Evidence for God in Physical Design Archives - Page 14 of 58

August 8, 2022August 7, 2022

Probability of a Life-Supporting Exoplanet

One of my favorite columnists is Bob Berman, who writes in Astronomy magazine. Mr, Berman is a science writer who doesn’t have an ax to grind and doesn’t stoop to ridicule or hostility toward Christianity or faith in general. In the September 2022 issue, he referred to recent articles hinting that astronomers have found exoplanets better suited for life than planet Earth and examines the probability of a life-supporting exoplanet.

Berman lists a few of Earth’s unusual features. He points out that a planet being at the proper distance from its star to allow liquid water to exist is not that difficult to achieve. If you get the appropriate distance from a fire, you can have just about any temperature you want. Five other cases that Berman mentions are not that easy.

They include…
1) …having a nearby moon that stabilizes the axial tilt over long periods.
2) …not having lethal surface radiation.
3) …not having overactive volcanoes.
4) …having atmospheric gases that are used and produced by living organisms.
5) …having the right temperature underground. On Earth, surface temperatures disappear at about six inches, and at 30 feet, temperatures don’t change no matter what happens at the surface.

These are only five of the unique qualities of our home planet. Each design feature appears reasonable, but the probability of a life-supporting exoplanet depends on more than a single feature. Many planets may have one or two of the required variables, but to sustain life, ALL of them must be in place. That means you would have to MULTIPLY the probability of each individual variable to find the odds for life, especially advanced life, to exist on a planet.

The bottom line is that the probability of a life-supporting exoplanet is vastly greater than the number of stars in the cosmos. This planet is unique because it was designed by God to sustain life. Wisdom’s words in Proverbs 8:22-36 eloquently describe the process that gave us this extraordinary planet. We need to thank God for what we have been given–and take care of it.

Reference: Bob Berman in Astronomy magazine, September 2022, page 12
See a list containing 47 variables that make Earth unique in “Evidence for Design in the Universe,” adapted from a paper titled “Limits for the Universe” by astronomer Hugh Ross. It’s available free under “charts” on our doesgodexist.org website at THIS LINK.

July 28, 2022July 27, 2022

Every Discovery that Answers One Question Raises a Dozen More

As technology progresses, we get better and better pictures from outer space. We are now seeing images from the Webb space telescope showing previously unknown details. The new information also challenges some of the assumptions of astronomy and cosmology. Researchers have an old saying: “Every discovery that answers one question raises a dozen more.” The general public may feel that we have a complete understanding of the cosmos and creation itself, but nothing could be further from the truth.,

A classic example of that is the red spot on Jupiter. Giovanni Cassini saw and made note of it 357 years ago. Astronomers have studied and analyzed that mysterious massive storm on Jupiter over and over ever since. Yet, here we are in 2022, and we still have no idea why it is red.

We are now detecting rapid radio bursts from outer space, but we don’t understand them. Interestingly, they have a pattern similar to a beating human heart. The cosmos is full of challenges we are still trying to understand. Many of them have been brought to our attention by advances in technology.

Voyager 1 left the Earth 45 years ago and has added more to our solar system knowledge than any other probe. However, scientists still cannot understand many of its discoveries. Every discovery that answers one question raises a dozen more.

As the Webb telescope sends incredible pictures like never seen before from deep space, it’s an exciting time to be alive and view areas of the creation that human eyes have never witnessed. Every new observation and discovery tells us more about the magnitude of God’s power, wisdom, and design.

Despite all this, the primary cosmological proof of the existence of God remains. Our discoveries continue to show us that there was a beginning to time, space, and matter/energy. Since the cosmos could not have come from absolute nothingness, we know that beginning had a cause, and the nature of that cause was an intelligence – not blind opportunistic chance.

The ancient words of the psalmist in Psalms 19:1-2 continue to ring true: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day after day, they utter speech, and night after night, they show knowledge.”

Reference: apodnasa.gov for 7/17/22.

