Category Archives: Fine Tuning

Evidence for Intelligent Design of the Universe based on the fact that many required interlocking components such as constants for the physical forces have been fined tune to a very high degree.

Multiverse thinking: though magical doesn’t exclude God’s existence – it proves it

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The multiverse – a product of magical thinking.

Many physicists  have begun to cloak themselves in what they hope is the  protective garment of the theory of the multiverse to protect them from the deluge of evidence that the universe is finely tuned.  As I point out in my previous article, that the universe is finely tuned is not a question:

“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” [physicist Andrei] Linde says.


Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea.  …

 

Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multi­verse.[1]

Continue Reading

Should Christians believe in a multiverse? 7 Reasons Against

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The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Cor 4.2

Non-believers will likely consider the above scripture irrelevant and unpersuasive and will ponder the wisdom of starting an article on the multiverse with a verse of scripture. In so doing they will have confirmed the scripture (blind to spiritual truths) while setting up my two points: First – this is not merely a discussion of physics – but of metaphysics. (Metaphysics being those things that lie beyond the realm of observable physical reality and so strictly speaking, are beyond the realm of the questions that physics can answer.) Second, not only is the multiverse “pure metaphysics”[1] as Christian apologist William Lane Craig puts it, but many scientists seem blind to the fact that they are engaging in metaphysics – not physics – when proposing the multiverse as a “scientific” answer to a number of the problems their theories have. They have fallen into the same error that  philosopher of science and apologist John Lennox chides theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking for: engaging in metaphysics while failing to recognize he is doing so.[2]

Truth in advertising

Having identified multiverse theories as claims that deal with the metaphysical, we can make the following observations: Continue Reading

Dark Matter: The Big Bang’s Missing Link

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Black holes – once again a candidate for dark matter. (Above: simulation of merging black holes. Click for animation)

 

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”[1]
Sherlock Holmes

Holmes, the famed fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized that statement of logic, and highlighted the power of deductive reasoning for solving problems.  As fans of Sherlock Holmes know this adage is a key tool in the forensic tool kit for catching criminals.  Applied to science, it is also very helpful, but it cannot always be as conclusive with scientific theory as it is when narrowing the field of suspects in a crime. That is because of two ambiguous terms that science has a hard time precisely defining. Those are:

  1. Eliminate the Impossible
     This is a doubly difficult task for science, because it assumes you first have the knowledge to identify all possibilities, then secondly, have the ability to identify (via testing if it’s to be scientific) that which is  not possible. Only then can you know that you’ve eliminated the impossible. But when it comes to cosmology as physicist and creationist John Hartnett quips:

    “To make such a claim, you would have to know that you have ruled out all other possibilities. In such a case—remember this is not a laboratory experiment—you would have to be an all-knowing god.” [2]
    John Hartnett
     

  2. Whatever remains
     We tend to think that “whatever remains” is a single identifiable cause, but in fact, there could be multiple causes that make up “whatever remains”

So before coming out with any definitive statements,  scientists must be sure that they have carefully accounted for each of these two often difficult to identify variables. Unfortunately, that has  not been the case when it comes to  scientific speculation on Dark Matter. In that regard there are a lot of scientists jumping to the conclusion that dark matter exists, and is out there, waiting to be verified (in a lab) by scientists. Why is that? Let’s take a look at why scientists are so intent on proving that Dark Matter exists, and why it’s prudent to be skeptical about their whole approach to the existence of dark matter.

The Problem: The Universe is not behaving as (we think) it should

Scientists have identified peculiar behavior in the outer reaches of the universe. Not all galaxies are moving as they should. To visualize the problem, consider: Continue Reading

Earth’s magnetic field: Testament to more than a young earth

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The earth is protected by a powerful but decreasing magnetic field.
Earth’s magnetic field exhibits signs of being young and part of a grand design.

