Return of the God Hypothesis: Breakthroughs in Physics, Cosmology, and Biology Seeking Evidence for the Existence of God

by Stephen C. Meyer

Because materialists think that matter and energy are the foundational realities from which all else comes,2 they deny the existence of immaterial entities such as God, free will, the human soul, and even the human mind conceived as an entity in some way distinct from the physiological processes at work in the brain.

Whereas Richard Dawkins contends that living systems merely “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose,”12 I have argued that certain features of living systems—in particular, the digitally encoded information present in DNA and the complex circuitry and information-processing systems at work in living cells—are best explained by the activity of an actual designing intelligence. Just as the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone point to the activity of an ancient scribe and the software in a computer program points to a programmer, I’ve argued that the digital code discovered within the DNA molecule suggests the activity of a designing mind in the origin of life.

Origin-of-life simulation experiments increasingly suggested that simple chemicals do not arrange themselves into complex information-bearing molecules, nor do they move in life-relevant directions—unless, that is, biochemists actively and intelligently guide the process.

Hubble discovered that the rate at which other galaxies retreat from ours correlates directly with their distance from us—just as if the universe were undergoing a spherical expansion like a balloon being blown up in all directions from a singular beginning.49

astronomers also sometimes think that a poppy-seed cake actually gives a better picture of the expansion of the universe. Before being baked, the poppy seeds are distributed throughout the cake. As the cake rises and expands during baking, each seed in the cake moves away from all the other seeds. The poppy-seed cake also illustrates why astronomers do not think that we can know where our Milky Way galaxy is located within the vast space of the universe itself. If we imagine ourselves sitting on any given poppy seed (or galaxy), all the other seeds (or galaxies) will appear to recede from us as the cake rises (or the universe expands), no matter where (or upon which seed or galaxy) we happen to be sitting.

In any case, Hubble’s discovery implied an expanding universe in the forward direction of time and a finite universe with a definite beginning in the distant past.

Einstein realized that if gravity were the only force acting in the universe, it would necessarily cause matter to congeal and spacetime to contract in on itself. Yet since such a contraction hasn’t happened (at least not yet) and since, further, the universe we observe today contains matter surrounded by empty space, Einstein thought something—some outward-pushing force of expansion—must be counteracting the effect of gravitation to account for the empty space between massive bodies in the universe.

Soon after visiting Hubble at Mt. Wilson, Einstein publicly acknowledged that he recognized the necessity of a “beginning.”26

Later Einstein said that his postulation of an arbitrary value for the cosmological constant—his cosmic fudge factor—was “the greatest blunder” of his life. Indeed, by seeking to preserve a static universe, Einstein inadvertently concealed an important cosmological reality implicit in his own theory of gravitation.

recent astronomical measurements suggest that the universe has a mass density slightly less than the so-called critical density necessary to stop the expansion of the universe, thus ensuring that the universe will never recollapse.54

In 1978, the British physicist Paul Davies described the implications of the singularity theorems with great clarity: If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of space-time itself.18

insofar as the spacetime singularity marks the point of origin of the universe from nothing physical, cosmological models based on solutions to the field equations of general relativity seem strangely reminiscent of what theologians long described in doctrinal terms as creatio ex nihilo—“creation out of nothing” (nothing physical, that is). Hawking and Ellis themselves addressed the issue of the creation of the universe in the conclusion of their 1973 book. As they reflected: “The creation of the Universe out of nothing has been argued, indecisively, from early times; see for example Kant’s first Antinomy of Pure Reason. . . . The results we have obtained support the idea that the universe began a finite time ago. However, the actual point of creation, the singularity, is outside the presently known laws of physics.”19

Indeed, since the 1950s, physicists have discovered that life in the universe depends upon a highly improbable set of forces and features as well as an extremely improbable balance among many of them. The precise strengths of the fundamental forces of physics, the arrangement of matter and energy at the beginning of the universe, and many other specific features of the cosmos appear delicately balanced to allow for the possibility of life. If any one of these properties were altered ever so slightly, complex chemistry and life simply would not exist.

We apparently live in a kind of “Goldilocks universe,” where the fundamental forces of physics have just the right strengths, the contingent properties of the universe have just the right characteristics, and the initial distribution of matter and energy at the beginning exhibited just the right configuration to make life possible. These facts taken together are so puzzling that physicists have given them a name—the fine-tuning problem.

There are four distinct fundamental forces in nature: gravitational force, electromagnetic force (EMF), the strong nuclear force (SNF), and the weak nuclear force (WNF). The weak nuclear force causes nuclear radiation (i.e., the radioactive decay of atoms). The strong nuclear force, an attractive force, holds protons and neutrons together; the electromagnetic force attracts particles with opposite charges and repels those with the same charge. The SNF operates at a short range, and the EMF operates at all distances.

