In recent years a flurry of
articles and books from the field of cosmology have lent credence to
intelligent design theory. Indeed, it has become fashionable in some
academic circles to discuss parallels between cosmology and
spirituality. The focus is on fundamental characteristics of our
universe and planet that render it suitable for life, but appear very
unlikely to have come about by random chance. In a 2007 issue of
The Guardian, physicist
Paul Davies said, “Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient
truth – the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns
the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and
cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient
‘coincidences’ and special features in the underlying laws of the
universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence
conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences
would be lethal.” (Davies, to be fair, is not saying God did it. But he
nicely describes the problem that requires faith in a designer,
multiplied universes, or unknown natural laws.) Not all intellectuals
welcomed this trend. Professor Robert Jastrow summed up his book
entitled
God and the Astronomers this way: “For the scientist
who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a
bad dream. For the past three hundred years, scientists have scaled the
mountain of ignorance and as they pull themselves over the final rock,
they are greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there
for centuries.” In his article “The Designed ‘Just So’ Universe” Dr.
Walter Bradley outlines these fine-tuned characteristics, dividing them
into three general categories:
1. The Remarkable Mathematical Form Nature Takes
Classical scientists noted that the natural world could be elegantly
described by mathematical statements. Today we know that a mere handful
of physics equations are able to describe all of the incredibly diverse
phenomena we see in nature. Albert Einstein (1956, Lettres a Maurice Solovine)
commented on the mathematical language of the world, “You may find it
strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world to the degree
that we may speak of such comprehensibility as a miracle or an eternal
mystery. Well, a priori one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot
be in any way grasped through thought… The kind of order created, for
example, by Newton’s theory of gravity is of quite a different kind.
Even if the axioms of the theory are posited by a human being, the
success of such an enterprise presupposes an order in the objective
world of a high degree, which one has no a priori right to expect. That
is the miracle which grows increasingly persuasive with the increasing
development of knowledge.” Bradley builds on this argument,
“…mathematical form alone is insufficient to guarantee a universe that
is a suitable habitat. The particular mathematical form is also
critical. For example, it is essential that the mathematical form
provide for stable systems at the atomic and cosmic level. [Hamilton,
Schrodinger, and MaxwellĂ‚’s equations] …It is clear that the specific
mathematical character of our universe is essential for it to be a
suitable habitat for life; yet the reason that nature has this precise
mathematical form is problematic from a naturalistic metaphysics.”
2. The Mystery of the Cosmological ConstantsSeveral
universal constants are an essential to our mathematical description of
the universe. A partial list includes Planck’s constant “h”, the speed
of light “c”, the gravity force constant “G”, the mass of the
proton/electron/neutron, the unit charge for the electron/proton, the
weak and strong nuclear force, electromagnetic coupling constants, and
Boltzmann’s constant, k. When cosmological models were developed in the
mid-twentieth century, it was naively assumed that the given set of
constants was not critical to the formation of a suitable habitat for
life. However, subsequent parametric studies which systematically varied
the constants demonstrated that changes in any of the constants
produces a dramatically different universe which is unsuitable for life
of any imaginable type.
Just one of the many examples cited by Dr. Bradly involves the strong
nuclear force: “…if the strong force which binds together the nucleus
of atoms were just five percent weaker, only hydrogen would be stable
and we would have a universe with a periodic chart of one element, which
is a universe incapable of providing the necessary molecular complexity
to provide minimal life functions of processing energy, storing
information, and replicating. On the other hand, if the strong force
were just two percent stronger, very massive nuclei would form, which
are unsuitable for the chemistry of living systems. Furthermore, there
would be no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, and no hydrogen
containing compounds.”
Skeptics, dating back to Hume, have retorted that it is not
surprising that everything is “just so,” otherwise we would not be here
to observe it. (This has been called the anthropic principle.) In his
book Miracle of Theism, the well known atheist J.L. Mackie
declares the flaw in Hume’s reasoning: “There is only one actual
universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants,
and it is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up
are just right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is
not made less surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one
would have been here to be surprised. We can properly envision and
consider alternative possibilities which do not include our being there
to experience them.”
3. The Remarkable Requirements for Initial ConditionsThe cosmos is hurtling outward at a remarkably balanced velocity. In his fascinating work Beside Still Waters: Searching for Meaning in an Age of Doubt,
Gregg Easterbrook discusses the concept. If the expansion were slightly
less, the universe would have collapsed back onto itself soon after its
birth. If it were slightly more rapid, the universe would have
dispersed into a thin soup with no aggregated matter. The ratio of
matter and energy to the volume of space at the birth of the universe
must have been within about one quadrillionth of one percent ideal!
