More Than A Theory

I read More Than A Theory (2009) by Hugh Ross in 2025. Like his other books I’ve read, I thought it was a bit sloppy. Its stated purpose was to propose a version of the Intelligent Design Hypothesis that was specific enough to make testable predictions. In the broadest possible sense, I believe Ross succeeded, but just barely.

The basic idea is that the creator made the universe with humanity in mind, and wanted us to know. Thus, examples of necessary fine-tuning should increase as more science is done. It’s not that the universe is fine-tuned for us (as it must be or else we wouldn’t be here), but the fact that the underlying laws of nature require such incredible fine-tuning for life to exist in the first place. Naturalism predicts that no more examples should be found, and the ones we already have are somehow illusory, being a result of either a vast multiverse or mathematical inevitability. The RTB (Reasons To Believe) model differs from other creation models in that it requires multiple instances of miraculous intervention (not just the Big Bang), and it requires billions of years, rather than thousands of years, or just an instant.

In Hugh’s mind, everything that came before was for our benefit, including mass extinction events (for the petroleum). This raises the possibility in my mind that we are only here for the benefit of something yet to come. Skynet perhaps? I also wonder whether all humanity is too broad a receiver. If the world was more for us than for the Lycophytes of the Carboniferous that died to give us coal, might it be that some humans are more favored than others? God was said to have loved Jacob and hated Esau. Maybe the universe was created primarily to give Jesus a place to live and a realm to rule.

The book is filled with the usual creationist claims, such as the distance and mass of Jupiter and Saturn striking the balance just right to deflect comets from the inner solar system without also pulling Earth out of orbit. The density distribution of matter at the Big Bang and the constant of gravity are precisely balanced between a universe of only thin gas and a universe of only black holes, thus allowing stars and planets. Without previously existing cells to manage them, organic molecules are poisoned by oxygen and destroyed by ultraviolet light, yet ozone protection requires oxygen, meaning life can’t get started from simpler molecules. Also, there is no known natural method to enrich prebiotic molecules to the homochirality found in living things. Very high levels of polarized light can partly enrich such mixtures, but only if (unnaturally) monochromatic, at luminosity high enough to destroy the molecules, and at polarization levels that do not exist in nature – and only barely approached in extreme environments such as the vicinity of magnetars (not a place where life is expected to begin). There are many reasons to suspect more is going on to nature than impersonal forces. On this we can agree.

Where Ross begins to lose me is in answering why some things are the way they are. There are those that point to the immense size of the universe and number of stars unsuitable for us to live around and ask why God would bother making all that if all he wanted was to make a home for humanity. Ross sidesteps the issue by bringing up the fact that without the requisite baryon density after the big bang, there would be either too much or too little helium for later stars to convert it into heavier elements needed to make terrestrial planets (and life). What he seems to miss is that a smaller universe with fewer stars could still have the same density. Furthermore, he claims that (sometimes deadly) hurricanes are necessary to better distribute rain, yet gives no good reason why rain must be so well distributed, since it is certainly not perfect even with hurricanes (deserts and rain forests exist), and humanity is already so constrained in habitat already (Mars and Venus and Challenger Deep are inhospitable) that a bit more constraint on Earth would hardly change the argument. One could also ask why God couldn’t simply distribute rain by other means, and the explanation that hurricane damage is necessary for our spiritual development seems ad hoc. Sure, some good can be extracted from bad things, but if the bad outweighs the good, further explanation is still needed.

He also seems to think much of the strange coincidence in timing of humanity. It takes billions of years for generations of stars to raise the metallicity of interstellar gas to the point that life (and technologically advanced life) is possible, yet certain heavy elements decay rapidly. Allegedly, we live at the perfect time in history when the abundance of such elements is at its maximum. At the same time, we live early enough in the age of the universe to see evidence of dark energy before all other galaxies are swept away faster than light, hiding the secrets of the universe. At the same time, greenhouse gas levels have been dropping just the right amount to compensate for the sun becoming hotter over the last five billion years, yet we are very close to the minimum levels of carbon dioxide needed for photosynthesis. Whether the Earth overheats or the plants starve, life will end in twenty million years one way or the other. He even makes the claim that no civilization can last more than 41000 years. I agree that all of this is interesting, but I’m not sure what conclusions to draw from it.

