IS SCIENCE AT WAR WITH GOD?
Paul Newcombe
Today Christian people are bombarded with radio broadcasts, podcasts, and documentaries which present a particular reality — one where science and Christianity are at war with each other. To be scientific, we are told, is to believe in atheistic materialism. There is nothing spiritual. The universe (and everything it contains) is merely the result of atoms colliding with atoms. The human being is an empty, soulless, bag of chemicals. Once our chemical cycles have run their course, our family quaintly attends our funeral and prays for our soul, but in reality — all turns black and we enter oblivion. God, for His part, is nowhere.
Since 2006 popular “new atheist” writers — Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Hawking, Bill Nye, and Lawrence Krauss — have published a series of best-selling books arguing that science renders religious belief unnecessary. According to Dawkins and others, science should be interpreted specifically to conclude that: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose … nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
But does science actually support this strictly atheistic vision of reality? In fact, three major scientific discoveries during the last century contradict the expectations of scientific atheists (or materialists) and point instead in a distinctly God-friendly direction.
(1) THE UNIVERSE HAD A BEGINNING
Traditionally, scientific atheists described the universe as “eternal” and “self-existent”. This position was used specifically to attack the Christian concept that the universe has an external Creator — the God of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. In a BBC Radio debate on the Existence of God, the famous British atheist and intellectual, Bertrand Russel asserted: “The universe is just there. And that’s all.” While Mr Russel successfully popularized atheism in his time, recent scientific discovery has subsequently disproven his belief regarding the eternal origin of the universe.
In the 1920s Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître and Caltech astronomer Edwin Hubble independently demonstrated that the universe (and space) is expanding from a singular explosive beginning — from a “big bang.” Albert Einstein initially asserted an eternal universe with no beginning, however, in 1931, he visited Edwin Hubble at the Mount Wilson observatory in California to view the evidence for himself. He immediately embraced the “big bang” theory and later announced that denying the evidence for a strict beginning of the universe was “the greatest blunder” of his scientific career.
This evidence of a beginning (which was later reinforced by other developments in observational astronomy and theoretical physics) not only contradicted the expectations of scientific atheists, it confirmed those of traditional Christians. As physicist and Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias observed, “The best data we have [concerning a beginning] are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the first five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole.”
Scientific atheists reacted reflexively against the idea that the universe had a beginning. The scientific evidence for a beginning ruptured the atheistic world-view and created anxiety among scientists devoted to atheistic conclusions. The British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington found the evidence for a created universe distressing. Eddington famously lamented:
“Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order is repugnant to me … I should like to find a genuine loophole.[1]”
Robert Dicke, a leading Princeton University physicist during the 1950s and 1960s, later explained why a finite universe elicited such knee-jerk philosophical opposition among so many atheistic scientists. An infinitely old universe “would relieve us,” he said, “of the necessity of understanding the origin of matter at any finite time in the past.[2]”
A finite universe, by contrast, would force atheistic scientists to confront uncomfortable questions about the ultimate beginning of the material universe itself. It also raised the possibility that the universe had begun in something like a creation event produced by a cause that existed independently of matter, space, time and energy. A cause strongly resembling the God of the Bible.
Consequently, during the remainder of the twentieth century, atheistic physicists and cosmologists formulated alternatives to big-bang cosmology. Most of these attempted to restore the idea of an infinitely old universe. All were formulated for explicitly philosophical reasons by scientists openly committed to an exclusively atheistic world view. Alternatives included: the “Steady State” theory; the “Oscillating Model”; the “Vacuum Fluctuation” theory; the “Eternal Inflationary” theory; and “Quantim Gravity” models. Unfortunately for the scientific atheists, these models, one-by-one, failed to stand up to scientific scrutiny.
More recently (2003), three leading cosmologists: Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin proved that any universe which has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past, but must have an absolute beginning.
In reference to scientific atheists, Vilenkin remarks:
"[Scientists] can no longer hide behind a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.[3]”
Today, Big Bang cosmology, and thus a finite universe with a creation-like beginning, is the prevailing scientific conclusion.
Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow of the Goddard Space Institute observed that the discovery of a definite cosmic beginning:
“is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth … The development is unexpected because science has had such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.[4]”
(2) THE EXTREME FINE-TUNING OF THE UNIVERSE (FOR LIFE)
Since the 1960s, physicists have determined that the fundamental physical laws and parameters of our universe have been finely tuned, against all odds, to make our universe capable of hosting life.
From galaxies and stars, down to atoms and subatomic particles, the very structure of our universe is determined by these numbers:
Higgs Vacuum Expectation Value
246.2 GeV
Cosmological Constant
(2.3 x 10-3 eV)4
Mass of Up, Down, Strange Quark
2.4 MeV, 4.8 MeV, 104 MeV
Scalar fluctuation amplitude Q
2 x 10-5
Mass of the electron, neutrinos (sum)
0.511 MeV, 0.32 eV
Baryon, dark matter mass per photon
0.57 eV, 3 eV
Electromagnetism coupling constant
0.00729
Entropy of the Universe
4 x 1081 J/K
Strong nuclear force coupling constant
0.1187
Number of spacetime dimensions
3 (space) + 1 (time)
These are the fundamental constants and quantities of the universe. Moreover, modern science has come the the shocking conclusion that each of these constants has been carefully fine-tuned to an astonishingly precise value — a value that falls within an exceedingly narrow life-permitting range. If any one of these constants were altered, by the smallest imaginable degree — no physical, interactive life of any kind could exist anywhere. There would be no stars, no planets, no chemistry, no life.
