In Alma 30, the prophet Alma is confronted with Korihor, one of the two men in the Book of Mormon whose opposition to Christ is so pervasive and vitriolic that they are given the label “Anti-Christ.” (The other is Sherem in Jacob 7) The debate between Alma and Korihor contain one of the classic arguments between theists – those who believe in God – and atheists – those who have faith that God is not real – that exists. In their debate, Korihor lays out exactly what it would take for him to become a believer in God:
Korihor said unto Alma: If thou wilt show me a sign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea, show unto me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words.
But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.
Alma 30: 39-45
Korihor makes the classic argument atheists always make – show me a sign, some form of objective proof, that God exists and then I will believe. This of course is often completely disingenuous as I’ve met many who, when pushed, have stated they could see God Himself and find it easier to believe He was an alien before He was deity. In other words, they would believe in Stargate before Jesus Christ. For such people, whose faith exists in the denial of deity, no argument or amount of evidence and no clarity of reasoning will be convincing. This has led some to conclude that Alma’s argument here is not a good one, as if the deficiency here was in the reasoning Alma was using and not in the heart of the person to whom he was speaking.
As we have learned more and more about the Universe, about the possible Multiverse, the more it seems impossible to imagine that everything needed to give rise to existence, life, and intelligence happened by accident. Indeed, it seems more likely that the entire Universe is merely a Boltzmann Brain, the delusion of a dying brain which spontaneously generated in the ether before it immediately began to die, because it is much more likely that this would happen with its far lower need for complexity than the actual Universe we see should spring into its infinitely complex existence and generate spontaneous intelligent life. The very complexity of existence is, as Alma teaches, a testimony that a Guiding Intelligence, God, exists and has ordered the Universe for the universal cosmological conditions necessary for complex intelligent life to flourish. The first article comes from Eric Metaxas and he explores the way that what we scientifically know about the Universe argues for the existence of a God based on mere logical deduction alone. The second is a Reddit post from physicist Joseph Smidt applies this same logic to the existence of the Multiverse and comments on how scientific academics would rather put their faith in the less logical argument that there is no God than the one that, when you examine all the scientific evidence, is most logical – that there is a Creating Intelligence, a God, which has ordered all of reality exactly how it needs to be for all of us to exist and thrive within it. I have added a few pictures, otherwise everything is as these authors originally wrote.
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Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God
by Eric Metaxas
In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.
Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.
With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continues with private funds. As of 2014, researchers have discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by nothing.
What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.
Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a 2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . . . . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no longer be tenable.”
As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn’t be here.
Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.
Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?
There’s more. The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.
Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Really?
Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”
The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond itself.
[Note from Will: I also highly suggest this article which is written in response to criticism to the above article. I suggest it because it builds on Metaxas’s arguments here by adding examples of even more respected scientists whose expertise in the field have led them to think there is more than random accident at work in the order of existence. This demonstrates that the position being argued here is far from a “fringe” position or an abuse of scientific knowledge for theistic ends and is in fact a logical conclusion based on the evidence.]
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The fact that people take the multiverse theory seriously demonstrates how powerful the fine-tuning argument for God is.
Full disclosure: as a real cosmologist I like the multiverse theory and have written first author papers with 100+ citations on the very inflationary models it is based on.
However given how people accept these theories rooted in much speculation, complexity, little evidence, and a host of philosophical issues, I have to admit: such irrationality underscores the strength of the fine-tuning argument for God.
The fine tuning argument: If while playing poker the dealer dealt you 100 royal flushes in a row, what is more likely: with enough games this eventually happens, so you must be lucky? Or that the dealer and/or someone else did this on purpose?
By analogy this is how we find ourselves. Roger Penrose has shown the odds of having a state after the big bang with as low entropy as happened is 1 in 101000 . People who work on string theory – a speculative theory where physical constants can vary – have shown that the likelihood the constants our universe would require for life is around 1 in 1100 – 10500 . Steven Weinberg has shown that the stability of our universe relies on a cosmological constant value that has a likelihood of 1 in 10120 . Sean Carroll, who writes popular books on his solution using an arrow-of-time argument, admits in his technical papers the “probability [for his model is] 10-101056 … [the] smallest positive number in the history of physics… but… that is nonzero”. Which sort of feels like this:
And those are just some issues related to cosmology. There are similar issues in every scientific field making random chance the explanation way more unlikely than 100 royal flushes.
But there is a straightforward solution. One that is consistent with the billions of people who have witnessed God in their life, as well as possibly your own. That accords with the philosophical necessity of God that philosophers have arrived at. That corresponds with the meaning and purpose behind life we often feel. One that has inspired men and women to give each other rights, form democracy, form the very university systems that incubated this science, inspired great art and music, etc… The solution that there is a God with with purpose and intention behind the cosmos in some way.
The Multiverse: And yet instead of embracing that simple explanation, rooted in a greater diversity of evidence than science alone along with the living testimonies of billions, people turn to the multiverse for escape.
That playing enough poker is the better explanation for receiving 100 royal flushes. The universe must have had a near infinite past (with no evidence and reasons to reject this). There must be 10500 – 101000 unobserved universes to explain a few of the probabilities above (with no evidence). This must be driven by an unknown theory that gives rise to ~10500 variations of physical constants (with no evidence any such theory is true). That inflation must be near-eternal driven by unobserved inflationary particles (no real evidence for this type of inflation) with just the right symmetries that upon breaking would manifest themselves as even more unobserved particles (no evidence).
The theory keeps getting worse because even after taking this leap of faith you arrive at the Boltzmann Brain problem. That these same theories show we are in the least likely life-giving universe for such models. Multiverse theories show the odds of particles randomly colliding to form a solar system like our own with no other universe baggage is ~1060, compared to 10500 . This means, after having faith in all this speculation, you must now explain why we find ourselves alive under the majesty of the heavens around us when it is 10440 time more likely that we would find ourselves alive inside nothing more than a single solar system surrounded by empty space.
Conclusion: defenders of the multiverse are willing to exercise faith in myriads of things – for which there is no evidence, much speculation, and an abundance of philosophical issues – instead of exercising faith in the one unifying thing that is straight forward: God exists and His intentions and purposes are behind the cosmos. The fact that so many have chosen the former approach to their faith is a testament just how strong the fine-tuning argument is.