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Modern
Science Introduces the Anthropic Principle
The Anthropic Principle states that the universe is fitted for life.
Even slight variations in a very few things would make biological life
impossible. Astronomer Stanley Jaki provides many scientific
observations that, when considered together, argue very definitely for
a Designer.
Is it reasonable to assume that an Intelligence which produced a
universe, a totality of consistently interacting things, is not
consistent to the point of acting for a purpose? To speak of purpose
may seem, since Darwin, the most reprehensible procedure before the
tribunal of science. Bafflingly enough, it is science in its most
advanced and comprehensive form scientific cosmology which reinstates
today's references to purpose into scientific discourse. Shortly after
the discovery of the 2.7o K radiation cosmologists began to wonder at
the extremely narrow margin allowed for cosmic evolution. The universe
began to appear to them more and more as if placed on an extremely
narrow track, a track laid down so that ultimately man may appear on
the scene. For if that cosmic soup had been slightly different, not
only the chemical elements, of which all organic bodies are made of,
would have failed to be formed. Inert matter would have also been
subject to an interaction different from the one required for the
coagulation of large lumps of matter, such as protostars and
proto-solar systems. . . . At any rate, the emergence of life on earth
is, from the purely scientific viewpoint, an outcome of immense
improbability. No wonder that in view of this quite a few
cosmologists, who are unwilling to sacrifice forever at the altar of
blind chance, began to speak of the Anthropic Principle. Recognition
of that principle was prompted by the nagging suspicion that the
universe may have after all been specifically tailored for the sake of
man (Jaki, “FSCC” as cited in Varghese, ISOAG, 71-72).
Hugh Ross explains how the universe shows that it has not randomly
come together. Even scientists who are not theists have acknowledged
this point, including the founder of the Steady State theory of the
universe, Fred Hoyle.
Astronomers have discovered that the characteristics of the universe,
of our galaxy and of our solar system are so finely tuned to support
life that the only reasonable explanation for this is the forethought
of a personal, intelligent Creator whose involvement explains the
degree of fine-tunedness. It requires power and purpose. . . . Fred
Hoyle concluded in 1982 that ‘a superintellect has monkeyed with
physics, as well as with chemistry and biology’. It is not just the
universe that bears evidence for design. The sun and the earth also
reveal such evidence. Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, and Josef Shklovskii
were among the first astronomers to make this point. They attempted to
estimate the number of planets (in the universe) with environments
favorable for life support. In the early 1960s they recognized that
only a certain kind of star with a planet just the right distance from
that star would provide the necessary conditions for life. (Ross,
“AEPTG” as cited in Moreland, CH, 160, 163-64)
Considering that the observable universe contains less than a trillion
galaxies, each averaging a hundred billion stars, we can see that not
even one planet would be expected, by natural processes alone, to
possess the necessary conditions to sustain life. No wonder Robert
Rood and James Trefil, among others, have surmised that intelligent
physical life exists only on the earth. (Ross, “AEPTG” as cited in
Moreland, CH, 169-170)
Meithe similarly notes, “It is this increasing amazement that has led
many astronomers and physicists to change the Anthropic principle
somewhat and announce with Sir Fred Hoyle that ‘there must be a God’“
(Varghese 1984, pp. viii, 23-37). (Miethe, DGE, 165).
Robert Jastrow comments that the Anthropic Principle is the most
obvious evidence of theism modern science has produced.
Thus, according to the physicist and the astronomer, it appears that
the Universe was constructed within very narrow limits, in such a way
that man could dwell in it. This result is called the Anthropic
principle. It is the most theistic result ever to come out of science,
in my view. (Jastrow, “AG” as cited in Varghese, ISOAG, 22)
Stephen Hawking again notes that the conditions for life necessary at
a subatomic level give evidence for design, even God. He even says
that it is difficult to conceive of any other alternative than
intelligent design for the universe once the evidence has been
examined.
The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many
fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the
electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron.
The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have
been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. .
. . Nevertheless, it seems clear that there are relatively few ranges
of values for the numbers that would allow the development of any form
of intelligent life. . . . One can take this either as evidence of a
divine purpose in Creation and the choice of the laws of science or as
support for the strong Anthropic principle. . . . This means that the
initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen
indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the
beginning of time. It would be very difficult to explain why the
universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a
God who intended to create beings like us. (Hawking, BHT, 125, 127)
Gordon Clark writes that, once we inspect the facts of the universe,
noting its irreducible complexity, all the conditions necessary to be
exactly accurate for life, and common sense lead to the conclusion
that God intelligently designed the universe.
It is hard to believe that the vastness and grandeur of nature is all
a matter of chance. Are the properties of the chemical elements just a
matter of chance too--carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and the rest? Are the
remarkable properties of water and carbon dioxide again due to chance?
