As a somewhat precocious teenager, after witnessing the horrible death of my father to cancer, I set out to try and muddle through much research in the attempt to prove to myself that God was the very myth many folks proposed Him to be. The funny thing is that over the course of the next decade, the more I read and researched the more I found minds far more brilliant than mine will ever be that made very compelling cases for the existence of God.
How is it that all of the known (and unknown) creation of our universe came into being? What was the genesis of it all, if you atheists will pardon the term? How can such an incomprehensibly complex universe that supports life as we know it come into being simply by untold quadrillions of fortunate results of random chance?
In my past research I came across a certain Nobel Laureate and high energy physicist by the name of Professor Steven Weinberg, an admitted skeptic, who wrote, "Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values... One constant does seem to require fine tuning." This constant to which he was referring has to do with the energy of the big bang. Weinberg quantifies the tuning to one part in 10 to the 120th power. In other words if the energy of the big bang were different by one part out of 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 there would be no life anywhere in our universe. That is an amazingly tuned degree of energy that was the catalyst for this universe. Uncannily so, I'd say.
Further, there are many other factors at play in the formation and existence of our universe that have such a remarkable degree of precision that if changed even minutely would necessarily negate the chance for life in the universe as we now know it. Just a few of these items include the following:
1.) The strength of the electromagnetic force (which encourages atoms to form molecules)
2.) The strength of the nuclear force which holds atomic nuclei together. (If it were even a minute bit stronger, the di-proton and not hydrogen would be the major component of the universe, hence no burning stars.)
3.) Gravity
4.) The very mass and energy of the big bang
5.) The temperature of the big bang
6.) The rate of expansion of the universe
If, during the formation of the universe, myriads of factors were left to pure random chance, as many atheists claim was the case, then we evidently have "won the lottery” trillions and quadrillions of times by defying mind boggling odds on any one of these few properties.
Further, let’s look at the stupendous appeals to chance in the building of life from the other perspective regarding carbon based life forms. The likelihood for amino acids to form by chance, which are the building blocks of proteins, and thus the building blocks of our life is astronomical. This process being replicated repeatedly by random chance in order to form intelligent life is so miniscule as to approach impossibility.
Life as we know it is based on the element carbon. It is the sixth element in the periodic table and the only element that is capable of forming the long and complex chains necessary for life. Now the very formation of carbon is quite remarkable in its unlikelihood. To form carbon, a radioactive beryllium (number four on the periodic table) must absorb the nucleus of helium (number two) and thus form the number six element of carbon. (4+2=6 ….simple!) The issue is that beryllium is very short lived. Indeed the mean life of radioactive beryllium atom is 10 to the minus 16th seconds. In other words, its mean life span is 0.0000000000000001 seconds. In that exceptionally brief period of time, the helium nucleus must find, collide with, and be absorbed by the beryllium nucleus to create carbon… the building block of life. The ONLY way that the helium nucleus can be absorbed by the beryllium atom in that sliver of time before the beryllium atom decays is if the energies of these two nuclei are exactly matched to the necessary levels of excitation. And they are indeed matched precisely. If this reaction were prevented by a mismatch in energies, then the universe would not contain hardly anything other than hydrogen and helium, and certainly not any life. It is uncanny the precision of this, if not done by intended design.
Even something as simple as the earth being 93 million miles away from the sun instead of 92 million or 94 million miles determines whether life on earth comes into being. Either of the former or the latter would doom our very existence as the temperature on earth would be too hot or too cold to support life.
Now I know all of these scientific facts don't specifically point to a Christian deity, (and in the interest of keeping this posting shorter than a Tolstoy novel, I will breach that subject in a future posting) but even just these few items I have mentioned are so significant that, to me, it takes more faith to believe that ALL of these things happened by the amazing luck of random chance coming to benevolent fruition a googolplex number of times rather than by the hand of a divine creator.
It has been said by Sir Fred Hoyle, the British Astronomer, that the spontaneous emergence of a single cell organism from random couplings of chemicals is about as likely as the assemblage of a Boeing 747 by a tornado whirling through a junkyard.
How much more complex is a fern, or a dog, or human than such a single cell organism?
No, I feel far more confident in the science that supports my faith in a creator than the possibility that life exists because it won the lottery a googolplex number of times. When something becomes so infinitesimally small of a likelihood of happening that it approaches zero, then I would say that logic would dictate that the possibility of God must be the only true answer.
