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New Astronomical Proofs for the Existence of God

Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

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Hugh Ross launched his career at age seven when he went to the library to find out why stars are hot. Physics and astronomy captured his curiosity and never let go. At age seventeen he was the youngest person ever to serve as director of observations for Vancouver's Royal Astronomical Society. With the help of a provincial scholarship and a National Research Council (NRC) of Canada fellowship, he completed his undergraduate degree in physics (University of British Columbia) and graduate degrees in astronomy (University of Toronto). The NRC also sent him to the United States for postdoctoral studies. At Caltech he researched quasi-stellar objects, or "quasars," some of the most distant and ancient objects in the universe.

Not all of Hugh's discoveries had to do with astrophysics. He observed with amazement the impact of describing for people the process by which he came to personal faith in Jesus Christ. Some have expressed dismay but most have been overjoyed to meet someone who started at religious ground zero and through scientific and historical reality testing, became convinced that the Bible is truly the Word of God. He was stunned to discover how many individuals believed or disbelieved without checking evidence.

Hugh's unshakable confidence that God's revelation of Himself in Scripture and nature do not, will not, and cannot contradict became his unique message. Communicating that message as broadly and clearly as possible became his mission. He scouts the frontiers of origins research to share with scientists and nonscientists alike the thrilling news of what's being discovered and how it connects with biblical theology.

Between writing books and articles and recording the weekly television program Reasons to Believe, he travels around the world challenging high school and university audiences, churches and professional groups to consider the evidence for what they believe. He presents a persuasive case for Christianity without applying pressure. Because he treats people's questions and comments with respect, he is in great demand as a speaker and as a talk-radio and television guest.

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"It really does matter, and matters very much, how we think about the cosmos," declares historian and college president Dr. George Roche. Immanual Kant, for example, posited an infinitely old and infinitely large universe. Such a universe Kant reasoned might permit an infinite number of random chances. Thus even such highly improbable events as atoms self-assembling into human beings might be possible. God, then, becomes unnecessary.

But is Immanual Kant's concept of the cosmos really true? Thanks to many spectacular discoveries made primarily in the last several years, we can say no. In fact, not only can we say that God must exist, but also the description of Him found in the Bible matches what science is finding. The god of the other religions is now demonstrably false.

related articles:

• Evidence for Design of the Cosmos
• Quantum Gravity and the Origin of the Universe
• Quantum Mechanics, a Modern Goliath
• Design and the Anthropic Principle
• Astronomical Evidences for the God of the Bible

Einstein Discovers God

The first such scientific breakthrough arose from Einstein's theory of general relativity. Subtracting one set of his famous field equations from the other yielded the surprising result that everything in the universe is simultaneously expanding and decelerating. The only physical phenomenon satisfying simultaneous expansion and deceleration is an explosion. But, if the universe is the aftermath of an explosion, then sometime in the past it must have had a beginning. If it had a beginning, then there must be a Beginner.

Einstein's own world view initially kept him from adopting such a conclusion. Rather he proposed a new force of physics that would perfectly cancel out the deceleration and expansion induced by gravity. However, Edwin Hubble soon proved that the galaxies indeed were expanding away from one another in the manner predicted by Einstein's original formulation of general relativity. Confronted with this, Einstein gave grudging acceptance to "the necessity for a beginning,"¹ and to "the presence of a superior reasoning power. "²

Search for Loopholes

Others were not so ready to concede a theistic world view. Sir Arthur Eddington proposed that the universe part way through its general expansion undergoes a quasi-static pause of infinite duration so as to "allow evolution an infinite time to get started."³ Herman Bondi, Thomas Gold and Fred Hoyle attempted to circumvent the beginning by proposing continual creation. Accordingly, the universe, though expanding indefinitely, takes on an unchanging and eternal quality since the voids that result from expansion are filled by the continual creation of new matter. Willem de Sitter, Richard Tolman, and Robert Dicke revived the ancient Hindu belief in an oscillating universe. The universe was presumed to explode, implode, and bounce back into a new cycle of explosion and implosion ad infinitum and thus "relieve us of the necessity of understanding the origin of matter at any finite time in the past."⁴

These and a few other theories were considered viable loopholes until the limits and parameters of the universe were measured. We now know that the universe is too large to allow for any kind of pause in the general expansion.^{5, 6} It is too small to permit continual creation.⁷ It radiates much too perfectly for the universe ever to bounce.^{8, 9}

Moreover, as astronomers look back in time with their telescopes, they see that the universe has changed precisely as predicted by a general relativistic explosion.

