Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

Excerpt from  wsj.com
By Eric Metaxas

 

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,

researches 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).

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Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God