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The Real Issue

Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God

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Meet the Author: Dr. Walter Bradley
Walter Bradley received his Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Texas at Austin. After eight years at the Colorado School of Mines, he came to Texas A&M University where he is currently a professor and Senior TEES Research Fellow in the department of mechanical engineering. He has received two teaching awards, one national and five local research awards, and from 1989-1993 served as the head of the department. He has received over $4,000,000 in research grants and contracts resulting in the publication of 100+ technical articles. He has been honored for his technical contributions by being elected a Fellow of the American Society for Materials. He and his wife, Anne, have two grown children.





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In the spring of 1987, I agreed to give a presentation on Christianity and science at Cornell University for Campus Crusade for Christ while I was there on business. Having spoken for almost 10 years on "Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life," a rather narrow presentation which was too technical for the average audience, I decided to experiment with a broad, popular level treatment of Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God.

I was totally unprepared for what was to happen that evening and subsequently. Over 550 students and faculty jammed into the lecture hall on a Friday evening, with over 50 more turned away due to lack of even standing room.

As I gave my presentation with eagerness that evening, I knew God was doing something special in and through my life. The presentation was followed by a lively question and answer time which continued for nearly two hours, after which a group of about 50 students elected to stay for further informal discussions which went past midnight.

It was the beginning of one of the most exciting adventures of my life: challenging students and faculty alike to consider the overwhelming evidence from modern science for the existence of God. During the past seven years, it has taken me to all of the Ivy League schools (except Columbia) most of the Big Ten schools (except University of Iowa), and about half of the Big Eight, Southwest Conference, and Pac-10 west coast schools.

The response everywhere has been overwhelmingly positive despite that a significant majority of the audiences have been comprised of nonChristians and nontheists. A professionally made video has further extended the ministry opportunity the Lord has given me through this presentation.

Happily, along the way I have discovered many additional areas in which alternative evidences for the existence of God can be found, persuading me of two things: (1) God's fingerprints are ubiquitous in his creation, giving "clear evidence of his eternal power and divine nature through the things that have been created" (Romans 1:19-20); and (2) almost anyone who works in a field of science could potentially develop a presentation of this type in their area of expertise.

It is important in such a presentation to acknowledge the limited goal: namely, to demonstrate the character of the universe clearly suggests an intelligent creator. While Hume and later Kant argued convincingly that one cannot prove the existence of God through teleological, or design arguments, it is fair game to study the universe and ask whether it is more reasonable to posit that such a universe could have originated from chemical and physical laws alone, or that it has the markings of an intelligent creator.

When I first began presenting Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God, I was usually met with strenuous objections that such an enterprise was completely inappropriate-that to infer anything about God from science was illegitimate.

However, with the publication of a large number of books in this area by secular scientists over the past six years, this objection has become the exception rather than the rule. Even popular magazines are getting into the fray (e.g., "What Does Science Tell Us About God," Time magazine cover story, Dec., 1992; "Does the Universe Hold Clues to God?" Chronicle of Higher Education, May, 1993; "10 Great Unanswered Questions of Science," Discover cover story, Nov., 1992; "Science and the Soul," cover story for Omni, Oct., 1993).

In a fascinating book entitled A New Guide to the Debate About God, philosopher Martin Prozesky (a nonChristian) evaluates the various arguments for and against the existence of God. He considers the arguments from science, especially the big bang, the origin of life, and the anthropic principle to be net positive evidence for God's existence, with the strongest arguments against the existence of a theistic, Christian God being philosophical (evil) and theological (why so many people are going to hell without having heard of Christ).

It is a shame so much of the dialogue of the last 35 years between Christianity and science has centered on the age of the earth and creation science. It has left the average person, Christian and nonChristian alike, with the impression that modern science and the Bible are seriously at odds, maybe irreconcilably so.

It is ironic this impression has developed during the same period of time that scientific understanding and the attitudes of many modern scientists have moved strongly toward belief in an intelligent creator as a result of the scientific discoveries of the past 35 years. A preoccupation with the age question has only diverted discussion from the strong, scientific supporting evidence for Biblical theism, putting this very bright light under a bushel basket, so to speak.

In the remainder of this article, I would like to summarize the scientific evidence which I use in my presentation of Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God. I note, however, this is such an active field today that I am continuously scurrying to replace current information with even better information as it becomes available.

I encourage faculty to study this subject further for their personal satisfaction, and to assemble a presentation of their own. I recommend three books as excellent sources for this information: J. P. Moreland's The Creation Hypothesis (InterVarsity Press, 1994); and Hugh Ross' The Fingerprint of God (Promise Publishing Co., 1989), and The Creator and The Cosmos (Navpress, 1992). As I get five times as many invitations to speak as I can accept each year, there is a need for a pool of faculty prepared to speak on this subject to whom these invitations could be referred.

Key Elements for Scientific Evidence
Up until 1960, there was a general optimism that the more we learned about nature through our scientific investigations, the more we would be able to explain the world around us, including its origin, and render belief in God unnecessary, though not impossible. During the past 30 years, we gradually became aware of flies in the ointment of naturalism, and they have grown to the point that doubt now exists as to whether they can ever be removed.

