Seeking Proof Finding Grace

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In a slight change of plans for the month of December, we are going to spend the next month looking at God’s great love for us through the Christmas story.  This week we will look at what makes the Christmas story and Christianity so different from anything else.

“It might be suggested, in a somewhat violent image, that nothing had happened in that fold or crack in the great grey hills except that the whole universe had been turned inside out.  I mean that all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were now turned inward to the smallest…It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast.  It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves…Individuals became important, in a sense in which no instruments can be important.”  Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton, 1925, Page 162-163 

“But supposing God became a man – suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person – then that person could help us.  He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God.  You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man.”  Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, 1942, Pg 58

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God loves you so much.  This podcast we just pause the journey for a moment for all of us to say thanks!

Psalm 136, “1 Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!  For His mercy endures forever…4 To Him who alone does great wonders, for His mercy endures forever; 5 To Him who by wisdom made the heavens, for His mercy endures forever…”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be-- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks--for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country...

https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-collections/article/thanksgiving-proclamation-of-1789/

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On this episode we wrap up our journey and determine the best answer for how the universe could be so finely tuned for life.  God’s intimate plan for you is on display.  He loves you!

“The [anthropic-design argument] and what it points to is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled.  To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare because it might have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years.  So it might.  But the sight of scientific atheists clutching at such desperate straws has put new spring in the step of theists.”  Longley, C. (1989). Focusing on Theism. London Times, 10.

“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.  The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put the conclusion almost beyond question.”  Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, 1982

“If all the evidence in the universe turned in favor of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind.  As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favors evolution.  It is for this reason and this reason alone that I argue for evolution with a passion that matches the passion of those who argue against it.  My passion is based on evidence.  Theirs, flying in the face of evidence as it does, is truly fundamentalist.”  Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006

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This week we look at a practical example of a finely tuned event from a Discover Channel show featuring Stephen Hawking, and perhaps expand on it just a bit.  Don't ever forget God's great love for you!

Discovery Channel, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking:
The Story of Everything, 2011

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This week we take a look to see if the multiverse can save naturalism from the impossible mathematical problem posed by fine tuning in the universe.  Fine tuning is another fingerprint of a Creator who loves you!

Problems with the multiverse:

1.      Where did the universal generator come from

2.      Fine tuning of the universal generator to get around fine tuning?

3.      Energy to feed the universal generator 

4.      The universal generator can’t be past eternal

5.      The lottery problem of actually getting an infinite number of different universes rather than an infinite number of universes where the same characteristics are repeated

“The physical constants, things like the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the strong and weak force things, physicists agree, most physicists agree, that if you change any of those constants by even a very, very small amount, than we don’t come into existence.  The universe doesn’t come into existence.  They have to be like that in order for galaxies to form, for stars to form, for chemistry to form actually.  And then for the prerequisite for life to evolve, need that as well.  So that is the nearest approach to a good argument.”  Richard Dawkins, Fine-tuning is a good argument for God - Richard Dawkins - YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWOkC7krfQ

“The [anthropic-design argument] and what it points to is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled.  To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare because it might have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years.  So it might.  But the sight of scientific atheists clutching at such desperate straws has put new spring in the step of theists.”  Longley, C. (1989). Focusing on Theism. London Times, 10.

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On this episode we look at the scope of the problem that Fine Tuning poses to naturalistic theory.  Do we see the Creator’s fingerprint clearly showing?  Don’t forget God loves you!

Gonzales, G., & Richards, J. W. (2004). The Privileged Planet. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing

“Beginning in the 1960’s, physicists unveiled a universe apparently fine- tuned for the possibility of human life.  They discovered that the existence of life in the universe depends upon a highly improbable but precise balance of physical factors.  The constants of physics, the initial conditions of the universe, and many other of its features appear delicately balanced to allow for the possibility of life.  Even very slight alterations in the values of many factors, such as the expansion rate of the universe, the strength of gravitational or electromagnetic attraction, or the value of Planck’s constant, would render life impossible.  Physicists now refer to these factors as “anthropic coincidences” (because they make life possible for man) and to the fortunate convergence of all these coincidences as the “fine tuning of the universe”.  Given the improbability of the precise ensemble of values represented by these constants, and their specificity relative to the requirements of a life-sustaining universe, many physicists have noted that the fine tuning strongly suggests design by a preexistent intelligence.”  Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe – Behe, Dembski & Meyer

"Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, that even now, 10 thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million, million, the universe would have collapsed before it ever reached its present size."  (Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, 1988)  

