There Is No Room for God in Naturalism

Stephen Jay Gould, of whom we will speak more tomorrow, once waxed rhapsodic over the legacy of Charles Darwin. Because of Darwin mankind now knows: "[N]o intervening spirit watches lovingly over the affairs of nature (though Newton's clock-winding god might have set up the machinery at the beginning of time and then let it run). No vital forces propel evolutionary change. And whatever we think of God, his existence is not manifest in the products of nature."

Well, so much the worse for God, then. I guess the heavens don't declare the glory of God after all, and we have Mr. Gould and Mr. Darwin to thank for this revelation.

Phillip Johnson observed in response, "If Darwinism has such profound anti-theistic implications, and if the crucial Darwinian mechanism for generating complex innovations is having as much trouble as Gould has said [elsewhere], then it would seem to be very reasonable indeed for philosophical theists to question whether Darwinism is true. Is it possible that a dominant group of scientists has been so devoted to philosophical naturalism that it has been too easily satisfied by inadequate evidence for naturalistic mechanisms of creation?"

Maybe. Only no one seems to willing to let the question be asked.