After reflecting upon this unlikely scenario, Dr. Bradley notes that it
“has been the impetus for creative alternatives, most recently the new
inflationary model of the big bang. However, inflation itself seems to
require fine-tuning for it to occur at all and for it to yield
irregularities neither too small nor too large for galaxies to form.
…Recently in Scientific American, the required accuracy was stated to be
1 part in 10123. Furthermore, the ratio of the gravitational energy to
the kinetic energy must equal to 1.00000 with a variation of 1 part in
100,000. This is an active area of research and the values may change
over time. However, it appears that the essential requirements of very
highly specified boundary conditions will be present in whatever model
is finally confirmed for the big bang origin of the universe.”
The book Rare Earth, released early in 2000 by Dr. Donald C.
Brownlee (an astronomer from the University of Washington) and Dr.
Peter D. Ward (a paleontologist specializing in mass extinctions)
presents the view that the conditions required for the inception and
survival of complex life are so complicated and unlikely that we are
probably alone in the universe. In an interview with Science Times Ward
stated, “We have finally said out loud what so many have thought for so
long – that complex life, at least, is rare. And, to us, complex life
may be a flatworm.” The book details a host of arguments: specialized
atmosphere, right distance from the star to permit liquid water, plate
tectonics to permit build-up of land, stable orbits in the solar system.
It discusses many of the unique aspects of the our star, the importance
of a large planet like Jupiter to clear out killer comets and
asteroids, the preponderance of metal-poor galaxies, the necessity of
proper amounts of carbon, and the critical placement of the earth within
the galaxy. These newer findings show that the Drake Equation (used
triumphantly by Dr. Sagan to estimate that there are a million alien
worlds) is riddled with hidden optimistic assumptions.
4. A Privileged Place in the UniverseThis
growing list of fine-tuning requirements is only part of the story. By
itself, the skeptic might say we’re just the incredibly lucky recipients
of a big cosmic lottery. But astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay
Richards argue in The Privileged Planet (Regnery Publishing,
2004.) that those conditions for habitability also provide the best
overall conditions for doing science. In other words, the places where
complex observers like us can exist are the very same places that
provide the best overall conditions for observing. For instance, the
most life-friendly region of the galaxy is also the best place to be an
astronomer and cosmologist. A solar system like ours is much more
helpful for doing science than many of the uninhabitable extrasolar
systems we’re now discovering. And the atmosphere that complex,
chemically-based living observers need also allows those observers (us)
to study the distant universe. You might expect these kinds of
“coincidences” if the universe were designed for discovery, but not if
you were a card-carrying materialist limited to the resources of mere
chance and physical necessity.
Over the years, science has provided naturalistic explanations for
phenomena that were once mysterious or ascribed to the supernatural.
Some scientists came to believe that everything from the appearance of
life to the origin of matter itself would be explained by natural
processes as more evidence came to light. Today that pendulum is
swinging back the other way. From the logical mathematical language in
nature, to the unique aspects of our universe and our planet; new
discoveries augment the mounting evidence for special design. Michael
Denton summarized it well in Nature’s Destiny: “…The cosmos
appears increasingly to be a vast system finely tuned to generate life
and organisms of biology very similar, perhaps identical, to ourselves.
All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core
propositions of traditional natural theology–that the cosmos is a
specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal
and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of
the galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and
explanation in this central fact.”
Atheists respond to the fine-tuning arguments put forward by design
theorists with the hypothesis of multiple universes (multiverse). By
supposing that universes are regularly being produced (forever beyond
our observation) with an infinite variety of laws and constants, it
becomes slightly more plausible that a universe such as ours would
happen along. “The anthropic principle kicks in to explain that we have
to be in one of those universes (presumably a minority) whose by-laws
happen to be propitious to our eventual evolution and hence
contemplation of the problem.” (Dawkins, Richard,
The God Delusion,
2006, p. 174.) The problem with multiverse is that there is no shred of
empirical evidence…it is just blind faith completely outside of the
arena of observable science. And it only pushes back the problem one
step. For then we must ask who built the “Universe Generator”? It must
be a fine-tuned apparatus that continuously produces universes cleanly
& completely, varies the constants continually, and needs to
maintain this process for trillions of tries!
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