The Beginning of Time

All this evidence has become somewhat academic. In 1968 and 1970 three British astrophysicists, Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose, extended the solution of the equations of general relativity to include space and time.^{10, 11} Their papers showed that if these equations are valid for the universe, then, under reasonably general conditions, space and time also must have an origin, an origin coincident with that for matter and energy. In other words, time must have a beginning. In 1970 general relativity still had not been overwhelmingly established by observations. But by 1980 observations removed any doubts.¹²

Three independent lines of research (color-luminosity fitting of globular cluster stars, nucleochronology of supernovae nuclides, and the Hubble time for the expansion of the universe) yield a definite and consistent age for the universe of 16 +/- 3 billion years. With the knowledge that time has a beginning, and a relatively recent beginning at that, all age-lengthening attempts to save agnostic science should cease. Moreover, the common origin of matter, energy, space, and time proves that the act(s) of creation must transcend the dimensions and substance of the universe—a powerful argument for the biblical doctrine of God.

Design Parameters

Now that the limits and parameters of the universe have come within the measuring capacity of astronomers and physicists, the design characteristics of the universe are being examined and acknowledged. Anything but the slightest disturbance in the values for the four constants of physics and for more than a dozen parameters of the universe would yield a universe unsuitable to support life.¹³ One astrophysicist likened the "coincidental" nature of these constants and parameters to the chance of balancing thousands of pencils upright on their points. Design characteristics also are becoming apparent for our planet earth. At least nineteen such life-sensitive parameters have been investigated.¹⁴ Considering that the universe contains only about a trillion galaxies, each averaging a hundred billion stars, we can safely conclude that not even one planet would be expected, by natural processes alone, to possess the necessary conditions to sustain life. These lists, each of which grows longer each year, would seem to provide another body of convincing evidence for the hand of the Creator-God of the Bible in the formation of the universe and of the earth.

Insufficient Universe

Now that the limits of the universe have been established, it is possible to calculate whether it is large enough and old enough to produce life by natural processes. The universe contains no more than 10⁸⁰ nucleons (basically protons and neutrons) and has been in existence for no more than 10¹⁸ seconds.

Compared to the inorganic systems comprising the universe, biological systems are enormously complex. The genome for the DNA of an E Coli bacterium has the equivalent of about two million amino acid residues. A single human cell contains the equivalent of about six billion amino acid residues. Moreover, unlike inorganic systems, the sequence in which the individual components (amino acids) are assembled is critical for the survival of biological systems. Also, only amino acids with left-handed configurations can be used in protein synthesis; the amino acids can be joined only by peptide bonds; each amino acid first must be activated by a specific enzyme; and multiple special enzymes are required to bind messenger RNA to ribosomes before protein synthesis can begin or end.

The bottom line is that the universe is at least ten billion orders of magnitude (a factor of 10^{10,000,000,000} times) too small or too young to permit life to be assembled by natural processes. Researchers, who are both non-theists and theists and who are in a variety of disciplines, have arrived at this calculation.^{15 - 20}

Invoking other universes cannot solve the problem. All such models require that the additional universes remain totally out of contact with one another; that is, their space-time manifolds cannot overlap. Thus the only explanation for how living organisms received their highly complex and ordered configurations is that an intelligent, transcendent Creator personally infused this information.

Jesus Christ, Transcendent Creator

Even the sardonic enemy of Christianity, Fred Hoyle, has conceded that "there is a good deal of cosmology in the Bible."²¹ Table 1 reviews some examples of that cosmology. Most significantly for our skeptical times, the latest discoveries on the frontiers of astronomy and physics validate and help to explain all this Biblical cosmology. Moreover, the Bible among all holy books stands uniquely apart in its statements about cosmology. No other sacred writings teach an extradimensional reality independent of the dimensions of our universe. Most, in fact, flatly contradict it.