The Washington Post, describing an international conference held in Washington D.C. in the late 1980s, noted,

Many scientists who were not long ago certain that the universe was created and peopled by accident are having second thoughts and concede the possibility that some intelligent creative force may have been responsible.
It should be emphasized one cannot scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God. Nevertheless, it is perfectly permissible to study the character of the universe and ask, "What does it reasonably suggest: an intelligent creator, or a universe which is in some sense self-caused?" I will consider in a cursory way just three such flies: (1) evidence for design in the universe; (2) the origin of the universe; and (3) the origin of life.
Evidence for Design
Evidence for design comes from three sources: (1) the simple mathematical form that nature takes; (2) the coincidence that the universal constants are exactly what they need to be to support life of any type on this planet; and (3) the coincidence that the initial conditions in many different situations are also critical and happen to have been exactly what they needed to be for the universe and life to come into being.

In a mathematical sense, we can say the universe is described by deceptively simple and elegant differential equations which just happen to have universal constants which are exactly what they need to be and initial conditions precisely prescribed to allow for the unfolding of a suitable habitat for life and for the appearance of life itself.

Nature Bound by Simple Mathematics
As a young physics student in high school, I was surprised and pleased to learn that the many diverse observations in nature find their description in such a small number of simple mathematical relationships such as Newton's laws of gravity and motion or Maxwell's equations of electricity and magnetism. It would probably surprise many of our earliest scientists to discover that today the universe is adequately described by such a small number of fundamental physical laws, represented by simple but elegant mathematical relationships, that they can be easily written on one side of one sheet of paper.

The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance, and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe,
said astrophysicist Paul Davies in his book Superforce (1984). The famous Russian physicist, Alexander Polyakov put it this way in Fortune magazine (October, 1986),
We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.
Coincidence of the Universal Constants
One of the remarkable discoveries of the past 30 years has been the recognition that small changes in any of the universal constants produce surprisingly dramatic changes in the universe, rendering it unsuitable for life, not just as we know it, but for life of any conceivable type. In excess of 100 examples have been documented in the technical literature and summarized in such books as the Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986).

For example, if the strong force which binds together the nucleus of atoms were just five percent weaker, only hydrogen would be stable and we would have a universe with a periodic chart of one element, which is a universe incapable of providing the necessary molecular complexity to provide minimal life functions of processing energy, storing information, and replicating. On the other hand, if the strong force were just two percent stronger, very massive nuclei would form, which are unsuitable for the chemistry of living systems. Furthermore, there would be no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, and no hydrogen containing compounds.

As a second example, if the relationship between the strong force and the electromagnetic force were to vary only slightly, we would not have the quantum energy levels which allow the remarkable conversion of beryllium to carbon (nearly 100% efficient) and the partial conversion of carbon to oxygen. With slight changes in either of these constants, we would have had a universe either rich in beryllium and little, if any, carbon or alternatively, a universe rich in oxygen with no carbon.

Since carbon is unique in its ability to chemically bond with almost all other elements in bonds that are stable but not too difficult to break (playing the critical role of the round pieces in a tinker toy set), it is remarkable that these forces are so precisely tuned to provide carbon in abundance, along with oxygen which is critical in its own right.

Many additional examples could be cited. If I rolled a dice and got a "6," you would not be surprised. If I rolled a dice five times and got a "6," you would begin to be a little suspicious. However, if you rolled the dice 1,000 times and got a "6" each time, you would be certain that there is something funny about the dice. So it is with our quirky universe in which everything has to be just so and is indeed found to be. Hume and others have argued incorrectly that it is not surprising that everything is just so, else we would not be here to observe it. The well known atheist J.L. Mackie (Miracle of Theism, p.141) saw the flaw in Hume's criticism:

There is only one actual universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up are just right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is not made less surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one would have been here to be surprised. We can properly envision and consider alternative possibilities which do not include our being there to experience them.
Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous British astronomer and agnostic, in The Intelligent Universe commented on the cosmological coincidences discussed by Mackie, "Such properties seem to run through the fabric of the natural world like a thread of happy coincidences. But there are so many odd coincidences essential to life that some explanation seems required to account for them."
"Slight variations in physical laws such as gravity or electromagnetism would make life impossible . . . the necessity to produce life lies at the center of the universe's whole machinery and design," stated John Wheeler, Princeton University professor of physics (Reader's Digest, Sept., 1986).

University of Virginia astronomers R.T. Rood and J.S. Trefil conclude their book Are We Alone? by estimating the probability of life existing anywhere in the universe to be one in a billion, and thus conclude the existence of life on planet earth, far from being inevitable, is the result of a remarkable set of coincidences.

"If I were a religious man," Trefil wrote in the concluding chapter, "I would say that everything we have learned about life in the past twenty years shows that we are unique, and therefore, special in God's sight." Instead he concludes that life on planet earth is a remarkable accident, unlikely to have been replicated anywhere else in the universe, which his book powerfully argues.