Saturn has its beautiful rings. Diamonds are often photographed adorning the fingers or the necks of beautiful women.  Both Saturn and diamonds are testimonies to a young earth (which I wrote about here and here). The earth’s magnetic field is also a testament to a young earth – but it’s more than that; it’s a powerful testimony that God created it. But being invisible to the naked eye, earth’s magnetic field is at a distinct disadvantage in this visual age – requiring visual aids like the depiction of the field above. But make no mistake, the magnetic field around the earth is one of the most powerful testaments to a carefully and lovingly designed young earth  that you’re likely to find. And what it lacks in glamour, it makes up for in the power of its evidentiary support of Genesis 1.1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Here’s why:

Evidences Gleaned from Earth’s Magnetic Field

1. Young earth

Old earth proponents will tell you that the earth is about 4 1/2 billion old. That means the magnetic field should also be about 4 1/2 billion years old. If that were true you would expect to have a magnetic field that’s very stable, not changing  much over time – since we’re talking about a lot of time: not merely hundreds of years, or thousands or even millions of years, but billions with a “b”.  The problem with that supposition is that it doesn’t match the observed measurements. It has been known for some time that the earth’s magnetic field is decaying. As geologist and creationist John D. Morris put it:

“The strength of the magnetic field has been reliably and continually measured since 1835. From these measurements, we can see that the field’s strength has declined by about seven percent since then, giving a half-life of about 1,400 years.”1

Obviously that’s a problem. A field decaying that quickly will last only a few thousand years not a few billion. And it’s gotten worse for old age earth believers:  scientists have recently discovered that the field has begun to decay even faster:

“Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought.”2

This does not bode well for the old earth explanation of a magnetic field that is billions of years old. Their explanation up to this point has been the field is created and maintained by a “dynamo”, a natural generator. Magnetic fields are created by the movement of electrons – a current flow. Scientist posit that the rotation of the earth and convection (movement due to heat) is sufficient to produce a current from the molten iron/nickel of the earth’s outer core, which they believe would create a self-sustaining field generating dynamo. The problem with the theory is that “Scientists have not produced a workable analytic model, despite 40-50 years of research, and there are many problems.”3

Creation Theory is Better Science
 Contrary to claims that Creation Science is not really science because it makes no predictions and has no objective data that can be tested,  creationist scientist Continue Reading

The multiverse and other fairy tales

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A picture supposedly of a fairies dancing before a young girl is examined for authenticity in a scene from “FairyTale: A True Story“		 Cosmologists faced with the difficult problems of the fine tuning of the universe and the origin of the singularity have resorted to the fairy tale of a “multiverse” to save a materialistic worldview.

In 1917 in Cottingley, England, 16 and 9 year old cousins Elsie Write and Frances Griffiths believed in fairies and wanted others to believe too. As evidence they produced pictures (viewable here) of what they purported to be real live fairies.  By today’s photoshop and CGI standards, the fairies in the pictures appear to be  simplistic two dimensional hand colored drawings. But a photo expert of the day declared the negatives had not been tampered with, and the pictures caught the eye of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of famed fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Less widely known is Doyle was a believer in the paranormal1, and his beliefs included the existence of fairies. Doyle took the photographs as authentic.

Years later, the girls, now women, confessed the photos had been faked. The question is why had so many, including one so obviously intelligent as the creator of Sherlock Holmes been so quick to believe a fanciful story with little or no evidence? Frances, nailed it on the head in a 1985 interview when she said, “I never even thought of it as being a fraud – it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can’t understand to this day why they were taken in – they wanted to be taken in.”2

“They wanted to be taken in.” In other words, they wanted to believe. I don’t fault them or anyone for that. Humans are designed to live by faith, and thus it’s natural to want to believe in something. (This includes atheists, evolutionists and scientists who claim to have no faith.3) The problem comes when you believe based on flimsy or no evidence. That’s always the problem with a fairytale – there is little or no evidence. This also distinguishes the Christian faith – for which there is a plethora of  evidences from a variety of fields of study –  from fairytales.  Furthermore, there are a number of sites dedicated to documenting the evidence.4

Segue to the 1980’s. The field of cosmology is in crisis. Scientists realize there are a number of problems with the Big Bang theory. (For a few details see my previous article here.)  Einstein had died in 1955 without completing what he had hoped would be his magnus opus: a completed Theory of Everything (TOE) – a single, elegant, unified theory that explained everything about the universe, including the current holy grail in cosmology: the unexplainable (in scientific terms) origin of the universe. The current explanation – the singularity that is itself the big bang – has been recognized as totally inadequate, contradicting the laws of physics. As physicist Michio Kaku put it:

“The fundamental problem of cosmology, is that the laws of physics as we know them break down at the instant of the big bang. Well people say what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with having the laws of physics collapse? Well for physicists this is a disaster. All our lives we’ve dedicated to the proposition that the universe obeys knowable laws. Laws that can be written down in the language of mathematics. And here we have the centerpiece of  the universe itself, a missing piece beyond physical law.” 5

To make matters worse, science had discovered that the universe is finely tuned. In an article for the Discovery Center Institute for science and culture, distinguished follow and author Jay Richards explains what fine tuning is:

“Fine-tuning” refers to various features of the universe that are necessary conditions for the existence of complex life. Such features include the initial conditions and “brute facts” of the universe as a whole, the laws of nature or the numerical constants present in those laws (such as the gravitational force constant), and local features of habitable planets (such as a planet’s distance from its host star).

