Tag Archives: multiverse

The Laws of Physics

Science, ,

Atheists believe there is no evidence of supernatural creation. At a dinner a few years ago a Harvard professor told me “I do not believe the laws of physics can be violated.. He didn’t realize that his system of belief fails when closely examined.

We will skip over here how one can have laws without a lawmaker. Where do the laws of physics come from. We will also skip over the fantastic fine-tuning of the laws of physics. It is accepted fact that the universe is fine-tuned almost beyond comprehension, beyond picking one special marble out of a pile of marbles millions of light years high. The existence of natural laws and the fine-tuning of those laws are both powerful evidence of God (see Chapters 7 and 8 of Counting To God). But we will skip over these for now, because the laws of physics themselves reveal God.

Perhaps the most fundamental of those laws are the laws of Thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics is that matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed. Einstein showed us how they are related (E=mc2). In a sense, matter is frozen energy, and a very small amount of matter melts into an enormous amount of energy (think atomic explosion). If the First Law of Thermodynamics cannot be violated, matter/energy have always existed, and the universe has existed forever.

This contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is that the universe is running out of useable energy. Everything eventually breaks down and decays. All systems go from order to disorder. The universe has not existed forever, because, if it had, everything today would be lifeless and static. There is no way around this problem. The “quantum egg” theory, that our universe popped out of a quantum field, fails because if the past were infinite the “egg” would have “cracked” an infinite time ago, and again today the universe would be lifeless.

How can we reconcile the First and Second Laws. There had to be an event outside the laws of physics. Genesis tells us God created the heavens and the earth. There is no better explanation, no better way to reconcile the First and Second Laws. The multiverse theory, that our universe popped out of another universe, cannot be tested (and is therefore unscientific by definition), and the infinite multiverse was disproved by the Borg-Guth-Vilenkin Singularity Theorem (the universe had to have a beginning).

If that weren’t enough evidence for God in the laws of physics, there is even a scientific experiment that violates the known laws of physics. It’s called “quantum entanglement,” where two particles, or even bundles of atoms, are “entangled” so that a change in one instantaneously affects the other. Instant effects over distances (it’s been tested up to 88 miles apart, see pages 188 and 189 of Counting To God)) violate General Relativity. General Relativity tells us that effects cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Quantum entanglement violates General Relativity, and proves there is something outside of space and time.

When I pointed out to the Harvard professor that quantum entanglement violated the laws of physics, he was taken back, and sheepishly suggested that we need a better definition of time. If that strikes you as a feeble cop-out, you’re not alone. At the same time he is claiming the laws of physics cannot be violated, he is admitting he doesn’t understand the laws of physics.

The laws of physics reveal the existence of God.

Thanks for reading. My health is starting to improve, and I hope to post more often.

Doug Ell

Is Darwinism a Scientific Theory?

Science, , , ,

Tom Wolfe is a powerful thinker and writer. His books include The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and Bonfire of the Vanities (the last two were adapted into motion pictures). His most recent book, The Kingdom of Speech, annihilates claims that Darwin’s theory of evolution is science:

There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Has anyone observed the phenomenon – in this case, Evolution – as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper’s “falsifiability” tests)? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of Evolution … well … no … no … no … no … and no.

[Tom Wolfe – The Kingdom of Speech, 2016, p. 27.]

Let’s look more closely at how evolution scores.

1. Has anyone observed the phenomenon?

There has never been a case where anyone has observed a new biological system or technology being created from random mutations and natural selection. Franklin Harold, a Darwinist, admits: “We must concede that there are presently no detailed accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” Scientists see systems that they imagine “evolved,” but they have never observed evolution in action. In one decades-old experiment involving 65,000 generations of bacteria, no new systems were created. Instead, systems not needed to survive during the controlled conditions broke down.

If you look at the complexity of life, and in particular at the fantastic improbability of ever forming by chance a single new functional protein, much less a complete new biological system, it’s not hard to see why. See Counting To God, pages 105 to 112.

2. Could other scientists replicate it?

Obviously, no. Scientists can’t observe or replicate Darwinian evolution.

