The Anthropic Principle: I saw a teenage girl the other day with a tee shirt on that read, “Yes, the Universe Does Revolve Around Me!” I loved this self-confident, though somewhat exaggerated, take on life. My message today is that, if that young lady will allow the rest of mankind to join her at the center of the universe, she is correct. All together, including civilizations of mankind that live on other planets, the universe really was built for mankind. In summary, the universe, Earth, and life itself are so elegantly designed, so intricately complex, and so purposefully created to provide for every need of intelligent life, that the Creation cannot possibly be attributed to random chance. God is the Supreme Creator of our Universe.
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S3E1 – “Yes, the Universe Does Revolve Around You”
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures - Discerning Truth from Error, Season 3, Episode 1, or “Yes, the Universe Does Revolve Around You.”
Hello everyone. This is Scott Frazer of the podcast Science and Scriptures. Before I do anything else, I must apologize for my very lengthy sabbatical from this podcast. My absence started with a death in my family and other personal issues that came up.I finally finished up writing a new book and, after a long editorial process, it has been accepted for publication.I’ll tell you more about that book someday soon. In any case, please forgive me for the… year-long delay in my podcast. I won’t do that again.
Actually, I strongly considered NOT continuing the podcast, wondering if my voice was just adding to the background noise of everyone else expressing their opinions. There is so much debate that it is often hard to distinguish truth. However, in the hope that the viewpoint of a scientist and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can help listeners to sort through the background noise of the world, I’m going to commit myself again to this podcast. In fact, I’m going to add a subtitle to the podcast. This podcast will now be Science & Scriptures – Discerning Truth from Error. We study both science and scriptures for only one reason - in order to determine truth. The podcast title needs to make that clear. If I can help listeners or readers to… discern the truths of the universe from the untruths, then I’d like to try.
Yes, the Universe Does Revolve Around Me
So, to begin. I saw a teenage girl the other day with a tee shirt on that read, “Yes, the Universe Does Revolve Around Me!” I loved this self-confident, though somewhat exaggerated, take on life. My message today is that, if that young lady will allow the rest of mankind to join her at the center of the universe, she is correct. All together, including civilizations of mankind that live on other planets, the universe really was built for mankind.
Those of you who have heard earlier podcasts know that I believe in evolution. Evolution teaches that mankind are descendants of primates. I believe this is true. However, some people conclude that we are thus of the same value as animals.After all, in biology, humans are classified as being part of the Animal Kingdom. Though our mortal bodies, and even our remarkable brains, evolved from animals, we are a special species. First, I believe that God directed much of our evolutionary path to become the people we are today. It is not an accident that we ended up “in the image of God and after His likeness”. With bodies and brains that finally evolved to be worthy vessels for our spirits, God chose two of those people, Adam and Eve, to be the first man and woman to be given spirits, a conscience, and the command to subdue the earth. As the Primary song states, “You are a Child of God”, meaning that you are special. Look at it this way - Creating the Universe was a lot of work that took billions of years – all to prepare a place for you, me, and the rest of mankind to live out our mortal probation.
Anthropic Principle
Was the universe actually created for us? This debate has raged for centuries. If you believe that yes, the universe was made for mankind, then you believe in the anthropic principle. “Anthrop” is the Greek root word for “human”. For example, the study of human societies is called Anthropology. Many disbelievers call the Anthropic Principle incredibly proud and self-delusional. They believe humans to be no more important than any other intelligent primate. Since they don’t believe in God, these people believe that the Universe, life, and humans to be completely random accidents. They must believe mankind is just a lucky accident. Though such theories excluding God from the Creation sound very progressive and even scientific, data is proving them wrong. That is the subject of this podcast episode.
Full Disclosure - I am also writing a book about the Anthropic Principle. It will be at least a year until it is published, so I am not spoiling a surprise with this podcast. Here is my definition of that Principle:
The universe, Earth, and life itself are so elegantly designed, so intricately complex, and so purposefully created to provide for every need of intelligent life, that the Creation cannot possibly be attributed to random chance. God is the Supreme Creator of our Universe.
In preparation to write this book, I read several books on the subject. My favorite was “A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos”. The authors of this book and others like it sound incredulous as they relate how the laws of nature, the constants of physics, and the workings of biology are all set at the exact values to support life. They admit that this happening by chance is very unlikely. Reading these books is actually very frustrating because they make the case that the Universe must have been created by design – but they are unwilling to draw such a conclusion. Apparently, they are simply not willing to recognize that a Master Intelligence, or a God, must exist.
To answer the question, “Was the Creation guided by a Creator or by random chance?”, we can take one of two approaches. We could try to find God and present Him to the world.That’s not going to work of course.We don’t have the technology to locate God or the power to force Him to introduce Himself to the world. Alternatively… we can tear down the argument that the universe was created by random chance. As Sherlock Holmes, the great, fictional crime-solver, stated, “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. So, if we can eliminate the possibility that the Universe was created by sheer happenstance, all that is left is the conclusion that there was an Intelligence behind that creation.
