...from the Wall Street
Journal
- The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent design, anyone?
ERIC METAXAS
In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have
accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses,
there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that
the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively
recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.
Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline,
the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria
for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right
distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27
zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1
followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.
With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched
in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with a
vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and
were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the
universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search
continues with private funds. As of 2014, researchers have discovered precisely
bubkis—0 followed by nothing.
What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became
clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed.
His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of
potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped
to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.
Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter
Schenkel wrote in a 2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light
of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to
rest . . . . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no
longer be tenable.”
As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets
hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in
the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we
shouldn’t be here.
Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to
support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole
thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity
will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface.
The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.
Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can
account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by
accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we
cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence
created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a
life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into
being?
There’s more. The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is
nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at
all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four
fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and
“weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after
the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For
instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic
force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one
part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all.
Feel free to gulp.
Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions,
and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical
that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be
like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row.
Really?
Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said
that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote
that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a
super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and
biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so
overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the
appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John
Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the
hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best
explanation of why we are here.”
The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the
universe. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with
the combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond itself.
_____________________________________________
Mr. Metaxas is the author, most recently, of
“Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life”
( Dutton Adult, 2014).
Correction
Note: An earlier version
understated the number of zeroes in an octillion and a septillion.
_____________________________________________
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