Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Responding To The Fine-Tuning

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.



[1]Sam Harris, The End of Faith, Norton, New York, 2004, page 15
[2]Psalm 19: 1-2 ESV
[3]Psalm 8:3 ESV
[4]Robin M. Canup, “Lunar Conspiracies.” Nature 504 (Dec. 5, 2013), 27.
[5]Tim Elliot, “A Chip Off the Old Block.” Nature 504 (Dec. 5, 2013), 90

Monday, July 15, 2019

Amazing Truths - How Science and the Bible Agree by Dr. Michael Guillen

Dr. Michael Guillen describes his 2015 book Amazing Truths: “I elaborate on ten objective truths that I consider amazing because of what they tell us about life, the world, and the Creator.  And because – wonder of wonders – science and the Bible agree on all ten being absolutely, positively, demonstrably true.”[1]

According to Dr. Guillen, the 10 objective truths are:
1.    Objective Truth
·     Science has objective truth in the form of laws, constants, and theories
·     Christianity is unique among religions in its strong defense of objective truth
·     “If we don’t respect it, objective truth will hurt us”[2]
·     “…objective truth will ultimately vindicate us and set us free…”[3]
2.    Time is Linear
·     “Science and the Bible offer us a worldview unlike the East’s hamster wheel of life. According to science and the Bible, time, and therefore life, advances, advances in a straight line from the past, through the present, and onward to the future.”[4]
·     “Long before anyone else, including scientists, Christians introduced the world to the idea that time advances in a straight, orderly fashion toward a knowable end.”[5]
·     Augustine of Hippo got time correct: 1. Time has an existence independent of any natural system of time-keeping, 2. Time hasn’t always existed, 3. Time is smooth and continuous.[6]
3.    An Entity Can Have Contradictory Natures
·      I wrote a previous blog about this:  Go hereor here.
4.    Significant Parts of Reality Are Hidden From Us
·     “Everything we call scientific knowledge is based on but a pittance of what there is to know about our world.  Ninety-five percentof it is hidden from us.”[7]
·     We obviously know very little about God and the afterlife.
5.    Light is Unearthly
·     “…science and the Bible agree that light belongs to an altogether unique category of reality. It is exceedingly exotic and operates on a privileged plane of existence that we ourselves can never experience – at least not in this life.”[8]
·     Both God and light operate outside of time, but can interact with objects that are within time.
6.    The Universe Was Created Ex Nihilo
·      I wrote a previous blog about this:  Go hereor here.
7.    Truth Is Bigger Than Proof
·     Both science and Christianity cannot “prove” things to 100% confidence.
8.    Cause And Effect Can Be Disproportional
·     Chaos makes our world precious – it is the crazy, unpredictable stuff that both science and the Bible agree is responsible for life’s infinite possibilities.[9]
9.    Instantaneous Communication Is Possible
·     Science: quantum entanglement & Bell’s Theorem
·     Bible:  communication with God
10.  Humans Are Unique
·     “To our knowledge, no other creature on the planet senses the existence of an invisible realm – daily takes into account not just the here-and-now but the hereafter. No other creature believes in a Creator and worships him – builds magnificent cathedrals, composes brilliant symphonies, or founds universities and hospitals in his name.”[10]



[1]Dr. Michael Guillen, Amazing Truths - How Science and the Bible Agree, Zondervan, 2015, page 12
[2]Ibid, page 22
[3]Ibid, page 22
[4]Ibid, page 26
[5]Ibid, page 27
[6]Ibid, page 33
[7]Ibid, page 60
[8]Ibid, page 71
[9]Ibid, page 134
[10]Ibid, page 163

Friday, July 12, 2019

Origin of Life Research Points To A Creator

“The Cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be.” If you are between 35 and 55 years of age you probably remember that quote from Carl Sagan very well and most likely spent much of high school science class watching his video series Cosmos. Implicit in that statement is the assumption of materialism – the belief that matter is all that exists.  This same philosophy is echoed by current day scientists Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Richard Dawkins.  Is there a way to test this assumption?  Is the data that nature is revealing to us indicating that matter is all there is, or is the data trending in the direction of much more?

If matter is all that exists, then as we do more science, we should be more and more convinced that we can describe everything in terms of blind forces and random motions of atoms. But if materialism is not true, and instead there is an intelligence that exists that created and designed the universe, then the data we find as we learn more about the universe should increase in support of a super intelligent mind who planned and created the universe for us.

Because of evolution, biology is probably the most common branch of science used to show that God does not exist. Richard Dawkins is famously quoted as sayingthat “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Every day we make discoveries that add to humanities knowledge and understanding of the origin of life; do these discoveries support materialism or as we learn more biology and biochemistry does what we find make belief in a creator more reasonable?

