only watchmaker in nature is the blind force of physics, albeit deployed in a very special
way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their
interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection (the
foundation of the Theory of Evolution), the blind, unconscious, automatic process which
Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and
apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no
mind's eye, it does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If
it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is that of the blind watchmaker.â€
Even the well known philosopher of the ‘Enlightenment’ and antagonist against faith in
God, Voltaire, observed: “I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist
without a clockmakerâ€.
Sir Julian Huxley, at the 1959 Darwin Centennial in Chicago, summed up the implications
of evolution as he saw them: 'In the evolutionary scheme of thought there is no longer
either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created, it evolved. So did all
the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well
as brain and body. So did religion...' In Huxley's opinion evolution displaces God, giving
us a purely naturalistic explanation of the origin, not only of life, but of the higher
faculties of consciousness and thought. (John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, a Lion Book,
2009, p. 87).
The information we get lets it appear as though all scientists worthy of that title would
agree with that worldview. That, however, is not the case. Allan Sandage, widely regarded
as one of the fathers of modern astronomy, discoverer of quasars and winner of the
Crafoord Prize, astronomy's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, is in no doubt that the answer …
is positive: 'I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some
organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but so is the explanation for the miracle of
existence - why there is something rather than nothing.' (ibid p. 65).
John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, concludes: “A remarkable
picture is gradually emerging from modern physics and cosmology of a universe whose
fundamental forces are amazingly, intricately, and delicately balanced or 'fine-tuned' in order
for the universe to be able to sustain life. Recent research has shown that many of the
fundamental constants of nature, from the energy levels in the carbon atom to the rate at
which the universe is expanding, have just the right values for life to exist. Change any of them
just a little, and the universe would become hostile to life and incapable of supporting it. The
constants are precision-tuned, and it is this fine-tuning that many scientists (and others) think
demands an explanation.
“The world of strict naturalism in which clever mathematical laws all by themselves bring
the universe and life into existence, is pure (and, one might add, poor) fiction. To call it
science-fiction would besmirch the name of science. Theories and laws simply do not
bring anything into existence.†(ibid)
