Category: The Fine-tuning of the Universe

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Apologetics Tools are now available!

Here are concise summaries of several recent posts to joshualetter, designed to be easily remembered so as to equip believers to be ready to address many of the concerns often raised by those who are seeking the truth.

Suggestions welcome!

SEVEN PRACTICAL APOLOGETICS TOOLS

1. The pioneers of modern science were virtually all Christians and were scientists specifically because of their religious beliefs.  In particular, they were scientists because they believed in a rational God who created an intelligible universe and man as a rational being capable of comprehending that universe.  For more information, see Thomas Alderman, Science and Religion: Exploding the Myth of Conflict, (a five-part series)(go to www.joshualetter.com and search for “exploding”).

2. The universe had a beginning and must therefore have had a cause outside itself.  That cause had to be timeless, immaterial, and inconceivably powerful.  More info: joshualetter.com, subject index: The Cosmological Argument for God.

3. The laws of physics are incomprehensibly fine-tuned for life.  The most plausible explanation (if not the only plausible explanation) is that they were intended to be that way by a cosmic designer.  More info: joshualetter.com, subject index: The Fine-Tuning of the Universe.

4. Objective moral values exist.  The most plausible explanation is that they are rooted in the character of a good Creator.  More info: joshualetter.com, subject index: The Moral Argument for God.

5. Jesus’ disciples were transformed by His post-Resurrection appearances from cowering fugitives to fearless evangelists.  Many of them died for their proclamation; none recanted.  The best explanation is that they truly encountered the risen Christ.  More info: joshualetter.com, search field, “minimal facts.”

6. The authors of the New Testament were honest and had ready access to the eyewitnesses of the events in the life of Jesus.  More info: joshualetter.com, search for “honesty.”

7. While it is true that many errors were introduced into the New Testament in the course of being manually copied, scholars have succeeded in identifying and correcting virtually all of those errors – as even skeptical New Testament scholars have acknowledged.  More info: joshualetter.com, search for “recovery.”

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What About Laplace’s Protoplanetary Disc?

Today I was thinking about one of the arguments for naturalism (atheism) that I discussed in a recent oral presentation.

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) was a French scholar who contributed to the eclipse of theistic science in the 19th Century by observing that the origin of the solar system could be explained mechanically.  Under the force of gravity, a “proto-planetary disc” formed, and as it collapsed and became denser and denser, it clumped together, forming a system of star and planets.

My only comment at that time was that that was all very fine, but where did Laplace suppose the gravity came from?

And that, of course, remains a perfectly good critique; but today it dawned on me that there is a lot more that can be said.  Readers of this blog know about stellar nucleosynthesis, whereby the elements of the periodic table (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron, chromium, etc., etc.) are by-products of the fusion reactions still taking place in the stars.  When the stars reach the end of their life cycle, they collapse and explode, spreading these elements into space, where they become the material for another generation of stars, which continue the process.  Eventually all 90 naturally-occurring elements are formed and spread abroad in space.  It was those materials which formed Laplace’s proto-planetary disc, which became our sun and our home, the Earth.

They also became our food source.

What is even more wonderful is that as that magnificent cosmic process produced our planet, it at the same time assembled all the elements we need for all our bodily functions; and we take those nutrients into ourselves whenever we consume plants grown in the soil or the animals that consume them.

Now, while the majority of our bodies are made up of common elements like oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, some “exotic” elements are present in trace amounts: silicon, fluoride, iron, zinc, copper, lithium, manganese, iodine, cobalt, chromium, selenium, and molybdenum.  In large proportions many of these elements would be extremely toxic to us, but are required in very small quantities for proper bodily function.  And that is what we have: lots of carbon for our muscles and bones, and trace amounts of copper, zinc, selenium, and iron, essential for healthy hearts. Why did stellar nucleosynthesis produce all the elements in exactly the right proportions that we needed in order to thrive?

And there is more!  Our planet has a surfeit of iron and uranium, much more than is typical of most planets.  And it’s a good thing, too, as it is the molten iron core of our planet which produces the magnetic field which surrounds the Earth and deflects the solar wind which otherwise would strip away our atmosphere, and it is the uranium whose decay produces the heat that keeps that iron core molten so that it can circulate and produce that magnetic shield!

Glory to God!