Anthropic Design is not a new concept. Some very smart scientists have recognized the truth of the principle. In his book, Reflections of a Scientist, physical chemist Dr. Henry Eyring tells a story about a symposium he attended where he asked twelve of the top physicists and chemists in the world if they believed in a Supreme Being. All twelve replied they did. Dr. Eyring concludes,
“Exact scientists are deeply impressed by the precision with which natural laws apply. Any explanation that ignores a Planner leaves this precision unexplained and is therefor unacceptable.” (Henry Eyring, Reflections of a Scientist, Deseret Book Company (1983) Salt Lake City, pg. 39)
Francis S. Collins, a practicing Christian and geneticist who directed the Human Genome project and was the director of the National Institute of Health, explained the Creation’s beginning. In his book, The Language of God, he stated,
“The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation. It forces the conclusion that nature had a defined beginning. I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.” (Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, Free Press (2006) New York City, pg. 67)
It has been extensively argued whether Stephen Hawking, the famous wheelchair-bound cosmologist, was an atheist or not. He once stated he was. However, the brilliant scientist could not reject the data that supported the idea that the universe was designed to allow the development of an intelligent species. He concluded in his book, A Brief History of Time,
“This means that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time. It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” (Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books (1988) New York City, pg. 131)
Before I get started, I hope this podcast will have two audiences. The first group are those who really want to know God better. You may have a testimony of how wonderful Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are. You may know the scriptures and the precepts that God has revealed to His prophets. Yet…could you write God’s resume? Do you know His accomplishments? My research into the Anthropic Principle has introduced me to God as I have never known Him. Understanding a bit of the science and pure knowledge God possesses to create this Universe allows me to better appreciate a side of God we don’t often consider - His intellect, His knowledge, and His design.
As for my second audience (or those who don’t want to believe that God exists) … I’m sorry, but I hope to discomfort you a bit.When you’re living your life as though God doesn’t exist, scientific evidence that He does indeed exist can be scary.
I must clear up one more confusion that may exist for some of you. I don’t believe in magic. You know, like Harry Potter magic where you wave a wand and, without understanding the physics or chemistry of the miracle, you make it occur. What intellect does Harry Potter’s magic access to figure out exactly how to perform a requested miracle? It makes no sense. Likewise, God did not simply wave His hands and create the Universe. He had to understand exactly what He was doing – from creating dispersed, functioning galaxies to understanding how molecules fit together. Then He had to have the power to make those creations occur. In doing this, God had to work within the laws of science.He had to follow the requirements of astrophysics to create the sun and the earth. He was required to work within the laws of biology to create life. God is a very smart being. I didn’t really appreciate exactly how smart until I did this research. Let’s get started on the examples of why the creation was an anthropic creation.
Since this is a podcast and not a 70,000-word book, I must be brief in giving the upcoming examples. Please know that I am only scratching the surface of each of these findings. These findings are much more complex than what I can explain to you in a podcast.
The Big Bang – We have all heard how the Big Bang, about 14 billion years ago, created all the mass of the universe. That mass was sent flying out from a central point – and to this day galaxies are still speeding further and further away from each other. Now if the Big Bang had been just a little less violent and galaxies were not given the velocity they were given – then the force of gravity of all that matter would have gradually stopped the outward momentum of those galaxies. Gravity would continued to pull back and then reversed the direction of those future galaxies, pulling everything back together into one truly massive collapse. On the other hand, if the Big Bang had been just a little more powerful, then the Universe’s mass would have been scattered so far and wide that gravity could have never pulled enough hydrogen together to form even one sun. Either way, we would have never existed.
The Periodic Table of Elements – The Big Bang created mostly hydrogen and some helium. Our planet and its life require a lot more elements than two gases. To make those other elements requires tremendous pressure and temperatures to initiate nuclear fusion reactions. There is only one place where such conditions exist – in the center of suns. Our present sun is a second-generation sun by the way. There was a much larger, first-generation sun there before. Over millions of years, new elements are created in the middle of that sun. Two hydrogen nuclei fuse to become a helium nucleus. Two helium nuclei fused to form a carbon atom. A carbon nucleus and a helium nucleus fused to become an oxygen nucleus. Heavier and heavier elements would have formed, including lots of iron.
But the elements would have done us no good inside a sun. Fortunately, in a violent process few could have predicted or hoped for, our first-generation sun went Supernova and sprayed all the elements it had formed into the space around it. A new solar system (including Earth), and a new, smaller sun formed from the debris.
Most of those naturally occurring elements were rather critical for life here. Carbon forms the backbone of all organic molecules – be they bacterial, plant or animal. Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Phosphorus give those carbon backbones their functionality. We require Calcium in our bones and Iron is our blood. We require minerals to make up the ground beneath our feet. The list goes on and on. If one of these key elements had not formed in the sun, life could not have existed.
Nickel and Iron make up the core of our planet. On top of that core is molten lava which we see in volcanoes occasionally. The core and the lava work together to create a magnetic field that covers the earth. Besides allowing compasses to work, the magnetic field diverts cosmic rays and harmful radiation from our own sun from hitting us. If not for the magnetic field, we would suffer the same death one receives from lethal doses of radiation.