Yet again, is science pointing to an unknown God? Even the atheistic
scientist rarely cracks a joke about what is behind nature. (Clark,
SC,154)
Hugh Ross echoes the same sentiment:
Again we see that a personal, transcendent Creator must have brought
the universe into existence. A personal, transcendent Creator must
have designed the universe. A personal, transcendent Creator must have
designed planet Earth. A personal, transcendent Creator must have
designed life. (Ross, FG, 138)
[Top]
DNA, designed
by Intelligence, not by prospect
In essence, the argument from information is an evidential support for
the teleological argument. Because information by its nature is
communication from one intelligence to another, any information found
in the universe argues for an intelligent origin. DNA and SETI (the
Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) assume that information
discovered implies an Intelligent Designer.
-DNA Contains a Complex Message
Charles Thaxton and William Dembski write about the complexity of DNA
with regard to the amount of specified information just one strand
contains. Molecular biology, they argue, provides evidence for an
Intelligent Designer.
A structural identity has been discovered between the genetic message
on DNA and the written messages of a human language. (Thaxton, “NDA”
as cited in CP, 18)
There is an identity of structure between DNA (and protein) and
written linguistic messages. Since we know by experience that
intelligence produces written messages, and no other cause is known,
the implication, according to the abductive method, is that
intelligent cause produced DNA and protein. The significance of this
result lies in the security of it, for it is much stronger than if the
structures were merely similar. We are not dealing with anything like
a superficial resemblance between DNA and a written text. We are not
saying DNA is like a message. Rather, DNA is a message. True design
thus returns to biology. (Yockey, JTB, as cited in Thaxton, “NDA,” 19)
Within biology, Intelligent Design is a theory of biological origins
and development. Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are
necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures of
biology, and that these causes are empirically detectable. (Dembski, “IDM,”
24)
-Some Events in the Universe Can Be Explained Only by Intelligence
The world contains events, objects, and structures which exhaust the
explanatory resources of undirected natural causes, and which can be
adequately explained only by recourse to intelligent causes.
Scientists are now in a position to demonstrate this rigorously. Thus
what has been a longstanding philosophical intuition is now being
cashed out as a scientific research program. (Dembski, “IDM,” 25)
In particular, Michael Behe argues that there are no nonintelligent
explanations for certain biological phenomena in the human body and
other organisms. These functions are, according to Behe, irreducibly
complex, meaning that such phenomena cannot occur in incremental
changes via evolution. In a candid moment, Charles Darwin admits, “If
it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could
not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely break down” (Darwin, OOS,
6th ed., 154).
No one at Harvard University, no one at the National Institutes of
Health, no member of the National Academy of Sciences, no Nobel Prize
winner – no one at all can give a detailed account of how the cilium,
or vision, or blood clotting, or any complex biochemical process might
have developed in a Darwinian fashion. But here we are. All these
things got here somehow; if not in a Darwinian fashion, then how? (Behe,DBB,
187)
Other examples of irreducible complexity abound, including aspects of
DNA reduplication, electron transport, telomere synthesis,
photosynthesis, transcription regulation, and more. . . . [Hence,]
life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical
components, is the product of intelligent activity. (Behe, DBB, 160,
193)
The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data
itself – not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that
biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum
process that requires no new principles of logic or science. . . .
[Thus,] the result of these requires no new efforts to investigate the
cell – to investigate life at the molecular level – is a loud, clear
piercing cry of ‘design!’ The result is so unambiguous and so
significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements
in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and
Einstein. (Behe, DBB, 232-233)
Another piece of evidence for intelligent design comes from someone
who would deny it.
The late astronomer Carl Sagan, founder of SETI, based the entire
program on the premise that even one recognizable message from outer
space would prove that there is life outside of earth. Hence, the same
principle evident in the information discovered in the universe would
argue for an Intelligence that created it.
The receipt of a message from space is, even before we decode it, a
profoundly hopeful sign. It means that someone has learned to live
with high technology; that it is possible to survive technological
adolescence. This alone, quite apart from the contents of the message,
provides a powerful justification for the search for other
civilizations.
It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously
artificial interstellar message. For example, the first ten prime
numbers – numbers divisible only by themselves and by one – are 1, 2,
3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 23. It is extremely unlikely that any natural
physical process could transmit radio messages containing prime
numbers only. If we received such a message we would deduce a
civilization out there that was at lest fond of prime numbers. (Sagan,
C, 302, 314)
Thus, if receiving a message as simple as ten prime numbers would
prove an intelligent cause, surely the amount of information in the
human brain, which has “the equivalent of twenty million books” within
us (Sagan, C, 278), provides strong evidence for an exceedingly great
Designer of the world and of humans.