3. Are there facts which, if false, would contradict the theory?

To me this is the most important test for a scientific theory. If a theory is scientific, there must be a way to test it, to create an experiment that, if the results don’t turn out right, would show the theory is false. Quantum Physics and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity have each been confirmed to about 13 decimal places. A tiny discrepancy could prove either theory false. Karl Popper wrote: “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”

Here’s Cornelius Hunter:

Being an evolutionist mean there is no bad news. If new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, that just means evolution operates in spurts. … If clever mechanisms are discovered in biology, that just means evolution is smarter than we imagined. If strikingly similar designs are found in distant species, that just means evolution repeats itself. If significant differences are found in allied species, that just means evolution sometimes introduces new designs rapidly. If no likely mechanism can be found for the large-scale change evolution requires, that just means evolution is mysterious. If adaptation responds to environmental signals, that just means evolution has more foresight than was thought. If major predictions of evolution are found to be false, that just means evolution is more complex than we thought.

Evolution cannot be falsified because it makes no predictions (other than change happens). Evolution has no mathematical equations. Karl Popper wrote: “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.”

4. Could scientists make predictions based on it?

Scientists have made predictions based on Darwinism, and those predictions have consistently been proved false. One major prediction was that, because according to Darwin we were created from random mutations, most of our DNA is “junk.” This was disproved by over 400 scientists in 2012 as part of the ENCODE project. See Counting To God, pages 153 to 158.

5. Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science?

Darwinism has not led to a single scientific discovery. It has led millions to lose faith in God. It has led to a disregard for human beings, and two major world wars. It gave Hitler, Stalin, and Mao justification to kill 100 million people.

Darwinism is a delusion to deny God. Here’s a video that goes into more detail on this subject.

And let’s not forget about the multiverse, another major and unprovable fantasy of Atheists who seek to deny God. The multiverse by definition cannot be observed or replicated – because it is not in the observable universe. There are absolutely no facts or experiments that can contradict the multiverse delusion – all we can do is observe and experiment in our universe. The multiverse leads to no predictions and no new science.

The complexity and beauty of life prove the existence of God. The complexity and fantastic fine-tuning of our universe, fine-tuning in the constants of physics, the laws of physics, and even the structure of time and space, prove the existence of God. There is no scientific theory that can explain these proven facts without God. In each case, the scientific evidence of design is overwhelming. True science proves God.

Thanks for reading.

Fine-Tuning

Science, , , , ,

The fine-tuning of the universe may be, for many, the most persuasive evidence for God. Fine-tuning is accepted by almost all top scientists, and you don’t have to deal with the fanatics of Darwinism. In this post I return to fine-tuning and why God is the only plausible explanation. If you want to challenge an Atheist or Agnostic with science, you might start with the fine-tuning of the universe.

Embedded in the laws of physics are dozens of fixed numbers—“constants”—that have been measured by experiment. Examples include the ratio of the weight of the electron to the weight of the proton, the energy density of space, and the strength of the gravitational force. These numbers create the structure of our universe.

Scientists have found that these and many other constants of physics are set with fantastic precision to allow life to exist. If they were just slightly different, by the tiniest bit, there would be no life.

Gravity is a good example. If gravity were slightly weaker, the universe would have expanded too fast, and stars and planets would not have formed. If gravity were slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed, and again no life. It turns out that the permitted variation is less than one part in 1060—less than one part in a number with 60 zeros. If you had a ball of 1060 marbles, it would be 600 trillion miles in diameter. You put in it one million trillion balls the size of our solar system. What are the odds that you could blindly reach in and pick out the one special marble that would allow life to exist?

Lists vary, but at least 30 constants of physics are “fine-tuned” for life, some to even more fantastic precision. It has been compared to walking into a control room for the universe and finding that all the dials had been set exactly for life. You would not think it was a lucky accident. The most likely explanation would be that some intelligent being had adjusted the dials.

Fine-tuning is accepted by almost all top scientists. Here’s Atheist Stephen Hawking:

The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron … The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.

Physicist Freeman Dyson writes:

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.

