Has Science found God?

All this begs a simple question: If this really is fine-tuning - who, or what, did it?

Over the last few decades scientists have increasingly been uncovering a growing mass of evidence that seems to suggest that our universe has been fine-tuned to sustain intelligent life.

And some are saying that only some sort of 'God' could have done that fine-tuning.

We all take gravity for granted - but the physicist Brandon Carter has pointed out the staggering discovery that if the strength of this force, which keeps our feet on the ground, were altered by even a miniscule amount, then 'stars like our sun would not exist.' And another scientist, Edward Kolb, interviewed by Newsweek magazine said, 'It turns out that the "constants of nature", such as the strength of gravity, have exactly the values that allows stars and planets to form... The universe, it seems, is fine-tuned to let life and consciousness flower.' The question is, can this be explained by blind, random chance, or is this not an accident at all?

But this is not the only 'fluke' in our universe that allows life. Another concerns atoms, the basic building blocks of matter. Scientists have now discovered that if the force that holds them together were even slightly weaker, the whole universe would have consisted of nothing but hydrogen gas. But if, on the other hand, it had been even a little stronger, the stars could not have formed. Stephen Hawkins, the famous professor at Cambridge concludes: 'It seems clear that there are relativelt few ranges of values for the numbers that would allow the development of any intelligent life.'

Another staggering statistic is that the particles called protons inside our atoms are apparently 1,836 times more massive than electrons. Now that may not feel staggering, but if that number were slightly different, then there would be no chemistry of life, no article in front of you, and - not to put a too finer point on it - no you. Again Stephen Hawkins comments that this seems 'to have been very finely tuned to make possible the development of life.' All this begs a simple question: If this really is fine-tuning - who, or what, did it?

I know it may sound like something out of Star Trek or the X-files, but apparently there really is a substance called antimatter. Scientists have made it in their laboratories, but it has never been found naturally - and the reason is simple: whenever matter encounters antimatter they annihilate each other. Antimatter mirrors ordinary matter, with the same characteristics, except that their charges are opposite. The upshot of all this is that, if at the beginning of the universe there had been equal amounts of matter and antimatter, they would have blasted each other into oblivion. In other words, it would have been a Big Bang - and nothing but a Big Bang.

For our universe to form there must have been a precise amount more matter than antimatter, so when they had finished blasting each other to smithereens, there was exactly enough matter left to form our cosmos. If there had been a bit too little matter then there would not have been enough to form the universe, and if there had been a dash too much, the fledgling cosmos would have collapsed in on itself. A variation of as slight as one particle per ten billion would have been enough to prevent our life-sustaining universe from coming into being. In terms of a cosmic game of roulette - the odds were obscenely stacked against us existing. But amazingly, it was exactly right. Paul Davies, Professor of natural Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, likens this precision to 'aiming at a target an inch wide on the other side of the observable universe and hitting the mark.' And as Timothy Ferris, Berkeley professor and popular science writer adds, we would have no more expected this to have arisen by chance 'than a pole vaulter's pole to remain standing, poised on its tip, for centuries following his vault.'

But the lottery for life is even more unlikely than that. The atheist astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle discovered how carbon and oxygen were created in the fiery interior of stars. 'It just happens' that this feat depends critically on what is called the internal resonance of the nuclei of the oxygen and carbon atoms. This led Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees and science writer John Gribbin, who, incidentally, do not believe in God, to state, 'This combination of coincidences … is indeed remarkable. There is no better evidence to support the argument that the universe has been designed for our benefit - tailor-made for man.' Fred Hoyle confessed, 'Nothing has shaken my atheism as much as this discovery.'

When all this is put together, it seems that a great deal of incredibly unlikely coincidences have had to happen in order to allow our universe to exist at all - and another set of unbelievable accidents have had to occur for life to be viable.

The real question is this: How many coincidences are needed before they can't be seen as coincidences?

Written by Jonathan Skinner

Posted on 25th Mar 2004

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