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Does the progress of science support atheism?

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Dr. Walter L. Bradley
Dr. Walter L. Bradley

Dr. Walter L. Bradley (C.V. here) is the Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor.

Here’s a bio from his faculty page at Baylor University:

Walter Bradley (B.S., Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin) is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor. He comes to Baylor from Texas A&M University where he helped develop a nationally recognized program in polymeric composite materials. At Texas A&M, he served as director of the Polymer Technology Center for 10 years and as Department Head of Mechanical Engineering, a department of 67 professors that was ranked as high as 12th nationally during his tenure. Bradley has authored over 150 refereed research publications including book chapters, articles in archival journals such as the Journal of Material Science, Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites, Mechanics of Time-Dependent Materials, Journal of Composites Technology and Research, Composite Science and Technology, Journal of Metals, Polymer Engineering and Science, and Journal of Materials Science, and refereed conference proceedings.

Dr. Bradley has secured over $5.0 million in research funding from NSF grants (15 yrs.), AFOSR (10 years), NASA grants (10 years), and DOE (3 years). He has also received research grants or contracts from many Fortune 500 companies, including Alcoa, Dow Chemical, DuPont, 3M, Shell, Exxon, Boeing, and Phillips.

He co-authored The Mystery of Life Origin: Reassessing Current Theories and has written 10 book chapters dealing with various faith science issues, a topic on which he speaks widely.

He has received 5 research awards at Texas A&M University and 1 national research award. He has also received two teaching awards. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Society for Materials and the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), the largest organization of Christians in Science and Technology in the world. He is President elect of the ASA and will serve his term in 2008.

You can read more about his recent research on how to use coconuts to make car parts in this article from Science Daily.

Below, I analyze a lecture I chose from the hundreds of public lectures he has given all over the world on the integration of Christian faith with other public, testable areas of knowledge. In this lecture, entitled “Is There Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer?“, Dr. Bradley explains how the progress of science has made the idea of a Creator and Designer of the universe more acceptable than ever before. (It’s a little different from the one I posted earlier in the week, and now I have summarized it so people can discuss it without having to watch the lecture).

Evidence #1: The design of the universe

1. The correspondence of natural phenomena to mathematical law

  • All observations of physical phenomena in the universe, such as throwing a ball up in the air, are described by a few simple, elegant mathematical equations.

2. The fine-tuning of physical constants and rations between constants in order to provide a life-permitting universe

  • Life has certain minimal requirements; long-term stable source of energy, a large number of different chemical elements, an element that can serve as a hub for joining together other elements into compounds, etc.
  • In order to meet these minimal requirements, the physical constants, (such as the gravitational constant), and the ratios between physical constants, need to be withing a narrow range of values in order to support the minimal requirements for life of any kind.
  • Slight changes to any of the physical constants, or to the rations between the constants, will result in a universe inhospitable to life.
  • The range of possible ranges over 70 orders of magnitude.
  • Although each individual selection of constants and ratios is as unlikely as any other selection, the vast majority of these possibilities do not support the minimal requirements of life of any kind. (In the same way as any hand of 5 cards that is dealt is as likely as any other, but you are overwhelmingly likely NOT to get a royal flush. In our case, a royal flush is a life-permitting universe).

Examples of finely-tuned constants and ratios: (there are more examples in the lecture)

a) The strong force: (the force that binds nucleons (= protons and neutrons) together in nucleus, by means of meson exchange)

  • if the strong force constant were 2% stronger, there would be no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no hydrogen containing compounds. This is because the single proton in hydrogen would want to stick to something else so badly that there would be no hydrogen left!
  • if the strong force constant were 5% weaker, there would be no stable stars, few (if any) elements besides hydrogen. This is because you would be able to build up the nuclei of the heavier elements, which contain more than 1 proton.
  • So, whether you adjust the strong force up or down, you lose stars than can serve as long-term sources of stable energy, or you lose chemical diversity, which is necessary to make beings that can perform the minimal requirements of living beings. (see below)

b) The conversion of beryllium to carbon, and carbon to oxygen

  • Life requires carbon in order to serve as the hub for complex molecules, but it also requires oxygen in order to create water.
  • Carbon is like the hub wheel in a tinker toy set: you can bind other elements together to more complicated molecules (e.g. – “carbon-based life), but the bonds are not so tight that they can’t be broken down again later to make something else.
  • The carbon resonance level is determined by two constants: the strong force and electromagnetic force.
  • If you mess with these forces even slightly, you either lose the carbon or the oxygen.

