Are Science and Faith Incompatible? Part 2
The Evidence of Physics
As early as the 1950s, astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle noticed the carbon and oxygen inside stars was produced in a very precise ratio. Since then, many other fundamental parameters and laws have been discovered that are so precisely fine-tuned that the term ‘anthropic principle’ was coined as a way to explain them. Patrick Glynn summarized this principle when he said, “In plainer English, the anthropic principle says that all the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common - these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life.”[6] For example, the cosmological constant - the energy density of empty space - is estimated to be at least one part in a hundred million billion billion billion billion billion. That is merely one example and is so precise it represents one part in ten followed by fifty-three zeroes.[7] And there are more than thirty such examples.
One explanation scientists have proffered for these astronomical “coincidences” is random chance. However, the mathematical odds of so many factors being so precisely fine-tuned are effectively zero. For example, the accuracy required by the “original phase-space volume” is a number so gargantuan that “it would require more zeroes than the number of elementary particles in the entire universe!”[8] Astronomer Royal Martin Rees says that if any one of six constants he has looked at was to change “even to the tiniest degree, there would be no stars, no complex elements, no life.”[9]
A variant of random chance that has recently gained traction is the multiverse theory. According to this theory, our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes. One of them was bound to get it right, and ours turned out to be the lucky winner. This is still random chance, but increases the sample size as it were. This theory has led Stenger to conclude, “The ‘fine-tuning’ of the constants of physics, said to be so unlikely, could very well have been random; we just happen to be in the universe that turned up in that particular deal of the cards.”[10] Given the impossibility of empirically testing this theory, I would argue that Intelligent Design is at a minimum no worse an explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. In fact, I would go so far as to assert that the data more readily support a theory of Intelligent Design than they do the multiverse theory. Yet Martin Rees subscribes to the multiverse theory as well and even likens our universe to finding a suit that fits if we look among a big enough stack of suits. He believes our universe is but a tiny, isolated cor-ner of the multiverse.[11] But in his assessment of the multiverse theory, physicist John Polkinghorne countered saying, “The many universes account is sometimes presented as if it were purely scientific, but in fact a sufficient portfolio of different universes could only be generated by speculative processes that go well beyond what sober science can honestly endorse.”[12]
Finally, in what may be the bluntest response to the fine-tuning of the universe, some scientists have replied with the equivalent of “so what?” If this universe, by itself or as one of many, did not support life, we would not be here to notice and ponder it. While technically true, that is not the point. The fact is more than thir-ty physics constants are so precisely balanced that the smallest change in just one of them would make the existence of life, and in some cases the universe itself, impossible. And that deserves a thoughtful answer rather than the dismissive attitude that some would give it.
Next we'll look at the scientific discipline of biology and how it, too, points in the direction of a Designer.
[6] Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World (New York: Three Rivers, n.d.), 31.
[7] Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 133.
[8] Ibid., 135.
[9] Sir Martin Rees, quoted in Brad Lemley, “Why is There Life?”. (DiscoverMagazine.com, Nov 2000) Available at: <http://www.discovermagazine.com/2000/nov/cover#.USKF3KV917s> [Accessed 12/01/15]
[10] Victor Stenger, “Intelligent Design: Humans, Cockroaches and the Law of Physics”. Available at: <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html> [Accessed 12/11/15]
[11] Sir Martin Rees, quoted in Brad Lemley, “Why is There Life?”. (DiscoverMagazine.com, Nov 2000)
[12] John Polkinghorne, Science & Theology: An Introduction (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 38.