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Posted on 10/15/2025 9:57:11 AM PDT by Heartlander
Many Baby Boomers are sceptical about God. They think that believing in a higher power is probably incompatible with rationality. Over the last few centuries, religious belief has appeared to be in rapid decline, and materialism (the idea that the physical world is all there is to reality) has been on the rise, as the natural outcome of modern science and reason.
But if this scepticism is common among my older generation, times are changing. As we come to the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, the tables are turning – with scientific discoveries making people question the very things they took for granted and thought rational. Perhaps surprisingly, Gen Z are leading the way, purporting that the belief in God’s existence might not be just a trend on the rise – it’s a rationally sound conviction, in line with their attitude towards science and religion.
While the findings of Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin created the impression that the workings of the universe could be explained without a creator God, the last century has seen what I call ‘The Great Reversal of Science’. With a number of break-through scientific discoveries – including thermodynamics, the theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics, plus the Big Bang and theories of expansion, heat death, and fine-tuning of the universe – the pendulum of science has swung back in the opposite direction.
More and more convincingly, and perhaps in spite of itself, science today is pointing to the fact that, to be explained, our universe needs a creator. In the words of Robert Wilson, Nobel Prize winner for the discovery of the echo of the Big Bang in 1978, and an agnostic: ‘If all this is true [the Big Bang theory] we cannot avoid the question of creation.’
It is true that the existence of God cannot be proved incontrovertibly. While absolute proofs only exist in the theoretical domains of mathematics and logic, relative proofs are what we normally deal with, and what is generally considered ‘evidence’ in everyday life. If, like Richard Dawkins, we take a rational and scientific approach to the existence or non-existence of God, then we should only be persuaded by multiple, independent, and converging pieces of evidence.
Scientists across many fields of inquiry are now coming round to the idea that the thermal death of the universe and the Big Bang are strong evidence that our cosmos had an absolute beginning, while the fine-tuning of the universe and the transition from inert matter to life imply (separately) some more extraordinary fine tuning, showing the intervention of a creator external to our world.
With sets of converging evidence from different scientific disciplines – cosmology to physics, biology to chemistry – it is increasingly difficult for materialists to hold their position. Indeed, if they deny a creator, then they must accept and uphold that the universe had no beginning, that some of the greatest laws of physics (the principle of conservation of mass-energy, for example) have been violated, and that the laws of nature have no particular reason to favour the emergence of life.
Weighing up the evidence on each side of the scale is a matter of intellectual rigour, and the question ‘Is there a creator God?’ is one we should all be asking ourselves, with serious implication for every one of us. What’s intriguing is that it’s actually the youth, who you’d think would be more preoccupied with more mundane and practical concerns, that are leading the way.
Last August, a YouGov survey revealed that belief in God has doubled among young people (aged 18-24) in the last four years, with atheism falling in the same age group from 49 per cent in August 2021 to 32 per cent. Interpreting the data, Rev Marcus Walker, rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, mentioned that young people ‘seem really interested in the intellectual and spiritual side of religion’.
Another report from the think tank Theos revealed that Gen Z have a more balanced perspective towards the relationship between science and religion. Over one in two young people think religion has a place in the modern world, and the majority (68 per cent) of Gen Z respondents believe that you could be religious and be a good scientist.
Far from painting a picture in which the number of people believing in God is dwindling (which has been the usual narrative in the last century), this research suggests we are at the dawn of a revolution – one in which belief in God is not simply supported by science, but embraced by younger generations, too.
In general, Gen Z seems to have positive and hopeful view of science’s impact on the world. According to recent figures, 49 per cent of Gen Z trust scientists and academics the most to lead global change, far ahead of politicians (8 per cent) and world leaders (6 per cent) (WaterAid, 2025). And yet, they are still spiritually curious: their trust in science doesn’t preclude them from wanting to explore spirituality and contemplating something bigger than our universe.
Could they be the ones showing older generations a new way forward, one in which religion and science can coexist? And, more to the point, we now have the scientific evidence that would support a big shift in perspective. In the words of 91-year-old Carlo Rubbia, Professor of Physics at Harvard and Nobel laureate: ‘We come to God by the path of reason, others follow the irrational path.’
