It Had To Be Perfect
Moses doesn’t get the credit he deserves. I often picture him in Heaven, sitting in the majestic dwelling place afforded him by the Father, reading a newspaper that chronicles the current discoveries of the scientific community. He is in a leather reclining chair, with a warm beverage sitting on a table to his left that remains undisturbed when he throws down the paper, looks at Zipporah, who is seated across the room, and shouts “I was talking about that 3500 years ago!”
His wife, of course, rolls her eyes as she offers a
consoling, “Yes dear” to her clearly grouchy husband.
“Kids these days” he bristles, “they think they’re soooo
clever.”
He feels better now – after venting – and is able to return
to the blessed relaxation of his morning routine, a wonderful way to start his
days that are largely filled with basking in the eternal glory of God
(Revelation 22:5).
Moses’ slights, though, are many. The scientific community has discovered that the
universe is expanding , Moses said the same thing in Genesis 1:6. Einstein declared that time is relative to
the physical situation of the individual observer – also know as the Theory of
Relativity. Moses also said this, though
excluding the part pertaining to physics and focusing on time
being different to God, in Psalm 90:4.
This great servant of God also documents the development of
the universe. Where the cosmos start as a singular conjoined substance (Genesis
1:2) that separates as space expands within it (Genesis 1:6), a process that
results in stars and planets separating from one another and taking their
eventual shape and coming into their current relational vantage points with one
another (Genesis 1:17). A progression that affects our galaxy – and our planet in
particular – which was chosen to be one that fosters life. Plants came first
(Genesis 1:12), followed by sea creatures Genesis 1:21), land animals (Genesis
1:25) and then people (Genesis 1:27).
But while these things have been in Scripture for millennia,
and the belief that the world we live in both had a starting point and is uniquely
fitted for life has been the sentiment of the faithful throughout the ages,
such discoveries of scientific proofs along these lines have created massive
upheaval in the scientific community.
We discussed this paradigm shift with the
evidence for the Finely Tuned Universe and how an
incredible number of factors have to be just right – which thankfully
happens to be how they are – in
order for life to exist. If any of those facets were not as they are then everything
we know – including our own existence – would never have been possible. We also talked about Edwin Hubble’s discovery
that the
universe is expanding. The fact that the universe is expanding has been
very disruptive to scientific theory because many scientists and philosophers
have chosen to seek to understand the origins of the universe in only
naturalistic terms.
If one resolves to limit himself in this way then he must
look at the universe as a balloon that is being blown up, or yeast-filled bread
that is expanding as it bakes in an oven and must then trace back the current
rate of expansion to a beginning point. Physicists have approached this in a couple of
ways.
2 Approaches
to Understanding the Big Bang
The primary approach – which is based heavily on
mathematical theory – postulates that “any universe that is on-average
expanding must have had a beginning” (Meyer, ROG).
The physicists credited with this
approach are Alan Guth, Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin, who combined principles
from geometry with Einstein’s theory of special relativity to trace the
expanding universe backwards in time to a place where it would have converged
on itself geometrically.
The second approach expands on this by taking what happens
in black holes – where “the dense concentration of matter will warp or bend the
fabric of spacetime, creating a tightly curved, self-enclosed region of space”
that is so dense that it creates a “kind of gravitational trap that prevents
anything on the inside of the tightly curved space from getting out, even
light” (Meyer, ROG)
– and applies that to the beginning of the universe. This approach, which was pioneered by Stephen
Hawking, Roger Penrose and George Ellis, goes a step further from the first in
stating that the universe before the Big Bang was a “singularity” and as such
something that mysteriously doesn’t conform to the Laws that govern the
Universe as we know them.
Singularities are interesting concepts, and I would
recommend reading the Return
of the God Hypothesis by Stephen Meyer where a more in depth
explanation of them is given in chapter 6, but for now we can simply state that
these men believed that if one took the expanding universe and “pushed rewind”
and followed its current trend backwards that he would see that it “would
attain an infinitely tight spatial curvature corresponding to zero spatial
volume.” It would be in this place where
“the known laws of physics would break down” and it would be from this state
that the “universe would have begun its expansion.” (Meyer, ROG)
In short, some of the most celebrated minds in the scientific
community adamantly say that if we trace the history of the universe back in
time then we will find 2 things: 1) A time when there wasn’t a universe 2) A
time when there were no natural laws.
