There are No Blind Forces in Nature
A lot of people may not know this but the newer discoveries in the field of science are pointing to God. When it happened is hard to pinpoint for sure, but sometime between the 1950s and the 1990s new findings within physics began to shake up the supposed certainties previously held by atheistic materialists. For over a hundred years before this, the idea that science had disproven God seemed possible if not logical even, but there was one problem. There was this pesky little invention called a lens. A device – if so configured – that would allow the eye to see things that are either very far away or things that are very small. And as a new generation of explorers peered through these freshly fabricated micro- and tele- scopes, they began to find some things that turned the theory of origins on its head.
A central figure in this story was the famous atheist
astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle. Dr. Hoyle
was a man who was obsessed with the element of carbon. Stephen Meyer in The Return of the God Hypothesis talks about Hoyle’s fixation with Carbon saying that the
physicist “knew that the universe contained a surprising abundance of
carbon. He also knew the production of
the element carbon was crucial to all known forms of life. Carbon forms long chain-like molecules that
can carry information and store the energy that living cells need to survive.”
Meyer goes on to say that people have “speculated about life based on other
elements” but that “physicists have largely rejected this possibility for
decades.”
In short, if there is no Carbon there is no life. As such the question of how Carbon is created
is a vitally important in seeking to figure out the mystery of life. Hoyle knew that carbon was produced within
stars, but he couldn’t determine how this was possible. Meyer describes the obstacles this scientist
faced as he sought this out:
But Hoyle was dissatisfied with the idea of incremental accretion. Incremental accretion could be described as the “snowball effect” of lighter elements colliding and fusing with nucleons to form heavier elements and then these now heavier elements combining and fusing with more nucleons to form even heavier elements and so on until the smaller “snowball” of helium becomes the larger “snowball” of carbon.
Meyer goes on to state that Hoyle’s rejection of this idea
revolved around a known fact about certain elements that would make for a giant
obstacle with this theory. The problem with this idea was that as the
collisions – and subsequent fusions - took place between lighter elements and
nucleons they would form elements that were known to be unstable. The instability of these elements was due to
their “incredibly short half-lives” which Meyer states are “about one
trillionth of a trillionth of a second (1/20²⁴ of a second)” long (Meyer, ROG).
In other words, as Helium – with its 2 protons and 2 neutrons
– fuses with either an additional proton (to create lithium-5) or an additional
neutron (to create helium-5) the fusion would break down in an incredibly short
amount of time. As such the thought that
within a star the element helium would eventually “snowball” into carbon
through gradual fusion was not feasible.
It was more like rolling a snowball down a hill on the equator or like trying
to build an ice-castle in a sauna – as soon as you get started the whole thing
breaks apart.
Meyer goes on to state that if the chemical reactions within
stars were like a ladder, starting with the lighter elements and through fusion
climbing to the higher elements, then it would be fraught with missing steps
that would make it impossible to climb.
He describes the quandary physicists faced below:
What they had encountered
was something like a 20-foot ladder with the rungs at the bottom and the top
but only one rung in the middle, making it impossible to climb. Except the situation was worse than that. Not only could the rung in the middle
(representing the 5-nucleon state) not be reached, but if it could be reached
it would vanish after only one trillionth of a trillionth of a second!
This gap is illustrated below – which shows the missing
rungs in the ladder that make it essentially impossible for an element to
incrementally fuse itself from helium to carbon.
Meyer goes on to talk about how scientists sought to answer this problem by postulating that 3 helium atoms could have joined themselves together to produce carbon but rejected this pathway as “implausible” due to the “incredible improbability of three helium atoms colliding simultaneously.” (Meyer, ROG)
This left the scientific community at a great impasse. It was known that carbon was produced by nuclear reactions within stars, but they had no concept as to what took place for this to occur. This led Hoyle to pursue a different theory. He suggested that “one nucleus of helium (with two neutrons and two protons) might combine readily with a beryllium-8 nucleus (containing four neutrons and four protons) to form carbon (which has six protons and six neutrons).” (Meyer, ROG) Beryllium-8 atoms are also “highly unstable” but they “have half-lives just enough longer than elements with five nucleons to make a collision of a single helium atom likely enough to provide a plausible pathway for building carbon.” (Meyer, ROG)
The reason Hoyle was the first to propose this was because this idea had its own issues. In order for the fusion of two separate atoms to form an atom of a completely different element they must “resonate” at a precise energy level. The energy that beryllium-8 atom and the helium-4 “resonate” at would have to correlate with the “excitation state” of carbon-12. Hoyle had calculated that the combined energy for these two elements would “need to have precisely 7.65 megaelectron volts (MeV) more energy than the ‘ground energy state’ for carbon-12.” (Meyer, ROG)
This eminent scientist knew that massive amounts of carbon
existed in the universe and since he “could think of no other plausible pathway
for its production” made the prediction that carbon existed in the “precise
energy state” that he had calculated. He
brought this to a fellow physicist named Willy Fowler who was able to verify by
experiment that carbon “with an energy level with precisely the resonance that
Hoyle had predicted” did in fact exist.
It is the Glory of Kings to Search a Matter Out
These findings are an incredible example of perseverance. In
Hoyle we find an individual who was so hungry to understand the universe that
he would not allow himself to be deterred by setbacks but rather persevered in his
pursuit of knowledge from the belief that we live in a rational world with
principles that can be understood – even if they are hidden from us
initially. Proverbs 25:2 says “It is the
glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search the
matter out.” God has hidden the mechanics of the universe not from us but for us. Beckoning mankind to search out the mystery
of why things are the way they are, for in doing so we are not only pursuing
understanding but pursuing the very thoughts of God Himself. Those thoughts that He possessed at the
beginning of time when He took His inscrutable wisdom and formed the material
world (Proverbs 8:22-31).