Science and religion: Exploding the Myth of Conflict

A Five-Part Series

Part Three: There is Conflict, but it is Between Naturalism and Science

Naturalism is the view that nature is all that exists.  That is, the matter and energy which constitute the physical world exist, but nothing else does.  The immediate corollaries of this view, of course, are that the cosmos and everything in it is a single interconnected system of physical causation, and that spirits do not exist, and that includes God.  

It may still safely be said, perhaps, that most contemporary scientists are naturalists – although that is changing, since naturalism has been under siege for decades and is showing signs of strain.  Certainly most scientists in the fields of paleontology and biology are naturalists.  This is in stark contrast to those in the fields of physics and astronomy, many of whom have exclaimed the theistic implications of Big Bang cosmology and the fine-tuning of the laws of physics.  The difference is attributable, no doubt, to the fact that astronomers and physicists are not as constrained as biologists are by the dictates of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy.

Here is a representative sample of the views of many astronomers and physicists:

Albert Einstein (1879–1955):

In response to the evidence for the Big Bang, he acknowledged “the necessity for a beginning”1 and “the presence of a superior reasoning power.”2.

Stephen Hawking (1942-2018): 

Commenting on the Fine-Tuning of the Universe, he stated that “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.”3.

Cambridge astronomer and atheist Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) (who never accepted Big Bang cosmology): 

A “superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology. . . .”4.

Physicist Paul Davies (1946- ): 

He once promoted atheism5 and is still opposed to Intelligent Design theory,6 but has conceded that “the laws [of physics] . . . seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design.”7  He further states: “[There] is for me powerful evidence that there is ‘something going on’ behind it all. The impression of design is overwhelming.”8

Design is an activity of mind.  Mind is a capacity of persons.  The Creator is a person (or rather, three persons).  Science is the study of the Creation.  All truth is God’s truth.

Clearly, then, a commitment to naturalism is unnecessary for the conduct of good science.  But we want to claim much more than that: we want to claim that naturalism actually impedes the progress of science.

Naturalism posits that human consciousness arises out of purely impersonal, mechanistic processes.  Somehow (they don’t tell us how, since they don’t know how), it is said, the motions of the atoms in my brain produce the thoughts, beliefs, and intentions which form my mental experience.  But thoughts, beliefs, and intentions are mental events, not physical events.  Mental events occur only in minds.  A mind is not a physical thing.

The naturalist will interject that mental events are embodied in neuro-physiological structures.  That may be the case; yet the properties of brain events and the properties of mental events are mutually exclusive.  The properties of brain events are physical: magnitude, valence, location, connections among neurons.  Mental events have none of those physical properties and possess one property which brain events lack, namely, “aboutness.”  Mental events – thoughts, beliefs, intentions – are always about something else.

Thus the mind and the brain, having entirely disparate sets of properties, cannot be the same thing.

A careful distinction must here be made.  Naturalism and evolution are not the same thing; yet they are almost always conflated.  The reason is readily apparent.  Consciousness is something that requires an explanation, and evolution is the only naturalistic explanation for the rise of consciousness which anyone has ever proposed.  If you are a naturalist, therefore, your choice is between evolution, as thinly supported by evidence as it is, and no explanation at all.  It is thus naturalism, not evidence, which drives naturalists into Darwin’s embrace.

We saw that theism provides an intelligible justification for our confidence in the reliability of the human cognitive capability: our having been created in the image of a rational deity.  What is naturalism’s justification?  Far from positing a rational source for the human mind, naturalism posits a cognitive faculty formed by undirected, purposeless, mechanistic, impersonal processes.  What basis is there for confidence that such processes could result in the formation of a reliable mind?

J. B. S. Haldane, a leading evolutionary theorist of the mid-twentieth century, may have been the first to notice that 

If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true . . . and hence no reason for supposing my brain to be made of atoms.

And no reason to believe that my awareness evolved.  Darwin himself worried about this.

There is more.  According to naturalism, theism is false; yet belief in God is widespread.  According to the Pew Research Center, 84% of the world’s population are religiously affiliated.  But theism is false, according to neo-Darwinists.  Do false beliefs then have survival value?  If not, how can evolutionary theory account for our species’ religiosity, how can we trust our cognitive capacity, and how can we be sure that naturalism is true?  Naturalism is thus seen to be not only self-refuting, but an obstacle to the progress of science.9

NEXT WEEK: Part Four: What Happened to Theistic Science?

ENDNOTES

1A. Vibert Douglas, “Forty Minutes with Einstein,” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 50 (1956), 100.

2Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948), 106.

3Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1998, 1996), 129-131.

4Hoyle, “The Universe,” 16. 

5Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), viii, 3–42, 142–143.

6https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jun/26/ spaceexploration.comment.  (Page unavailable 12.2.24.)

7Paul Davies, Superforce (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 243. 

8Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 203; Paul Davies, “The Anthropic Principle,” Science Digest 191, no. 10 (October 1983), 24.

9I have Kenneth Samples of Reasons to Believe to thank for this argument.

A Little Deeper Into the Cosmos

More on the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Why is there something rather than nothing?

If anything exists, then an uncaused being exists.  How do we know this?

Something does exist: the universe; and the universe either had a beginning or it didn’t.  If it didn’t, then it has an infinite past, and neither has a cause nor can it have a cause, and that would end the inquiry.

But we happen to know that the universe did have a beginning, and since it did not create itself, it must have had a cause outside itself.  Thus there exists, in addition to the universe itself, at least one other being – specifically, whatever it was that caused the universe to exist.

Either the cause of the universe was itself uncaused, or it was preceded by an infinite regress of caused causes.  An actual infinite regress of caused causes is impossible.  Therefore, the universe was caused by an uncaused cause.  QED.

What kind of being is this uncaused cause of the universe?

Big Bang cosmology entails that space and time themselves came into existence with the matter and energy of the Creation event.  Therefore, the cause of the universe must be:

     Uncaused

     Spaceless

     Timeless

     Immaterial

     Stupendously powerful

Other observations enable us to add to the list of divine attributes.  The fine-tuning of the universe shows that the First Cause has crafted the constants of physics to achieve a particular purpose, namely, a universe hospitable to complex life.  Purpose is a mental activity: only minds have purposes.  Therefore the First Cause is a personal being.  The fine-tuning demonstrates also that the First Cause is transcendently intelligent.

Why does the universe exist?  Why is there something rather than nothing?  Because God caused the universe to exist.  Then why does God exist?  I do not believe there is an answer to that question.  God does not exist for a reason: he just is.  He is the uncaused cause.  He, and only He, contains in Himself the explanation of His own existence.  As He said to Moses: “I am that I am.  Tell them that I am sent you.”

So to someone who asks, “If God created the universe, then who created God?” the proper response is to point out that the answer is obvious, but that it is the wrong question.  The question is not who created God, but how can it be that God exists, uncaused?  What is the reason for God’s existence?  And the only answer I know of is that He just exists.  He and He alone contains within himself the explanation for his own existence.

And we are in awe once again, and our hearts overflow with gratitude.

Many philosophers maintain that the reason God exists is that He is the necessary being.  I’m not clear on what that means.  Wouldn’t it be possible that nothing at all exists?  Then God would also not exist, right?  Then He doesn’t exist by any sort of logical necessity.  In what sense, then, is he the necessary being?

I suspect the answer is that if God did not exist, then nothing would exist.

So my answer to the question how we know God exists is that we know it from the fact that something that is not God exists and had a beginning.  Everything else follows by logical necessity.

The Heavens Declare the Glory

Several people who follow this blog have been complaining about the recent dearth of posts.  Mea culpa!  I repent!

Here is a fascinating special case of the fine-tuning of the universe.

There are 90 naturally-occurring elements in the periodic table – elements like hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and many others.  Every physical thing in the universe is made up of these elements or of combinations of these elements.

Each element has distinctive properties, and the properties of all the elements, taken together, result in our physical world –the Earth, the Earth’s atmosphere, the iron that drives the Earth’s magnetic field, the water that makes life possible, the sun, the moon, the stars, our bodies.

It makes me weep to realize the wisdom and power displayed in the Creation.

Where do these elements come from?

I learned several years ago that there have been three or four generations of stars.  The first generation, formed at about 100 million years after the Creation event, consisted only of the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium.  During the lifetime of those stars, they produced heavier elements by a process of fusion – that is, by combining lighter elements to form heavier ones under extreme heat and pressure.  When these stars reached the end of their lifespans, they collapsed, and then they exploded, spreading those heavier elements throughout the cosmos.  Then under gravitation the debris from the explosion of those stars formed a second generation of stars, which likewise produced even heavier elements, collapsed, and exploded.  (They are still exploding; they are called “super-novas.”)  Our sun is an instance of at least a third-generation star, if not a fourth.

