A Universe Fine Tuned for Life

 

Last Christmas season, my wife and I were invited to a party at a friend’s home. We met several people including a young man that was a physics professor with a PhD in physics. I engaged him in conversation about the universe by asking him a series of questions. For example, I ask him “How do you think the universe came into existence?” His answer was predictable. He answered that it all started in the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. Then I ask him “What was the cause of the Big Bang?” His answer was that he did not know and as far as he knew, no one did. When we started talking about evolution and I asked him “From what did protons, neutrons and electrons evolve”, he got a concerned look on his face and he changed the subject.

In the book The Privileged Planet, the authors show, by statistical analysis, that the universe is fine tuned for life and the odds that life exists in this universe is almost negligible. In other words, the conditions in the universe necessary for life to exist are very complex to the point that except for a Designer, we could not be here. A couple of examples of the conditions needed for life are the values of gravity and the electromagnetic force.  These are the only two forces in the universe except for the strong and weak nuclear forces-forces that we mere mortals cannot personally observe.

When I used to teach mechanical engineering at the University of Louisville in the 1980’s, the first thing I would always share with my class was the formula for the value of gravity- F=G x m1 x m2/r squared. I explained that the “F” stood for the force due to gravity and the “m1 & m2” represented two masses in the universe such as a human being and the earth and the “r” was the distance between the 2 masses. The only symbol that doesn’t represent anything tangible is the “G”. This is the fudge factor inserted into the equation to make everything work in the computation.  The value of “G” is 0.0000000000667384.  I then ask the class “Why is that the value?” Science did not decide the value; science observed the value. Who designed the value? A similar philosophical analysis can be made concerning the formula for the electromagnetic force between two electrically charged bodies and the constant “k”.

Getting back to the conditions necessary for life, if these constants were only slightly different values life would not be possible in the universe. In the book, The Privileged Planet, there are 20 other factors necessary for life detailed and discussed. The Truth is, science is not a participant in nature, it is only an observer and may I add a somewhat less than enlightened observer. It does take some intellect to observe God’s handiwork but it takes arrogance to try to eliminate Him from the formula.

I leave you with Psalm 19: 1-4

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

“Then you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.” John 8: 32.

The Simplicity of the Complexity

God's design is both astoundingly simple and unbelievably complex. The simplicity begins with the activity of three separate persons performing the functions of the creation. God the Father initiating design (Genesis 1:1), the Son carrying out His plan (John 1:1-3) and the Holy Spirit observing and hovering over it (Genesis 1:2). Just as God utilized the three persons of the Trinity to speak the universe into existence, He designed the universe and its laws with three characteristics. As science teaches, we experience our universe through three parameters-Time, Space and Matter. "In the beginning..."-Time, "...God created the heavens..."-Space, "...and the Earth."-Matter. Some may ask "What about energy; isn't that a parameter we experience." As we have learned, matter and energy are two forms of the same as expressed in the formula for the Theory of Relativity developed by Albert Einstein, E=mc squared. Where the amount of energy, E, available in the universe is dependent on mass, m, and the speed of light, c.

 

So far we have the Triune God that created and the triune universe that was created. Now let's look at the three parameters of the universe. As we experience time, we are aware of three dimensions-past, present, and the future. We experience space in three dimensions, length, width and depth or X,Y and Z as science denotes it. And finally, matter has three forms, solid, liquid, and gas. When we examine matter on the microscopic level we find that the primary subatomic particles that make up all matter are protons, neutrons and electrons. We could also go further into protons and neutrons and find that on a quantum level, protons and neutrons are made of three quarks each. By the way, science has decided that all of these particles exist without ever seeing any quarks, protons, neutrons, electrons or even atoms. On a Macro-scale, the triune universe is so vast, science is only guessing how vast it is; if you blink it is much bigger than it was. Now we are getting into the complexity of these simple triune things and parameters at which we marvel. This is stuff for another blog.

Please continue to follow along with us to examine the complexity of God's marvelous creation. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” John 8:32. We will go were the truth takes us.

Beginning in the Beginning

Something is eternal! This is a self-evident truth. Try to imagine the universe coming into existence without a cause. To believe that you would certainly deny all of science. Even secular science teaches without exception that everything and every event that we observe has a cause. Wait a minute; I miswrote. Secular science has accepted that the universe with all its complexity, sprung into existence without a cause anyone can discern. Whoops! One more thing. Secular science has no credible explanation for the cause of the origin of life. 