How do we explain fine-tuning? These constants can only be measured by experiment; they are independent and not derived from a formula. Does fine-tuning reveal a designer God, a magnificent Creator, or did we just get very lucky?

Those who deny God usually claim the latter. They imagine an infinite number of universes, each with different constants of physics. If that is true, they say, then in some of those universes the constants are set to allow life, and since we are life, in our universe the constants of physics are set just right. They call this unwieldy collection of universes the “multiverse”.

Although scientists write articles about the multiverse, this theory of a multiverse is not scientific in any way. It cannot be proven, measured, or observed. There is no scientific evidence the multiverse exists, and there never will be. By definition, we can only measure and observe things in our universe.

The multiverse theory has other problems. In 2003, three leading scientists proved that, even if it exists, the multiverse cannot be infinite. That makes it hard to ignore fine-tuning, and leads to a second question— if there must be a first universe, who but God could have caused the first universe to exist?

Another problem is that multiverse fans imagine some sort of universe-generating machine that creates new universes. But any machine or mechanism capable of building universes would itself have to be impossibly fine-tuned. A bakery is more complex than a loaf of bread. So the multiverse actually doesn’t eliminate the need for fine-tuning, it just pushes it back one level to an imaginary mechanism that creates new universes.

Scientists have found that the laws of physics themselves, and the properties of space, are also set precisely to allow life to exist. Why does the force of gravity exist so that matter will gather into clumps? Why is there an electrical force to power the reactions and machines in our body? Why are there nuclear forces so that atoms can form? Why do we have three directions of space? In a universe with two space dimensions (like an endless sheet of paper), the necessary connections of life could not be made, and in a universe with four or more space dimensions (don’t even try to imagine this!) gravity and electromagnetism would not follow the inverse square law (the force is weaker in proportion to the square of the distance), and planets and electrons would not have stable orbits. Are we supposed to imagine a universe-generating machine powerful enough to change the laws of physics and the dimensions of space?

Fine-tuning is a scientific fact. The only plausible explanation is God. Here’s a cute video:

Thanks for reading.

Something From Nothing – Revisited

Atheist Pseudo-Science, , , ,

I am saddened by the confusion over the scientific evidence for God, and particularly saddened that many Atheists deliberately create confusion. This week let’s return to a question I asked about a year and a half ago: Why does anything exist?

I think it’s obvious that if you start with absolutely nothing – no time, no space, no energy, no matter, no laws of physics – you can’t create anything. So, to me, there is clearly no nontheistic reason – no explanation without God – for why anything exists. It just does. By itself, this doesn’t prove that God exists, it just proves that existence is an unshakable mystery.

Yet one Atheist has published a book claiming that you can get something from nothing. Believe it or not, A Universe From Nothing is actually the title of his book. But what he does is disingenuous, and that is sad. He doesn’t start from nothing, he assumes the existence of the quantum field.

What scientists call the “quantum field” is the foundation of our reality. It is a high energy field, and, as I explain in Chapter 14 of Counting To God, described by fantastically complex mathematics. It appears to consist of pure thought – ideas in the mind of God. Clearly the creation of the universe is connected to events at the quantum level – the subatomic level – of reality. But what caused the quantum field to exist? You can’t seriously just assume the existence of the quantum field. How does energy described only by fantastically complex mathematical patterns and equations pop out of absolute nothingness?

There are other problems with his pseudo-science theory, beyond falsely claiming that the quantum field is “nothing.” First, while “virtual particles” – particles that exist for fantastically small periods of time, less time than it takes light to cross a hydrogen atom, and then disappear – do exist, there is no scientific evidence that stable particles can pop out of a quantum field. So that’s another blatant, unacknowledged leap of faith. Second, even if you could get a stable particle from the quantum field, how could an entire universe, with the mass to create hundreds of billions of galaxies, suddenly pop out? Third, even if that event happened, how could it all be so finely tuned as to create the beautifully complex universe we now observe?

