dorkelf
Active Member
The very nature of our universe, as supported by current scientific understanding, makes it extremely hard for me to dismiss the idea of an intelligent designer as anything except extremely likely. I have seen convincing scientific arguments which show that for conditions to ever reach a point where life can exist, much less be formed, requires the pre-existence of many infinitesimally complex forms such as atoms, molecules, etc., and in the correct quantity, configuration and balance. The fact that our universe was formed with exactly the right quantity, balance and configuration of matter and antimatter to lead to the eventual creation (or evolution) of life is therefore very hard for me to attribute to random chance, because the odds against it are tremendous:
• British physicist P.C.W. Davies calculated the probability of initial conditions in our early universe suitable to the formation of stars (presumably needed for the eventual existence of life as we know it) as one to [one followed by a thousand billion billion zeroes] against. In the article “The Anthropic Principle” published in Particle and Nuclear Physics 10, 1983) this scientist also shows how approximately fifty different constants and quantities have to be balanced to a mathematically infinitesimal degree for any life to be possible in a given universe. The probability of this happening through random chance is extremely, extremely low.
• In “A Brief History of Time”, Stephen Hawking calculated that if the rate of the universe’s expansion a second after the Big Bang had been smaller by a factor of one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would never have even expanded into a form that could eventually support life. Rather, it would have immediately collapsed into a gigantic, supermassive fireball.
Let me clarify that I am not yet even touching the matter of the oft quoted “perfect” orientation of the Earth (in terms of its distance from the sun, level of gravity, etc.) Rather I’m referring only to the initial formation of stars, the ratios of fundamental forces in our universe (such as gravity), the amount of usable energy in the universe, the difference in mass between protons and neutrons, and the proportion of matter to antimatter.
It is an untenable argument that something can ever come out of nothing, much less that something as ORGANIZED and STRUCTURED as a proton or electron (much less an atom) could pop into existence randomly. And yet, current scientific knowledge overwhelmingly points to an event some 14 billion years ago where, in the words of physicist Stephen Hawking, “the universe, and time itself, had a beginning.” Because I accept these majority opinions of science, I have no choice except to assign a very high probability to the following logical summation:
ERGO whatever began to exist had a cause
ERGO the universe began to exist
SUM the universe had a cause.
In all areas of science, it is well-accepted that organization at any significant level always points to causation. To reference an oft-quoted analogy, a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter is simply never, ever going to write the script for Hamlet. So if one finds such a script in a monkey’s typewriter, is it scientific or reasonable to assume that the monkey created it? This sort of ‘leap of faith’ is far beyond my ability, and yet a very similar leap of faith is necessary to believe the complexity and organization of this universe evolved purely through random chance.
(By the way, if you believe the monkey COULD have typed Hamlet randomly, I suggest you read an excellent statistical analysis which can be found at http://www.nutters.org/docs/monkeys )
• British physicist P.C.W. Davies calculated the probability of initial conditions in our early universe suitable to the formation of stars (presumably needed for the eventual existence of life as we know it) as one to [one followed by a thousand billion billion zeroes] against. In the article “The Anthropic Principle” published in Particle and Nuclear Physics 10, 1983) this scientist also shows how approximately fifty different constants and quantities have to be balanced to a mathematically infinitesimal degree for any life to be possible in a given universe. The probability of this happening through random chance is extremely, extremely low.
• In “A Brief History of Time”, Stephen Hawking calculated that if the rate of the universe’s expansion a second after the Big Bang had been smaller by a factor of one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would never have even expanded into a form that could eventually support life. Rather, it would have immediately collapsed into a gigantic, supermassive fireball.
Let me clarify that I am not yet even touching the matter of the oft quoted “perfect” orientation of the Earth (in terms of its distance from the sun, level of gravity, etc.) Rather I’m referring only to the initial formation of stars, the ratios of fundamental forces in our universe (such as gravity), the amount of usable energy in the universe, the difference in mass between protons and neutrons, and the proportion of matter to antimatter.
It is an untenable argument that something can ever come out of nothing, much less that something as ORGANIZED and STRUCTURED as a proton or electron (much less an atom) could pop into existence randomly. And yet, current scientific knowledge overwhelmingly points to an event some 14 billion years ago where, in the words of physicist Stephen Hawking, “the universe, and time itself, had a beginning.” Because I accept these majority opinions of science, I have no choice except to assign a very high probability to the following logical summation:
ERGO whatever began to exist had a cause
ERGO the universe began to exist
SUM the universe had a cause.
In all areas of science, it is well-accepted that organization at any significant level always points to causation. To reference an oft-quoted analogy, a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter is simply never, ever going to write the script for Hamlet. So if one finds such a script in a monkey’s typewriter, is it scientific or reasonable to assume that the monkey created it? This sort of ‘leap of faith’ is far beyond my ability, and yet a very similar leap of faith is necessary to believe the complexity and organization of this universe evolved purely through random chance.
(By the way, if you believe the monkey COULD have typed Hamlet randomly, I suggest you read an excellent statistical analysis which can be found at http://www.nutters.org/docs/monkeys )
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