15 Feb Free Miracle #2: Order Came from Chaos – Part 2 of 2
Blog Series
Why Believe in God? ~ If You Reject God, You’ve Only Done Half the Job.
As we saw at the beginning of this blog series, Terrance McKenna said, “Modern Science is based on the principle: ‘Give us one free miracle and we will explain the rest.’ The one free miracle is the appearance of all the mass and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern them, in a single instant from nothing.”
Yet, this blog series is making the point that they are asking, not for one free miracle, but for five. The first was something coming from nothing. The second is order coming from chaos. Last week, we made the point that order never comes from chaos. The Big Bang was an unimaginably colossal explosion that could not be expected to produce “order,” yet the world and the universe reflect greater order and design than found in the finest Swiss watch.
Last week we looked at the order (also often called fine-tuning, and design) of our earth. This week, we look at the order in the universe. The degree of apparent design and order in the universe is so much greater than in the earth that it makes the fine-tuning of the earth seem small by comparison. And, same as with the earth, if the universe did not exist precisely as it now is, life on earth would not exist.
There are two major evidences for the design of the universe that make the point powerfully.
Size of the universe
The size of the universe must be what it is, or life on earth could not have been possible. Scientists themselves say that if the universe’s mass were the tiniest bit smaller, the elements necessary for life – nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon – would never have come into being.
Caltech astrophysicist Hugh Ross, in his book Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, writes: “This degree of fine tuning is so great that it’s as if, right after the universe beginning, someone could have destroyed the possibility of life within it by subtracting a single dime’s mass from the whole of the observable universe or adding a single dime’s mass to it.”
In addition, in his book A Brief History of Time and Space, physicist Stephen Hawking wrote, “If the overall density of the universe were changed by even 0.00000000000001 percent, no stars or galaxies could be formed. If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it reached its present size.”
Laws governing the universe
There are physical laws governing our universe, including gravity, temperature, centrifugal force, etc. All of these laws have to exist within a very narrow range in order for life on earth to exist. The perfect calibration of these laws by chance is essentially impossible. Scientist Francis Collins writes, as quoted by Timothy Keller,
“There are fifteen constants – the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force etc. – that have precise values. If any one of these constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million- million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce; there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets, or people.” (Timothy Keller, The Reason for God)
Conclusion
The odds against the earth and universe being as “fine-tuned” as they are by accident is so remote as to lead all but the most committed unwilling mind to accept a “Great Fine-tuner.”
Robert Jastro, an American astronomer and planetary physicist has written,
“Far from disproving the existence of God, astronomers may be finding more circumstantial evidence that God exists. Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.” (God and the Astronomers)
He wraps up his point cleverly: “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.” (God and the Astronomers)
So, as we look at the “fine-tuning” apparent in the universe, there are two major reasons we’ll not give modern scientists their free miracle #2, “order came from chaos”: 1. The size of the earth and the universe, and 2. The laws governing the universe.
Join me next week as we look at the third free miracle modern sciences asks us to give them, “life coming from non-life.”
For more information on the fine-tuning of the universe, see:
The Reason for God, Timothy Keller
Is Atheism Dead?, Eric Metaxas
In case you’re new here
This blog post is part of a series titled “Why Believe in God? If You Reject God, You’ve Only Done Half the Job.”, introduced on January 5, 2022. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.
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