What a Wonderful World

 

In the pantheon of saints from the Old and New Testaments, King David stands in rarified air. His mystique, which is rivaled only by Moses or the apostle Paul, can be understood by the description given him in Acts 13:22, of being “the man after God’s own heart.” A title that would, in and of itself, already place him on the top shelf were it not eclipsed by the very distinct honor afforded him, as being the “father” of the very Messiah Himself. Who, in the mystery of being fully God and fully man, not only derived His human lineage from the Davidic line but was also specifically called the “Son of David” (Matthew 1:1).

Yet David’s accomplishments don’t end there. He is the most famous soldier, with the most impressive victories, in the history of the nation of Israel. He presided over this nation, as king, during its golden age, when it was arguably the most powerful country in the world.

He was a renowned musician, the writer of many songs, many of which we still sing in Church today. He in fact wrote a larger portion of Scripture - comprised mostly of sed songs - than any other man, save maybe Moses. It’s possible he also contributed more raw value of money and materials to the work of God than anyone else is recorded as having done.

But another title to add to this giant-killing, empire-ruling, bleeding-hearted poet philanthropist is that of “lover of nature”.

We see in the 19th Psalm that David spends time adoring the majesty of the sky, which day and night shows forth its wonders. He muses that this panorama is more than just an optical feast, but that there is something of a hidden message behind it all.

He has spent his life pursuing God, and he has come to understand that this Invisible and Inaudible Being that he has come to know, often chooses to communicate through the implications of what He has done. That, in the vastness of the stars and the beautiful blueness of a clear sky, there are messages from God, that we can clearly hear (Psalm 19:3), if we slow down and reflect on what they might mean.

Sometimes these messages are heard by those who aren’t even looking for them. People, for instance, like Sir Fred Hoyle, who, in his quest to understand physics, inadvertently heard what is being said. Dr. Hoyle - an unbeliever - did so in a way that “shook his atheism.”

In the previous post we discussed how Hoyle came to such an experience, which started when he sought to understand how carbon – the element from which all living organisms are made – was produced within stars.  This quest required him to theorize, which he was later able to prove, that there was a form of this element with an excitation state that was significantly higher than the ground energy state of carbon, which allowed beryllium and helium to combine to form this substance within stars.  He was so floored by this discovery that he began to consider all the different factors that must be in place to make it so that this reaction could occur.

The more he thought about this the more he was drawn into wonder, for he found that many things had to be exactly as they were for this to be possible.  This included the masses of elementary particles, the heat within stars and the fundamental forces of physics, all of which had to be precisely as they are in order for the element that all life is based off of to exist in the universe. As mentioned above these thoughts challenged him, so much so that they made him question everything he believed about the cosmos and what or who might be behind them. 

Hidden Constants

Hoyle’s exploration of the “why” behind the “what” as it pertained to the inter-celestial production of 6^th element is fascinating.  That much of it is contingent upon the precise values of the constants of physics is itself a marvel and a subject fit for further inquiry, the investigation of which we will start here.

In our world, where words like electromagnetic and nuclear are used so commonly that they are expected to be understood by an 8-year-old, we can very easily lose sight of what such things describe.  Take the Law of Gravity for instance.  This most famous law of physics, which was discovered by Newton, describes how there is a force that pulls 2 objects toward one another.  This force can be known by the following equation:

F = G * ((M1 *M2)/D²)

Where the masses of object 1 (M1) and object 2 (M2) are multiplied together and then divided by the distance between them squared.  The force is then calculated when all of this is multiplied by a mysterious variable, which in the equation is defined as “G”.

Now, anybody who has been exposed to the modern world to any degree can probably guess that the “G” stands for “Gravity”.  And you would be correct.  But to prevent you, the reader, from merely congratulating yourself and moving on, I’d hope to belabor the point on this a bit.  Because in our society today we so clearly understand what Gravity does, that we fail to think further about what it actually is.  Is it not strange that in this universe that we live in, that there is an invisible force that pulls objects together?  Is it not equally odd that we have been able to use math to discover the precise value of this mysterious power?

What causes the Law of Gravity to be in effect?  Is there some kind of industrial strength vacuum inside of each entity that draws every other object to it and it to every object?  Obviously, that is ridiculous¹ but how else could one attempt to describe the “why” or even the “how” behind the “what” of Gravity?

The “what” I understand.  Newton’s apple falls to the earth every time.  The masses of 2 objects are drawn to each other.  But the “how” makes no sense to me at all.  What causes this to take place, what essential aspect of the cosmos makes this so?

It is a mystery.  And so are all the Laws of Physics once one drills down deep enough to really consider what might be behind them. 

Fixed Order Built on Mysterious Factors

This perhaps may be reason to give a brief pause to consider the Laws of Physics themselves in greater depth.  They were discovered by scientists who, in combining their regular experience of the natural world with much experimentation, were able to isolate the different factors that shape that experience, and then explain how those factors related to each other through the use of equations.  These relational maps are able to accurately predict what will happen in controlled experiments every time.  And within each of these formulas are constants, like that of the “G” in the theorem for Gravity, that represent invisible forces that cannot be understood any further than simply describing how they govern the relationships between the different aspects of the physical world.

The writers of Scripture, although unaware of the technical workings of the Laws of Physics, were fascinated with the immovable and enduring nature of the world.  An unnamed penman in the 104^th Psalm mused about how God had “established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter forever and ever.” (Psalm 104:5) The prophet Asaph marveled about the “boundaries of the earth (Psalm 74:17) and Jeremiah referred to the “fixed order” of the moon and stars (Jeremiah 31:35).  Similar sentiments were also uttered by Job (Job 38:4-11) and Solomon (Proverbs 8:27-29), who joined with the others in their ancient appreciation for the mysterious constants of the cosmos.