If life appeared through a purely materialistic process, there should be evidence for a prebiotic chemical soup on the early earth; we should find evidence in the oldest rock formations of some mixture of chemicals that could organize into the first life. We do not find any evidence at all to support this; instead, what we do find is strong evidence that life is designed and created. Measurements of the carbon-13 to carbon-12 ratios in the earliest rock formations show that no concentration of pre-biotic molecules existed; no known abiotic process can explain the ratio that is measured while the number is easily explained as coming from already existing life. Measurements of the nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 ratio, along with the finding that the concentration of ammonia on early earth is inadequate to sustain prebiotic chemical pathways, confirm that no primordial soup ever existed.[1]

Earth’s early atmosphere was also neutral to mildly oxidizing from the beginning, therefore it could not have sustained the production of prebiotic molecules which could only be produced in a reducing atmosphere. The presence of oxygen shuts down prebiotic chemistry pathways, but even if there was no oxygen, there still would be no way for prebiotic molecules to persist because the lack of ozone would allow ultraviolet light to break apart any molecules that happened to form.  Even if we assume the pre-biotic chemicals existed, the favorite locations for life to have begun on earth are not viable. Volcanoes produce oxidizing gases, so they are not an option as locations for prebiotic molecules to form and the temperature of underwater vents would frustrate any prebiotic synthesis. Even the purest water today has a higher concentration of amino acids (by a factor of 100 million!) then what could have possibly been delivered from space into Earth’s oceans.[2]Steven Benner, University of Florida Professor and Founder of the  Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, summarized all this evidence at the 2017 International Society for Study of the Origin of Life, “The building blocks of the building block molecules of life are either missing on the early earth or they existed at abundance levels far too dilute to be of any use.”

The early appearance of biochemically and metabolically complex life provides evidence for a designer; if God created life, then we would expect it to show up as early as it could and we would expect it to appear without going through a gradual, step by step process. Cyanobacteria, as well as complex ecosystems with all types of bacteria were present 3.5 billion years ago; just 350 million years after the oceans became established. Prokaryotic microorganisms were firmly entrenched on Earth at 3.7 billion years ago and quite possibly prior to 3.8 billion years ago. We have geochemical and isotopic evidence for abundant life existing on Earth 3.83 billion years ago.[3]Life appeared in a geologic instant on earth with no evidence for a prebiotic concentration of the chemicals necessary for life. Niles Eldredge, an evolution specialist, is said to have commented that life seems to be intrinsic to Earth.

The more origin of life research we do, the harder it becomes to explain life’s origins through a purely materialistic process.  Life appearing on earth in a fairly advanced state as early as physically possible is solid evidence for a creator. The extreme variability of the sun's luminosity and the intensity of the sun’s ionizing radiation would not have allowed life to exist prior to 3.9 billion years ago and up until about 3.85 billion years ago, Earth suffered dozens of sterilization events from meteorites bombarding the planet, known as the late heavy bombardment. Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee comment in their book Rare Earth,“Life appeared simultaneously with the cessation of the late heavy bombardment.” In addition, during the 50 million years following the bombardment, the surface temp of earth was 158-194OC!  Most proteins denature well below this and all four of the RNA nucleotide building blocks will degrade at these temperatures!  According to James Tour, a synthetic organic chemist who specializes in nanotechnology, “Every day it gets harder to have the origin of life. The origin of life becomes more and more complex every day.” No wonder Nobel prize winner Francis Crick, along with origin of life chemist Leslie Orgel, proposed that life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

There was no pre-biotic mixture of chemicals and fairly complex life appeared on earth as early as physically possible.  But there is more evidence from organic chemistry that makes a naturalistic origin of life almost impossible.  If you have ever taken an organic chemistry lab, you know how difficult it is to do organic synthesis – even in a pristine laboratory environment. The large, very specific, complex organic molecules necessary for life could not have been produced on the early earth for several reasons.  First of all, organic synthesis reactions don’t just stop on their own!  For most large molecules, reactions, such as polymerization, will continue to occur if the products are not removed and separated from the starting materials. Second, since most organic compounds required for life are kinetic products, they must be stored in a freezer under inert conditions to keep them from decomposing.  This also means that the molecules required for life cannot sit around and wait for other compounds to be made!  For example, if a needed carbohydrate did happen to be produced, the odds are that it would undergo caramelization before it could come into contact with another chemical needed for life. Third, there are more ways than you can count that most organic molecules can hook together and it takes very specific controlled conditions to get the specific molecule you want.  From the trillions of ways that carbohydrates can connect, only one works when dealing with a certain life structure or process; there is no way nature can purify a large mixture of chemicals to get the specific one that is needed. Conditions such as pH, temperature, and the type of solvent you are working in all need to be carefully controlled to guarantee the correct arrangement of atoms and functional groups on the very specific needed compound.

The organic synthesis reactions required for life to begin all require a researcher to control some aspect of the experiment to get the needed result. Evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris has pointed out, “Many of the experiments designed to explain one or other step in origin of life are either of tenuous relevance to any believable prebiotic setting or involve an experimental rig in which the hand of the researcher becomes for all intents and purposes the hand of God.”[4]An intelligence is necessary every time we duplicate origin of life chemistry; materialism predicts that these reactions should occur on their own.  The more origin of life research we do, the more evidence we get for a creator.

Evidence for biological systems being designed by a mind and not occurring as a product of a purely materialistic process include:
1.    The lack of a prebiotic chemical soup on the early earth.
2.    The fact that life appeared on earth at the very instant it was first possible.
3.    The fact that the organic synthesis reactions needed to make the specific organic molecules needed for life could not have happened under the conditions of early earth.
4.    The fact that we can’t create the materials necessary for life without using our own intelligence.  
From this evidence, you can reasonably conclude that a mind, which we can call God, created life on this planet.



[1]Fazale Rana & Hugh Ross, Origins of Life, Reasons to Believe, 2014

[2]ibid
[3]ibid
[4]Fazale Rana, Creating Life In The Lab, Baker Books, 2011, page 195