Initial Conditions
Initial condition problems are found in many places in our scenario of the origin of the universe, its development into a suitable home for us, and the origin of life. These initial condition problems have, in fact, grown much worse with the recognition that many critical processes in the origins scenario are nonlinear, and therefore, require particularly precise initial conditions. Trefil and Rood's book cited above mentions some of these problems in detail. I will also discuss, briefly, initial conditions problems having to do with the origin of the universe and the origin of life.

In summarizing this section, it is clear that there does appear to be something unique and special about our home in the universe and our existence in it.

Origin of the Universe
Cosmology is not neutral when it comes to philosophy and theology. A universe that eternally existed is much more congenial to an atheistic or agnostic worldview. By the same token, a universe that began seems to demand a first cause; for who could imagine such an effect without a sufficient cause?

In a dramatic address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1977, Robert Jastrow, Professor at Columbia University and Founder and Director of the Goddard Space Center, made a presentation which was later published as a book entitled God and the Astronomers. In this presentation, Jastrow, who is himself an agnostic, argued that the evidence for the Big Bang cosmology had been quite superior to competing cosmologies since 1929, but that many scientists had refused to accept it because they did not like the philosophical implications.

For example, Sir Arthur Eddington commenting on the Big Bang in the 1950s noted, "Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant . . . I should like to find a genuine loophole."

By the 1970's, after the discovery of the background radiation in 1965, John Gribbin in Nature said,

The biggest problem with the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe is philosophical-perhaps even theological-what was there before the bang? This problem alone was sufficient to give a great impetus to the Steady State theory; but with that theory now sadly in conflict with the observations, the best way around this initial difficulty is provided by a model in which the universe expands from a singularity, collapses back again, and repeats the cycle indefinitely.
[Articles published in 1984 in Nature by Guth and by Bludman clearly demonstrate the impossibility of a "bouncing" universe.]

Jastrow went on to argue that it is time that astronomers begin to acknowledge the philosophical implications of their discoveries. Jastrow concluded his presentation (and his book publication of it) with the comment, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story [of the big bang] ends like a bad dream. For the past three hundred years, scientists have scaled the mountain of ignorance and as they pull themselves over the final rock, they are greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Furthermore, recent measurements by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and by the Hubble Space Telescope, both reported in 1992, seem to confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that the Big Bang cosmology is indeed correct. George Smoot, Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Principle Investigator of the COBE team which made the discovery, said regarding these new observations, "What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe . . . It's like looking at God."

"The scientific community is prepared to consider the idea God created the universe a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last 100 years," Frederic B. Burnham, science historian, declared.

It is worth noting that Steven Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, has as its stated purpose to try to escape the implications of the Big Bang, to which he strongly objects for philosophical reasons, not scientific ones. His book is filled with conjecture not rooted in observational science and should be taken not as careful science, but as a polemic argument motivated by Hawking's own "religious" beliefs. The very fact that Hawking felt compelled to write such a book indicates the force of the Big Bang in arguing for a theistic universe.

Information Theory and Origin of Life
There is a necessary molecular complexity required to provide minimal life functions: processing energy, storing information, and replicating. Chemical evolution, as distinct from biological evolution, cannot look to mutation and natural selection to solve its problems (which don't solve the problems of macroevolution either).

Chemical evolution addresses the development of living systems from a prebiotic soup which did not initially have molecules, much less systems, capable of replicating. The production of molecules such as protein, RNA and DNA from a prebiotic soup is extremely difficult to imagine. The original euphoria associated with the making of building blocks such as amino acids under prebiotic conditions by Stanley Miller in 1952 has gradually been replaced with a somber recognition that the assembly of such molecules into function biopolymers is indeed the real problem. It is analogous to the problem of selecting a sequence of letters by randomly picking out of a box of typeset and hoping to accidentally get a sequence that corresponds to words, sentences, and coherent paragraphs.

"The current scenario of the origin of life is about as likely as a tornado passing through a junkyard beside Boeing airplane company accidentally producing a 747 airplane," Sir Fred Hoyle suggested in The Intelligent Universe.

In an article in Scientific American (February, 1991), Sir Francis Crick wrote, "The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going."

In the same article, Harold Klein who chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee which reviewed the origin of life noted, "The simplest bacterium is so damned complicated from the point of view of a chemist that it is almost impossible to imagine how it happened."

Anyone who thinks recent work on RNA has or will solve the problem of the origin of life should read Robert Shapiro's article in Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere (1988) or Klaus Dose's article in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (1988) entitled "Origin of Life: More Questions than Answers."

Summary
It is abundantly clear evidence abounds for the existence of an intelligent creator. I have only provided information from three narrow areas, but similar arguments could easily be formulated from many different scientific disciplines. One need never be ashamed of the intellectually respectability of belief in an intelligent creator; modern science has come down decisively on the side of the person who would posit such a belief. While Hume and Kant may have been right in their arguments that scientific proof for the existence of God cannot be made, they would surely be as impressed as I am with the compelling evidence that makes such a belief perfectly reasonable.