It is sold through Amazon Books.
1. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006).
2. David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, (New York: Crown Forum 2008)
3. Berlinski, op. cit., as quoted in Sean M. Walsh, Twilight of Darwinism: an Information-Age Evaluation of Unintelligent Design (Maitland, FL: Xulon Press 2022), pp. 230-231
4. Henry H. Morris, Men of Science, Men of God (Green Forest, AK: Master Books, 1982), as quoted in Walsh, op.cit., pp. 40,41