This is the last in a series of guest blogs on science, religion, and design by Dr. Ben Clausen of the Geoscience Research Institute, based near the campus of Loma Linda University. I am very grateful that he allowed me to present these at my blog site. The words that follow are his.

The argument from design for God shouldn’t be oversold and both sides of the argument need to be recognized, but it can be a useful argument. As long as one realizes that both evolutionists and creationists overstate their case to make a point, one has lower expectations about delivery on a promise. It is easy to make pronouncements that “man will never synthesize any organic molecules”, or “man will never set foot on the moon”, but they only make the Christian appear a fool when they happen.

The design argument is useful for the believer when evidence in the natural world is easily interpreted in harmony with a Designer; it is at least consistent with belief in the supernatural God of the Bible. The design argument can also be useful as an apologetic for the non-believer in at least suggesting that more than pure naturalism is needed.

Personally, I believe that the “heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.” {Ps 19:1} The design that I see in nature is not proof for God – I have a choice –, but the evidence is good enough for me.

An Appendix will follow in a couple of days for those interested in further reading on this topic. It will expand on key works in the following bibliography.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. 1986. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford Univ. Press).
• Bertola and U. Curi, eds. 1993. The Anthropic Principle, Proceedings of the Second Venice Conference on Cosmology and Philosophy (Cambridge Univ. Press).
• Bhaktivedanta Institute. 1984. Origins (3764 Watseka Ave., Los Angeles, CA).
• Fred Bortz. 2010. “Hawking and Mlodinow return with a unifying ‘Grand Design’,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 5; http://articles.philly.com/2010-09-05/entertainment/24977039_1_leonard-mlodinow-quantum-mechanics-lucasian-professor
• Walter Bradley. 1994. “Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God”, The Real Issue 13(September/October):3-6,14, [http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9403/evidence.html].
• J. Carr and M. J. Rees. 1979. “The anthropic principle and the structure of the physical world”, Nature 278(12 April):605-612.
• Brandon Carter. 1974. “Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology”, in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data, International Astronomical Union Symposium No. 63, M. S. Longair, ed. (D. Reidel, Dordrecht-Holland), p.291-298.
• Marcus Chown. 2001. The Magic Furnace: The Search for the Origins of Atoms (Oxford Univ Press).
• Francis S. Collins. 2006. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press).
• Paul Davies. 1983. God and the New Physics (Simon and Schuster)
• C. W. Davies. 1984. The Accidental Universe (Cambridge Univ. Press).
• Paul Davies. 1992. The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (Simon and Schuster).
• Richard Dawkins. 1987. The Blind Watchmaker (W. W. Norton).
• William Dembski, ed. 1998. Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press).
• Gabriel A. Dover. 1993. “On the edge”, Nature 365(21 October):704-706.
• Linda T. Elkins-Tanton. 2013. What Makes a Habitable Planet?, Eos 94(16):149-150, 16 April.
• Owen Gingerich. 1995. “Is There a Role for Natural Theology Today?” The Real Issue 14(March/April):1,9-14, [http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9501/natural.html].
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. 2010. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (Pantheon).
• George Greenstein and Allen Kropf. 1989. “Cognizable worlds: The anthropic principle and the fundamental constants of nature”, Am. J. Phys. 57(August):746-749.
• John Gribbin. 1976. “Oscillating universe bounces back”, Nature 259:15-16.
• John Gribbin and Martin Rees. 1989. Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology (Bantam).
• Stephen W. Hawking. 1988. A Brief History of Time (Bantam).
• Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. 2010. The Grand Design (Bantam; Random House)
• Fred Heeren. 1995. Show Me God: What the Message from Space Is Telling Us About God (Searchlight Pub., Wheeling, IL); see review by Dennis L. Feucht. 1996. Persp. Sci. Christ. Faith 48(March):50.
• Lawrence J. Henderson. 1913. The Fitness of the Environment: An Inquiry into the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter (Macmillan).
• Sir Fred Hoyle. 1959. Religion and the Scientists (London: SCM); quoted in: Barrow and Frank Tipler, op cit., p.22.
• James Kasting. 2010. How to Find a Habitable Planet (Princeton Univ Press).
• John Lennox. 2010. “As a scientist I’m certain Stephen Hawking is wrong. You can’t explain the universe without God,” Daily Mail, 3 September; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1308599/Stephen-Hawking-wrong-You-explain-universe-God.html
• John Leslie. 1989. Universes (Routledge, NY).
• Mario Livio. 2003. The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (Broadway).
• Casey Luskin. 2014. “Alister McGrath Mistakes Intelligent Design for a God-of-the-Gaps Argument”, October 15, Evolution News & Views (Discovery Institute); http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/10/alister_mcgrath_1090411.html
• Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, eds. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo sapiens (Open Court, La Salle, IL).
• Alister McGrath. 2014. “Big Picture or Big Gaps? Why Natural Theology is better than Intelligent Design”, BioLogos, September 15; http://biologos.org/blog/big-picture-or-big-gaps-why-natural-theology-is-better-than-intelligent-des
• Simon Mitton. 2011. Fred Hoyle: a life in science (Cambridge Univ Press).
• P. Moreland, ed. 1994. The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer (Intervarsity Press).
• Heinz R. Pagels. 1985. “A Cozy Cosmology”, The Sciences 25(March/April):34-38.
• Blaise Pascal. 1966. Pensées Translated with an Introduction by A. J. Krailsheimer (Penguin).
• John Polkinghorne. 1986. One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology (Princeton Univ. Press).
• Martin Rees. 2000. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe (Basic Books … Perseus Group)
• John M. Robson, ed. 1987. Origin and Evolution of the Universe: Evidence for Design? (McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, Montreal).
• Hugh Ross. 1995. The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God (NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO).
• Joseph Silk. 2010. “One Theory to Rule Them All,” Science 330(6001):179-180.
• Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise. 1989. Energy and empire: a biographical study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge Univ Press)
• Victor J. Stenger. 2011. The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is not Designed for Us (Promethus Books).
• John Marks Templeton, ed. 1994. Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover the Creator (Continuum, NY).
• Michael Turner. 2010. “No miracle in the multiverse,” Nature 467:657-658.
• Howard J. Van Till. 1995. “Special Creationism in Designer Clothing: A Response to the Creation Hypothesis”, Persp. Sci. Christ. Faith 47(June):123-131.
• Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. 2000. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus … Springer-Verlag).
• Steven Weinberg. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory (Pantheon Books, NY).
• Matt Young and Taner Edis. 2004. Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism (Rutgers Univ Press).