Recently it was learned that iron is the heaviest element formed in this manner – by fusion within the first generations of stars.  Now cosmologists have discovered how the heaviest elements were formed.

Most massive stars (say, 10 times the mass of our Sun) exist in binary systems with a twin.  When they die, they explode, but their cores remain, and they collapse to a diameter of only 10 to 12 kilometers, forming the densest objects in the universe other than black holes – so dense that the protons and electrons combine, forming neutrons; and hence they are called “neutron stars.”

The twin neutron stars then circle each other for eons until at last, under their mutual gravitational attraction, they fall into each other.  When they collide, they annihilate in the most spectacular events ever observed.  But after the collapse and before the explosion, they form the heavy elements by a process called “rapid neutron capture,” or the r-process.  Then the explosions again spread these heaviest elements throughout the universe.  Some of them ended up in Earth’s soil.  We ingested the plants that drew those elements out of that soil, and those elements keep us alive by performing vital life functions, from the regulation of brain development to the formation of strong bones.

You can read more from Scientific American at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-star-collisions-forge-the-universes-heaviest-elements/

Glory to God!

Water: Designed for Life

In April I published links to a wonderful 7-part essay by John Millam, Ken Klos, and Iain D. Sommerville, entitled, Water: Designed for Life (Reasons to Believe 2013).

I have to apologize to those who have tried to open Part 2, or anything after Part 1, by clicking on the links which the publisher provided at the bottom of Part 1.  They don’t work.  (They did work when I first posted the essay.)  Here’s what does work: Once you have opened Part 1, at the top of your browser window will be the URL for that web page, ending in “part-1-of-7.”  Place your cursor next to the 1 and replace it with a 2 and <press> enter.  The same for parts 3-7.  (Yes, I do have permission from RTB to tell you to do this.)

Feast on this thrilling exposition of the miraculous properties of a substance we all take for granted, water, in seven quick strokes by pasting the following URL into your browser:

reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/tnrtb/2013/05/20/water-designed-for-life-part-1-(of-7)

Everything is fine-tuned.

Fine-Tuning for High-Tech Civilization

Astronomer Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (reasons.org), of whom much is heard in these pages, has long emphasized that all of natural history prior to mankind was fine-tuned to prepare the cosmos not for mankind simply, but for mankind and his development of high-tech civilization.  He even categorizes the features of the physical universe by their tendency to foster either simple, single-celled life, or large, air-breathing organisms, or human civilization, or – high-tech human civilization.

I have long wished for some elucidation from Ross as to the reasons he considers high-tech civilization in particular to be the goal in God’s creative activity.  An answer has occurred to me; and while I can’t say I actually heard this from Ross, it strikes me as something he would probably readily endorse.

The last 70 years has seen an explosion of scientific discovery, fueled, to a large extent, by the development of science technology that has enabled us to study the cosmos in ways that were not possible until now.  That science technology – the space telescopes, the super-colliders, the computers – would never have been developed by itself, apart from the advance of technology generally.  Modern science is indeed the invention of a broadly high-tech civilization.

And what have we discovered with our sophisticated and very expensive new kit?  Everywhere we look, we find the unequivocal signs of active intelligence.

So I think Ross would say that God prepared a planet for advanced civilization so that we would find him.

It gives a fuller understanding, it seems to me, of Romans 1:20:

[God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Those invisible divine attributes – God’s existence, his divinity, and his power – were evident even to primitive man.  Our study of Creation continues to make God’s power, genius, wisdom, and love more and more obvious; yet somehow men still deny him.  Can judgment be far off?

The fine-tuning just got finer

Here is a link to the latest from Reasons to Believe (reasons.org).

Some scientists have maintained that the water habitable zone[1] is wide because even if a planet is farther from its star, more carbon dioxide can keep the planet warm enough for ice to melt.  This new study shows that above very strict limits, CO2 becomes toxic to oxygen-breathing animals.  The water habitable zone just got much, much, smaller.  There is much more.  Treat yourself.  Here it is:

https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/todays-new-reason-to-believe/2019/07/01/complex-life-s-narrow-requirements-for-atmospheric-gases

The “fine-tuning of the universe” for complex life gets finer and finer the more we learn about nature.  The bottom line: it was very, very hard to create a universe in which even one earthlike planet could exist.  It would not happen by accident in a trillion, trillion, trillion years.

[1] Water habitable zone: The range of distances from its star within which a planet must be located in order for the temperature to be mild enough for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet.