A Five-Part Series
Part Five: Twentieth Century Physics and the Recovery of Theistic Science
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.
– Genesis 1:1
The author of the Book of Genesis was very clear about it: there was an absolute beginning. But Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) didn’t get the news. He taught that the universe was eternal, and that view prevailed in Europe until the early 20th Century. What happened then is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of science, and one of the most important. What is most significant about the story for our immediate purposes, is that it demonstrates that science and religion are allies in the search for truth, and not adversaries.
In 1915 Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity (GTR), by which he explained gravity as a distortion in the fabric of space-time under the influence of massive objects. How this happens is beyond the scope of this paper (which is fortunate, seeing that it is beyond my comprehension too). What concerns us is that Einstein’s GTR mathematical equations implied that the universe is not static (and hence not eternal), but is either expanding or contracting. Einstein himself found that idea repugnant, and he eliminated it by introducing a “fudge factor,” or rather a “cosmological constant” into his equations.
In 1922 Alexander Friedmann showed that Einstein’s original equations were correct, and Einstein acknowledged the fudge factor to be his “biggest blunder.” Then in 1929 Edwin Hubble produced the first empirical confirmation of GTR by observing that the distant galaxies are moving away from us; indeed, he saw that the farther away the galaxies are, the faster they are receding. Thus Hubble showed that as between a contracting or an expanding universe, we definitely occupy an expanding one.
Then in 1931 Georges Lemaitre showed that by extrapolating the expansion of the universe backward in time, it could be shown that the universe began from a “singularity” in which all the material of the universe was concentrated into an infinitely dense and hot, infinitesimal mathematical point, strongly suggesting an absolute beginning.
Not everyone was convinced; and it was not until 1965 that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson found the radiation (the “cosmic microwave background radiation,” or CMBR) that was left over from the creation event, confirming Big Bang theory. For this they were awarded the Nobel Prize.
The fact that many scientists did not immediately embrace what has become known as “Big Bang” cosmology illustrates beautifully the unavoidable interrelatedness of science and religion. An absolute beginning has obvious theistic implications. Since the universe began to exist, it must have had a cause.1 The cause must have been spaceless, timeless, and inconceivably powerful and intelligent. This would not necessarily be a personal God, but it does indicate a Creator of some kind. Many scientists were slow to acknowledge this. William Lane Craig states that the history of twentieth-century theory is a long series of failed attempts to falsify Big Bang cosmology:
With each successive failure of alternative . . . theories to avoid the absolute beginning of the universe predicted by the Standard Model, that prediction has been corroborated. It can be confidently said that no cosmogonic model has been as repeatedly verified in its predictions and as corroborated by attempts at its falsification . . . as the Standard Big Bang Model.
Moreover, leading theorists have pronounced the matter closed. Craig puts it this way:
A watershed of sorts appears to have been reached in 2003 with Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s formulation of their theorem establishing that any universe which has on average over its past history been in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have a spacetime boundary. . . . [T]he Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem . . . single-handedly sweeps away the most important attempts to avoid the absolute beginning of the universe, especially the darling of current cosmologists, the eternal inflationary multiverse. Vilenkin pulls no punches: “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”2
Why, then, has a segment of the scientific community struggled so mightily to avoid the beginning? It seems sufficiently apparent that they are bringing their prior metaphysical (i.e., religious) commitments to bear upon their science, which confirms again the interrelatedness of science and religion.
Atheism is as much a religious viewpoint as is theism. Both address the perennial religious questions: Who am I, Where did I come from, Where am I going, Why are people so selfish, and What can we do about it? It is the questions themselves which qualify a viewpoint as religious.3
It is impossible to separate completely science and religion from each other. What matters is that when we practice science, we do it well, and when we practice religion, we do it well. That entails avoidance of doing religion and calling it science.
The Fine-Tuning of the Laws of Physics
The Twentieth Century produced two more blockbuster scientific discoveries that re-establish the plausibility of theism and of theistic science: the discovery that the laws of physics have been “fine-tuned” to an astonishing degree so as to produce a universe hospitable to life; and the elucidation of the DNA molecule.
In 1961 Robert H. Dicke discovered that gravity and electromagnetism must be fine-tuned for life – that is, that they have very precise values, and that if they did not have exactly those very values, there would be no life anywhere in the universe. Hawking has stated, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”4 In the ensuing decades, scientists have learned that almost everything about the physical cosmos is fine-tuned.5 Suffice it to say, anyone who is not flabbergasted at the astonishing fine-tuning of the cosmos, is not paying attention.
DNA
In addition to the Big Bang and the Fine-Tuning, Twentieth Century science has made one more discovery having sweeping implications, and that is the discovery of the mind-boggling complexity of living things.
The human body has roughly 30 trillion cells and twenty thousand different kinds of proteins. Proteins carry out all of the life functions of the organism, from respiration to metabolism to digestion to the immune system, to name a few. Proteins also build and maintain the system in which the instructions for fabricating all of these proteins are contained in the three billion base pairs of DNA, not to mention the system for communicating those instructions to the ribosomes, where all the proteins that the body needs are manufactured. The complexity is overwhelming. One way to gain a deep appreciation of this would be to read Fazale Rana’s Fit For a Purpose.6 The impression of design is unavoidable. Rana shows that cellular functions take place at the atomic and the subatomic levels, one proton at a time, one electron at a time, performing precisely their instructions from DNA.
Conclusion
It makes my head spin when I consider that until 1929 scientists believed that the universe was static and eternal. It spins faster when I recall that the Big Bang was presented to me in high school in 1965 as a commonplace fact, as if we had always known the universe had an absolute beginning.
Did I mention that until 1924 we thought the Milky Way was the only galaxy? Do you remember when you first learned there are billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars? I don’t. People weren’t talking about it much when I was growing up. We’re still not talking about it.
Listen. If there was a beginning, then there is a Creator. If there is a Creator, naturalism is false. This is news! The whole project of investigating nature needs thoroughgoing reform.
But there is much more than that. There was a beginning, and there is a Creator. Who cares about naturalism? There is a Creator! Who is this person? Did he, as the Bible teaches, take human form, walk the planet, and promise me eternal life?
I know that He did.
Thomas Alderman
December 3, 2024
ENDNOTES
1I have previously demonstrated this necessary causal relationship. See Part Four, fn 2.
2William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Crossway 2008), 139-140.
3I have also addressed this question in a previous post. See joshualetter.com June 13, 2015 blog post, “The Definition of Religion.”
4Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1 1998, 1996), 129-131.
5I have discussed this topic at length also. See joshualetter.com June 28, 2018 blog post, “The Existence of God: Four Philosophical Arguments,” pp 18-27 at https://joshualetter.com/2018/06/28/the-existence-of-god/
And see joshualetter.com January 27, 2023 blog post, “The Heavens Declare the Glory” at https://joshualetter.com/category/philosophy/the-existence-of-god/
And see joshualetter.com July 26, 2022 blog post, “Water: Designed for Life,” at https://joshualetter.com/?s=water.
And see reasons.org Design Compendium at https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/rtb-design-compendium-2009.
6Fazale Rana, Fit For a Purpose (Reasons to Believe Press, 2021). Rana is the Executive Director of Reasons to Believe.
Joshualetter 