Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

wsj.com/ ^ | Eric Metaxas

[RoosterRedux]

The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.

Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Really?

Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

[Gideon7]

Modern cosmology during the past decades has made huge advances, and all of it is pointing in the direction that was definitely designed, that there is a Creator of our universe.

1. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is a dead giveaway. The UDF is impossible without a super-finely tuned matter density gradient and alpha opacity function that is absolutely perfect. The UDF does not require the Anthropic Principle. (AP is the last, desperate, refuge of the cornered atheist.) The UDF is basically God showing off. I think He likes to do that a lot.

2. We are living in a universe created by Him. Our universe has basic minimal rules and structure (the universe is a closed simulation, like a video game). Ask a physicist how elegant and minimalist it all is. Gravity is the ugly duckling of the four forces, seemingly a standalone force, with weird behavior at cosmological distances. I believe that was needed to make it all work. (Dark matter is a design hack.) Meanwhile, dark energy gives us the Big Rip, which is a totally cool way to end the story. It will be visible. You will literally see the galaxies dissolving one by one, then the stars, then the planets, then the Earth itself. Again this is God showing off. (See a pattern?)

3. Item 2 implies that a higher level of reality exists somewhere (running the video game). Call this Heaven, or whatever.

4. Item 3 implies there is no way for you to reach Heaven on your own. It would be like a video game character trying to step out of the screen. (Secular Humanists and Gene Roddenberry think this way.)

5. Item 4 implies you must be pulled up. No way to get there on your own. Instead, God shoved His own hand inside the screen, over 2000 years ago, to grab us and pull us up. Why? Dunno. Grace. (Aside: The difference between Christianity and Buddhism is that I think God wants friends to chat with. The Buddhist wants to merge with the Godhead and lose self-identity.)

6. I strongly suspect there is a chain of these higher realities, possibly transfinite. God lives up at the top, the apex of this infinite ladder. (The Continuum Hypothesis is true.) Why? Because the math is elegant, and it is the only way for Georg Cantor to defeat Kurt Goedel. But it requires CH for it to work. The atheist denies CH. That is an unsupported and unprovable assumption. (It is really fascinating how the atheist/deist divide strongly correlates to each mathematician's position on CH. See the Wikipedia article.)

7. God is definitely watching you. Why? The video game analogy. But there is an even better way to prove it: Observation is the key to Quantum Mechanics. We are living inside a closed QM system with a collapsible wave function. So who collapsed it? Answer: Whoever observed us from outside the box. So, like Schroedinger's cat, we are alive and not dead. We are literally alive because of Him. (That's a pun.) Yeah, I'm oversimplifying a bit. Observation is the key to everything. I say 'I think, therefore I am,' and since I am aware of myself right at this moment, therefore somebody must be observing me doing it. QED.

8. God wants a relationship with you. Why? Because you are hardwired for it. You feel it. You are an instinctive seeker. No other animal thinks this way.

That's basically it.

You can work out the rest for yourself. God gave you eyes and a brain. It's all obvious. You can work out all the deep philosophical questions of life from the above: the question of free will, the two-way communication backchannel called prayer, the problem of evil, how salvation really works, pretty much everything.

You need to get at least items 1-5 under your belt first. Otherwise you will never get anywhere, and you are toast.

And then after you got all that nailed down, pick up an NIV Bible and start with the Gospel of John. He really gets it, the gestalt, the head space, the intuition, the heart, better than anybody. Love is the key. Our minds cannot grasp the infinite so He had to downsize it to something finite that we could understand. Basically, Christ is a hack to make it all work, the same way that dark matter is a hack. (I use the word 'hack' in the following sense: Not an error or a mistake, but a necessary special modification to make it all work. For example, the kludgy van der Waals force is a hack to make proteins fold right and ice float in water, so that Earth's oceans and ocean-under-ice-worlds like Europa can support life. I'll explain that later sometime.)

And there it is.

How to start: To start your seeker journey at step 1, go see the following YouTube video, the most important video ever created by mankind: The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D by Deep Astronomy. Watch this video carefully. Or just look out your window.

The end of the story is called the Big Rip. See New Estimates May Adjust Universe's Date for "Big Rip" Fate by slatester, and Dark Energy Are We Alone? by ScienceChannel.

It's all pretty simply, really.

[G Larry]

>http://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568<

or the first entry on this page:

>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Science+Increasingly+Makes+the+Case+for+God&gbv=2&oq=Science+Increasingly+Makes+the+Case+for+God&gs_l=heirloom-hp.3..0i3.2086.2086.0.3784.1.1.0.0.0.0.302.302.3-1.1.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..0.1.301.lmZsFSDsHPc<

[lonevoice]

Fabulous article, thanks for the ping! There is also some good discussion in the replies on this thread.

If you want to read the entire article, you need to get past the Wall Street Journals paywall.

Here's how:

Click on this link: http://bit.ly/1viYDbR

When it finishes the google search, click on the first result (which says it is from the Wall Street Journal)

Well worth the time to read it all.

Then, if you really want to get the shivers, follow it up with viewing this youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njpWalYduU4

This is an incredible recording from the Apollo 8 astronauts on Christmas Eve, 1968. They were the first first manned spaceflight to leave Earth and voyage to another celestial body, the Moon. From their capsule, they took turns reading aloud from the book of Genesis to send God's message back to Earth from this never-before seen human vantage point.

[time4good]

It all boils down to Accountability. I do not want to be judged. Therefore I will deny the existence of The Judge and His Law. (says the Atheist)

[C. Edmund Wright]

pack some ice dude
bye

[C. Edmund Wright]

...and some freepers......

