The Astonishing Fine-Tuning of the Universe - FAS2620

SPEAKER A If design requires a designer, then who designed God? It's the ultimate skeptic's question, but is it a logic trap? Today on Faith and Science, we're going beyond biology to the biggest question of all. We'll explore why the infinite regress argument fails and why the evidence in nature, like a well-manicured garden, points clearly to a creator. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we're drawing on some insights from this book, from chapter 6 in particular. Now, in that chapter, it compares finding a designed universe with finding a well-manicured garden in a forest. So it sets up that scene. Why could we be sure a gardener exists if we found such a thing, even if we never saw the gardener? SPEAKER B Yeah, so I guess just human experience. You know, we know that when we go through a forest, it's, you know, pretty random. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B The trees. I love bushwalking, and I've walked through forests in, you know, different countries around the world, this sort of thing. As well as Australia. And, and there's, I guess, a certain amount of beauty in the randomness. But when you come to, for example, a well-manicured garden, things are laid out there and set out in a particular pattern and this sort of thing. We know, yeah, wow, somebody has set this up, you know. Yes, yes. Effort has been put in. Yes, yes. And they've designed, they've planted the flowers in rows and, you know, match the colors. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B All this sort of thing. And we see that it's creativity. And we talk about, you know, human creativity. And we can pick that up. And often too, when the so-called claims of human evolution, they look at tools and they say, okay, this can't have been produced by a random process. This has gotta have been produced by someone to make something, you know, to make a sharp object so they could cut something and so forth. So we have this overwhelming evidence in the universe. And one of the aspects of that is what we call the fine-tuning in the universe that we've discovered there. So there are a number of constants, for example, like the gravitational constant that we're all familiar with that controls the rate at which objects fall towards the greater mass, this sort of thing, this attraction. And so there are a lot of things, the ratios of the cosmological constants, the nuclear forces, there's a whole lot of constants that are involved in the universe that are so precise that their precision is in the order of 10 to the power 10 to the 50, these sort of things. So these are huge, Numbers. SPEAKER A Yeah. SPEAKER B You know, the accuracy of this is, you know, not one part in a billion billion billion, but one part in a, you know, we'd have to be saying that for a long period of time to estimate the size and, and everything, everything works, you know, even just our planet where we are, our distance from the sun, the fact that we have a moon to create tides. You know, all this sort of thing, the temperature, the ratio of the different atomic nuclei and this sort of thing that allow helium to form carbon and so forth. When we look at the constants that are involved in the atomic chemistry, that is, in the atomic physical interactions that are involved, the, it's well recognized that there's absolutely fine-tuning. And when physicists do the calculations, it's highly improbable that the universe should exist. And so that's why they've attempted to come up with a theory, well, there must have been an infinite number of universes. 'Cause essentially you need the number of universes that you would need to set up the probability of our just right universe is so huge if you have some sort of random forces. But this all comes back to where did these forces come from anyway? Where did gravity come from? Like, you know, the famous physicist Stephen Hawking said, well, the universe exists because of gravity. Well, it's really a bit crazy. I mean, gravity doesn't cause anything to exist. It's just a force, right? It was really strange that, you know, such an eminent physicist should say this. I mean, gravity doesn't cause anything. And the thing is, where did gravity come from? And we know that gravity doesn't exist until you have mass or matter. And so, you know, this, this comes to the fundamental problem of, you know, where, where did these things come from? Why should anything exist? Now, I've often thought of this myself. You know, here I am. Yeah. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B Here we are. Why should there be anything? You know, how did it come about? And when we go back in time, always say, you know, we go back however far back you want to go. If you want to go back, you know, a billion, trillion, trillion years, you know, what was there before that? Why should there be anything? You know? And this then leads us to the fascinating, you know, connection between gravity and time. So according to relativity, of course, If you don't have matter, you can't have time. So this is a fascinating, you know, interdependence here. And so, you know, the whole concept of energy, matter, time, you know, these sort of things are really, really fascinating things that we don't have any known explanation for. So people, you know, we have the Big Bang theory and all these sort of things, but really, where did those forces come from? You know, they talk again about a singularity. Well, that's all right. That singularity just means a single event. You've still got to have an origin for all the laws of physics to make that event work anyway. And, and, you know, time is quite a fascinating aspect. I remember some scientists discussing once, you know, trying to come up with a definition of what is time. And I think the definition they come up with, if I can remember, is time as a unidimensional, unidirectional, one-valued continuum. Oh. But it really doesn't describe it. Yeah. And so, yeah, some fascinating aspects of this that come out in terms of time as well. SPEAKER A And in relation to the whole question of God and his existence, I think there's often been an argument put forward You know, if God is the designer, then they think, well, someone needs to design God, and that can just go back infinitely as well. And so this question is all— is existent there about who created God, if that's even an appropriate question. And then the chapter brings in a link here with the idea of linear time, and God's existence and the fact that there can be other alternative perspectives on God and how he relates to linear time and the biblical concept of a God that has always been, you know, how does that fit into all of this? SPEAKER B Well, I think it's the only explanation because as you talked about this infinite regress theory, you know, who, okay, God created the universe, who created God? SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B You've got the same problem. