Recently got this email from a long-time JW friend who is still "in".Thoughts on a tactful response?Thanks,Doc
SCIENCE INCREASINGLY MAKES THE CASE FOR GOD
The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer.
Intelligent design, anyone?
ByEric Metaxas
Dec. 25, 2014 4:56 p.m. ET
In
1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have
accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science
progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet
it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing
is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a
surprising place—science itself.
Here’s
the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the
astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria
for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the
right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by
27 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about
septillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.
With
such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a
large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects
launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists
listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled
coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed,
the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress
defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continues with private funds. As
of 2014, researchers have discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by
nothing.
What
happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear
that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan
supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so
the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased
accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on
plummeting.
Even
SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a
2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light of new findings
and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . .
. . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no
longer be tenable.”
As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero,
and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in
the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that
even we shouldn’t be here.
Today there
are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support
life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing
falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose
gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit
Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply
astonishing.
Yet
here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can
account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect
by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests
that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an
intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith
than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the
inconceivable odds to come into being?
There’s more. The
fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared
with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For
example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four
fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong”
and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a
second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could
not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force
and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of
the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no
stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.
Multiply
that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the
odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical
that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It
would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion
times in a row. Really?
Fred
Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his
atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that
“a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a
super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry
and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to
me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming”
and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know
about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . .
gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”
The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe.
It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the
combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond
itself.
Mr.
Metaxas is the author, most recently, of “Miracles: What They Are, Why
They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life” ( Dutton Adult, 2014).