The truly sad part is that many people seem to think this quantum field nonsense makes sense. I have met many people who will tell you they think the universe popped out of a quantum field, and that therefore God is unnecessary. Where exactly did the quantum field come from? It makes no sense to say that the quantum field always existed, and then the universe suddenly popped out, sort of like a cosmic egg that finally hatched. If time and space have no beginning, so that the quantum field existed in the infinite past, then, even assuming that there is some small possibility that at some point a universe will pop out, our universe would have “popped out” an infinitely long time ago. Any probability, no matter how small, becomes a certainty when multiplied by an infinite period of time.

The truth is that ALL of these pseudo-science theories that attempt to avoid creation don’t work. The “steady state” theory collapsed in 1965 when Arno and Penzias discovered the radiation from the Big Bang. The “infinite multiverse” theory was disproven in 2003 by the Borde-Guth-Villekin singularity theorem – the past can’t be infinite. The perpetually oscillating universe theory – a universe that somehow contracts and expands forever, creating an infinite number of “Big Bangs” – would run out of energy (second law of thermodynamics).

We are left with the truly astonishing scientific conclusion that our universe was created. What caused that – what was the first cause? This doesn’t automatically get you to God, but it does prove, in my view at least, that something just exists, that there is something outside space and time that is uncaused, that caused our universe to exist. To me, that’s sort of like the first punch in the face of Atheism.

The second punch, a knockout punch, is that our universe is astonishingly fine-tuned. In so many ways, from the precise settings of the constants of physics, to the number of dimensions of space, to the mind-boggling ordering of the universe at the Big Bang, to the laws of physics, to the nuclear resonance levels within atoms, and on and on, the universe at least unquestionably looks like it was perfectly designed for life. This is commonly accepted among Atheists.

So our universe was somehow created, there can’t be an infinite number of past universes, and our universe is perfectly designed. To me, those are knockout punches.

And yet the public reads the titles of these nonsense books and thinks there’s a “scientific” explanation without God for existence.

I’ve been a little behind on my blogging, but hope to get back into it this year. If you have questions, or suggestions for blog posts, please comment on my Facebook author page.

Thanks for reading.

A New Dawn

Atheist Pseudo-Science, Science, , , ,

How do you explain the miracle of dawn? With heavenly clockwork, an immense fireball rises over one horizon and marches inexorably toward the other, bringing light and heat, making all life possible, and astonishing the sentient beings who stand witness. My best dawns were after sailing through the night, and seeing the darkness slowly conquered by the rising Sun. If you’ve ever watched a dawn, from first rays to final glory, you know it is a miracle.

In the ancient world, dawn, like every other mysterious thing, happened at the will of the gods. Over thousands of years, and most impressively in the last few hundred years, we’ve come up with different stories. We now say the Sun is a ball of burning stuff, of hydrogen atoms in a controlled ten-billion-year thermonuclear explosion. We now say the predictable march across the sky, and all other clockwork of the heavens, are the result of gravity, a fundamental force of nature where objects interact over great distances. Many extend this progress story – this “grand progress narrative” of “natural” causes replacing divine causes – to the origin of humans, we sentient creatures who observe the dawn. Many will tell you we are here because life arose by accident, and that, through blind, unguided evolution, the continual process of natural selection preserving the best mutations, those first cells eventually transformed into human beings.

This “grand progress narrative” supports a philosophy called Scientism. Scientism is the belief that everything can be explained by so-called “natural” causes, without God. Scientism is clearly not science, but it masquerades as science, and many can’t tell the difference. The grand progress narrative is scientism’s main theme. Scientism says there will always be a natural, materialistic explanation, and that if we just wait long enough we will figure it out. Scientism claims that natural causes alone can and will explain the dawn, and even how we came to be here.

Most people aren’t aware that in the last few decades this grand progress narrative has been proven false. Scientific progress has not slowed; fortunately for us new discoveries continue. But this thousand year old story of “natural” causes replacing divine causes has been reversed. To see why, let’s look at the dawn piece by piece.