Furthermore, Ross makes very many claims without explanation, evidence, or much context. He claims that human lifespans are the perfect length to eliminate sin from the world as quickly as possible. I have never heard this and have no idea what he is referencing whatsoever. He claims that our sun has no sufficiently similar stars in the Milky Way, yet numerous other stars have their “twins.” He cites no examples of this, and no statistics either so I can judge how likely this is to happen by chance. He makes many claims on page 88 of the world yet to come, some more speculative than others, including the wild claim that there will be no gravity, thermodynamics, or electromagnetism on the “new Earth,” yet there will be light somehow. How does he know?

Then there are the claims that contradict what I have already read from other sources. This does not mean Ross is the wrong one, since the other sources are wrong often. Yet, Ross makes no effort to explain himself or debunk mainstream science. It is things like this that make it hard to sift through the book for the good stuff. He claims that Neanderthals made no contribution to the gene pool of modern humans, although I have read differently. He claims that Homo neandertalis and Homo erectus are non-human animals, yet I have read they made stone tools, bone flutes, and clothing. He also claims that our last universal common male ancestor (predicted based on levels of diversity in Y-chromosome DNA) and our last universal common female ancestor (predicted based on levels of diversity in mitochondrial DNA) lived at the same time, although I have read differently. To his credit, he does later briefly mention that the mainstream predictions for mitochondria differ because they assume monoplasmy, but I still felt I needed a better explanation than that. In any case, the fact that “Y-chromosome Adam” and “mitochondrial Eve” lived at different times does not mean that there wasn’t a true Adam and Eve who lived further back, so the Bible can be true either way.

Most annoying by far is the absolutely bizarre nonscientific mystery phrases that keep popping up:

He claims some animals (mammals and birds) are “soulish” while others are not. This is a very inexact term to the point of meaninglessness. Over the years, psychologists have proposed many classification schemes for different types of animal minds, including ranking them on a spectrum of preprogrammed animals, remembering animals, planning animals, and empathic animals capable of true language and incrementally building technology. New surprises about animal psychology are discovered every year, and nothing in this field is settled. Soul and spirit are words with more definitions than there are people using them; I don’t know what they mean.

He also repeats that the beginning of the universe was found to be the beginning of space and time and vice versa. What would it even mean for a universe to exist without space and time? What would it even mean for space and time to exist without a universe? Of course they are the same! What is he talking about?

He also repeatedly talks about space being a “surface.” In what sense? What is under the surface? What is at the center? What does that even mean? He compares the universe to a tent, meaning it is without center. My tent has a center. If he uses the word tent to mean only the material itself, this is a bad analogy because space is neither material nor two-dimensional. He compares the expansion of space to the stretching of a balloon with galaxies imbedded in it, but why? Why not just say that distances increase in all directions? Using a balloon as an analogy implies there to be an “inside” and an “outside” beyond our space, but there is no evidence of that. What is he talking about? If space being a surface is such a profound claim, then what would it mean for it not to be a surface? He cites eleven Bible verses (Job 9:8, Psalm 104:2, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24, 45:12, 48:13, 51:13, Jeremiah 10:12, 51:15, Zechariah 12:1) that refer to God stretching out the heavens, claiming this as a confirmed prediction by the prophets, but these are quick, throwaway lines in the middle of much more mundane prophecies. Not one prophet explains precisely what they mean and how they know or why God would tell them. It is clearly just flowery language illustrating God’s greatness, not to be taken too literally. I hope Ross wouldn’t take Isaiah 29:4 literally, or else he will have to admit that the dead speak.

He also makes the claim that Christianity makes claims of an interdimensional nature, while no other religion does. This is then used to support his claim that while other religions are mere human constructs, Christianity is divine revelation. His examples do not support this. He claims that triunity and the coexistence of free will and divine sovereignty imply additional dimensions. I can’t see what either of those has to do with dimensionality, and neither of these things are accepted by all of Christendom anyways. One might say they are human constructs later added to the gospel. He mentions Jesus entering a locked room, which could have to do with a dimensional shift (or not), but is hardly unique to Christianity. He also seems to miss that the fact we talk about higher dimensions today is not because they have been discovered, but because humans thought them up, thus proving that dimensions can very well be human constructs. He goes on to discuss string theory (which requires ten dimensions), but string theory is just a model created by human minds that people hope will make testable predictions one day that might confirm the existence of extra dimensions. The jury is still out.

The book is so full of bad reasoning and poor writing that it is hard to take it seriously.

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