A person can be a God-fearing Christian on Sunday and a working scientist come Monday morning, without ever having to account for the partition that seems to have erected itself in his head while he slept.[1]
This quote described me perfectly for most of my life. My great-grandfather started the first Lutheran church in the town where I grew up and my grandmother made sure that we all grew up going to church. I never doubted the truth of Christianity, even when I was a science major in college and later when I taught science. I just did as Sam Harris said, “created a partition in my head.”
I really didn’t see a problem with this division; I just accepted the prevailing cultural mindset that Christianity and science are in conflict. But the Bible clearly proclaims that we can trust nature to teach us about God. We are told to do science in order to learn about God’s character and attributes! If science conflicts with what the Bible teaches, why are we told to look at nature and then trust what we find?
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.[2]
I didn’t realize the problem I had until around 15 years ago when I began teaching a canned apologetics program in a Sunday School class and discovered how inadequate the science portion of the class was. I came to the realization that if God was responsible for both the Bible and the universe then what we discover in nature should agree with what the Bible teaches! There should be no need for a “partition”, and we should be able to do science unafraid that anything we discover will conflict with scripture. So why does the Bible tell us to do science?
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him.[3]
One of the reasons is so we can know how much God cares for us! Atheists like Richard Dawkins try to tell us that we have no purpose, and that there is no meaning. Bill Nye says the same thing a little less intelligently when he says that we are just a speck on a speck on a speck and we suck. Contrary to what Dawkins and Nye try to tell us, if we do science, we will uncover purpose and meaning when we discover how much care God has taken just so we can exist.
I think it is safe to assume that everyone desires purpose and meaning in their lives.
We all want to be loved, we all want to be affirmed, we all want someone to care for us. In our society today, most people seek justice. We can know all of this by doing science! As we do more science, the evidence will increase in support of a super intelligent mind that took exceptional care to plan and create this universe for us. I remember a Keith Green song from the 70’s that began with Keith talking about how amazing heaven will be because Jesus has spent 2000 years preparing it for us. Science shows us that God has spent the entire history of the universe preparing for us to be here right now! Water and carbon provide us with an excellent example of this preparation.
I am sure all of you know that water is necessary for life. It is the only substance that has these five life-essential properties: it’s a liquid under the conditions on earth, it is extremely polar for its size, its solid is less dense than its liquid, it dissolves a vast array of other substances, it has a high specific heat capacity. The only reason water has these properties is because of the physical laws - mainly the laws of quantum mechanics - that were set up at the very beginning of the universe.
You probably also know that carbon is necessary for life. It is the only element that can make large, complex, information-rich molecules and still remain what’s called “meta-stable” – which means that these large complex molecules are still able to undergo reactions. Carbon also “coincidently” reacts the best under the same set of conditions that will make water a liquid!
Both carbon’s chemistry and water’s properties depend on the exact right set of physical laws, again set at the very beginning of the universe. If the laws of quantum mechanics would have been set differently, then carbon and water wouldn’t have the perfect properties for life; which means that most likely we wouldn’t be here! But there is another layer to this fine-tuning of carbon and water; that they even exist at all is a “miracle.”
For carbon and water to even exist, all six of the following physical laws, forces, and constants had to be perfectly fine tuned at the start of the universe: cosmic mass density, cosmological constant, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force, laws of quantum mechanics. God has been planning for our existence for 13.8 billion years! So, both the properties and the existence of carbon and water have to be exquisitely fine-tuned; but there is still another layer of fine-tuning with carbon and water.
You can’t just have any amount of carbon and water on a planet for life to exist. Even too much carbon and too much water is bad for life. Getting the perfect amounts of carbon and wateron earth so that we can be here right now took a perfectly designed moon formation event.
