The Fine-Tuning of the Universe - extract from 'God's Undertaker: has science buried God?' by John Lennox
The argument of Hawking that universe created itself
1. Stephen Hawking, leading cosmologist and recently retired Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has co-authored a book, The Grand Design. In it, he claims that the universe did not need God to create it.
2. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist."[1]
3. a. This is science, saying :” Things happen”? Science means studying the causes and purposes to come to perfect knowledge and perfect existence or well-being, living in harmony with the laws of the Complete whole.
b. Perhaps Hawking thinks that gravity has an equal amount of "negative" energy to perfectly balance all other "positive" energies.[2]
4. But even if "gravity" did provide such balance, it could hardly suffice as an adequate cause for the whole universe; can gravity only have been the cause of the subatomic particles moving into the structures of the cosmos?
5. Moreover, pointing out qualities of already-existing energies is not an explanation for their origin and ability to operate as such, and the perfecting of life.
6. Hawking may have relied on the common cosmological concept that gravity supposedly can pull matter together from fine dust into nuggets, clumps, large conglomerates, nebulae, planetesimals, planets, stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, and super-clusters. Physics, however, shows that gravity alone cannot do this.
7. The universe is characterized by vast extraordinary information. The three-dimensional placements of heavenly bodies in space, the life-enabling parameters such as the speed of light and electromagnetic strength are some examples of fine-tuned information.
8. Gravity and energy do not address the question of information and so these two alone form insufficient grounds to reject a supernatural origin for the universe.
9. A basic argument for the existence of God is that since something exists (e.g. the universe), and since something cannot make itself, then there must be a transcendental, first cause, a cause outside that thing, namely God.
10a. Hawking says the universe was just the result of "spontaneous creation," but such reasoning makes no sense. Spontaneous creation means magic and this need a magician. This is our practical experience. Juggling of the subatomic balls and macroscopic planet balls of the universe is performed by a Juggler. Therefore, Sir Isaac Newton formed a reasonable and accurate assessment of the universe's origins: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
10b. To answer Hawking’s question as to what is the cause of God; He is eternal, just as Hawking’s laws are eternal principles.
11. God exists.
http://www.focus.org.uk/lennox.php
fine-tuning has established itself as an aspect of the universe that merits very serious consideration. Let us look, then, at some examples.
For life to exist on earth an abundant supply of carbon is needed. Carbon is formed either by combining three helium nuclei, or by combining nuclei of helium and beryllium. Eminent mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, found that for this to happen, the nuclear ground state energy levels have to be fine-tuned with respect to each other. This phenomenon is called ‘resonance.’ If the variation were more than 1 percent either way, the universe could not sustain life. Hoyle later confessed that nothing had shaken his atheism as much as this discovery. Even this degree of fine-tuning was enough to persuade him that it looked as if ‘a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,’ and that ‘there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.’
However, in terms of the tolerance permitted, this example pales into insignificance when we consider the fineness of the tuning of some of the other parameters in nature. Theoretical physicist Paul Davies tells us that, if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic force had been different by 1 part in 1016, no stars could have formed. Again, the ratio of the electromagnetic force-constant to the gravitational force-constant must be equally delicately balanced. Increase it by only one part in 1040 and only small stars can exist; decrease it by the same amount and there will only be large stars. You must have both large and small stars in the universe: the large ones produce elements in their thermonuclear furnaces; and it is only the small ones that burn long enough to sustain a planet with life.
To use Davies’ illustration, that is the kind of accuracy a marksman would need to hit a coin at the far side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away. If we find that difficult to imagine, a further illustration suggested by astrophysicist Hugh Ross may help. Cover America with coins in a column reaching to the moon (380,000 km or 236,000 miles away), then do the same for a billion other continents of the same size. Paint one coin red and put it somewhere in one of the billion piles. Blindfold a friend and ask her to pick it out. The odds are about 1 in 1040 that she will.
Although we are now in realms of precision far beyond anything achievable by instrumentation designed by humans, the cosmos still has more stunning surprises in store. It is argued that an alteration in the ratio of the expansion and contraction forces by as little as 1 part in 1055 at the Planck time (just 10-43 seconds after the origin of the universe), would have led either to too rapid expansion of the universe with no galaxies forming or to too slow an expansion with consequent rapid collapse.
