ot much chance ot much chance Many scientists disclaim any role of a supreme being in the design of creation. Yet, science begins, and the ship of science sails, on the ocean of the unknown not being able, despite centuries of focused, collective, scientific research and thought to answer the most basic question: How did the universe and life begin? As there are no facts and only opinions, science soundly rests on very unscientific opinion. And when it is said that these things occured by chance, there does not seem to be much chance for that.
Among the outstanding scientists speaking of various sorts of biological occurences that seem beyond the realm of chance are Don Page, a Princeton scientist, who calculated the odds against our universe as being like 1 in 10133. Paul Davies saying that the assembly of a virus has a chance of 102 000 000 to one. Isaac Asimov estimates that the chance of making hemaglobin to be 10619 to one. Stuart Kauffman of the Biology Department of the University of Pennsylvania believes gene expression has a probability of 1030 000 to one.
Richard Dawkins states that the chance of the human genome emerging without some innate guiding hand is "Many times the age of the universe to one." Fred Hoyle states that enzymes can occur randomly if they beat odds of 1040 000 to one. Lewis Thomas, formerly Dean of Yale Medical School, believed: "[Sustained human] existence, without drifting back into randomness, was nearly a mathematical impossibility ... You'd think we'd never stop dancing." And Darwin felt the odds were so great, he simply said, "The Creator breathed life." (Sources supplied on request). They put their money on design. The following physical data also weighs against mindless, random chance. 1. Electromagnetism and other forces. With electromagnetism very slightly stronger, stellar luminosity would fall sharply. The main sequence (on which stars spend most of their lives) would consist of red stars, probably too cold to encourage life's evolution and unable to explode as the supernova one needs for creating elements heavier than iron. Were it slightly weaker all main sequence stars would be very hot and short-lived blue stars. Changes in strength by only one part in 1040 could spell disaster. A slight strengthening could transform all quarks (essential to atoms) into leptons or make protons repel one another strongly enough to prevent the existence of atoms even as light as helium. A strengthening by one percent could have doubled the years needed for intelligent life to evolve, by making chemical changes more difficult. Gravity is 1039 times weaker than electromagnetism. Had it only been 1033 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.Lesli 2. The weak force. Had the nuclear weak force been appreciably stronger, the Big Bang would have burned all hydrogen to helium. There could then be neither water nor long-lived stable stars. Making the nuclear weak force appreciably weaker would also have destroyed the hydrogen; the neutrons formed at early times would not have decayed into protons. Again this force needed to be chosen appropriately if neutrinos were to interact with stellar matter both weakly enough to escape from a supernova's collapsing core and strongly enough to blast its outer layers into space as to provide material for making planets. Lesli 3. The Expansion Rate. Stephen Hawking writes, "If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million it would have recollasped before it reached its present size."Hawk On the otherhand, if it had been greater by a part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form. The expansion rate itself depends on many factors, such as the initial explosive energy, the mass of the universe, and the strength of gravitational forces. The cosmos seems to be balanced on a knife edge. 4. The Formation of the Elements. If the strong nuclear force were even slightly weaker we would have only hydrogen in the universe. If the force were even slightly stronger, all the hydrogen would have been converted to helium. In either case, stable stars and compounds such as water could not have formed. Again, the nuclear force is only barely sufficient for carbon to form; yet if it had been slightly stronger, the carbon would all have been converted to oxygen. Particular elements, such as carbon, have many other special properties that are crucial to the later development of organic life as we know it.Carr 5. The Carbon Mystery. Watson also comments on carbon. "There seems to have been a surprising amount of carbon, formed as a result of yet another happy coincidence. Carbon nuclei come into being as a result of the rare and simultaneous triple collision of three separate helium nuclei. If just two collide in precisely the right way, they form an unstable nucleus of the hard white metal beryllium, which exists for only a very short period of time. And if a third helium nucleus strikes the temporary beryllium with exactly the right amount of energy, it too becomes incorporated to produce carbon. None of this, however, can take place unless the resonance, the frequency of internal vibration of all three nuclei, is in complete harmony. But, as chance would have it, the thermal energy of a typical star, the temperature of its interior, lies at the one level that makes this not only possible, but inevitable."Watson 6. The Particle / Antiparticle Ratio. For every billion antiprotons in the early universe, there were one billion and one protons. The billion pairs annihilated each other to produce radiation, with just one proton left over. A greater or smaller number of survivors – or no survivors at all if they had been evenly matched – would have made our kind of material world impossible.Barrow These six features could be put on the six-sided face of two dice. Most cannot even roll double sixes twice in a row when playing dice. To believe that with a roll of the dice all the above could be due to random chance would be to believe in 21st century scientific voodoo. Science has and will continue to provide many useful answers to questions. But, there are things science will never answer. It can never say how the universe really began: no one was there to see it. Good scientific theories may exist, but they are, by the nature of the word, theories. Evidence would seem to indicate the role of a Creator in the design of life and the universe.
Bibliography supplied on request