[Top]
Creation Ex Nihilo (Out Of Nothing) Does Not Contradict Modern Science
In answering the question, “How much more plausible is belief in a
Creator of the universe in the light of the advancement of modem
science,” Margenau says,
Maybe there are two points I should make. In the first place, if there
was no Creator, how did the universe come into being? I don’t believe,
I could simply not get myself to think that it all happened by
accident. . . . After all, the Creation of the universe had to obey
the Law of the Conservation of Energy, of Mass, and so forth. That was
St. Thomas. It now happens, and this is not known to many people, that
the Creation of the universe out of nothing does not contradict the
laws of Nature. If you write down the equation for the total energy of
the mass of all matter, of radius, let’s say, R and Mass M, you find
the following. The energy, according to Einstein, is Mass times C2,
MC2 . This ball of matter also has gravitational energy. Gravitational
forces are attractive. Therefore the gravitational energy has a
negative sign, it’s a negative energy. The total energy consists of
two parts: MC2 and the second one happens to be Newton’s constant of
universal gravitation, G, times the square of M divided by R plus MC2
minus the latter term. Now if this difference was zero, the ball could
spring into existence out of nothing and not violate the principle of
conservation of energy.
Well, it turns out that if you put the equation, the first term minus
the second term equals zero, you get almost exactly the condition of
the black hole. Therefore the Creation of the universe out of nothing
is by no means contradictory to modem science; Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics have shown us that it isn’t. . . . It is absolutely
unreasonable [for someone to reject the notion of a Creator by
appealing to science]. [Rather, the modern science] has definitively
shown [the non-contradiction of Creation out of nothing]. This is not
widely known. [Furthermore, the Anthropic Principle] is absolutely
convincing to me. . . . Do you see Purpose in the universe and, if so,
what is its relation to the Creator? ‘There my argument is extremely
simple. What is the difference between cause and purpose? Cause is
determination of future events by the past. Purpose is determination
of future events by a vision of the future. You can’t have a purpose
unless you visualize what you want to do. Therefore, purpose requires
a mind’” (Margenau, “MPBG” as cited in Varghese, ISOAG, 41-42).
In continuing, Margenau was asked if the leading scientists opposed to
religion. The question assumes that the Anthropic Principle has
adequately demonstrated the truth of the teleological argument.
Numerous scientists are convinced and have become believers, showing
that faith and reason can coexist in intermingled harmony.
The leading scientists [Eccles, Wigner, Heisenberg, Schroedinger,
Einstein, etc.], the people who have made the contributions which has
made science grow so vastly in the last fifty years, are, so far as I
know, all religious in their beliefs. None of these men had any
objection to religion. They didn’t write about religion much
Heisenberg did occasionally - but they were certainly not atheists. So
what I’m saying is that, if you take the topnotch scientists, you find
very few atheists among them. [On other occasion Margenau said] . . .
if you take the outstanding physicists, the ones who have done the
most to advance modem physics, especially Heisenberg, Schroedinger,
Dirac (a Nobel Prize winner) you find them all interested in religion.
All these men were intensely interested in religion. (Margenau, “MPBG”
as cited in Varghese, ISOAG, 43-44).
[Top]
Evidence from Life
Since the time of Louis Pasteur, man has been certain that life cannot
come from inorganic material. The cause of life is something living.
Yet, according to evolutionists, the exception is that evolution is
true. Life itself has a very powerful testimony that it came from
another living thing, as is the case when we observe it and consider
its origins.
I think if you look at the structure of our living system,
micro-organisms or ourselves under the microscope, as it were (not
literally), if you investigate a living system that is before us, that
is accessible to us, one is driven to the conclusion, inescapably,
that living systems could not have been generated by random processes,
within a finite time-scale, in a finite universe. I think the evidence
from life is very hard, a hard fact, from the nature of a living
system as you study it in the lab. The information content in the
living system that we have on the earth is perhaps the hardest
cosmological fact. You can’t get away from that, in the sense that the
Universe has to in some way discover this arrangement. I would put
that datum above the cosmological datum in quality of information. (Wickramasinghe,
“SDOL” as cited in Varghese, ISOAG, 33)
Can other universes explain the origin of life and complex
information? No, says Hugh Ross, because the multi-universe scenario
requires complete independence of universes, that is, there is no way
for these universes to interact. Further, even granting this does not
explain how these other civilizations originated, for there has to be
some way these other civilizations came into being, which falls into
the cosmological argument.
Invoking other universes cannot solve the problem. All multi-universe
models require that the additional universes remain totally out of
contact with one another; that is, their space-time manifolds cannot
overlap. Therefore, they cannot help resolve origin of life problems
on Earth. The only explanation left for how living organisms received
their complex and ordered configurations is that an intelligent,
transcendent Creator personally infused this information” (Ross, FG,
138).