July 23, 2022July 22, 2022

Lunar Soil Flunked the Test

University of Florida researchers conducted an interesting experiment comparing plant growth in Moon soil and Earth soil. Unfortunately, the lunar soil flunked the test. NASA provided the researchers with small soil samples from three Apollo missions. After placing one gram of the precious lunar soil in each of twelve pots, they planted thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) seeds in each pot. They also planted similar seeds in sixteen pots of volcanic Earth soil.

The researchers placed both groups of plants under LED lights and fertilized them with the same nutrients. Plants grew in all of the soil samples, but the lunar soil plants grew more slowly and were smaller and scrawnier than the plants grown in Earth soil. Some of them also had a purplish color typical of plants under stress.

Analysis of the soils showed that the lunar soil was full of metallic iron and tiny glass shards, both toxic to plants. The soil also lacked nitrogen, phosphorus, and trace elements that plants need to grow.

This experiment is of great interest to those wanting to colonize the Moon or Mars. Experiments have shown that space debris pelting their surfaces has altered all planets and moons. To farm on the Moon or other planets, astronauts would have to carry soil from Earth or genetically modify the plants to accept the alien soil. For now, lunar soil flunked the test. Of course, lunar farmers would also have to provide an atmospheric environment allowing plant growth.

The Genesis account tells us that God “planted a garden eastward in Eden” (Genesis 2:8). One part of planting a garden is to prepare the soil and Earth’s environment to support the three kinds of plant life (simple plants, gymnosperms, and angiosperms) mentioned in Genesis 1:10-12.

You might not think that dirt has to be specially designed, but lunar soil flunked the test. This experiment and our knowledge about plants and the solar system shows us that God designed the soil on our planet with the just-right properties to grow the plants we need for survival. Everywhere we look on Earth, and in space, we see that a wonder-working hand has gone before.

Reference: Science News, July 2, 2022, page 4.

July 21, 2022July 12, 2022

Science and Faith are Friends

For the past week, we have explored the idea that science and faith are friends.
Both science and theology deal with the fundamental human desire to know. We are naturally curious because God made us that way. Science began with Christian believers who sought to learn more about God through His creation. A desire to learn about God through the things He has made motivated men like Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others to create what today we call “science.”

Faith in a loving and orderly Creator opened the door to a realization that the universe is orderly and not the chaotic product of the many gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans. As a result, theology and theologians developed many of the methods of modern science. Also, it was theologians who recognized that only natural causation is open to our direct study. They knew by faith that God was the ultimate cause of the universe. But since God is not a physical being, we can only study the secondary causation.

Even though we recognize that God is the only possible cause of the universe, all we can do is discover how He did it and marvel at the precision fine-tuning of the cosmos. If we say that God “zapped” these things into existence without a process, we deny God’s engineering and architectural skills. Science and faith are friends, and we can know there is a God through the things He has made (Romans 1:20).

Today, well-known scientists use books and TV programs to proclaim atheism, materialism, and scientism. At the same time, prominent and often highly-paid religious teachers debunk science and tell people to take off their “science glasses” and put on “Bible glasses.” It’s time to call a truce in the war between science and faith. Although the Bible is scientifically accurate beyond its time, it is not a science book. Although nature can tell us much about God, only the Bible can tell us everything we need to know about the Creator of the universe and how to have a relationship with Him. Good science and good theology go hand-in-hand because science and faith are friends.

We have seen that the scientific understanding of the Cause of the universe matches the biblical description of God. Since God is outside of time, He can hear the prayers of millions of people all over the world at the same time. We can’t imagine what it would be like to be outside of time because being locked into time is all we know. If we could step out of history’s timeline and see it from God’s perspective, we could understand why God allows things to happen. We could understand the things that make us ask, “Why doesn’t God prevent that?” We could see the conclusion of all things. We would know that because of God’s wisdom, justice, and love, the conclusion is good.

July 20, 2022July 12, 2022

Tracing the Process of Creation

As we said in our previous post, scientists have been tracing the process of creation back to almost the beginning. However, they hit a roadblock called Planck density (named for German physicist Max Planck) just before they reach the starting point. So, thus far, science finds it impossible to go back to the precise moment when the universe began.