This is the seventh in a series of guest blogs on science, religion, and design by Dr. Ben Clausen of the Geoscience Research Institute, based near the campus of Loma Linda University. The words that follow are his.

While design is evident to our senses, the appeal to a Designer moves beyond methodological naturalism to something more, something beyond. To be science, the design paradigm should present a better alternative working scientific model, rather than just attacking the standard cosmological model; however, that may be difficult because the design paradigm appeals to actions from outside the realm of repeatable, ongoing processes.

Scientists trust the ongoing processes of nature just as all of us do in our everyday lives. Methodological naturalism works so much of the time that one has reason to trust the method: aerodynamic theory gets us around in airplanes, quantum mechanics theory gives us computers, and seismic theory can reduce the devastating effects of earthquakes and volcanoes. Since methodological naturalism works so well today, it makes sense to use it to explain the past with plate tectonics and stellar evolution, and there it also works amazingly well. Weinberg (1992, p.247) says, “… the only way that any sort of science can proceed is to assume that there is no divine intervention and to see how far one can get with this assumption.” Modern science developed in a Christian culture with many of the founding fathers being devout Christians, but the scientific principle had within itself the seed of atheism. The more that is understood of nature, the less need there seems to be for supernatural intervention to explain it.

Actually, no one would want God to be continually intervening in unpredictable ways. If one expects God to be continually intervening, it would not be useful to study how the world works. There would be no incentive to try to find patterns and laws that govern on-going processes.

Thus, design arguments are encouraging for the believer, but not so logically convincing for the unbeliever. That is not because most scientists are anti-God, at least not the ones I have worked with, but because it doesn’t provide a scientific explanation that is better than what science currently provides. Although one may believe that the universe was designed by a supernatural intelligence, that doesn’t make the design argument a scientific argument; it is more than that. In most cases, methodological naturalism’s use of natural law works well without a need for God to continually step in and adjust the universe, but that still leaves open the possibility that God designed and upholds those natural laws.

To be continued. . .

This is the fourth in a series of guest blogs on science, religion, and design by Dr. Ben Clausen of the Geoscience Research Institute, based near the campus of Loma Linda University. The words that follow are his.

The evidence for a beginning to the universe points to a beginner, or designer to get things started. Evidence for an expanding universe was observed in about 1930 by Edwin Hubble, but the idea did not take hold in the scientific community for more than thirty years because it seemed to point to the need for more than naturalism, the need of a “Beginner/Designer” (Gribbin 1976). This is a limit to scientific explanation because of an effect without apparent cause.

The second law of thermodynamics is tied to this concept of a need for a creator. As formulated by Lord Kelvin, the law indicates that the amount of useful energy in the universe is decreasing. One can find local increases in useful energy, order, or design, such as in crystal structures, living systems, or the source of hydroelectric energy, but only at the expense of a greater loss of useful energy elsewhere. Kelvin believed that the universe required a Creator/Designer to wind it up at the beginning with sufficient useful energy: “a necessary diffusion of energy which only God Himself could restore to its original concentration (Smith and Wise, p.332).