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B And okay. So-and-so created God. Well, who created so-and-so? SPEAKER A So-and-so, yeah. SPEAKER B You know? That's right. SPEAKER A Goes all the way back. SPEAKER B And you don't get anywhere. There's no answer. And this is the beauty of the Bible because the Bible says, "I'm the self-existent one." And the other thing is that it says God is spirit. So God is non-material, right? So time only exists according to relativity if we have material, if we have matter. And this is a fascinating thing, that the Creator God is outside time. Time is meaningless to God. And this is a very interesting concept. And I think one of the problems that we have in the understanding of people today, and particularly people that are highly critical of the Christian God, and a number of philosophers and scientists have been that, and they reject God, is that They're comparing the biblical God with like Zeus or some, you know, rainbow serpent or some other god, right? Which is a created thing. SPEAKER A And a matter existing in matter. Yeah. SPEAKER B And often they were objects, superhumans or animals or something like that, right? But the Hebrew God is not that god. The Hebrew God is the Creator God outside of his creation. This is very, very important to understand. He is outside, and the Bible describes that very clearly. He's self-existent and he's spiritual. He's non-material, which immediately puts him outside time. God created time. And this is the fascinating thing that comes out of it. And it's a miracle. SPEAKER A And if he's self-existent and all-knowing, then you don't need to have a creator creating God. Like, he can be the start point of everything. And logically, that fits if that's your concept of God. SPEAKER B It's the only explanation that is actually logical. Because you run into all these problems if you had these different laws and some sort of materialistic explanation. You've gotta start with, well, where did these materials come from to make matter? You know, to make energy. And where did the laws come from that designed the gravitational constant to be just right so that, and nuclear forces so that atoms and molecules could exist? You know? There's no explanation for that, but here we are. But the God explanation, this almighty creator outside this, fits. It's the only logical explanation that does fit. But it works. Yeah. And that's why really the biblical position is a far superior position. And it really frustrates me that it's not taught in schools. You know, okay, we don't need to get into sectarianism, which religion should be, but the whole concept of an Almighty Creator should be fundamental in our education. SPEAKER A And at least people should be given the opportunity to wrestle with that perspective logically versus the current one. So they can use their minds and logic to reason through it and decide for themselves. Yeah. Now it's interesting, this whole idea of God, often people can dismiss it as miraculous and not something they wanna part with. But the chapter in this book actually pointed out that believing in evolution is something that requires believing in miracles just as much as believing in God does. What kind of evidence could we share in support of that? SPEAKER B Yeah, look, this is a very important issue that is often overlooked because we know mathematically that evolution is absolutely impossible, right? So in actual fact, for the claim to happen, for evolution to occur, for the amazing DNA codes to arise by chance that can produce the amazing structures, for example, in our brain to be able to understand things, requires a miracle. It requires some sort of chemical reactions to occur that aren't predicted by nature. Right? It's gotta be supernatural. So they've gotta believe in that. They've gotta believe in, in something happens that by definition, by scientific definition, is absolutely impossible. The Christian faith is based on observed miracles. There were actual witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. There were actual witnesses to Jesus' ascension into heaven. And it wasn't just, you know, 1 or 2 people. There were a dozen or more people at the ascension, and more than that, more, you know, up to 500 people. Afterwards were witnesses of the resurrection. And that's why Christianity spread in the face of, of death, persecution and death, because it was real. They were real witnesses and they wrote it down. Also, we have a large number of records of the testimonies of those people. You know, when we talk about Roman history and this sort of thing, we have very few records really, and often they were copies that were written you know, hundreds of years after the event, sometimes 1,000 years after the event. We have records of the Scripture, of the witnesses, of those people that saw the miracle of Jesus' resurrection and his ascension into heaven, that made copies within 100 years and multiple, multiple copies because it was such an important event. So we have evidence there of a miracle. That's why the Christian faith is far superior to evolution. SPEAKER A Interesting point there about, yeah, evidence for miracles versus assuming something just happened and don't have the evidence for it necessarily that can stack up and give validity to it. That's basically what we're looking at here with this question, aren't we? Yeah, so very interesting to consider it from that angle. Thank you so much for sharing. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.