Since tracing the process of creation back to BEFORE the cosmic creation event will probably never be possible, scientists can only study secondary causation. They can see the processes that lead to the universe we live in, but they can’t study the primary causation. Could God be the primary cause operating behind the secondary causation we can see? Science cannot say. The best science can do is to suspend judgment. Personal beliefs are not science.

Science today has set limitations on itself, confining its study to the physical realm. To go beyond that would be considered metaphysics or theology. However, some scientists don’t hesitate to make theological statements. An example is the late Carl Sagan opening the old Cosmos series on PBS television with the statement, “The cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be.” That is not a scientific statement. It is a materialistic, atheistic theological statement beyond what science can measure and examine.

Biologist Richard Dawkins is also not afraid to venture beyond science into theology when he states in River Out of Eden, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Scientists such as Sagan and Dawkins contribute to the war between science and theology, and specifically science and the Bible. All the while, they fail to acknowledge that they are making faith statements.

If you have followed these discussions for the past week, I hope they help you understand why we say science and faith are friends, not enemies. We will have some final thoughts on that tomorrow.

July 19, 2022July 12, 2022

The Creation Process for the Universe

In the past week, we have looked at the fact that the universe had a beginning. Science can trace the creation process to learn many things about why we are here.

Because the universe was created by a process, scientists can study that process and follow it back in time. They have detected the residual cosmic background microwave radiation left over from the creation event. Astronomers can look back in time to see some of the earliest stars. Chemists can analyze the elements in the stars by examining the radiation spectrum. We can know how the elements originated in the stars as we study atomic reactions.

Life is built around the carbon atom, but for a long time, it was a mystery how carbon atoms could have formed. Finally, atheist Fred Hoyle solved the mystery and was shocked by what he found. He saw the fine-tuning required to create the carbon atom, and he expressed it this way:

“Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.” — Fred Hoyle

Studying the process of creation leads to the logical conclusion that there is intelligence behind it. What is the source of that intelligence? Science can trace the creation process back to almost the beginning. However, they hit a roadblock just before they reach the starting point. We will look at more on that next time.

July 18, 2022July 12, 2022

What is the Cause of the Universe?

In the past few days, we have examined this syllogism:
Premise 1- Everything that begins to exist must have a cause.
Premise 2- The universe began to exist.
Conclusion- The universe has a cause.
We concluded that premise 1 and premise 2 are both correct. That means the conclusion must be true. So what is the cause of the universe?

The scientific consensus is that the big bang was the beginning of time and space as well as matter and energy. So, what does that tell us about the Cause? It tells us that the Cause has to be non-material and outside of time and space. That fits the biblical description of God! Check it out!

Jeremiah 23:23-24- God is everywhere and sees everything.
Acts 17:28- In God, we live and move and have our being.
Psalms 90:4 and 102:27, 2 Peter 3:8- God is outside of time.
Proverbs 8:22-23, John 1:1-3, Revelation 1:8- God existed before the universe and time began.
John 4:24- God is a spirit.
1 John 4:8 and 16- God is love.

As we said before, the common name for the cosmic creation event is the big bang. However, that derisive term coined by astronomer Fred Hoyle does not accurately describe what happened at the beginning. A big bang indicates some kind of explosion. Explosions are haphazard and chaotic, so I prefer to call it the cosmic creation event. Scientists have determined that the beginning could not have been chaotic but precisely tuned to create a life-supporting universe. The more we learn about the processes of creation, the more we see that if things had been even slightly different, we would not be here.

What is the cause of the universe, and what process was used to create it? Scientists have studied that process and learned many things about it. Next time, we will think about what science has discovered.

July 16, 2022July 12, 2022

Did the Universe BEGIN to Exist?

Look at the syllogism in the picture above. Is it logical? Does it make sense? Yesterday, we examined premise 1 and concluded that it is true. However, looking at the second premise could be more challenging. Did the universe BEGIN to exist?

