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!
jay and t hanks just too much GOOD STUFF.!!!.
Awesome!
Sure, it’s a long shot… But obviously it happened or we wouldn’t be here! I wasn’t sure whether to reply to this post or the next one, but this FEELS like a logical flaw somehow.
Things must have happened the way they did to produce the laws of nature that allow us to exist. Since we exist, things must have happened the way science speculates. Since the likelihood of things happening in the specific way they did is astonishingly small, there must have been a Creator to guide it.
In your next post on multiverses, you talk about the probability of rolling a 12 on a pair of dice a million times in a row to demonstrate long odds. Walk me through this one… Roll a pair of dice a million times. I’m a programmer, so I could easily write a program to simulate this for you (though for a multitude of reasons it wouldn’t be truly random, so scrap that and imagine I built a robot to do the work for you instead). What are the odds that you could duplicate that sequence of one million numbers with another million rolls of the dice? Similar?
Now look at the argument. We don’t live in a universe where a million rolls of the dice can produce a million 12s. Even if the dice were rigged, the physical forces exerted on the dice would introduce some degree of randomness before the experiment ended. But we clearly live in a universe where a million rolls of the dice can produce a sequence of numbers with a million entries. And that specific sequence of numbers seems just as unlikely to duplicate.
Now think of those numbers as stepping stones to the “now”. We can’t reproduce it, but obviously it happened. Once you remove the “life as we know it” restriction, anything becomes possible. To explain it another way, if I write a program, it is highly unlikely that anyone else would write the same program line for line. Even with a specific end result in mind, there are innumerable ways to achieve the goal. Each programming language was born of its own “Big Bang”, so to speak, and carries with it a unique set of immutable laws. This universe may appear to be “finely tuned”, but we’re looking at it from the wrong end. We’re sitting atop a stack of dice, marveling at how we wouldn’t be here if just one roll had happened differently or enjoying the output of a working program and discussing how it couldn’t have happened if all the semicolons weren’t in just the right place.
I’m not saying there are possible alternatives in the multiverse. I’ve never liked multiverse theory. I’m saying that it seems odd to think that things could have only happened one way because we happen to live in a universe where (for whatever reason) things happened that way. With different universal laws and constants established at the creation of the universe, we might all be hyper-intelligent shades of the color blue.
The odds only make sense if we’re trying to predict THIS result, and the universal bias of “the way it is” prevents us from seeing any other way it could be.
Stewart,
So, your saying there is a Programmer who wrote a program? Doesn’t the very fact that there is a code, mean there was a programmer? You don’t believe that programs in your line of work just exist on their own, do you?
Stewart,
The Finely Tuned Universe argument doesn’t deal just with “life as we know it” but life. Fail to meet those conditions and you have no planets, or no stars, or even no matter. If the universe expands too slowly, it collapses in on itself and there’s no universe — making life especially difficult. Hence, it’s not just about dice but whether you have to roll at all.
The odds of “life as we know it” are also ridiculously long, but as you note, life could happen some other way — within limits. Although random keystrokes are wildly unlikely to produce a functional program. There may be a huge number of possible programs, but the odds of hitting one is far less than remote.
Monty — I think you missed my point, which was ultimately that trying to determine the nature of the origins of the universe by looking at the end result is futile. We assume that things happened the way they had to happen because we exist and we wouldn’t be here to argue about it if things didn’t happen just the way they needed to happen.
I’m not going to chase the programmer argument, because it’s unrelated to the point. I didn’t create the computer I use to write programs. Even if you could definitively show that “life on Earth” demands a creator, it doesn’t conclusively show that said creator created everything else. Especially if the bits of the Bible that deal with origins are explained from a geocentric perspective…
Jay — When did the laws of physics originate? Did they predate the Big Bang, or were they created by it? This is getting closer to what I was trying to point out (I knew I should have stayed away from a programming example).
I’m not just talking about LIFE as we know it, but a UNIVERSE as we know it. Imagine a completely different universe with completely alien laws of physics with a hyper-intelligent shade of the color blue that answers to the spectralinguistic equivalent of “Jay Guin” arguing that the universe is finely tuned to that particular existence and worshiping the Heavenly Green. The odds don’t matter because we can’t argue with the fact that we exist.
The programming example doesn’t work because it requires a specific creator in the first place. Programs require programmers. Programmers require programming languages. Programming languages require operating systems. Operating systems require computer hardware. All these things must be created, but the creators of one are rarely the creators of another. Humanity hasn’t been around all that long, considering the timespans available. Who’s to say that intelligent life didn’t spontaneously arise elsewhere in the universe and create us? “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” after all…
Don’t get me wrong — I believe in a God that is alive and active in our lives — but I don’t see God in the Big Bang. If everything COULD have arisen by chance, there is nothing inherent in the numbers game to conclusively demonstrate that it DIDN’T.
Or IS there? (dun dun dunnnnnn…)
Stewart,
If one believes in the God of the Bible, the laws of physics originated whenever God decided on them, no later than the beginning of creation.
If one believes in the Big Bang, sometime before the Big Bang.
(In both cases, the references to time outside the created universe are for lack of a better word (or concept) because time is a part of the created universe. God is outside of created time but may experience time in some other sense.)
The two cases are not inherently contradictory. In fact, both stipulate an origin outside of the created universe.
I’ve not delved into DNA and information theory, but you put your finger on the problem with spontaneously created DNA. DNA is very much a program. The cell is the computer/operating system. Enzymes in the cells serve as the programming language. Neither work at all without the other, so where did the vast amount of information in DNA come from for the first cell? It’s like picking up a CD filled with a complex program and concluding that it was created by random natural processes.
PS — the Big Bang theorists assume that some of the laws of physics were created by random processes in the Big Bang. These are the numbers that the Fine-Tuned Universe argument deals with. However, even then, it’s assumed that quantum mechanics allowed the spontaneous formation of the universe — so that certain quantum mechanics laws predate the Big Bang — and so exist outside the created universe.
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