The Case for a Creator (25 page)

“What has your study of the fine-tuning of the universe done for your faith?” I asked.

Collins put down his tea. “Oh, it has strengthened it, absolutely,” he replied. “Like everybody, I’ve gone through some hard times in life, and all of the scientific evidence for God has been an important anchor for me.”

That sounded like science displacing faith. “Isn’t that what faith is supposed to do?” I asked.

“I
am
taking about faith,” he insisted. “God doesn’t usually appear supernaturally somewhere and say, ‘Here I am.’ He uses preachers to bring people his message of redemption through Christ. And sometimes he uses natural means. Romans 1:20 tells us that God’s eternal power and divine nature can be seen and understood through things that are made, and that this is the reason humanity is without excuse. I see physics as uncovering the evidence of God’s fingerprint at a deeper and more subtle level than the ancients could have dreamed of. He has used physics to enable me to see the evidence of his presence and creative ability. The heavens really do declare the glory of God, even more so for someone trained with physics and with eyes to see. That has been a tremendous encouragement to me.

“Of course,” he continued, “the fine-tuning by itself can’t tell us whether God is personal or not. We have to find out in other ways. But it does help us conclude that he exists, that he created the world, and that therefore the universe has a purpose. He made it very carefully and quite precisely as a habitat for intelligent life.”

“How do you assess the persuasiveness of the anthropic evidence?” I asked.

“It’s not conclusive in the sense that mathematics tells us two plus two equals four,” he said. “Instead, it’s a cumulative argument. The extraordinary fine-tuning of the laws and constants of nature, their beauty, their discoverability, their intelligibility—all of this combines to make the God hypothesis the most reasonable choice we have. All other theories fall short.”

I picked up a newspaper clipping from the conference table, then said to Collins: “The
New York Times
recently published that famous quote by physicist Freeman Dyson, who looked at the evidence for fine-tuning and said: ‘The universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.’ But then the author added: ‘This notion horrifies some physicists, who feel it is their mission to find a mathematical explanation of nature that leaves nothing to chance or the whim of the Creator.’ Obviously, that’s not how you see the mission of physics, is it?”
⁵³

“No, not at all,” he said. “That attitude reflects an antitheistic bias. I don’t mind scientists trying to find naturalistic explanations, but I wouldn’t say it’s the mission of physics to explain everything naturalistically. The mission of physics is to pursue a naturalistic explanation as far as we can; but since physics can only explain one set of laws by invoking a more fundamental set of laws, it can never itself explain the most fundamental laws. Explaining these laws is where one moves from physics to metaphysics. Though invoking God may not be strictly part of science, it is in the spirit of science to follow the evidence and its implications wherever they lead us. We shouldn’t shrink back from the God hypothesis if that’s what the facts fit.”

He wasn’t alone in that perspective. Said Harvard’s Gingerich: “I believe that . . . the Book of Nature, with its astounding details—the blade of grass, the
Conus cedonulli
, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom—suggests a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less of a scientist.”
⁵⁴

With that, one last question came to mind. “As you dig deeper and deeper into physics,” I said to Collins, “do you have a sense of wonder and awe at what you find?”

“I really do,” he said, a grin breaking on his face. “Not just with the fine-tuning but in lots of areas, like quantum mechanics and the ability of our minds to understand the world. The deeper we dig, we see that God is more subtle and more ingenious and more creative than we ever thought possible. And I think that’s the way God created the universe for us—to be full of surprises.”

HEADS OR TAILS

Whichever way I looked, the inference of design seemed inescapable. If ours is the only universe in existence, which is a logical conclusion based on the evidence, then its highly sophisticated fine-tuning cries out for a designer. On the other hand, if the esoteric theories of physicists turn out to be true and our universe is one of many others, then the need for a universe-generating mechanism also would demand a designer.

Heads or tails, the Creator wins.

As Vera Kistiakowski, professor of physics
emerita
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former president of the Association of Women in Science, summarized the implications of the evidence: “The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.”
⁵⁵

That was also the conclusion that dissolved Patrick Glynn’s atheism. The anthropic evidence, he said . . .

. . . does offer as strong an indication as reason and science alone could be expected to provide that God exists. . . . Ironically, the picture of the universe bequeathed to us by the most advanced twentieth-century science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus.
⁵⁶

So far, after the one-two punch of my interviews with Craig and Collins, the evidence was clearly pointing in that direction. In fact, my imagination was captivated by one particular implication.

In
The Case for Christ
, I described the historical evidence for the miracles of Jesus of Nazareth, especially his resurrection from the dead. The ability to supernaturally intervene in the normal affairs of the world, to momentarily suspend the natural functioning of the universe, is certainly powerful affirmation that he is the Son of God.

However, having heard about the meticulous fine-tuning of the laws of nature, I now realized that the everyday functioning of the universe is,
in itself
, a kind of ongoing miracle. The “coincidences” that allow the fundamental properties of matter to yield a habitable environment are so improbable, so far-fetched, so elegantly orchestrated, that they require a divine explanation.