Generally speaking,19 if the gravitational force strength were weaker, stars wouldn’t get hot enough for nuclei to combine to form carbon. In addition, a slightly lower value for the gravitational force constant (G) would prevent the development of thermal layering inside stars.20 Such layering is necessary for producing the many different types of elements (including carbon and oxygen) needed for life. A weaker overall gravitational force, in most cases, will also prevent stars from eventually becoming supernovae and ejecting the elements necessary for life into the universe. Unless stars explode and turn into supernovae, the elements necessary for life would be locked away inside their cores.21 On the other hand, if the gravitational force were too strong, the temperature inside stars would get too hot and nucleosynthesis would produce only elements heavier than carbon and oxygen. Nucleosynthesis would also proceed too quickly to allow for the formation of long-lived stars.22 In that case, the stars would burn up too fast, thus depriving life of a fit place of habitation.23

Over the years, as Hoyle thought more about the discovery of the exact resonance level of carbon that he had predicted, and especially about all the factors that had to be just right to make carbon relatively easy to produce inside stars, he became convinced that some intelligence had orchestrated the precise balance of forces and factors in nature to make the universe life-permitting.26 The strengths of the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces, the ratio between the fundamental forces,27 the exact kinetic energy of beryllium and helium, and thus the strength of gravitational forces inside stars as well as the excitation energy of carbon all had to be exquisitely tuned and coordinated within very narrow tolerances to promote the synthesis of large amounts of carbon inside stars. Yet without carbon life would be impossible.

“Intelligent design,” as Nobel Prize–winning physicist Charles Townes has said, “as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it’s remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren’t just the way they are, we couldn’t be here at all. The sun couldn’t be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here.”

Our uniform experience affirms that specified or functional information—whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, encoded in a radio signal, or produced in an RNA-world “ribozyme-engineering” experiment—always arises from an intelligent source, from a mind, not a strictly material process. So the discovery of functional digital information in the DNA and RNA molecules in even the simplest living cells provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living organism.

scientifically informed theists know that modern physics teaches that matter and energy exist in space and time. They also know that (1) matter and energy are linked (by Einstein’s equation E = mc2); (2) matter and space are linked (as John Archibald Wheeler put it, “Space tells matter how to move, and matter tells space how to curve”10); and (3) space and time are linked, as the concept of spacetime in general relativity implies. Consequently, these theists think of time and space as much as matter and energy as created entities. But that means that any act of creation that brings matter and energy into existence would also bring space and time into existence. Thus, both the universe and the time in it should have a beginning.11 For these and other reasons,12 theists who conceive of God as a personal agent might reasonably expect to find evidence of a temporally finite universe—evidence that the universe had a beginning. This expectation can be expressed as part of a syllogism to show how the discovery of a finite universe can underwrite an abductive inference in support of the God hypothesis:

The Hawking-Penrose-Ellis singularity theorems amplify this conclusion. If sometime in the finite past, either the curvature of space reached an infinite and/or the radius and spatial volume of the universe collapsed to zero units, then at that point there would be no space and no place for matter and energy to reside. Consequently, the possibility of a materialistic explanation would also evaporate, since at that point neither material particles nor energy fields would exist. Indeed, since matter and energy cannot exist until space (and probably time) begins to exist, a materialistic explanation involving either material particles or energy fields—before space and time existed—makes no sense. As I used to tell my students, “If you extrapolate back all the way to a singularity, you eventually reach a point where there is no matter left to do the causing.”

Since both theism and deism conceive of God as having an existence independent of the material universe—either in a timeless eternal realm or in another realm of time independent of the time in our universe—both can account for (a) the origin of the universe in time (i.e., at a beginning) and (b) the fine tuning of the universe from the beginning of time. In other words, since both theism and deism posit the prior (either ontological or temporal) existence of a transcendent intelligent agent, the creative and causal act of such an agent in choosing to design the universe with a specific suite of life-permitting parameters would explain the origin of the fine tuning from the beginning of the universe.

if some version of quantum cosmology provides the correct model for the origin of the universe, then mind, not just matter and energy (or even math), played a causal role in that ultimate origin event. Insofar as quantum cosmology models the origin of the universe, it implies the need for prior intelligent design.

A common objection to Newton’s view of the relationship between science and theistic belief is known as the God-of-the-gaps objection (hereafter, the GOTG objection). According to those who pose this objection, the GOTG fallacy occurs whenever someone invokes the activity of a creative intelligence or God to explain phenomena or events in the natural world. Such postulations, critics argue, stifle scientific advance by using God (or creative intelligence) to account for phenomena or events that scientists will eventually explain, once they discover new laws of nature or material processes. Allowing God as an explanation only serves to impede or distract scientists from discovering such true explanations.

any cause capable of explaining the origin of the universe and its fine tuning must in some way stand causally separate from the universe or, in philosophical terms, transcend matter, space, time, and energy. Materialists themselves have tacitly conceded the need for a transcendent explanatory entity by positing universes beyond our universe and abstract nonmaterial mathematical entities (such as those in quantum cosmology) as explanations for the origin of the universe and its fundamental attributes.