The basic idea is that these features must fall within a very narrow range of possible values for chemical-based life to be possible.”6

In that article Richards, who prefers to take a conservative approach to fine tuning parameters, lists 21 features of the cosmos that are fine tuned. (As opposed to 200 as the number of parameters that Metaxas cites as finely tuned in his popular article.7)  Richard’s  conclusion: the universe is fine tuned and thus designed.

On the other hand, British cosmologist and astronomer royal Martin Rees examines in depth 6 of those finely tuned parameters in his book “Just Six Numbers.” Though the evidence for fine tuning that results in a world like ours is quite apparent, he refuses to believe that means it points to a designer who fine tuned it. Instead he chooses to believe in an solution as fanciful as fairies, and having the same amount of evidence (none): the multiverse: Continue Reading

Evolution falsified – Again

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The irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum

The irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum
Darwinian evolution has been falsified many times. With the recent bacterial find, it’s been falsified again.
A recent bacterial discovery once again demonstrates that evolution is false, and that adherents believe it on a faith basis, not an evidentiary, scientific basis. To fully appreciate that point one must understand how faith is expressed. As a Christian, there are certain things that I believe that you will not change my mind on. For instance, I hold the following as true:

  • God exists
  • God is good
  • God is love
  • Jesus is the image of the invisible God

I have good reasons to believe all these things1, which makes my belief a rational one. (More on that here.) But the fact that regardless of what you show me, I will still believe them indicates that they are un-falsifiable statements, which make them statements of faith, not of science.

That is precisely how faith is supposed to work. Care must be taken that you place your faith in an object worthy of faith. Such as Jesus and the Bible.  Once that requirement is met, you continue to have faith in revealed truth because your object of faith (God) has presented evidence of the truthfulness of what you believe.  More importantly he knows more than you do about things you now question, like why or how did __x___ (fill in the blank) happen.  God will at some future date resolve your questions and make sense of apparent contradictions, but that which he has made clear – like the fact of his existence2
– he expects us to continue to believe regardless of the nonsense and lies unbelievers present.

On the other hand, science is not supposed to work that way. Continue Reading

Scientific creeds reveal hidden scientific faith

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 Artist’s depiction of the invisible Higgs field which fills the entire universe according to  the standard model of particle physics Scientists claim to base theories only on science but the fact is they are as faith driven as any fundamental Christian

 

There have been many famous creeds offered about science by scientists. And I use creed in the normal sense, which as Google defines it is:

“a system of Christian or other religious belief; a faith.”

So to be precise I’m using it in the sense of the faith of scientists.  While they don’t like to admit it, materialists scientists do indeed have faith in a belief that underlies all their theories – the physical world is all there is. This faith is typically encapsulated and expressed in what often becomes a well-known adage. Here’s a couple:

“The COSMOS  is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”1

Carl Sagan starts “Cosmos” – both his book and TV Series – with this statement of faith. Here’s another from evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky:

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”2

In case you didn’t notice, both of these are statements of faith. How can we tell? Easy. These are not testable hypotheses based on specific evidence(s). They are general statements which support a specific worldview (a materialist one)  clearly intended to discredit other approaches to science.  Another dead give away – when other scientists point out serious problems with the associated theory, instead of re-examining the theory, they get angry with the questioner for daring to question them.

Consider the Cosmos statement. Most materialist scientists are firmly in the big bang camp.  Yet such scientists can not say the cosmos always was because according to the big bang, there was a time when the cosmos wasn’t. (For Christian apologists, this leads naturally to the Kalam cosmological argument which I discuss in  Enraging the Dragon.) Thus for Sagan, since neither he nor anyone else has any evidence the Cosmos always “was”,  (in fact the evidence is to the contrary) that is a statement of faith. As for Dobzhansky, who tries to at once both affirm evolution and discredit creationism, the faith based nature of his statement has become apparent as many biologists, and other scientists have reached the conclusion that evolutionary theory is quite unnecessary for true science to progress.3