In other words, the momentary abrogation of the laws of nature in a sudden, visible, and direct way—what we usually call a “miracle”—obviously points toward an all-powerful deity. Yet even if God
doesn’t
supernaturally intervene, the otherwise inexplicable fine-tuning of physics, operating day in and day out ever since creation, also seems to warrant the term “miraculous.”

And miracles are the province of God.

I was pondering this thought as Collins and I emerged from the building, taking deep breaths of the fragrant autumn air and basking in the sunshine. Looking up, I could see the blazing sun on one side of the blue sky and the faint moon on the other. My mind turned from the abstract world of physics to the planets and moons and stars and galaxies that populate the universe.

What other evidence of fine-tuning, I wondered, might be waiting in the cosmos? Could our very existence on a life-sustaining rock on the outskirts of the Milky Way tell us anything about the Creator who has thus far been so highly suggested by cosmology and physics?

I made my decision as I drove away from the campus: it was time to quiz an astronomer about what we can learn from the mystery and grandeur of the heavens.

For Further Evidence

More Resources on This Topic

Collins, Robin. “The Argument from Design and the Many-Worlds Hypothesis.” In
Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide
, ed. William Lane Craig. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

——. “The Evidence for Fine-Tuning.”
In God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science
, ed. Neil Manson. New York: Routledge, 2003.

——. “A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine-Tuning Design Argument.” In
Reason for the Hope Within
, ed. Michael J. Murray. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999.

——. “The Teleological Argument.” In
The Rationality of Theism
, ed. Paul Copan and Paul Moser. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Dubay, Thomas.
The Evidential Power of Beauty
. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999.

Leslie, John.
Universes
. New York: Routledge, 1989.

7
THE EVIDENCE OF ASTRONOMY: THE PRIVILEGED PLANET

As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather, Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?

Astronomer George Greenstein
¹

Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say “supernatural”) plan.

Nobel laureate Arno Penzias
²

T
here’s nothing unusual about Earth. It’s an average, unassuming rock that’s spinning mindlessly around an unremarkable star in a run-of-the-mill galaxy—“a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,” as the late Carl Sagan put it.
³

The fact that life flourishes on our planet isn’t exceptional. Creatures of all kinds undoubtedly abound, we’re told, in countless locations among the ten trillion billion stars in the universe. Some scientists have estimated there are up to ten trillion advanced civilizations.
⁴
Sagan put the number at one million for our Milky Way galaxy alone.
⁵

After all, the forces of nature are so automatic that life is sure to have evolved wherever water exists. That’s why whenever scientists raise new speculation about liquid water being present on another celestial body—the underground worlds of Jupiter’s frozen moons Europa and Ganymede are currently the most fashionable examples—then the automatic assumption is that living organisms must necessarily and inexorably follow.

If life can emerge from nonlife so quickly and efficiently on a planet as undistinguished as ours, they reason, then why not throughout the universe’s hundreds of billions of galaxies? To them, life is like a soup mix: just add water!

The very title of astrobiologist David Darling’s recent book nicely encapsulates this optimistic philosophy:
Life Everywhere
.
⁶
He’s enthusiastic about claims that “life may arise inevitably whenever a suitable energy source, a concentrated supply of organic (carbon-based) material and water occur together.” These ingredients, he said, “are starting to look ubiquitous in space.”
⁷
Consequently, he believes microbial life, at least, “is widespread.”
⁸

In short, Earth has no privileged status. Polish scientist Nicholas Copernicus deflated our oversized ego by putting us in our place long ago—the universe doesn’t revolve around us; instead, we’re just living in a humdrum hamlet off the beaten path in a nondescript suburb of the vast Milky Way. We have no grand role, no meaning, no significance, no reason for being other than . . . well, just being.

“The universe that we observe,” said Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, “has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
⁹

This is the essence of what I was taught as I studied science. Of course, these conclusions neatly bolstered my atheistic values. Somehow I managed to avoid getting too depressed by the personal implications of all of this, strangely finding hope and inspiration in the belief that we are not alone in the universe. Even if God didn’t exist, at least there were millions of advanced civilizations out there.

BEAMING MESSAGES TO HERCULES

Ever since I first watched the classic movie
The Day the Earth Stood Still
as a child, I’ve been enthralled by the fanciful images of teeming inter-galactic life portrayed in science fiction. Sure,
Star Trek
and
Star Wars
were silly—but still, the idea of other exotic creatures living in the strange nooks and crannies of the universe was always intriguing and even comforting to me.

Later I became fascinated by the Drake Equation, an attempt by astronomer Frank Drake to quantify the number of civilizations that might exist in our galaxy. The equation factors in such variables as how many of the two hundred to three hundred billion stars in our Milky Way might resemble our own sun, the percentage of stars that may have planets in habitable zones, and so forth.

Though the specific numbers that scientists then plugged into Drake’s equation mostly amounted to rank conjecture fueled by their own biases—one scientist admitted it was “a way of compressing a large amount of ignorance into a small space”
¹⁰
—this did lend an air of scientific certainty to a highly speculative issue.