Creationtriumphs_02
CHAPTER TWO
Who Fine —Tuned
the Universe for Life on Earth?
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.And the earth was without form and void:
and darkness was upon the face of the deep. . ."
Genesis 1:1-2
In the first verse of the Bible, God created the heavens and the earth. The second verse describes this earth that "was" in existence for an undisclosed period of time. It was in a primitive, unprepared state. Not until the third verse does the work of the first creative day commence. It is important to notice that the work on the first creative day was not the creation of the earth itself, but God causing light to penetrate the "darkness on the face [surface] of the deep [the waters that already covered the unfinished earth]."
The work of the seven creative days did not begin until the third verse. Because the creation of the heavens and the earth was before the seven creative days, the first two verses are not within the time frame of the seven creative days. Thus the actual age of the "heaven [universe] and earth" are not indicated. Between the creation of the heaven and earth and the commencement of the seven creative days, the earth "lie waste" (1) and was "empty" (2) of life for an undesignated period of time. These two characteristics of the formless earth—waste and empty of life—only anticipated the coming work to be accomplished on the seven creative days.
This global waste would have to be transformed into a habit-able host planet capable of sustaining life. After this point, all the life forms up to and including humans would be created and placed in their respective ecological niches.
For the scriptural reasons already considered, therefore, the length of the seven creative days in no way indicates the age of the universe—or even that of our planet earth. Theories about a "young Earth" or an earth billions of years old are not relevant to the Genesis account of the seven days of creation. Therefore, speculations of science as to the age of the universe and earth do not pertain to the length of the seven creative days. The Biblical account of creation welcomes the support of science, but when the Bible does not even present a precise age of the universe or earth, such attempts at agreement are not to be sought. Nevertheless, the theories of science fluctuate. The Biblical account stands on its own.
Certain other scriptures, as a matter of fact, indicate that the universe and the earth have existed for a long period of time. The Psalms compare the antiquity of the founding of the earth as a suitable metaphor for God's existence from eternity (Psalms 90:1,2). "LORD. . .before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from ever-lasting to everlasting, thou art God." If the forming of the earth is compared to God, from everlasting to everlasting, a very ancient earth is suggested. The earth, indeed, did exist long before its preparation for life began.
Proverbs (8:22-23) compares "wisdom" as existing for a long time before the Earth was created:
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting,
from the beginning, or ever the earth was. . . .
Whether "wisdom" is applied in these verses to the literal wis-dom of God or to the Son of God as the personification of wis-dom, the logic of these verses is that the wisdom of God has existed for an extremely long period of time. Why? Because the wisdom of God was in existence before the heavens and the earth were created. If the universe and the earth are only 6,000 or 7,000 years old, as some believe, the logic of these verses is meaning-less. A comparison of just more than six millennia is not very long. A young universe and earth of only 6,000 years old is more absurd than the many arbitrary speculations of phenomenal lengths of time.
Many of the recent discoveries of the universe support Biblical creation. Ironically, some of these discoveries were made by scientists pursuing their atheistic quests to prove evolutionary life on many of the other planets of the universe. Religion, to the scientists, was the "opiate" of the superstitious and weak. Naturalistic evolution was supposed to be the reality of the brave who dared chart the unknown. What a shocking disappointment! The eminent cosmologist, Fred Hoyle, aggressively opposed theism and Christianity. (3) But Hoyle discovered that an incredible fine-tuning of the nuclear ground state energies for helium, beryllium, carbon and oxygen was necessary for any kind of life to exist. If the ground state energies of these elements proportioned to each other were just four percent higher or lower, there would be insufficient oxygen or carbon for life anywhere in the universe, including the planet Earth. (4)
This fine-tuning forced Hoyle to conclude—a superintellect has "monkeyed" with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology. (5) Another scientist, Paul Davies, who once promoted atheism, now promotes "ingenious design." (6-7) In his own words:
[There] is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. . . .It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe. . . .The impression of design is overwhelming. (8)
Astronomer George Greenstein wrote in his book, THE SYMBIOTIC UNIVERSE:
As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather, Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit? (9)
The theoretical physicist, Tony Rothman, concluded a popular level essay as follows:
The medieval theologian who gazed at the night sky through the eyes of Aristotle and saw angels moving the spheres in harmony has become the modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature. . . .When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it. (10)
In an article on the anthropic principle (that the universe must have properties that make inevitable the existence of intelligent life), cosmologist Bernard Carr wrote:
One would have to conclude either that the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidences or that the universe was indeed tailor made for life. I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor! (11)
Physicist Freeman Dyson, also dealing with the anthropic principle, concluded:
The problem here is to try to formulate some statement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. In other words, the problem is to read the mind of God. (12)
MIT physicist and former president of the Association of Women in Science, Vera Kistiahowsky, commented,
The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine. (13)
Arno Penzias, who shared the Nobel prize for physics for the discovery of cosmic background radiation, was quoted as follows:
Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was cre-ated out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan. (14)
Even before Communism fell, Alexander Polyakov at Moscow's Landau Institute said:
We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. So there is a chance that the best of all possible mathematics will be created out of physicists' attempts to describe nature. (15)
Fang Li Zhi, China's noted astrophysicist, and Li Shu Xian, physicist, wrote:
A question that has always been considered a topic of meta-physics or theology—the creation of the universe—has now become an area of active research in physics. (16)
Cosmologist Edward Harrison evaluated the end conclusion of cosmology:
Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God—the design argument of Paley—updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one . . . Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument. (17)
The winner of the Crafoord Prize in astronomy, Allan Sandage, related his recognition of God:
I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing. (18)
Robert Griffiths, who won the Heinemann Prize in mathematical physics, described the physicist's encounter with God:
If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use. (19)
The agnostic astrophysicist, Robert Jastrow, narrated the iron-ic twist of his colleagues' research of the universe:
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (20)