All of this leads to another concept of fine tuning in the Universe. If the Big Bang is assumed, the mass of the universe seems to be finely tuned. A little more mass at the early stages of the universe would have caused a rapid gravitational collapse; a little less mass would have resulted in too little gravitational attraction for clumping of matter into galaxies and stars. Much of the apparent fine-tuning seems to be related to a variety of fundamental constants that keep our universe powered. One of the most intriguing is the cosmological constant which remains difficult to explain within the naturalist construct.

In 1915 Einstein put into his general relativity equation a cosmological constant. He assumed a static universe and needed this constant to provide a repulsive force to keep the universe from gravitational collapse. Once evidence for an expanding universe became available fifteen years later, the constant appeared to no longer be necessary. Einstein later lamented that inserting the constant was the biggest mistake of his life, for without it, his equation could have predicted an expanding universe. The cosmological constant needs to be exactly zero to 120 decimal places, an unexpected specificity that appears to require design. Weinberg (1992, p.223) recognizes that the constants of nature are well suited for the existence of life, but believes that a final theory would be able to prescribe values for these constants without any surprising coincidences. However, even he recognizes that a cosmological constant of exactly zero to 120 decimal places may still require some kind of anthropic principle for explanation. Though no longer needed for a static universe, the constant seems to be important for other reasons. Silk (2010) notes that the acceleration of the universe is produced by dark energy, but yet the governing cosmological constant is 10¹²⁰ smaller than predicted by particle theory.

The nucleus of an atom is another example where the forces of nature appear balanced beyond coincidence (Rees 2000). For most atoms, the nucleus contains many positively charged protons. Due to the electromagnetic force, like charges repel each other. How then do all the protons with the same charge stay inside the nucleus without flying apart? Apparently, some stronger force holds them together. For want of a better term, physicists call this force the “strong force.” To get the range of light-to-heavy elements necessary for life, the ratio between these two forces must be finely tuned. If the electromagnetic/strong force ratio were larger, protons would not be able to clump together. No heavier elements necessary for life, such as carbon and oxygen, would be stable. If the ratio were smaller, protons would too easily clump together to form the heavy elements, but no single-proton hydrogen atoms would remain for water or life. There might be plenty of gold and platinum, but no one to enjoy it.

Here are some other fine-tuned constants: (1) The mass of the neutron is slightly greater than the proton. If the relative masses were very much different than they are, the burning of stars and stellar evolution wouldn’t work. (2) The relative electron and proton masses need to be balanced in a particular combination, in order to have the chemical bonding forces combine to give the molecules important for life. (3) The number of positive protons and negative electrons needs to be balanced to cancel to zero, or else the electromagnetic force would dominate the much weaker gravitational force in the universe. (4) The great excess of matter over anti-matter is an unexpected and perhaps designed necessity after the Big Bang occurred. (5) Other examples are listed in The Creation Hypothesis by Moreland (1994) if you wish to read more. Notice that these fine-tuned forces are related to radioactive decay, so that a suggestion of change in decay rates would also suggest a change in the fine-tuning of the forces, thus making life impossible.

The universe seems to be designed with an abundance of the right elements for life to exist – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc. The relative abundances of the elements in the universe can be explained as due to stellar evolution. With a beginning material of hydrogen (single protons), stars produce helium and energy by combining protons into a helium nucleus with two protons and two neutrons in a process similar to how hydrogen bombs produce energy. Once the hydrogen is used up, three helium nuclei can combine to form carbon and the interaction of additional helium nuclei can make the heavier elements such as neon, magnesium, silicon, etc. up to iron. All of these reactions give off energy to fuel the sun or star, but elements heavier than iron require a different process that consumes energy. To form these heavier elements such as lead or gold or uranium requires additional energy from a stellar explosion called a supernova. (Chown 2001) If the elements were formed in this way, it lead to several questions: Was it by fiat or process? How long did it take? Is such creation continuing?

One physicist working in the 1950s made a prediction in regards to the abundance of the elements. In general it would be difficult to get three helium nuclei close enough together all at the same time to make carbon inside a star. Two helium nuclei could group together briefly (with a 10^-16 sec half-life) to make beryllium-8, but to easily add another helium nucleus would require carbon to have a resonance (an excited state) with just the right energy for combining beryllium-8 plus helium-4. Fred Hoyle suggested the need for this carbon resonance to a fellow physicist. Fowler discovered that in fact there was such a resonance and received a Nobel Prize for its discovery. Hoyle’s 1959 response: “I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars.” (Mitton 2011)

To be continued. . .