Eminent scientists driven to ask
why natural qualities were so
`carefully chosen' and `precisely adjusted'
to make the universe and life possible


On 21/8/95 The Times reported that the distinguished British-born cosmologist Professor Edward Harrison of the University of Massachusetts states in an article in the September 1995 issue of the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society: `We do not know why natural qualities, such as the strength of gravity, the speed of light, the electric charge on the electron and so on have the values they do. Yet the slightest variation of their values would result in a barren universe without stars or light. Why are they precisely adjusted to give rise to life?' Prof. Harrison says there are two answers to this question. One is that a supreme being - God - designed the universe in just the form needed for life. The only objection he raises to this answer is that it precludes further rational inquiry! The alternative explanation is the so-called `anthropic' principle*, however `many people find this a clever but unsatisfying answer.' A third possible answer is that our universe was created by comprehensible beings living in another universe. (This latter reminds one of Tommy Gold's story, quoted in Prof. Sir Fred Hoyle's book Evolution from space, about the old lady who believed that the earth was supported on the back of a giant turtle. When the scientist she told this to asked her what the turtle was supported on she replied `on a second larger turtle'. The scientist, slightly exasperated, then asked `But what holds up the second turtle?' to which she replied `It's no use mister, it's turtles all the way down!' As Sir Fred comments: `The issue is where do the turtles stop? The conventional answer is that the turtle pile floats on a sea of organic soup, an answer as scientifically improbable as Tommy Gold's story makes it sound.' Professor Harrison's `beings in another universe' sound like yet another `turtle' even further down!)

Nigel Hawkes, The Times Science Editor, comments as follows: `His analysis will be seized upon by those who feel life on Earth is so freakish a circumstance that it could not have arisen by chance. This includes most Christians and some scientists. Prof. Harrison quotes Albert Einstein as saying: "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." The answer to this old philosophical problem could be that it was created by beings with minds similar to our own.' Or, may we add, by God, a Supreme Being in whose image we are made The Bible(Genesis chapter 1 verses 26 and 27) - Professor Harrison's first and correct answer to his own question!

Professor Harrison's question is closely similar to the question asked by Prof. Stephen Hawking in his book Black Holes and Baby Universes (Bantam Press, 1993). After noting that had the density of the universe one second after the (supposed) Big Bang been greater or lesser by just one part in a thousand billion the universe would either, respectively, have recollapsed or been essentially empty after ten years, Prof Hawking asks (p.136) `How was it that the initial density was chosen so carefully? Maybe there is some reason why the universe should have precisely the critical density?' Earlier in the same book, referring to the laws which govern the universe, he states: `These laws may have been ordained by God ...' and adds significantly: `Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question: Why does the universe bother to exist? I don't know the answer to that.' (p 89).

It is striking that both Prof. Harrison and Prof. Hawking are so profoundly impressed by the amazing fine tuning, both of the fundamental natural qualities and of the laws which govern them, to make the universe viable and life possible, that both eminent scientists feel compelled to contemplate the possibility that the universe was `designed' and its laws `ordained' by `a supreme being - God'. Prof. Hawking's last quoted comment illustrates the fact that science may discover something of the `how' of the universe, but hasn't a clue about the `why'. Jesus said that God had hidden certain things from `the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes' (The Bible: Matthew chapter 11 verse 25). The simplest Christian believer knows the answer to the `why', the secret of the universe! (See The Bible: Revelation chapter 4 verse 11; Job chapter 7 verse l7; Psalm 8; John chapter 3 verse l6; Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 to 14).

* The `anthropic principle' states that the universe is the way it is because we exist and that if it were any other way we would not be here wondering about it! (This is hardly a logical, let alone a clever explanation - one would have thought that scientists could have done better than this! Surely it is a nonsense statement - it explains nothing).

Bernard A. Reeves (1995)

******

Return to the Scientific Issues Page
Return to the BCS Home Page

Copyright © 1996 The Biblical Creation Society
The serial number of this page is S/N: BCS-03-H-64
This page was last modified 27 May 1996