Mennonite Weekly Review

On my desk is God’s Universe by Owen Gingerich, published by Belknap Press, 2006, 160 pages, $16.95.

Marlin Jeschke, of Goshen, Ind., is retired from teaching at Goshen College.

Gingerich, a Mennonite and Harvard University astronomer, writes as a scientist who sees God-designed purpose in the universe. He defends both faith and science, each with its own body of knowledge and belief. He rejects the kind of faith that tries to manipulate science as well as a view of science that tries to rule out faith.

He serves notice already in the introduction that “the current political movement popularly known as Intelligent Design is misguided when presented as an alternative to the naturalistic explanations offered by science… . This does not mean that the universe is actually godless, just that science within its own framework has no other way of working.”

The book contains the William Belden Noble Lectures that Gingerich gave at Harvard in 2005. In the first — somewhat teasingly titled “Is Mediocrity a Good Thing?” — he shows the ambiguity of the scientific revolution effected by Copernicus and Darwin.

According to the Copernican principle, Gingerich says, “we human beings cannot flaunt a unique or special identity… . Everything we see around us is commonplace in the universe, [and] we are average human beings in a run-of-the-mill planetary system in an average galaxy probably populated by scores of other mediocrities.”

This principle of mediocrity has led scientists to search for intelligent life elsewhere, opening up “a fascinating back door to a goal-directed cosmos,” Gingerich says.

“Atheists and theists alike may be disconcerted and challenged by the conclusion that the Copernican principle provides an opening to teleology” — that is, using design or purpose to explain natural phenomena.

Gingerich pursues the subject of design in his second lecture, “Dare a Scientist Believe in Design?” From a review of the perfect balance found by astrophysics in the big-bang universe-creation event, and from the fitting ordering of oxygen and carbon for the production of life, and from the cunning found in the formation of DNA, we are prodded by suggestions of design.

And yet, these intimations of purpose are the result of purely scientific study. “Science remains a neutral way of explaining things, not anti-God or atheistic,” Gingerich says.

For Gingerich, “the blade of grass … or the incredible intricacy of DNA — suggests a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist.”