We know the Sun is made of “stuff,” mostly burning hydrogen. We now also know that, without God, there is no explanation why stuff, or anything else, exists. All of true science – observation, experimentation, and reasoning – now leads us to a unique event – a universe created out of nothing, all matter and energy, even time and space itself, created in a single “big bang” instant. This “big bang” theory forced Atheists to retreat and claim, with absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever, that our universe somehow popped out of an infinite, eternal, and perpetually inflating “multiverse.” This infinite multiverse theory was disproven by the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin singularity theorem of 2003, what I have previously called the “God Theorem.” As one scientist put it, “With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”

We know that the clockwork of the heavens results from gravity. We have learned that gravity, along with dozens of other constants and features of our universe, is “impossibly fine-tuned,” set just perfect for life. If the force of gravity were stronger or weaker by one part in a number with 60 zeros life would not exist. That’s a greater precision than throwing a dart randomly and hitting a bulls-eye on the other side of the universe. Other features of our universe are even more precisely set. Without God, we have absolutely no explanation for this fine-tuning, and the amazingly perfect design of our universe.

Some say the first life arose by accident. Science now tells us that’s a fantasy. Harvard’s “Origin of Life Initiative” crashed and burned, its scientists crushed by the enormity of the problem. We now know that even the most “simple” life is a fantastically designed collection of micro-miniaturized factories and roads and storage facilities. Without God, we cannot explain the origin of life.

Some say, most of our popular culture will insist, that human beings arose solely through blind, unguided evolution. Yet we have found massive amounts of original information in every species on Earth. Throughout all of science, all of human history, all of our human experience, we have never found meaningful information that did not arise from a mind. This information – unique DNA coding in each species – proves the existence of a transcendent intelligence.

At this time in human history, we are witnessing a new dawn. Scientism’s grand progress narrative has been exposed. Without God, there is no explanation why anything exists. Without God, there is no explanation for the incredible design and fine-tuning for our universe. Without God, there is no explanation for the origin of life. Without God, there is no explanation of the creation of new species, including and especially human beings. It is a new dawn for belief, and if we as a culture can grasp the wonder, and work together as God wants, there may be hope for us yet.

Thanks for reading.

The God Theorem

Atheist Pseudo-Science, Science, , , , ,

Can a mathematical theorem point to the existence of God?

Consider whether our universe had a beginning, as claimed by the Bible. Until about a hundred years ago, there was no scientific evidence it did. Then, in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble discovered the universe is expanding in a way that implies a beginning, or “Big Bang.” Stunning confirmation of this theory came with the accidental discovery in 1965 of radiation, “relic photons” from the Big Bang (actually, to 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had cooled down enough to allow light to travel freely). Today the Big Bang theory is commonly accepted.

By itself, the Big Bang theory claims the universe had a beginning, and suggests the existence of God. So today most Atheists have retreated to belief in a “multiverse.” They believe our universe is an insignificant part of a much larger scheme, a collection of universes typically called the multiverse. To avoid the need for a beginning, Atheists typically believe the multiverse contains an infinite number of universes. One popular theory has universes exploding out of other universes, in “eternal inflation.”

Which bring us to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, what I call the God theorem. (For videos on this theorem, click here.) In 2003 these scientists proved that, if you assume an expanding universe, you can’t have an infinite past. Every universe that expands must have a space-time boundary in the past. What’s so powerful about this theorem is that it covers all cosmological models and theories of expanding universes. According to Professor Vilenkin:

All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.

With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe.

The multiverse has other problems, not the least of which is that it’s impossible to prove or disprove, and therefore many people think should not be considered “science.” The multiverse theory may be losing favor, even among Atheists. An opinion piece in the current issue of New Scientist magazine, by physicist Lee Smolin, is titled: “You think there’s a multiverse? Get real.”

Here’s how one blog sums it up:

If the universe came into being out of nothing, which seems to be the case from science, then the universe has a cause. Things do not pop into being, uncaused, out of nothing. The cause of the universe must be transcendent and supernatural. It must be uncaused, because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be eternal, because it created time. It must be non-physical, because it created space. There are only two possibilities for such a cause. It could be an abstract object or an agent. Abstract objects cannot cause effects. Therefore, the cause is an agent.

Sounds like God to me. Thanks for reading.