Man, being a creature of faith, can’t help but espouse some type of faith, so I don’t begrudge scientists their faith. No, the issue I have is with the various pretenses they don as a masquerade, in efforts to mislead the public. In disguising their faith they also disguise the motivations  of the resulting behaviors – such as what to research. What pretenses are donned, you ask?  Glad you asked: Continue Reading

The Waning, Great Scientific Hope

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  New data from remote
telescope Kepler and a yet to be deployed star shade has put blinders on scientists so they can’t see that the great scientific hope – the discovery of life on other planets – is quickly fading. 
Depicted: a star shade deployed in front of a remote robotic telescope to provide a man made eclipse to make viewing exoplanets possible.

 

With a new year comes renewed hope in many endeavors. 2015 is no different.  Among materialist scientists (those adhering to philosophical materialism – thus  rejecting anything exists beyond the material world), hopes are high that researchers will find an  earth like “exoplanet” – a planet that orbits a sun other than our own. As space.com’s Mike Wall1 reports:

This week, astronomers announced that NASA’s Kepler space telescope had discovered eight more relatively small planets that may be capable of hosting life as we know it, describing two of the new finds as the most Earth-like alien worlds known.

Mission scientists also announced 554 new unconfirmed Kepler “planet candidates” on Tuesday (Jan. 6); six of these potential worlds orbit sunlike stars, are close to Earth-size and are possibly habitable. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

The excitement is heightened as researchers prepare to launch a sun shade – a man made device to eclipse a star in front of a remote telescope like Kepler in the next decade – allowing it, and them, to see faint planets that would otherwise be invisible due to the glare coming from the star. But why the excitement? And why the insatiable desire to find earth like planets? Simply put, scientists are rushing head long to find the Great Scientific Hope.

The Great Scientific Hope

For materialist scientists, there is no greater hope than Continue Reading

Testimony of the Higgs Boson

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Beyond the Wormhole - Is there a 'God' Particle Contrary to what scientists had hoped, the Higgs boson, The so called ‘God’ particle does not show how the universe was created without God; instead it shows the creation required God.

Since he does it so well, I’m going to let Morgan Freeman set this up:

“Can the Higgs boson really tell us how all creation came into being?
Do we owe our existence to something so elusive yet so powerful?
Is there a ‘God’ particle?…1“

According to scientists, the Higgs boson is what gives particles mass. Of course without mass neither the universe, nor  life as we know it could exist. Thus the name the ‘God’ particle, at least in some people’s mind – fits since nothing would exist without it. Scientists prefer to call it the Higgs boson or the Higgs particle, but of course for those who report the stories, the ‘God’ particle is a much more catchy  headline and moniker – so it has stuck. Purists however will tell you that the name came about when Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman wanted to name his book about  the particle   ‘The God – – – – [expletive deleted] Particle‘ – because no one could find it at the time – but his editor talked him into calling it the ‘God’ particle.2 Let’s let Morgan continue:

“…Physicists have long suspected there must be some invisible force field spread across the universe mysteriously turning energy into solid matter. Now scientists have at last proven that this theoretical force field is real. They have produced from it a sub-atomic particle known as the Higgs boson – the so called ‘God’ particle. Can it explain the mystery of our  creation?”3

And thus the Higgs boson – the so called ‘God’ particle – is introduced. The episode goes on to point out problems now that they’ve made the discovery – that in order to eliminate anomalies and make the theory work – there must be not one, but five Higgs types of Higgs bosons. But that’s a simple matter of further discovery – not what I want to discuss here. Of greater interest is a finding that the Higgs boson is in conflict with the standard, universally accepted model of where the universe came from – The Big Bang. And thus we see another problem for the Big Bang theory.

I say “another” because the Big Bang theory of course has a number of problems- such as flatness problem, the monopole magnet problem, and the horizon problem4 among others. Since this post isn’t on the technical details and problems of the Big Bang, let me suffice it by saying that the Big Bang has a number of show stopping issues, many of which were supposedly solved by Alan Guth’s theory of Cosmic inflation – at lest these problems that I’ve mentioned.

Make two mental notes here:

1. The Big Bang theory – as proposed – does not work.

2. To fix it, additional theories and physical entities (Like Guth’s theory of Cosmic Inflation) must be appended; and thus Cosmic Inflation is now a required part of the standard Big Bang Model.

Let’s move on to the latest Discovery. The latest tests with the Higgs boson indicate that the Higgs is Continue Reading