It is all too common for those who hold an atheistic worldview to consider that their “materialistic” worldview is supported by science. That great thinkers and scientists have shared their argument for a universe that has been created entirely out of nothing.
However, this is simply not true. The vast majority of the great thinkers and scientists that use reason as a framework to “discover” truth have mostly been theists. Or at the very least, believed in a rational universe that requires a rational creator.
TCFC Tai Chi’s Alistair Cotton interviews Mike Zingel of the Academy for Spiritual Reality.
Historically, many of the greatest scientific thinkers did not see their work as dismantling belief in God. They saw themselves as uncovering order, law and structure within reality. The early pioneers of modern science operated on the assumption that the universe is intelligible — that it behaves consistently and can be understood through reason.
That assumption is not trivial.
Science depends on the belief that reality is ordered, that cause and effect are reliable, that mathematics corresponds to the physical world, and that the human mind can grasp objective truth. These are not scientific conclusions. They are preconditions for doing science at all.
A purely materialistic worldview struggles to explain why such preconditions should exist.
- Why is the universe governed by stable laws rather than chaos?
- Why does mathematics describe physical reality with extraordinary precision?
- Why does matter produce beings capable of abstract reasoning and moral awareness?
These are not “gaps” in scientific knowledge. They are structural questions about the foundation of reality itself.
Even the idea that the universe came from “nothing” is often misunderstood. In physics, “nothing” typically refers to a quantum vacuum — not absolute non-being. Absolute nothing has no properties, no potential and no power. From nothing, nothing comes.
Many scientists, astronomers, theologians and philosophers recognise that if the universe began to exist, it requires an explanation beyond itself. And that faith should not compete with science. Rather, it should support it. It proposes that the reason we observe law, order, intelligibility and rational structure is because reality is grounded in a rational source.
In other words, belief in God is not a retreat from reason. It is a commitment to follow reason all the way down to its source.
Consider the following five scientific points that challenge the atheistic worldview:
1. The Precise Strength of Gravity
The strength of gravity is fine-tuned to an extraordinary degree. If gravity were slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed back in on itself after the Big Bang. Slightly weaker, and stars and galaxies would never have formed.
Physicists calculate that the gravitational constant is finely balanced to around 1 part in 10⁴⁰ (and some fine-tuning estimates across cosmology go far beyond that).
To picture that probability, imagine winning the national lottery not once, not twice — but dozens of times in a row without fail.
The Big Bang required razor-edge precision. The odds of that precision happening by blind chance are so astronomically small that “impossible” is not an exaggeration.
Precision implies calibration. And calibration implies a calibrator.
2. Mathematics Is Discovered, Not Invented
Mathematics is not a human creation. We discover it.
The equations that describe gravity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics existed before any human mind wrote them down. The universe runs on mathematical laws whether we are here or not.
Why?
Why should physical reality obey abstract mathematical principles? Why should the universe be intelligible to the human mind?
The most coherent explanation is that both the universe and the human mind arise from a greater rational Mind.
As Christian tradition has long held: creation reflects the Logos — the Divine Reason.
3. DNA: The Language of Life
DNA is not a chemical blob. It is an information system — a coded language containing instructions, error correction mechanisms and regulatory systems.
Information does not arise from chaos. In every other context we know, meaningful coded information comes from intelligence.
The odds of random mutations producing even a single functional protein are staggeringly small. The odds of constructing a fully integrated DNA system by blind chance is beyond practical possibility
4. We Cannot Create Life
With all of our modern technology — AI, supercomputers, genetic engineering — we still cannot create even the simplest living cell from scratch.
We can manipulate life. We can edit DNA. But we cannot generate life from non-life in the way nature has.
If unguided chemistry can easily produce life, why can’t the most advanced scientific teams replicate it?
5. Cause and Effect Require a First Cause
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist. Even secular cosmology recognises that space, time and matter had a beginning. If time itself began, the cause of the universe cannot be within time. It must be outside it.
An uncaused, timeless, non-material cause is not mystical language. It is the logical requirement of a beginning. That is remarkably close to what classical Christianity calls God.