Partial Fine Tuning List:

1.      Hoyle’s discovery of carbon production

2.      Initial phase-space volume of the universe – 10,000,000,000^123

3.      Expansion rate of the universe – 10^16

4.      Mass of quarks – 10^21

5.      Gravity 10^35

6.      Cosmological constant 10^90

7.      Universal density 

8.      Mass of neutrinos

9.      Electromagnetic force

10.   Strong nuclear force – 200^38

“If we modify the value of one of the fundamental constants, something invariably goes wrong, leading to a universe that is inhospitable to life as we know it.  When we adjust a second constant in an attempt to fix the problem(s), the result, generally, is to create three new problems for every one that we “solve”.  The conditions in our universe really do seem to be uniquely suitable for life forms like ourselves, and perhaps even for any life form of organic chemistry.”  J Gribbon and M. Rees, Cosmic Coincidences (New York: Bantam Books, 1989)

Psalm 136:4-5 NKJV

[4] To Him who alone does great wonders, For His mercy endures forever; [5] To Him who by wisdom made the heavens, For His mercy endures forever;

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This week we pause for a moment and ask the question, when does the evidence become so great that we take a step back and decide whether or not we need to change directions?  Along the way we look at Roger Penrose's discovery of the original phase-space volume that required fine tuning to the level of one part in 10,000,000,000^123.  That's ten billion to the 123 power.  Should something that big be enough to perhaps give us pause that more than chance is at work here?

Is God’s love for us starting to come into view.

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This week we move on from the Cosmological Argument to the Teleological Argument, or the Fine Tuning Argument.  In the first part of this episode we take a look at how this argument originated with Fred Hoyle’s discovery of where the carbon came from in the universe.  By the way, God loves you!

Strobel, L. (2004). The Case for a Creator. Zondervan

Craig, W. L. (2008). Reasonable Faith. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway.

Meyer, S. (2021), The Return of the God Hypothesis. HarperCollins

Lewis, G. F., & Barnes, L. A. (2016). A Fortunate Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“The anthropic answer, in its most general form, is that we could only be discussing the question in the kind of universe that was capable producing us.”  Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2008

“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.  DNA neither knows, nor cares.  DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” (Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1994)  

“The fine-tuning of the Universe for life is the realization that if the laws of physics were different, even just by a little bit, life would not exist.”  Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016

“What if?  What if the laws of physics were different?  What if the building blocks, atoms and molecules, had different masses…What if we messed with the stage, playing around with the very space and time underlying the cosmos?  What would change in the Universe? And what would it mean for life?”  Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016

“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.  The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put the conclusion almost beyond question.”  Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, 1982

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On this week’s episode we look at what the Anthropic Principle does and does not tell us.  Can it really explain how we got here, or just that we are here?  Don’t ever forget how much God loves you!

“The anthropic answer, in its most general form, is that we could only be discussing the question in the kind of universe that was capable producing us.  Our existence therefore determines that the fundamental constants of physics had to be in their respective Goldilocks zones.”  Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press

“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified.  For example, my collegue, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life.  The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability.”  Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press

“One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines.  There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria, but only a fraction of these life forms ever made it across the gap to something like a eukaryotic cell.  And of these, a yet smaller fraction managed to cross the later Rubicon to consciousness.  If both of these are one-off events, we are not dealing with a ubiquitous and all-pervading process, as we are with ordinary, run-of-the-mill biological adaptation.  The anthropic principle states that, since we are alive, eucaryotic and conscious, our planet has to be one of the intensely rare planets that has bridged all three gaps.”  Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press

“Once the initial stroke of luck has been granted – and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us – natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck.”  Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press

“As ever, the thiest’s answer is deeply unsatisfying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained…A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself, and that’s the very improbable indeed.  This is exactly the premise of the whole discussion we are having.  It follows that the theist’s answer has utterly failed to make any headway towards solving the problem at hand.  I see no alternative but to dismiss it, while at the same time marveling at the number of people who can’t see the problem and seem genuinely satisfied by the Divine Knob-Twiddler argument.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press

 “…many people have not had their consciousness raised, as biologists have, by natural selection and its power to tame improbability…Biologists, with their raised consciousness of the power of natural selection to explain the rise of improbable things, are unlikely to be satisfied with any theory that evades the problem of improbability altogether…Let’s turn, then, to the anthropic alternative.”  Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press

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After wrapping up our discussion on how the universe came into existence, this week we take a step back and pause before the next leg of our journey; to examine the universe around us.