You could assume that the universe has always existed. If it didn’t BEGIN to exist, it doesn’t need a cause! That was the approach of many “thinkers” from Aristotle to Einstein. When Einstein formulated the theory of special relativity in 1905, he was concerned that his formulas indicated that the universe was not in a steady state. It was either expanding or contracting, meaning it could not have always existed. To correct that “problem,” Einstein added a “cosmological constant” that made it appear that the universe is unchanging. He just made up a number so that his equations would show that the universe was eternal. Other scientists realized that Einstein was cheating, and he later admitted it was the biggest mistake of his life.

Scientific experiments from the 1920s to the 21st century have confirmed the universe is expanding and even accelerating in its expansion. Since the universe is expanding, we can trace that expansion back to a point where the universe began as a “singularity.” So, did the universe begin to exist? The answer is yes, it had a beginning! That was something that many scientists did not want to accept because of its religious implications.

British astronomer and atheist Fred Hoyle coined the derisive term “big bang” because his faith would not allow the concept of an ultimate Causer, or God. He used that term to make fun of the idea of a beginning. However, it has now become the popular term for the beginning.

So, if premise 1 and premise 2 are both true, the conclusion must be true. The universe has a cause, and science can’t determine what it is. The scientific consensus is that the big bang was the beginning of time and space as well as matter and energy. So, what does that tell us about the Cause? It tells us that the Cause has to be non-material and outside of time and space. What fits that description? We will examine that next time.

July 15, 2022July 12, 2022

Why Does the Universe Exist?

Yesterday we questioned, “Why does the universe exist?” So, why is there anything now if nothing existed before the cosmic creation event or big bang?

We can say that everything exists because God exists. God chose to create this fine-tuned universe of space, time, matter, and energy. We can summarize this with a simple logical statement known as a syllogism. If the first and second premises are correct, then the conclusion must be true.

Premise 1- Everything that begins to exist must have a cause.
Premise 2- The universe began to exist.
Conclusion- The universe has a cause.

Premise 1 seems to be obvious. If something did not exist and then came into existence, it must have a cause for its existence. For example, suppose you are driving down the street and notice an empty lot. Each time you drive by, there is nothing but grass growing there. You take a different route for a few months, but one day you drive down that same street, and there is a house on the lot. You would not conclude that the house appeared there without a cause.

You would logically conclude that some builders constructed that house for a reason–probably because someone wanted to live there. You could investigate to learn the identity of the occupants. You could even explore building methods to see how the house was constructed. However, you would surely not conclude that the house appeared out of nothing with no cause.

Why does the universe exist? Did it BEGIN to exist? I think that a reasonable person would be willing to accept premise 1. Tomorrow, we will examine premise 2.

July 14, 2022July 12, 2022

Something from Nothing Does Not Make Sense

How can you get something from nothing? Most scientists today agree that the universe had a beginning. They disagree on how it began, but they largely accept the idea that it began to exist. However, another question many ask is, “Why does anything exist?” If there was nothing before the universe began, why are we here? If nothing existed before the universe began, it is difficult to explain why there is anything at all.

Some have tried redefining “nothing” to make it “something.” Sometimes they suggest that something is gravity. So, if gravity existed before there was anything, where did the gravity come from? What they are doing is to substitute gravity for God, but how can there be gravity without mass?

Isaac Newton described gravity as the attraction between objects that have mass. The more mass, the more gravity pulls them together. That was the accepted theory until Einstein devised a new idea. His theory defined gravity as a curvature in space-time, which is the accepted concept today. But, according to scientists, the cosmic creation event (usually referred to as the big bang) was also the beginning of space and time. So, where does gravity come from if there is no space-time or matter-energy? That still does not answer the question, “Why does anything exist?” You can’t get something from nothing.

Of course, if science says that gravity existed before anything else, atheists argue that it is no different from saying that God existed before anything else. Who or what made God? Everything that begins to exist must indeed have a cause. However, God is eternal. He did not begin to exist. God is the first cause, the unmade Maker, the necessarily existing uncaused Being. If God created time and space, He is outside of time and space.

God existed before time, but even using the term “before” shows that we are limited to thinking in time terms. There is no before or after with God. He knows the future because He can see the entire timeline of the cosmos, viewing it from the outside.

So back to our original question, “Why does anything exist?” We will look at that tomorrow.