Apologetics: The Bible and Science, Part 8 (the Finely Tuned Universe)

This is an argument that began from within the scientific community. The gist of it is that the universe appears to have been designed for life because of the extraordinarily precise nature of certain physical constants.

Most of physics is mathematics, and countless equations are derived from other equations. It’s like proofs in geometry. Therefore, physicists intuitively expected to find reasons that certain constants (as opposed to variables) in the equations of physics are rooted in some other, more fundamental numbers or equations. And certainly many are.

But as physics has inquired deeper and deeper into the fundamental processes of the universe,  it’s been discovered that many constants have no origin within this universe. Just like axioms in mathematics, they are just true because they are true — and so far as the mathematics of physics is concerned, they could be any number at all because they are not based on anything else.

As a result, cosmologists began to speculate that these constants were created at random in the Big Bang — these are just the numbers that the randomness of the quantum mechanics of creation created. And then someone noticed how extremely unlikely it is that a random process would generate these very numbers — or, for that matter, any numbers that would allow life to exist in the universe.

According to the Center for Intelligent Design (a convenient source; the numbers aren’t controversial among cosmologists),

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Unevenness in the expanding energy

As the primordial universe grew, there needed to be a very slight unevenness in the expanding energy. If the energy had been entirely evenly distributed then there would be no coalescence of matter into galaxies; instead there would have been a homogenous and featureless universe. As a matter of fact the universe is fairly smooth, with very similar conditions and distributions of galaxies in every direction. Some of this smoothness is thought to be due to a short burst of what cosmologists call inflation, very close to the beginning. Inflation is when, after a split second, the universe is said to have suddenly jumped in size by an enormous factor of about 10²⁵ (ten trillion trillion), after which it resumed its normal expansion rate. This inflation is thought to have stretched the initial irregularities away rather like an inflating balloon loses its wrinkles. However, there was still enough irregularity to allow for clumping into galaxies. The amplitude of these non-uniformities is described by a simple number, Q, which is the energy difference between the peaks and troughs in the density, expressed as a fraction of the total energy of the initial universe. Computer models show that Q had to be very close to 0.00001 in order for any galaxies to form. If it was minutely higher then no structures would have formed. If it was minutely lower then all matter would have collapsed into huge black holes. In other words Q had to be just right.

Matter vs. Anti-matter

At the beginning of the universe there was matter and anti-matter. If the amounts of each had been exactly the same then they would have cancelled each other out, leaving just energy in the form of photons. The Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov showed that matter and anti-matter are not precise mirror images of each other. There is a very slight asymmetry which favours matter over anti-matter. This difference is absolutely crucial and is only about one part in a billion. We, and all the rest of matter in the universe, only exist because of this one in a billion difference. As Martin Rees, former Astronomer Royal, writes in his book ‘Our Cosmic Habitat’, referring to this fact, “we owe our existence to a difference in the ninth decimal place.”²

Expansion Energy vs. Gravity

It was crucial for the expansion of the universe at the very first second of the big bang that the expansion energy (or impetus) was finely balanced with the gravitational force, which was pulling it all back together. If the expansion energy had been too big then galaxies and stars would never have been able to pull themselves together with gravity. If the expansion energy had been too small then there would have been a premature ‘big crunch’ as the universe imploded into itself. It has been mathematically calculated that, back at one second, the universe’s kinetic (expansion) energy and gravitational energies must have differed by less than one in 10¹⁵(one part in a million billion). If it was any different, in either direction, then there would be no galaxies, no stars, and no earth.

Ratio of nuclear forces

Physicists tell us that if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic force had differed by 1 part in 10¹⁶, no stars would have formed.

Ratio of electromagnetic and gravitational forces

Also, the ratio of the electromagnetic force constant to the gravitational force constant must be precisely balanced. If you increase it by only 1 part in 10⁴⁰ then only small stars will form. Decrease it by the same amount and only large stars will form. To have life there must be both large stars (to produce the elements) and small stars to burn long enough to sustain a planet with life.

To understand something of the kind of accuracy to achieve a 1 in 10⁴⁰ chance of a certain state occurring it is helpful to illustrate this in various ways. Paul Davies writes that it is the kind of accuracy a marksman would need to hit a coin at the far side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away.³ Astrophysicist Hugh Ross gives another illustration:⁴ cover America with coins in a column reaching to the moon (236,000 miles away), then do the same for a billion other continents of the same size. Paint one coin red and put it somewhere in one of the billion piles. Blindfold someone and ask them to pick it out. The odds are about 1 in 10⁴⁰ that they will.

The odds of getting a low entropy start

Eclipsing even this, eminent mathematician Roger Penrose writes about the way in which the universe had to start with low entropy to have galaxies, stars and life. To have this state, and the resultant second law of thermodynamics, the ‘Creator’ had to aim for what is called a certain volume of ‘phase space’ This aim would have to have been accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power 10¹²³. This is a number so large that the zeros far exceed the number of particles in the universe.⁵ While we may not all understand what ‘phase space’ is, we can grasp the enormity of what he is saying here. The universe, to have a second law of thermodynamics and thus the possibility of sentient beings like ourselves, required extraordinarily special conditions at the big bang; special because the conditions, out of the endlessly other possible ones, simply had to be as they were.

Resonance energy of carbon

We can go on giving even more examples of how the universe, our solar system and our planet seem honed to the most precise states possible so that conditions exist for life to occur, and the last one I will mention is about carbon. We, and the rest of life, are made of carbon-based chemistry. The carbon that is in you and me was manufactured in some star prior to the formation of the solar system. We are literally made of star dust. Each carbon nucleus (six protons and six neutrons) is made from three nuclei of helium within stars. Astrophysicists Hoyle and Salpeter worked out that this process of forming carbon works only because of a strange feature: a mode of vibration or resonance with a very specific energy. If this was changed by more than 1% either way then there would be no carbon to make life. Hoyle confessed that it looked as if a ‘super intellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology’ and that ‘there were no blind forces in nature worth talking about’.⁶

The physicist Freeman Dyson wrote: “I do not feel like an alien in this universe, the more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.”⁷ Is this just make-believe or is there really evidence here for a Creator? I will now look at some of the common objections to the idea of a designer of the universe.

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As much as the Young Earth Creationists may want to dismiss the Big Bang Theory as ungodly, it’s looking like a really powerful argument for God. There are counter-arguments made, of course (considered in the next post). But what a strong position for those who believe in God this is!