The argument of Hawking that universe created itself
1. Stephen Hawking, leading cosmologist and recently retired Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has co-authored a book, The Grand Design. In it, he claims that the universe did not need God to create it.
2. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist."[1]
3. a. This is science, saying :” Things happen”? Science means studying the causes and purposes to come to perfect knowledge and perfect existence or well-being, living in harmony with the laws of the Complete whole.
b. Perhaps Hawking thinks that gravity has an equal amount of "negative" energy to perfectly balance all other "positive" energies.[2]
4. But even if "gravity" did provide such balance, it could hardly suffice as an adequate cause for the whole universe; can gravity only have been the cause of the subatomic particles moving into the structures of the cosmos?
5. Moreover, pointing out qualities of already-existing energies is not an explanation for their origin and ability to operate as such, and the perfecting of life.
6. Hawking may have relied on the common cosmological concept that gravity supposedly can pull matter together from fine dust into nuggets, clumps, large conglomerates, nebulae, planetesimals, planets, stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, and super-clusters. Physics, however, shows that gravity alone cannot do this.
7. The universe is characterized by vast extraordinary information. The three-dimensional placements of heavenly bodies in space, the life-enabling parameters such as the speed of light and electromagnetic strength are some examples of fine-tuned information.
8. Gravity and energy do not address the question of information and so these two alone form insufficient grounds to reject a supernatural origin for the universe.
9. A basic argument for the existence of God is that since something exists (e.g. the universe), and since something cannot make itself, then there must be a transcendental, first cause, a cause outside that thing, namely God.
10a. Hawking says the universe was just the result of "spontaneous creation," but such reasoning makes no sense. Spontaneous creation means magic and this need a magician. This is our practical experience. Juggling of the subatomic balls and macroscopic planet balls of the universe is performed by a Juggler. Therefore, Sir Isaac Newton formed a reasonable and accurate assessment of the universe's origins: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
10b. To answer Hawking’s question as to what is the cause of God; He is eternal, just as Hawking’s laws are eternal principles.
11. God exists.
http://www.focus.org.uk/lennox.php
fine-tuning has established itself as an aspect of the universe that merits very serious consideration. Let us look, then, at some examples.
For life to exist on earth an abundant supply of carbon is needed. Carbon is formed either by combining three helium nuclei, or by combining nuclei of helium and beryllium. Eminent mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, found that for this to happen, the nuclear ground state energy levels have to be fine-tuned with respect to each other. This phenomenon is called ‘resonance.’ If the variation were more than 1 percent either way, the universe could not sustain life. Hoyle later confessed that nothing had shaken his atheism as much as this discovery. Even this degree of fine-tuning was enough to persuade him that it looked as if ‘a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,’ and that ‘there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.’
However, in terms of the tolerance permitted, this example pales into insignificance when we consider the fineness of the tuning of some of the other parameters in nature. Theoretical physicist Paul Davies tells us that, if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic force had been different by 1 part in 1016, no stars could have formed. Again, the ratio of the electromagnetic force-constant to the gravitational force-constant must be equally delicately balanced. Increase it by only one part in 1040 and only small stars can exist; decrease it by the same amount and there will only be large stars. You must have both large and small stars in the universe: the large ones produce elements in their thermonuclear furnaces; and it is only the small ones that burn long enough to sustain a planet with life.
To use Davies’ illustration, that is the kind of accuracy a marksman would need to hit a coin at the far side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away. If we find that difficult to imagine, a further illustration suggested by astrophysicist Hugh Ross may help. Cover America with coins in a column reaching to the moon (380,000 km or 236,000 miles away), then do the same for a billion other continents of the same size. Paint one coin red and put it somewhere in one of the billion piles. Blindfold a friend and ask her to pick it out. The odds are about 1 in 1040 that she will.
Although we are now in realms of precision far beyond anything achievable by instrumentation designed by humans, the cosmos still has more stunning surprises in store. It is argued that an alteration in the ratio of the expansion and contraction forces by as little as 1 part in 1055 at the Planck time (just 10-43 seconds after the origin of the universe), would have led either to too rapid expansion of the universe with no galaxies forming or to too slow an expansion with consequent rapid collapse.