I have said before that I am
skeptical of the idea that we can observe the world as it is today and then
trace that backwards into the distant past as a means of definitively knowing
its history. And I will explain how
the expanding universe can be interpreted in other ways that are not bound to
the narrow approach of scientific naturalism in a future post but it also is
important to state that in this theory we have the consensus of mainstream
scientists stating that the universe has a beginning and that this starting point
is something that is in itself mysterious and beyond our ability to understand.
Does that sound familiar to anyone (Genesis 1:1)?
So, while I don’t feel the need to hitch my wagon to this
theory (though
I’ll admit that I’ve been tempted to do so), I must confess that I find it
fascinating. And so did many of the
great thinkers of the 20th century.
They did so not only because of the puzzle of what – or who – may
be lurking behind this singularity, but also because of what they believe had
to have happened after the Big Bang itself for life to have been possible in
the universe.
It Had to be
Perfect
If one embraces a purely materialistic approach towards
understanding the origins of the universe and goes along with scientific
consensus by tracing the current expansion of the universe backwards in time to
arrive at a belief in the Big Bang, then he would find himself with a fresh set
of problems. The first problem – that we
mentioned above – is that he would have to accept that there is an eternity of
time, that precedes the Big Bang, that is permanently walled off from
science. The second is that there is
also a cause of some kind that made the Big Bang happen, that likewise is outside
the reach of scientific inquiry. Those 2
problems alone are disastrous to atheistic belief systems.
But this is just the beginning of the implications that the
Big Bang has for those who embrace a purely naturalistic approach towards
understanding the history of the material world. What scientists have begun to realize about
the Big Bang is that it’s not just that they believe that it had to have
happened, but that it had to have happened in a certain way.
The Density
and Mass of the Universe
For starters the mass of the universe would have been a very
important factor right after the Big Bang.
Eric Metaxas harps on this in Is Atheism
Dead saying “if there were any more mass in the universe …. the
gravity would be too much and would not have allowed the universe to expand
from the Big Bang to where it is now. At
some point the gravity – if it were even the tiniest bit greater – would have
overtaken that expansion…. It would have eventually pulled everything back down
into objects much larger than our sun, which would have ended up as black holes
and neutron stars.” He goes on to say
that conversely “if there were any less mass in the universe, then its
expansion would have been too fast. So
gravity would not have had the chance to create the stars that exist now, nor
the planets, and so the universe would just be an endless scattering of gas and
dust.”
Stephen Hawking has similar things to say in his book A
Brief History of Time where he states “if the overall density of the
universe were changed by even 0.0000000000001 percent, no stars or galaxies
could be formed. If the rate of
expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a
hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before
it reached its present size.” (Metaxas, IAD)
The Laws of
Physics
We discussed the mysterious nature of the Laws of Physics in
my post called What
a Wonderful World. Those who take a
purely naturalistic approach to understanding the history of the universe
believe that these Laws must have come into being at the moment of the Big Bang
and that they were instrumental in the development of the early universe.
Metaxas explains this by discussing how if the strong
nuclear force was “just 2 percent weaker than it is, it wouldn’t be strong
enough to hold the protons and neutrons together…they would drift apart, giving
us an entire universe consisting only of hydrogen – whose nucleus has only one
proton and no neutrons.” (Metaxas, IAD) This obviously
describes a universe in which life could not exist. He goes on to state that
conversely “if that same strong nuclear force were just 0.3 percent stronger
than it is, it would also be disastrous.
