Our Finely Tuned Universe: How Physics Points to God
- Bobby Tucker
- Feb 13, 2018
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 3, 2021
When I was teaching Sunday school, I did a series of classes using Lee Strobel's works. The following is from The Case for A Creator, chapter 6. While there may be the stray original item from me, I deserve no credit for what is written in this particular article. It is properly attributed to Lee Strobel in its entirety.
Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it as merely brute fact…. I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.
Physicist Paul Davies, The Mind of God, 16, 232.
As early as the 1950s, astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle noticed the carbon and oxygen inside stars was produced in a very pre-cise 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.”
For example, let's consider the gravitational constant. Imagine a ruler stretching across the entire universe in one-inch increments. Obviously, there'd be billions upon billions upon billions of inches. After all, the observable universe is approximately 93 billion lights years in diameter.
Moving the gravitational constant just one inch on the ruler would increase gravity a billion-fold. This sounds HUGE, but relative to the entire ‘ruler,’ it’s very small - just one part in 10 thousand billion billion billion. Compared to the total range of force strengths in nature, gravity has an incomprehensively narrow range for life to exist.
Gravity is just one parameter scientists have studied. There are more than thirty separate physical or cosmological constants that require precise calibration in order to produce a life-sustaining universe.
The so-called “cosmological constant” (part of Einstein’s equation for General Relativity) has conservatively been estimated to be at least one part in a hundred million billion billion billion billion billion. That would be a 10 followed by 53 zeroes! It would be like being in space and throwing a dart randomly toward Earth and hitting a bullseye that is one trillionth of a trillionth of an inch in diameter (that’s less than the size of a solitary atom).
Now just consider these two - gravity and the cosmological constant. Fine-tuning would be to a precision of one part in a hundred million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion (the equivalent of one atom in the entire known universe).
Other parameters to consider:
Difference in mass between neutrons and protons
Electromagnetic force
Strong nuclear force
Oxford Physicist Roger Penrose said just one parameter, the “original phase-space volume,” required fine-tuning to an accuracy of one part in 10 billion multiplied by itself 123 times. It would be impossible to write down that number in full since it would require more zeroes than the number of elementary particles in the entire universe!
Random chance can’t account for this degree of fine-tuning, and as such, it is perfectly reasonable to choose the design theory over the chance theory. We reason that way all the time. Were the defendant’s fingerprints on the weapon because of a chance formation of chemicals or because he touched the weapon? Jurors don’t hesitate to conclude that he touched the gun when the odds against it are so astronomical.
Alternative theories have been proposed in an effort to rid us of the burden of design. One is the elusive Grand Unified Theory, but that just moves the argument up one level. A grand unified theory still points to a designer, albeit an even more impressive one if that is even possible.
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 thirty 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.
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 Victor 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.” 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. 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.”
However, if we grant some merit to one theory - the ‘Many-universes generator’ - we merely kick the issue up another level, just like the issue of a Grand Unified Theory. A designer would be required to create a many-universes generator; it could not arise naturalistically. Belief otherwise requires as much suspension of disbelief as any religion. Clifford Longley said, “The sight of scientific atheists clutching at such desperate straws has put new spring in the step of theists.”
Intelligent design is just a natural extrapolation of what we already know - we already know that intelligent minds produce finely tuned devices. Romans 1:20 says, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." It seems the deeper we dig into His creation, the more evidence we find supporting this biblical claim, not less.