The Gravitational Constant
To appreciate the extreme degree of fine-tuning that’s built into the universe, lets consider gravity. The force of gravity is determined by the “gravitational constant.” If this constant varied by just:
1 in 10 (to the power of 60) parts
no life would exist.
To gain more perspective — 1 in 10 (to the power of 60) looks like this:
1 part in
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000 parts.
There are 10 (to the power of 14) number of cells in your body.
There have been 10 (to the power of 20) seconds in the 12 billion year lifespan of the universe.
These are unimaginably large numbers.
Yet 10 (to the power of 60) for the fine-tuning of the gravitational constant is much, much larger.
If the gravitational constant was out by just one of these infinitesimally small increments, the universe either would have expanded and thinned out so rapidly that no stars could form (and life couldn’t exist), or, it would have collapsed back on itself with the same result — no stars, no planets, and no life.
The Expansion Rate of the Universe
Another example is the expansion rate of the universe, which is determined by the “cosmological constant.” Moreover, any change in its value by a mere 1 part in 10120 parts would render the universe as “life prohibiting.”
1 in 10 (to the power of 120) parts
is a fraction that’s so vanishingly small that we can’t even conceive of it.
Our universe permits physical interactive life only because these (and many other numbers) have been independently balanced on a razor’s edge.
Atheistic Physicist and Cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, admitted:
“The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.[5]”
Likewise, Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, Fellow of Trinity College, and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, concluded:
“Wherever physicists look, they see examples of fine-tuning.[6]”
Not surprisingly many physicists have reasoned that this extreme fine-tuning of the universe for life does not point to mere random chance (due to its mathematical impossibilities), but, instead, points to a cosmic “fine-tuner” or “intelligent designer.” As former Cambridge astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle argued:
“A common-sense interpretation of the data suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics” to make life possible.[7]
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Townes has likewise commented that:
“Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it’s remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren’t just the way they are, we wouldn’t be here at all. The sun wouldn’t be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here.[8]”
More and more, science is revealing what can only be described as evidence for an intelligent mind behind the universe — known by Judeo-Christian theology as “God.”
To avoid the God-friendly conclusions being prompted by science, “scientific” atheists have now resorted to promoting unscientific speculation — known as the “multiverse.” In desperation, they postulate the existence of a universe-generating mechanism that spits out billions and billions of universes — each with completely different physical laws and parameters. Our particular universe just happens to be that one special universe that possesses the almost infinitely improbable combination of life-conducive factors. Fine-tuning problem solved!
Yet, before “scientific” atheists pop their champaign to celebrate the death of actual scientific data supportive of Christian theology, we should note a couple of substantial flaws with the multiverse theory. Firstly, this theory is not based upon science. There is no scientific evidence for either the existence of a “universe-generating mechanism” nor the supposed infinite number of parallel universes (each with unique physics) that come from such a mechanism. Every premise is based exclusively upon speculation or wishful-thinking. Secondly, the multiverse theory postulates universe-generating mechanisms that themselves would require prior unexplained fine-tuning — thus, taking us back to where we started and the need for an ultimate fine-tuner.
The multiverse theory is based upon nothing. It is simply unsupported atheism being smuggled into the classroom as “science”.
(3) MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Third, molecular biology has revealed the presence in living cells of an exquisite world of informational nano-technology. These include digital code in DNA and RNA — tiny, intricately constructed molecular machines which vastly exceed our own digital high technology in their storage and transmission capabilities.
When James Watson and Francis Crick recorded the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, they made a startling discovery. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions — the information — for building the crucial protein molecules and “machines” that cells need to survive.
Sequences of chemical bases along the spine of a DNA molecule convey precise instructions for building proteins. Thus, the DNA molecule has the same property of “sequence specificity” that characterizes written text and computer code. Richard Dawkins himself has acknowledged, “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.” And Bill Gates has noted, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”
Since the 1960s, further discoveries made clear that the digital information in DNA and its cellular neighbor RNA is only part of a complex information processing system — an advanced form of nano-technology that both mirrors and exceeds our own in its complexity, design logic and information storage density.
Scientists now argue for purposeful design because living systems possess features that we know from our experience invariably arise only from intelligent causes.
DNA contains information in a digital form and functions much like a software program. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that information — whether stored in a computer program, inscribed in hieroglyphics or written in a book — always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of information in the DNA molecule provides strong grounds for inferring that a designing intelligence played a role in the origin and history of life.
At the very least, the discoveries of modern biology are not what anyone would have expected from blind materialistic processes.
Faced with his own fine-tuning discoveries, British mathematician Fred Hoyle commented that:
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.[9]”
Far from pointing to “blind, pitiless indifference,” the great discoveries of the last century point to the exquisite design of life and the universe and, arguably, to an intelligent creator behind it all.
Footnotes:
[1] Luminet, “Lemaitre’s Big Bang,” 10.
[2] Dicke et al., “Cosmic Black-Body Radiation,” 415.
[3] Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176.
[4] Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 116.
[5] Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time, p.125.
[6] Rees, Martin. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
[7] The Universe: Past and Present Reflections. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, volume 20, p. 16, September 1982.
[8] Bonnie Azab Powell, “’Explore as Much as We Can’: Nobel Prize Winner Charles Townes on Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Meaning of Life,” UC Berkeley News Center, June 17, 2005, https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/06/17_townes.shtml.
[9] Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November 1981. pp. 8–12