By Owen Toomey–
Michael Houts ultimately became a NASA engineer, so he prided himself on being scientific.
But when he asked biology professors some basic questions (Where did life come from? Do mutations create better things? How does non-living matter come alive?), he got the same answers as his 9th grade teacher.
“That’s really weird, I’m just asking these very basic questions,” he says. “That’s when it started to click for him: “This is not science. This is not engineering. This is just two different religions.”
Houts called it quits on atheism. He realized you needed as much faith (or more) to believe that life spontaneously arose. Instead of viewing atheism as the natural basis for scientists, he saw atheism as a faith competing with Christianity. He became a Christian.
Before that, Michael Houts once considered himself a firm believer in naturalism, the idea that everything in the universe could be explained by material causes like evolution and the Big Bang.
A car ride with a relative began to shake his worldview. The relative was a more militant atheist, who got offended that someone had raised a sign on his property that said, “Repent.”
“We need to find his house and burn it down,” the relative said.
Houts was struck by the excessive hatred. Who cares what somebody’s message is? he thought to himself. Why would we want to burn his house down?
The strident, violent atheism had no appeal.
Then a fellow student and roommate discussed philosophy with him every night as their wind down activity. Once, he showed him a paragraph written by a philosophy professor from another college. It was a pledge to believe only in
evolution; you had to sign it to even get your science degree. Houts’ friend said he wouldn’t sign it.
That struck Houts because his friend was a top engineering student, highly respected, top grades, very scientific.
If the nature of science is to question theories, why was this philosophy professor advocating a no-questioning policy?
His curiosity was piqued. That’s when he visited the biology department at college. He got disappointing answers to his sincere queries. The answers seemed dogmatic, unscientific.
Houts points out what noted scientist James Tours has explained clearly: After decades of failed research, scientists now know that you can’t spontaneously generate the massive molecules (like DNA) needed for the simplest living cell. There’s no way all the atoms would just come together in the right order without being arranged so by an outside force.
Despite spending millions of dollars, scientists still haven’t created life from non-living materials. One team spent 15 years and was only able to copy and slightly modify existing DNA, nowhere close to forming life from scratch.
“I pretty much rejected atheism really quickly once I really started thinking about it,” he said.
Dr. Houts has a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was employed at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 11 years where he served in various positions including Team Leader for Criticality, Reactor, and Radiation Physics and Deputy Group Leader of the 70 person Nuclear Design and Risk Analysis group.
Dr. Houts currently serves as Nuclear Research Manager for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and is also the principal investigator for NASA’s Space Nuclear Propulsion (SNP) project. Recent awards include a NASA Distinguished Service Medal, a NASA Exceptional Service Medal, a NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal, and being selected as an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
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