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I can believe this.
With each process, as they dig deeper into them, find it more and more complex and more mathematically impossible to accept it as natural processes.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” – Psalms 19:1
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuseRomans 1:20.
Intelligent design wins that argument.
It seems physicists are more likely to believe in God than are biologists.
Probably because biology is taught in a very reductionist manner.
Full stop.
I do not believe the first two, Copernicus and Galileo, had any interest in overthrowing religion and God. They were attempting to more fully understand God's amazing creation if I remember correctly.
Roll back the calendar two+ centuries, and many of the great thinkers considered Christianity itself to be reasonable. The stench of modernity has a way of infecting everything, sadly.
This.
It is very difficult to understate the power and reach of indoctrination that happens at the universities.
Yes, while the simplistic science, reining nowadays in high schools, is explaining world without God, the sophisticated modern science cannot avoid him.
The problem is that the modern science is so complicated, that no ordinary high school science teacher can understand it.
It is sort of “I see God in these equations, you have to believe me!”
Nicolaus Copernicus was a devout Catholic and a member of the Catholic Church, serving as a canon in a Polish cathedral. He saw no conflict between his heliocentric theory and his faith, believing that studying the natural, mathematical order of the universe was a way to honor God. He initially feared backlash from the academic community more than from the Church, and dedicated his book to Pope Paul III.
Materialist theories explaining the origins of the universe around us are becoming less persuasive.
It’s incredible with the Hubble and Webb telescopes how galaxies have become the new stars.
Mathematically improbable (impossible, really) levels of complexity being discovered in the basic cell must be frying the brains of many a hardened atheist (aging) biologist.
Two trillion galaxies and counting. More stars than the number of grains of sand on earth. And this is just in the observable universe.
Our galaxy is probably someone's star.
You’re somebody’s star, TLS.
Don’t go changin’. Lol
Oh, you...
Their heads and hearts are getting harder, to compensate.
Yes a lot of scientists have seen this for ages:
Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.-Louis Pasteur
Pasteur had a lot of great quotes along these lines: https://www.azquotes.com/author/11366-Louis_Pasteur
Then of course there is Pascal’s wager, a logical argument for having faith:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and should strive to believe in God. The reasoning for this stance involves the potential outcomes: if God does not exist, the believer incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries; if God does exist, the believer stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.[2]
I’ve always taken the combination of Pascal and the C.S. Lewis “Mere Christianity” (and other works) as the logical arguments for why not just a belief in God is correct, but also that Christianity is the correct religion.
“Carlo Rubbia, Professor of Physics at Harvard and Nobel laureate: ‘We come to God by the path of reason, others follow the irrational path.’”
Well, isn’t he special.
I have always believed that one should give credit to those who were right. In this case, Carlo is a late arrival. He should admit it and give at least a little credit to those who were right when he was wrong. Besides, many who came to believe in God before him were rationale.
1) Expanding Universe (Big Bang)
2) Fine-tuning of physical constants
3) Junk DNA wasn't junk after all.
4) No plausible evolutionary explanation for the origin of life.
4a) No non-DNA based lifeforms have ever been found, which suggests that there was one origin of life making it a highly improbable event.
5) Cells are orders of magnitude more complex than presumed/predicted by evolutionists.
6) Neurosurgeons can't locate consciousness within the brain. The mind is part physical and part immaterial.
7) No plausible evolutionary explanation for the the Cambrian Explosion.
Several of these are derisively labeled 'God of the gaps' arguments, but over the last 50 years the gaps have widened, not narrowed as atheist predicted.
Three points that science gives as evidence of God’s existence: 1) the Big Bang. A creator is needed to create the universe, 2) The universe is too young to have arisen out of chaos or accident. There must be a creator. 3) the odds that the parameters for the natural forces are precisely aligned so that life can exist on the planet are so vast, they are nearly impossible to occur by accident. So a designer/creator was involved.
The worst hold out is Darwinian biology. They can’t explain the complicated machinery inside the cell at all. That machinery didn’t arrive by chance or accident.
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