The process of questioning our current understanding and
only accepting an explanation of the mechanics of the universe that is
consistent with logic and can be reproduced by experiment is an exercise in
humility and discernment that Scripture teaches us to have. Matthew 7:1-5 teaches us to always consider
that something may be missing in our understanding – that we could have a speck
in our eye – that should always leave us open to ideas that are better
explained by logic than what we currently possess.
This applies to our understanding of theology in that we
should always be open to doctrine that can be logically shown to be Biblically
accurate – even if it's not an understanding of the Christian Life that we grew
up with. If something can be shown to be
a Biblical Truth, then we should be open to it.
And it similarly applies to our understanding of the natural world, in
that if something can be shown to be logically true and confirmed by experiment,
then we should be open to changing our understanding of the mechanics of the universe.
It’s important to have a degree of self-doubt as it pertains
to your understanding of things. This of
course doesn’t mean that we don’t have confidence in the clearly revealed
principles of Scripture – like for instance that we are saved by grace through
faith (Ephesians 2:8) or that those who put their faith in Jesus will have
everlasting life (John 3:16) – but that we always assume the heart-posture
before God as that of a student who realizes that he has something to learn. This humility comes from the acknowledgement
that we are finite creatures who are prone to selfish and sinful tendencies
that ultimately blind us from truths that can be clearly seen by those who
don’t have the motivation to remain blind to them. Sin blinds us (Romans 1:21) and when we
realize that we should remain open to how fellow brothers in the Lord may see
Scripture and how our understanding of the universe may have room to grow.
The Universe is Finely-Tuned
But while Holye himself didn’t recognize the Biblical
principles at the root of his quest for truth he still marveled at the
ramifications of this discovery. In his pursuit to understand how carbon was
produced he had discovered a factor of carbon’s resonance level that had
previously been unknown to the world and would have remained unknown had this
not been sought out. But what did this
mean?
An element’s resonance level is a “consequence of many factors and can be calculated using the equations of quantum chromodynamics, a subdiscipline of quantum mechanics.” (Meyer, ROG) Hoyle knew that if these resonance levels had been different then carbon could not be produced within stars and consequently life could not exist. This led the astrophysicist to explore “what conditions were needed to ensure that carbon would have the right resonance level, allowing it to form.” (Meyer, ROG) What he found were multiple factors that had to be exactly the way they are, or carbon (and subsequently life itself), could not exist.
Those factors are:
1) The Precise Strength of the Strong Nuclear Force and the
Electromagnetic Force
- These phenomenons – like Gravity – are mysterious
forces that create effects that can be observed and measured. The Strong Nuclear Force (SNF) operates at extremely
short distances (about one quadrillionth of a meter)
and holds the protons and neutrons of a nucleus together. The Electromagnetic Force (EMF) attracts
particles with opposite charges and repels those with the same charge. Meyer states that modern “calculations
indicate that the EMF and the SNF must have precise strengths, within about .5
to 4 percent of their current levels, to make carbon possible.”
2) The Masses of Elementary Particles
- Proton and Neutrons are made up of constituent parts known as “quarks”. Quarks come in 2 varieties – there are “up quarks” and “down quarks”. These 2 types of quarks theoretically could have had masses that ranged between zero and the “Planck mass”. The value of the up-quark must “have a precise mass of between zero and just one billion trillionth of the Planck mass” which had a chance of being correct in a value of roughly “1 part in 10²¹.” Meyer states that the “mass of the ‘down quark’ must have a similar precise fine tuning.” (Meyer, ROG)
3) The Heat of the Stars
- The heat of stars is also a necessary factor. When Carbon is forming from the fusion of beryllium and helium, their “nuclei must attain sufficiently high velocities to overcome the repulsive electromagnetic force between them. But that condition can only be met if the stars are hot enough to generate those critical atomic velocities.” Stars can only produce that level of heat and energy if gravity is strong enough to pull “the atoms together into a hot, dense ball during stellar nucleosynthesis.” If the gravitational constant was weaker then it would “prevent stars from eventually becoming supernovae and ejecting the elements necessary for life into the universe.” If gravity was too strong then “the temperature inside stars would get too hot and nucleosynthesis would produce only elements heavier than carbon and oxygen.” Meyer goes on to state that “physicists have determined that the value of G is finely tuned to 1 part in 10³⁵ in relation to the ‘natural’ range of values that G could have.” (Meyer, ROG)
There are No Blind Forces in Nature
The idea of an astrophysicist observing a phenomenon in
nature – that the necessary building block of life (carbon) is produced within
stars – and then speculating about the mysterious forces that make this
production possible seems somewhat ho-hum.
The knee-jerk reaction of us non-physicists is “isn’t that his job to do
this - what’s the big deal?”
But Hoyle’s thoughts on this are profoundly important. As an atheistic materialist he believed that everything
in the world had to have a material explanation. When he considered that the Laws of Physics
had to be exactly the way they were for life to be possible he took a distinct
pause. He did this because the values of these Laws (at least in his mind at
the time) had to have been randomly generated.
If that was the case, then they theoretically could have
been different values than they are today. And when he considered that, among
the large range of possible values that they could have possessed, that they
were exactly the figures they needed to be, he “became convinced that some
intelligence had orchestrated the precise balance of forces and factors in
nature to make the universe life-permitting.”
His atheism was profoundly shaken, and he stated that a
“common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has
monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there
are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts
seem to me to be so overwhelming as to put this conclusion beyond question.”
A profound statement for a man who had been a committed
atheist his entire life. And a profound
set of ideas that we will continue to look at in the next post.
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* All References cited as (Meyer, ROG) are for Stephen Meyer's Book "The Return of the God Hypothesis" Which can be bought here: Return of the God Hypothesis | Discovery Institute
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