A thing came into existence at some point in time or it has always been here. Think about it. When I was in high school in the 60’s, we were taught that the universe(matter and space) was eternal; it had no beginning and will have no end. Now students are taught that the universe came into existence out of nothing and will end at some point. They are told that science has proven that the universe is expanding rapidly and had a beginning. The question is not “was there a beginning of the universe” but “how did the universe come into existence”. In this blog we will explore the evidence from true science. 

Many believers in the Bible say that we should not mix science and faith. True, the Bible is not a text book, but where it speaks about the earth and the universe, it is accurate. For example, science teaches that we live in a space, time and matter universe. You may ask what about energy; all energy comes from matter therefore they are the same. In first verse in the Bible, the writer described this scientific principal when he wrote “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The beginning-Time. He created the heavens-Space and the Earth-matter. Genesis 1:1 described the scientific basis for our existence. 

Secular scientist have a story about how the first element was Hydrogen and all the other naturally occurring elements, 97 of them, were formed by fusion at very high temperatures. There is a serious problem with this story. All of the elements are made of sub-atomic particles such as protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks etcetera. We think we know that protons and neutrons are made of quarks, but no one seems to know what quarks are made of for that matter, where they came from. The chemical evolutionist has a major problem with the question “How did quarks evolve?” or “How did electrons evolve?”. When you go back to the beginning, evolutionary theory has no answers.  

It seems to me that we need to go where the evidence leads us. So the question remains, “What is eternal?”, matter or a Creator of matter.  Since secular science has decided that the universe had a beginning and that matter is not eternal, it seems logical that whoever created the matter is eternal.

When, As disclosed in the book, published in 1994 and the corresponding DVD, The Privileged Planet, it became obvious that the mathematical odds of life existing in the universe was so low that it was basically impossible, secular origin of life researchers were driven to a theory of an infinite number of parallel universes dubbed “The Multiverse”. This theory exists without a shred of scientific evidence therefore has become an article of “faith” by those scientist that believe that the admission that a Supreme Creator can possibly exist violates their “theology”. They certainly do not subscribe to Biblical theology but a theology nonetheless. 

To illustrate the lack of facts to support the “Multiverse” belief, Scientific American published an article about the concept. The article states:

        The notion of parallel universes leapt out of the pages of fiction into scientific journals in the 1990s. Many scientists claim that mega-millions of other universes, each with its own laws of physics, lie out there, beyond our visual horizon. They are collectively known as the multiverse.

The trouble is that no possible astronomical observations can ever see those other universes. The arguments are indirect at best. And even if the multiverse exists, it leaves the deep mysteries of nature unexplained.

The intro to the article also states, “Proof of parallel universes radically different from our own may still lie beyond the domain of science.” 

Back to the Privileged Planet. The authors have made a case that the mathematical odds for life existing, nether the less coming into being by pure chance, in our universe is somewhere between statistically negligible to downright impossible. Guillermo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University, received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1993 from the University of Washington and Jay W. Richards is Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He received his Ph.D. with honors in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. As they pen in  the aforementioned book:

Elsewhere you might learn that Earth and its local environment provide a delicate, and probably exceedingly rare, cradle for complex life. But there's another, even more startling, fact, described in The Privileged Planet: those same rare conditions that produce a habitable planet-that allow for the existence of complex observers like ourselves-also provide the best overall place for observing. What does this mean? At the least, it turns our view of the universe inside out. The universe is not "pointless" (Steven Weinberg), Earth merely "a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark," (Carl Sagan) and human existence "just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents" (Steven Weinberg). On the contrary, the evidence we can uncover from our Earthly home points to a universe that is designed for life, and designed for discovery. 

By the way, the odds documented in the DVD of life existing in our universe is 1000 trillion to 1.

In conclusion, the beginning of time is well documented in Genesis 1, meanwhile science is still struggling with its version of the truth.  As we have stated previously, we will follow the evidence where it leads. The question that we ask in this particular blog is “What is supported by the facts that we know, a universe that sprung into existence by the power of an eternal God or by an eternal something that science has no clue about?” 

Please follow me in our journey to the truth.