Fortunately, or more probably programmed that way, we are just the right distance from the Sun. We don’t burn like Venus nor freeze like Mars. We are in the so-called Goldilocks Zone. You know the story – not too hot and not too cold.
After Darwin came out with the theory of evolution, there were plenty of theories about how bacteria, the first evidence of life, could have evolved. You see, through most of the 1900s, single-celled bacteria were considered to be very simple in construction and physiology. These bacteria were even called simple cells. Basically, microbiologists considered bacteria to be a sphere of outer membrane, a bit of salt water, and a nucleus. With this paradigm, it was fairly easy to imagine the random formation of a bacterial cell. One could picture a piece of hydrophobic membrane randomly forming in an ancient bog somewhere. One could envision it connecting its edges to form a small sphere surrounding a bit of salt water inside. Simple nucleic acids in the salt water might have randomly aligned to form a small DNA molecule. (At least, that was the theory. Despite many attempts, no one has ever made such a process work in their labs.) Biologists theorized that DNA learned to grow, replicate, and divide. Still very simple, right?
As analytical sciences improved, cell biologists discovered that… maybe things weren’t as simple as they had first thought.If you monitor the cell membrane of a bacteria, you will find that thousands of organic reactions are occurring there every second. Some of those reactions are sensory, designed to let the cell know conditions outside of its membrane. Some of them control what is allowed to enter the cell, and others control what is allowed to leave. The nucleus is the home of thousands of other chemical reactions. During the act of cell division, the double helix of DNA is unraveled and copied.
At this point, please note that simple is vitally necessary to believe that random chance could guide evolution. If I give you a dice and ask you to roll a six, you could do it in a few rolls. My request is… simple. However, if I then ask you to roll one hundred sixes in a row, you will be at it for a very long time. My second request is 100 times more complex and demanding. Random chance is simply not up to the task. But now let’s work Intelligent direction into the task. If I ask a friend to pick up the dice and place it down showing a six 100 times, we could accomplish the chore in short order.
Human DNA is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes. Each chromosome is made up of 150 million base pairs of nucleotides. Our cells replicate at the rate of about 50 base pairs per second. Could random chance really build a molecule as complex as DNA?
Life itself is complex and has never been replicated, even in multimillion dollar labs. Could random chance have ever accomplished it? In the movie Jurassic Park, when they find that dinosaurs were unexpectedly reproducing, the actor Jeff Goldblum states, “Life finds a way. ”No, Mr. Goldblum, it really doesn’t. We have never found life on the moon, Mars, or anywhere else in the Milky Way. Life is fragile. There is no evidence life has “found a way” to occur except in the movies.
The human mind is composed of 86-100 billion neurons. It is an amazing bio-computer. Could random chance have built it from scratch, even given twenty million years of evolution?
The case for a Creator is being made in all areas of science. Quantum chemistry research focuses on learning more about sub-atomic particles. We know that protons and neutrons make up the nucleus of atoms. Protons all have a +1 charge on them, so they repel one another. Neutrons are neutral, so act as a nuclear glue to hold nuclei together. It’s a fine balance. If protons had been created with a stronger charge or a larger size, the nucleus would not hold together. If protons had a weaker charge or a smaller size, the nuclei would refuse to ever react with other nuclei and the periodic table of elements would have never formed. Change the features of the neutrons or the electrons, the same disastrous results would occur.
As mentioned earlier, the possibility that science is proving the case for God’s existence is actually very frightening for many people. Most of the world has convinced itself that attending church, following the commandments, or recognizing their debt to God is unnecessary. Believing that God may not really exist is an important foundation for such decisions. Discovering evidence outside of the world of religion that God does exist puts people on the proverbial slippery slope. If science can demonstrate God’s works, does that mean everything else being taught by religion is true? Could the scriptures actually be based on revelations by God to His prophets? Could there be an afterlife, where judgment and consequences for a life poorly lived are handed down?
This is scary stuff for many people. It is little wonder that so little has been published about the Anthropic Principle, and the proofs that continue to pour in.
Yet arguments will still go on that random chance could have created the universe. After all, critics of the Anthropic Principle note that evolution has been occurring for millions of years! I have one more story for you about the claim that random chance could have created the universe. In1954, George Wald, a Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Laureate believed that the age of the earth made random chance a viable explanation of the Creation. In an article in Scientific American, he wrote, “Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.”
It turns out that Dr. Wald was wrong. Twenty-five years later, Scientific American retracted the article, stating that Wald was wrong and “that merely to create a single bacterium would require more time than the universe might ever see if chance combinations of its molecules were the only driving force.” The Creation proves the existence of a Creator, no matter how unbelievers wish to deny the fact. Science has become a friend to Religion.
So, that is all I have for you today. This is Scott Frazer from the podcast Science and Scriptures. Once again, I apologize for the gap in my podcast. In the future, I will be posting new podcasts every 3 weeks or so. Thanks again for listening. Take care and may God bless you.