Table 1: Some biblical statements of cosmological significance

1. God existed before the universe. God exists totally apart from the universe, and yet can be everywhere within it. (Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16-17)
2. Time has a beginning. God's existence precedes time. (2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2)
3. Jesus Christ created the universe. He has no beginning and was not created. (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16-17)
4. God created the universe from that which cannot be detected with the five senses. (Hebrews 11:3)
5. After His resurrection Jesus could pass through walls in His physical body, an evidence of His extradimensionality. (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:26-28)
6. God is very near, yet we cannot see Him, a further evidence of His extradimensionality. (Exodus 33:20; Deuteronomy 30:11-14; John 6:46)
7. God designed the universe in such a way that it would support human beings. (Genesis 1, 2; Nehemiah 9:6; Job 38; Psalm 8:3; Isaiah 45:18)

As vital as the new cosmology may be for convincing the skeptic that Jesus Christ is his one and only Lord and Savior, it is equally important as an aid to Christians in living a Spirit-filled life. Christians are transformed and strengthened as they become convinced that the Savior they cannot see is every bit as real and close as their next of kin-even closer. Further, all the paradoxical doctrines in the Bible (e.g., the Trinity, free-will and predestination, eternal security, baptism in the Holy Spirit, heaven, hell, spiritual gifts) can, be resolved and understood within the framework of extradimensional reality.

REFERENCES

1. Douglas, A. Vihert, "Forty Minutes With Einstein," in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 50. (1956), p.100.
2. Barnett, Lincoln. The Universe and Dr. Einstein. (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948), p.106.
3. Eddington, Arthur S. "On the Instability of Einstein's Spherical World," in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 90. (1930), p.672.
4. Dicke, R. H., Peebles, P. J. E., Roll, P. G., and Wilkinson, D. T. "Cosmic Black-Body Radiation," in Astrophysical Journal 142. (1965), p.415.
5. Petrosian, Vahe. "Confrontation of Lemaitre Models and the Cosmological Cconstant with Observations," in Proceedings of the I. A. U. Symposium No.63: Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data. edited by M. S. Longair. (Dordrecht-Holland, Boston-U. S. A.D. Reidel Publishing, 1974), pp.31-46.
6. Dunlop, J. S., Downes, A. J. B., Peacock, J. A., Savage, A., Lilly, S. J., Watson, F. G., and Longair, M. G. "Quasar with z = 3.71 and Limits on the Number of More Distant Objects," in Nature, 319. (1986), pp.564-567.
7. Guth, Alan H. and Sher, Marc. "The Impossibility of a Bouncing Universe," in Nature, 302. (1983), pp.505-506.
8. Bludman, Sidney A. "Thermodynamics and the End of a closed Universe," in Nature, 308. (1984), pp.319-322.
9. Hawking, Stephen W. and Ellis, George F. R. "The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in Our Universe," in Astrophysical Journal, 152. (1968), pp.25-36.
10. Hawking, Stephen and Penrose, Roger. "The Singularities of Gravitational collapse and Cosmology," in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 314. (1970), pp.529-548.
11. Vessot, R. F. C., Levine, M. W., Mattison, E. M., Blomberg, E. L., Hoffman, T. E., Nystrom, G. U., and Farrel, B. F. "Test of Relativistic Gravitation with a Space-Borne Hydrogen Maser," in Physical Review Letters, 45. (1980), pp. 2081-2084.
12. Ross, Hugh. "Design and the Anthropic Principle." (Pasadena, Calif.: Reasons To Believe, 1988), pp.2-5.
13. Ibid., pp.5-7
14. Yockey, Hubert P. "Self Organization Origin of Life Scenarios and Information Theory," in Journal of Theoretical Biology, 91. (1981), pp.13-31.
15. Hoyle, Fred and Wickramasinghe. Evolution From Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), pp.14-97.
16. Thaxton, Charles B., Bradley, Walter L., and Olsen, Roger. The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984).
17. Shapiro, Robert. Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. (New York: Summit Books, 1986), pp. 117-131.
18. Ross, Hugh. Genesis One: A Scientific Perspective. (Pasadena, Calif.: Reasons To Believe, 1983), pp.9-10.
19. Kok, Randall A., Taylor, John A., and Bradley, Walter L. "A Statistical Examination of Self-Ordering of Amino Acids in Proteins," in Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, 18. (1988), pp.135-142.
20. Hoyle, Fred. The Nature of the Universe, second edition. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952), p.109.

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Updated: 14 December 2002