The moon formed when another planet collided with earth 4.5 billion years ago. This collision left us with the perfect moon and earth; both with the exact conditions for advanced life to exist. It also set the stage for the perfect amount of carbon and the perfect amount of water to remain on the earth. Not only did the collision have to take place at the exact right angle and speed, but prior to the collision there had to be the perfect amount of water already on the earth! Computer models show that the oceans had to be the exact right depth for the collision to result in the perfect conditions for life.[4]
“the sequence of conditions that currently seems necessary in these revised versions of lunar formation have led to philosophical disquiet.”[5]
Think about all the “coincidences” that had to take place just to get the right amount of carbon and water on earth so that we could exist, and you can understand why this might create some “philosophical disquiet.” We needed the perfect set of initial conditions at the start of the universe for carbon and water to even exist. We needed the perfect set of physical laws for carbon and water to have perfect set of life-permitting properties and life-permitting chemistry. We needed the perfect moon forming collision to get the right amount of carbon and water on the earth. We needed the perfect amount of water on the earth prior to the collision for the results to be what we needed for us to be able to exist here, right now. God has been working to prepare the earth for us for the entire history of the universe, and carbon and water are only two of the characteristics needed for us to exist here on earth.
Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe has kept track of the number of characteristics of the universe that need to be fine-tuned for advanced life to exist. The number of has gone from only two in 1961 to over 180 today. These numbers show that as we do more science, we get increasing evidence of how fine-tuned the initial conditions of the universe, the laws of nature and the physical constants are just for us to exist. The more we study nature, the more we see evidence of God’s handiwork!
We also see fine-tuning evidence increasing at the scale of our galaxy; the Milky Way is the perfect spiral galaxy. We see fine-tuning at the level of our solar system; we have the perfect G-type main sequence star as our sun, and we have the perfect planetary neighbors. And, as with carbon and water, we see fine-tuning on our planet. According to Dr. Ross, the number of fine-tuned characteristics of our galaxy, solar system, and planet needed for advanced life has grown from three in the 1960’s to over 1000 today. God has not only been working at every time since the beginning of the universe, but also at every location!
Every field of science - astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology – is increasingly showing us how amazing our existence is! Just to get the correct amount of carbon and water on earth took several amazing, intertwined “coincidences.” The fact that there are now over 1000 “fortunate accidents” that make our existence possible provides exceptional evidence for a designer who planned the whole thing for our benefit.
The fine-tuning of the universe is so well established that the question is not if the universe is fine-tuned, but instead has become who or what is responsible for the fine tuning. Even atheist scientists see the design when they look at nature. Paul Davies, physicist at Arizona State University, asks the question, “Why Is The Universe Just Right For Life?” Most scientists recognize that the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned for life to exist, almost like the universe knew we were coming! But some scientists take this one step further and recognize that an intelligence had to be responsible.
A few theories have been proposed by actual, serious, working physicists which show a recognition that a mind is required to explain the fine-tuning. One involves time travel: “Humans evolve to be God-like beings and then reach back in time and create the universe for themselves.” A second proposal uses the weirdness of quantum mechanics: “The universe engineers its own awareness through quantum backward causation.” A third explanation that is becoming more and more popular is that we are living in a simulation of a super-intelligent race. These proposals show how unreasonable a purely materialistic explanation is for the extreme fine-tuning needed for life to exist on earth.
To decide which intelligence is responsible, we will need to look at all the other evidence available to us. If a mind has designed the universe for us, it is reasonable to conclude this mind has left us hints about who they are! If we take into account all the other evidence we have from history, archaeology, and from the biblical writings, it becomes clear that the designer has indeed left clues about who they are and this same intelligence has actually told us to look at nature to discover their attributes and character! The intelligence that we detect when we are doing science is the God of the Bible.
The Bible tells us to look at creation for evidence that God cares for us. Not only do we find it, but that evidence grows every day. Science shows us that we must be incredibly significant and loved for God to take such extreme care since the very beginning of the universe to make sure we exist. God has been working at every time and at every location so that each one of uscan be here right now. It is easy to see yourself as having purpose and meaning if the creator of the universe cares that much for you. The Bible also tells us that God, the creator, has provided a solution to evil and suffering through Jesus, giving us ultimate justice. Most importantly, Jesus has also provided a way for us – including you - to have a relationship with God, who wants you to have this relationship with him for eternity.
