Science Proves the Existence of God?

“Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system. I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.”

-Sir Isaac Newton

“Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God” – that was the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article.

As a Christian and someone who has probably spent way too much time in higher ed environments I’ve always been a little (hate to say this) but self-conscious about my faith. I love apologetics and have read a few good books on the subject, but trying to defend my faith against a scientist pulling for the other side has always scared me a bit.

I’ve always wanted the most “learned” people in the world to believe in God like I do, but faith is not something that is prized at the institutions of higher learning. In fact, it is pretty much looked down upon.

That is why I found this article so exciting! A mainstream publication – the Wall Street Journal, no less – publishing a well written article on how science is having an increasingly hard time justifying our universe without some form of divine creator.

If you’d like to learn more about what the article said, please read on.

The article starts out referring to a 1966 Time magazine cover story asking: “Is God Dead?” The concept was that as science progresses there will be less need for a “God” to explain the universe. In other words as we become smarter and understand more about our universe, we won’t need to rely on the “God Crutch” to explain how all this got started.

That same year Carl Sagan (famous astronomer) 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 be about a septillion (1 followed by 24 zeros) planets capable of supporting life – according to Sagan’s calculations.

So the scientific community fired up the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI for short). Scientists listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence – but as of 2014 – the results have been a big Zilch.

Turns out there were more criteria for a life supporting planet than were originally expected. The number of parameters grew from 10 to 50. As additional requirements for life supporting planets arose, the number of potential planets kept diminishing – eventually hitting zero.

Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life. Every single parameter must be met perfectly. The odds against life in the universe keep growing. Turns out we shouldn’t even be here.

But there is more – 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 that one millionth of a second after the big bang. And if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction (even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000) then no stars would have ever formed.

Now this is all totally over my head, but could that have happened by chance?

Scientists have begun to believe that it couldn’t.

Fred Hoyle – the astronomer who coined the term the “Big Bang” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” by 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 overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming.”

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 credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

Wow. Totally over my head, but I love it. More people need to read evidence like this rather than being afraid of defending our faith in front of the most educated people we know.

Yes, believing in God still requires faith, but understanding a little more science could help us all.

To read the full article go here http://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568.

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