More Than a Theory: Revealing a Testable Model for Creation

by Hugh Ross

Geneticists observe that deleterious mutations outnumber beneficial mutations by at least as much as ten thousand to one, and in some species by as much as ten million to one.

However, because the fraction of the genome acknowledged as functional is rapidly increasing (see chapter 13, pp. 200–202), the number of neutral mutations is dropping, while the quantity of recognized deleterious mutations is rising.

Given the high mutation rate for most species,22 natural selection cannot be expected to remove both the deleterious and near neutral mutations as quickly as they arise. Nor can it effectively separate the good from the bad and near neutral mutations. Everything in the natural realm, including the genomes of all life-forms, is subject to the law of entropy.23 As a result, genetic decay appears inevitable.

Winning the Origins Lottery Nontheistic models adhere to a central premise that humans arose by strictly natural unguided steps from a bacterial life-form that sprang into being 3.8 billion years ago. Famed evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, an advocate for the hypothesis that natural selection and mutations can efficiently generate distinctly different species, nevertheless calculated the probability that humans (or a similarly intelligent species) arose from single-celled organisms as a possibility so small (10-1,000,000) that it might as well be zero (roughly equivalent to the likelihood of winning the California lottery 150,000 consecutive times with the purchase of just one ticket each time).2 He and other evolutionary biologists agree that natural selection and mutations could have yielded any of a virtually infinite number of other outcomes. Astrophysicists Brandon Carter, John Barrow, and Frank Tipler produced an even smaller probability.

For the past three billion years, greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere were steadily reduced so that life remained abundant despite a brightening Sun. However, continued reduction of greenhouse gases extends life’s time window by only another 0.02 billion years. A nearby supernova eruption, climatic perturbation, war, social or environmental upheaval, mass extinction of supporting species, declining birth rate, or the accumulation of negative mutations could drive humans to extinction in just tens of thousands of years. Humanity’s arrival so near the inevitable end of all life on Earth is either a dreadful but meaningless fact or part of the Creator’s plan. By appearing toward the end of life’s history, humans reap the benefit of nearly 4 billion years’ worth of biodeposits as RTB’s biblical model predicts.

Why We Need Earthquakes and Volcanoes Plate-tectonic activity, which gives rise to earthquakes, plays a critical role in building islands and continents, compensating for the Sun’s increasing luminosity and maintaining life-essential chemical cycles (see p. 155). It also provides an ongoing supply of nutrients to surface soils. The maintenance of these life-essential processes early in Earth’s history required much greater tectonic upheaval. Today, the level of activity is only about a fifth of what it was when Earth’s first life came on the scene. As with hurricanes and tornadoes, scientists note that the human race appeared on Earth at the ideal tectonic moment. Earthquake activity today is high enough to sustain adequate levels of various surface nutrients but low enough to allow for a global, high-tech civilization.

In the universe, cause-and-effect relationships cannot occur apart from time (see chapter 7, pp. 96–98). Thus, in creating the space-time dimensions of the universe, its causal Agent, in effect, operated in what can be considered the equivalent of an additional time dimension. Using the equivalent of two time dimensions, the universe’s Creator could perform an infinite number of cause-and-effect operations along an infinitely extended timeline that never crosses or touches this universe’s timeline. In our time context, the Creator would have no beginning or end. That causal Agent would not have been created. The Creator would not have been created in any time context because the space-time theorems establish that in creating a time dimension at will, this Being’s causal capabilities are in no way restricted or limited by time. Statistical improbability does not apply to a Being who always was, is, and will be.

Mind Blowing...

The irony is that such a multiverse hypothesis points to a “transcendent” explanation for the design that researchers observe throughout the universe. In essence, it echoes a statement about the universe from Hebrews 11:3: “What is seen was not made out of what was visible.” Thus, the multiverse proposition is actually an appeal to the supernatural.

Boom

Nothing New under the Sun It’s important to note that the multiverse concept, at least in some contexts, is neither novel nor necessarily anti-theistic. In previous centuries, theologians often debated whether the universe may be infinite by virtue of its Source. Some argued that an infinite Creator would be satisfied with nothing less. Even those who take a minimalist perspective on God’s creative activity must concede there may be more to what God created than just the universe in which humanity resides.

On a more practical level, the multiverse theorist commits a variation of the “gambler’s fallacy.”

Astronomers and others need not make the gambler’s error concerning the universe. One way they can test theistic universe models against nontheistic multiverse models is to examine the observable parts of the universe in more detail to determine whether such research turns up additional fine-tuning evidence for the possible support of advanced life.

Chinese paleontologists studying the famous Cambrian explosion fossils in the Cheng–jiang shale in the Yunnan province have commented to their American colleagues, “In China we are not allowed to criticize our government leaders, but we are free to criticize Darwin. In your country you are free to criticize your government leaders, but you are not permitted to criticize Darwin.