All of this could be summed up in God’s Promise to Noah in Genesis 8:22:

While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
And day and night
Shall never cease.

These men of God had yet to quantify gravity the way Newton would, and lacked the superpowered lenses that gave us the ability to identify the other laws of physics, but they witnessed the remarkable stability of the universe, and it led them to worship.  Had they lived in our day, when science has flourished as it has, then they likely would have expanded their vision to include the mysterious and invisible constants that direct our world.  Adding a postscript to the moon being the silent “witness in the sky” (Psalm 89:37), they could have described gravity as the “invisible hands of God” that hold everything together.

But regardless of how deep one travels down the scientific rabbit hole, he will land in a similar place as these ancient saints, where he will find that our universe is made up of mystical guardrails – boundaries as it were - that inexplicably govern the world we live in.

In their day it was the stability of the earth, the seasons, the ever-reliable sunrise and so on; in ours it has been expanded to include unseen forces that command the way the pieces of the universe relate to each other.  But the reality of a world that exhibits a coherent and fixed order which is managed by things that we can’t understand remains true in every age.

The Four Fundamental Forces

As I have alluded to already, there are more invisible constants than just the Law of Gravity.  Gravity is the easiest to talk about because we experience it every day, but physicists have discovered what they believe to be Four Fundamental Forces that, like Gravity (and including Gravity), drive the relationships between the different pieces of the material world. These forces are:

1) Gravity – The force which attracts masses towards one another.

2) The Electromagnetic Force – That which attracts particles with opposite charges and repels those with the same charge.

3) The Weak Nuclear Force – That which causes the radioactive decay of atoms.

4) The Strong Nuclear Force – That which marks the attractive force that holds protons and neutrons together.

All of the above forces are invisible and constant throughout the universe. And they have precise values. 

Impossible Precision

As we said earlier, these forces are deeply mysterious and thinking about them causes one to marvel. But their existence is only the first layer of the wonder. When one examines them in depth – like Sir Fred Hoyle did – he finds that the exact numerical equivalents of these constants are just as important and incomprehensible as their subsistence. They each theoretically could have been a different number, amongst a large range of possible figures, other than what they are, but puzzlingly have the value that they must have in order for life to exist on earth.  Stephen Meyer reflects on this in his book The Return of the God Hypothesis where he says “these force constants have one of the rare sets of values that make life in the universe possible.  In other words, the constants in the equations describing the fundamental forces of physics turn out to be exquisitely finely turned within extremely fine tolerances.” (Meyer, ROG)

He goes on to quote the British physicist Paul Davies who says, “The really amazing thing is not that life is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly.”  Stephen Hawking had similar thoughts in saying “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” (Meyer, ROG)

Meyer then proceeds to explain the magnitude by which these constants have been fine tuned.  “The electromagnetic force constant exhibits moderate fine tuning of 1 part in 25.  The strong nuclear force constant exhibits moderate fine tuning to 1 part in 200.  Moreover, the ratios of the values of the different force constants also require significant fine turning.  For example, the ratio of the weak nuclear force constant to the strong nuclear force constant had to have been set with a precision of 1 part in 10,000.   If the weak force had been weaker or stronger by that small fraction, stars powered by hydrogen fusion, required for life, would not have existed.” (Meyer, ROG)

As if that wasn’t enough, Meyer goes on to state “more impressively, the ratio of the electromagnetic force to gravity must be accurate to 1 part in 10⁴⁰.  Were this ratio a bit higher, the gravitational attraction would be too strong in comparison to the contravening force of electromagnetism pushing nuclei apart.  In that case, stars would, again, burn too quickly and unevenly to allow for the formation of long-lived stars and stable solar systems.  Were this ratio a bit lower, gravitational attraction would be too weak in comparison to electromagnetism.  That would have prevented stars from burning hot enough to produce the heavier elements needed for life.” (Meyer, ROG)

The entire thing is fascinating and worldview shifting.  We can now see that it’s not just that things like the human hand and eye seem curiously designed – I’ve grown up marveling at this – but now we are realizing that the invisible laws of physics themselves have been perfectly calibrated to make life itself possible. 

If I were to go much more into any of this, I would be writing a physics textbook and to be honest I’m already out of my depth in simply talking about this at all.  For a more extensive study of this I would recommend reading The Return of the God Hypothesis by Stephen Meyer.

But even though I am beyond myself, I think to some degree we are all out of our depth on this subject.  The idea that there are invisible powers out there that govern the universe and that those powers are discoverable by the human mind is incredible enough.  If we then add to this the idea that theoretically these invisible powers could have had constants that were different than they are today, and that should they have been different in any way that life would be impossible to sustain on Earth, then we are left with nothing else to say.

Perhaps the only thing to do is allow one’s self to head David’s message in Psalm 19:2-4.  To turn our ears to listen to what God is saying, though He does so inaudibly, through these invisible boundaries that govern the way our world works.  And as we do so maybe we will find ourselves recalling a more modern version of Psalm 19, sung by the famous Louis Armstrong, in when he soothingly sings:

I see trees of green, red roses too.  I see them bloom, for me and for you.  And I think to myself.  What a wonderful world.

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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

¹ Its actually not that much different than how Rene Descartes described gravity through his idea of vortices being the mechanism behind how gravity operates (Meyer, ROG)