It would cause protons and neutrons to attract each other too much, so
that they would pile up and create only large nuclei, such as are found in
heavier elements. So that in this case
there would be no hydrogen at all, and any universe without hydrogen is just as
useless as a universe with only hydrogen. No life could exist.” (Metaxas, IAD)
He goes on to discuss the electromagnetic force saying “we
remind ourselves that for life to be possible, we need a whole raft of elements
– not just hydrogen, oxygen, iron, helium, nitrogen and carbon. At a bare minimum human beings require about
twenty-two different elements. We may remember
from chemistry class that the way elements are formed has to do with electrons
leaping from their orbits in one atom over to the orbit of another atom. It is the electromagnetic force that keeps
the electrons in orbit around their nuclei.
So science tells us that if this force were slightly weaker, electrons
would leave their orbits too easily. But
if it were slightly stronger, they would never budge from their original
orbits. In either case, for enough
elements to exist, this force needs to be perfectly calibrated. And yes, it just happens to be perfectly
calibrated. And here we are.” (Metaxas, IAD)
There is honestly so much about the Fine-Tuning of the Laws
of Physics and how they would have factored in to the developing universe
(should one assume a purely naturalistic perspective) that I must refer the
reader who wants to go deeper to Eric Metaxas’ book Is Atheism
Dead or to Stephen Meyer’s book The
Return of the God Hypothesis.
In reading these monumental works the reader will find the way that the
finely-tuned ratios between these forces play an important role in the
production of iron within giant stars, which after they explode, release this
iron into the universe. Iron of course
is necessary for life on the earth.
The Initial Entropy
of the Universe
Continuing on with our theoretical exercise of what one
finds if he accepts the assumptions of scientific naturalism (which just to
make sure I’m not misunderstood, is a position that I personally do not take),
we move to the initial setup of the Big Bang itself. In a way that is similar but slightly
different to the initial mass of the universe, the “initial distribution of
mass-energy” or “entropy” of the universe had to be specifically
fine-tuned. Stephen Meyer explains that
entropy “measures the amount of disorder in a material system – of
molecules, atoms, or subatomic particles.”
The more ordered a system is the lower its entropy, whereas the less
ordered a system is the higher its entropy.
As such scientists have found that the universe must have had a very low
entropy at its beginning.
This is important because when a scientist with a naturalistic
perspective explores this idea, he is coming from a place that views everything
in the world as random. The entropy of
the early universe, in his mind, could have been anything, so he finds himself
compelled to calculate the possible range of values that it could have been to see
just how lucky all of us really are.
Roger Penrose was an example of a scientist like this and he found out that
the chances of having an early universe with the precise entropy level needed
for our cosmos to possess its current order was what “mathematicians call a hyper-exponential
number – 10 raised to the 10th power (or 10 billion) raised again
to the 123rd power.” A number
so vast that it should be understood as excluding the element of randomness
from consideration.
Pointing to
a Giant Question Mark
The way the Density and Entropy of the early universe,
combined with the 4 Fundamental Forces, had to be perfectly Finely Tuned in
order for the universe to have progressed from the Big Bang to where we are
today is incredibly compelling, but this doesn’t even tell the whole
story. The reader will have to purchase
Metaxas’ or Meyer’s books in order to hear about how factors like the expansion
rate or the cosmological constant also are theorized to have played a necessary
role – and that, as we would now expect, if they were any different, then life
in our world would have been impossible.
Such exercises in naturalistic theory are fascinating, even
if the reader – like myself – doesn’t accept the assumptions of
materialism. They are powerful because
they show that even if one excludes the supernatural from the picture and only
limits himself to what we know about physics, then the material world points to
a giant question mark. One that looms
over our lives like a specter, begging for a conclusion to be drawn, but unable
to be answered by the very discipline that discovered it.
We will follow the logic of naturalism more in the next post
but for now is it not a wonderful thought to consider that even within the frame
of mind that specifically excludes God, that even this way of thinking
ultimately seems to point to Him?
------------------
.*All References to (Meyer, ROG)
are taken from The
Return of the God Hypothesis by Stephen Meyer
**All References to (Metaxas, IAD) refer to
the incredible book Is Atheism Dead? by Eric Metaxas that can be purchased
here: https://socratesinthecity.com/product/is-atheism-dead/
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