[C. Edmund Wright]

But I’m smart enough to know that you have no sense of humor - so it was “C” - the heart thing.

You need to follow this commandment: DUDE, LIGHTEN UP.

[FBD]

Do you accept the chronological order of creation as presented in Genesis?
In the Genesis account of the formation of life on planet earth, plants were supposedly created on the third day, while the sun/ sunlight was created on the 4th day.

Now, I've heard many explanations of a “day” being the same as a thousand years to God, which I can accept. What I can't accept, is the lack of availability for photosynthesis for plant life, since sunlight wasn't available yet.

That biblical rendition of the order of creation isn't scientific at all, since plants requirements for sunlight/ photosynthesis is a pretty well researched subject in the scientific world. And then there's the wholesale fabrication of a female Eve being created from Adams rib, as almost an afterthought for Adam's companion.

Sorry, as someone who believes a rational God would follow his own laws of physics, I've concluded that the Genesis account is not only inaccurate, it''s completely flawed scientifically.

[RegulatorCountry]

What I can't accept, is the lack of availability for photosynthesis for plant life, since sunlight wasn't available yet.

Plants have somehow managed to survive a night in my exposure.

[Honorary Serb]

NO ONE can afford to—or be expected to—subscribe to everything!!! And all those passwords are onerous, too-that’s why I do not pay most bills online. And I refuse to subscribe to or finance anything that supports neocons and/or liberal interventionists!!!!

If they want to count their articles as their private property, they should NOT post the first part of them as a teaser. Otherwise, they are public domain!!!!

By the way, I have a professional blog with valuable articles, that is ENTIRELY free and public domain. One competitor earlier this year installed a paywall on their similar blog, and started changing for subscriptions. Interested people and companies can learn about the same subjects for free on our blog. If they want to pay for our publications and/or consulting services, that is fine indeed, and is the business point of having the blog in the first place. So I practice what I preach!!!!

[Honorary Serb]

I tried this morning. No luck.

[time4good]

True. And the ‘day is like a 1000 years to the Lord’ is misinterpreted - Peter is simply saying God is outside Time when it comes to His long-term plan and long-suffering for Man.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“Now, I’ve heard many explanations of a “day” being the same as a thousand years to God, which I can accept. What I can’t accept, is the lack of availability for photosynthesis for plant life, since sunlight wasn’t available yet.”

1. Light created on the first day.
2. You are assuming that everything has always worked identically to how it works today. The creation account in Genesis sets up an order that changes after the fall of Adam and Eve.

“Sorry, as someone who believes a rational God would follow his own laws of physics”

1. Miracles stand outside the laws of physics.
2. God stands outside the laws of physics - nor is He limited by created laws, anymore than by any other part of creation.

“I’ve concluded that the Genesis account is not only inaccurate, it’s completely flawed scientifically.”

I always smile when a human who knows so little about so much has judged the Creator so thoroughly.

You may want to spend the days between Christmas and New Years Eve reading Job. There is a message there for you.

Perhaps you are just comfortable hiding behind a scientific shield?

[Honorary Serb]

There was a recent article in Nature, saying that physics should be based on data—or at least on hypotheses for which one could hope to find data in the future (i.e., with better instruments). The “multiverse” hypothesis was cited as a egregious example of a non-falsifyible hypothesis.

The “multiverse” hypothesis is not a real scientific hypothesis, but an atheist’s trick to avoid having to face the reality of God the Creator. Then there art those evolutionists who pretend that we know more about evolution than we really do. Same idea!

[tacticalogic]

If that’s what it takes to make you right, go for it.

[FBD]

“Plants have somehow managed to survive a night in my exposure.”

-So you accept the biblical version of one earth day (one rotation) between the creation of the Sun on "day 4"; which would be one earth rotation *after* the creation of plant life on "day 3"?

Putting aside the completely illogical fallacy that God created the Sun one earth rotation after He created vegetation, consider this thought:

-If you built a house, would you frame up the walls before pouring the concrete foundation? -because that's the order of creation as presented in Genesis 1:

--------------------------------------------

From Genesis chapter 1:

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so.

12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 

15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so.

16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 

17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 

18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 

19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

-------------------------------------

This is really BAD science.

[RegulatorCountry]

And then there's the wholesale fabrication of a female Eve being created from Adams rib, as almost an afterthought for Adam's companion.

Females have two "X" chromosomes. Males have one "X" chromosome. If you were capable of creating a different category of human being with a male being the starting point, just what do you suggest be done differently?

[RegulatorCountry]

If you accept a supreme being who is capable of doing such things, it’s no problem at all, FBD.

You clearly don’t, and that’s your problem. Godlessness.

[C. Edmund Wright]

It’s not about right, it’s about you being a total drip and insisting on focusing on the serious to the point you can’t even abide an analogy. I feel sorry for you.

What kind of cubicle do you work in bureaucrat?

[FBD]

Miracles stand outside the laws of physics.

Not in the world we live in today. Stories verbally passed on from generation to generation from a thousand years ago, without any demonstrable scientific proof are just that. Stories. Perhaps we could view a scientific presentation of a human being walking on water? -uh-huh...

2. God stands outside the laws of physics - nor is He limited by created laws, anymore than by any other part of creation.

-So the God you believe in, doesn't even abide by his own physical laws? -Interesting science.

As far as your suggestions that I read Job;

I've read Job in church bible studies; and always scratched my head about a story of a loving God who engaged in a conversation with the Wicked one, and why He would try to prove to Satan how faithful his child Job was, by sadistically allowing his wife and children to be murdered. -Not logical. Not logical at all. Ive come to the logical conclusion that the story of Job is completely bogus.

Back to the discussion at hand, about the bible being a reliable source of scientific thought...