[Top]
Finely Tuned Natural
Laws Imply Purpose
The laws of nature operate with such regularity in maintaining the
universe we see that intelligence rather than nonintelligence seems a
more reasonable explanation of the origin of the universe.
When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely
tuned to produce the universe we see . . . that conspires to plant the
idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a
purpose behind it. (Polkinghorne, as cited in Begley, “SFG,” 48)
[Recent discoveries in cosmology reveal] a universe that fits
religious views [- specifically, that] somehow intelligence must have
been involved in the laws of the universe. (Townes, as cited in
Begley, “SFG,” 49)
. . . I think one is driven again to postulate an intelligence. The
logically easiest way of beating the improbability is to say that an
intelligence intervened. (Wickramasinghe, “SDOL” as cited in Varghese,
ISOAG, 32)
[Today] intellectuals are beginning to find it respectable [to talk
about how physical law seems to favor life]. (Barbour, as cited in
“CD,” 52)
The fact that these relations [fine-tuned universe] are necessary for
our existence is one of the most fascinating discoveries of modern
science. . . . All this prompts the question of why, from the infinite
range of possible values that nature could have selected for the
fundamental constants, and from the infinite variety of initial
conditions that could have characterized the primeval universe, the
actual values and conditions conspire to produce the particular range
of very special features that we observe. For clearly the universe is
a very special place: exceedingly uniform on a large scale, yet not so
precisely uniform that galaxies could not form; . . . an expansion
rate tuned to the energy content to unbelievable accuracy; values for
the strengths of its forces that permit nuclei to exist, yet do not
burn up all the cosmic hydrogen, and many more apparent accidents of
fortune. (Davies, “AU” as cited in Plantinga, “MN”, 111)
In answering the question, “How do you find the Anthropic Principle?”
Wickramasinghe replies,
I think it is certainly, objectively true that the number of carbon
atoms and oxygen atoms and nitrogen atoms in the universe have an
appropriate proportion for life to start on a planet like the earth.
That is certainly true. Whether that means anything much deeper than
that those proportions have been controlled by an Intelligence, I
don’t know. I tend to think that they are, that they have been. (Wickramasinghe,
as cited in Varghese, ISOAG, 36)
Fred Heeren adds that since science can expect order and rationality
in nature, “scientists have found that they can actually predict the
values of certain constants - within narrow parameters - based on
life’s need of them, as Fred Holye did when he accurately predicted
the resonance of the carbon atom” (Heeren, “DMCPBC,” 39).
[Top]
The Specificity of the Universe Must Involve a Super cosmic
Intelligence
Specified complexity, as stated before, argues for a Designer. Within
the Anthropic Principle, so many variables from the supercosmic to the
subatomic had to occur just so in order for organisms to develop. The
gradual formation of numerous irreducibly complex entities point to an
Intelligence planning it all to come together as it has.
The actual specificity of the universe is a striking reminder of such
a dependence. Precisely because the actual cosmos is so specific, it
should be easy to see the possibility of an immensely large number of
other specificities. The actual specificity of the universe, which
cannot be necessary, reveals therefore its dependence on a choice
beyond the universe. Since the specificity of the universe is highly
understandable, the choice underlying that specificity, a choice which
also gives the universe its actual existence, must involve an
intelligence and power which is supercosmic, that is, beyond that
cosmos which for science is the totality of consistently interacting
things. (Jaki, “FSCCU” as cited in Varghese, ISOAG, 71)
[Top]
The Universe Designed for
Life
In particular, the universe appears to be designed with the exact
conditions to support life. Since the probability is much higher for
the conditions in the universe to not favor life than to favor it, the
best explanation appears to be that God made the our universe suitable
for life.
[The universe is] apparently designed for the development of life and
destined to live forever, neither to fly apart into dying cinders nor
collapse. (Sternglass, as cited in “CD,” 52)
Had the expansion rate at the beginning been faster or slower - by
mere 1 part in 1060
- life would not have been possible. . . . One matter
atheists and Bible believers agree on is that our universe has been
finely tuned, against astronomical odds, in a way that permits
conscious beings to exist. (Heeren, “DMCPBC,” 39, 42)
[Top]
Conclusion
The question of whether God exists is one that humans can answer.
We have the necessary information with which to reasonably conclude
that God exists. The evidence cannot be effaced for we are self made
examples of the power of such intelligence. Science and all the
secrets of life it has unlocked have not yet begun to scratch the
surface of who and what we really are. It is reasonable to conclude
that God exists, and to conclude against it rubs against reality
itself. |
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