3. Fine-tuning to allow a habitable planet

  • A number of factors must be fine-tuned in order to have a planet that supports life
  • Initial estimates predicted abundant life in the universe, but revised estimates now predict that life is almost certainly unique in the galaxy, and probably unique in the universe.
  • Even though there are lots of stars in the universe, the odds are against any of them supporting complex life.
  • Here are just a few of the minimal requirements for habitability: must be a single star solar system, in order to support stable planetary orbits, the planet must be the right distance from the sun in order to have liquid water at the surface, the planet must sufficient mass in order to retain an atmosphere, etc.

The best current atheist response to this is to speculate that there may be an infinite number of unobservable and untestable universes. (I.e. – the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it)

Evidence #2: The origin of the universe

1. The progress of science has shown that the entire physical universe came into being out of nothing (= “the big bang”). It also shows that the cause of this creation event is non-physical and non-temporal. The cause is supernatural.

  • Atheism prefers an eternal universe, to get around the problem of a Creator having to create the universe.
  • Discovery #1: Observations of galaxies moving away from one another confirms that the universe expanded from a single point.
  • Discovery #2: Measurements of the cosmic background radiation confirms that the universe exploding into being.
  • Discovery #3: Predictions of elemental abundances prove that the universe is not eternal.
  • Discovery #4:The atheism-friendly steady-state model and oscillating model were both falsified by the evidence.
  • And there were other discoveries as well, mentioned in the lecture.

The best atheistic response to this is to speculate that there is an unobservable and untestable hyper-universe outside our own. (I.e. – the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it)

Evidence #3: The origin of life

1. The progress of science has shown that the simplest living organism contains huge amounts of biological information, similar to the Java code I write all day at work. This is a problem for atheists, because the sequence of instructions in a living system has to come together all at once, it cannot have evolved by mutation and selection – because there was no replication in place prior to the formation of that first living system!

  • Living systems must support certain minimum life functions: processing energy, storing information, and replicating.
  • There needs to be a certain amount of complexity in the living system that can perform these minimum functions.
  • But on atheism, the living system needs to be simple enough to form by accident in a pre-biotic soup, and in a reasonable amount of time.
  • The minimal functionality in a living system is a achieved by DNA, RNA and enzymes. DNA and RNA are composed of sequences of proteins, which are in turn composed of sequences of amino acids.

Consider the problems of building a chain of 100 amino acids

  • The amino acids must be left-handed only, but left and right kinds are equally abundant in nature. How do you sort out the right-handed ones?
  • The amino acids must be bound together using peptide bonds. How do you prevent other types of bonds?
  • Each link of the amino acid chain needs to be carefully chosen such that the completed chain with fold up into a protein. How do you choose the correct amino acid for each link from the pool of 20 different kinds found in living systems?
  • In every case, a human or other intelligence could solve these problems by doing what intelligent agents do best: making choices.
  • But who is there to make the choices on atheism?

The best current atheistic response to this is to speculate that unobservable and untestable aliens seeded the earth with life. (I.e. – the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it)

The problem of the origin of life is not a problem of chemistry, it is a problem of engineering. Every part of car functionality can be understood and described using the laws of physics and chemistry. But an intelligence is still needed in order to assemble the components into a system that has the minimal requirements for a functioning vehicle.

Conclusion

In all three areas, scientists expected that the data would be consistent with atheism. First, scientists expected that life could exist even if the physical constants and ratios were altered. The progress of science said NO. Second, scientists expected that the universe would be eternal. The progress of science said NO. Third, scientists expected that the origin of life would be simple. The progress of science said NO. Why do some people resist the progress of science and cling to the religious dogma of materialism?

Related posts

Videos

Walter Bradley presents the fine-tuning argument at UCSB

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Walter Bradley is one of my favorite lecturers in the whole universe!

Here’s a 5-minute sample of the lecture he presented at the University of California (Santa Barbara).

And if you like it, you can watch the whole lecture here on Vimeo.

Here’s a bio from his faculty page at Baylor University:

Walter Bradley (B.S., Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin) is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor. He comes to Baylor from Texas A&M University where he helped develop a nationally recognized program in polymeric composite materials. At Texas A&M, he served as director of the Polymer Technology Center for 10 years and as Department Head of Mechanical Engineering, a department of 67 professors that was ranked as high as 12th nationally during his tenure. Bradley has authored over 150 refereed research publications including book chapters, articles in archival journals such as the Journal of Material Science, Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites, Mechanics of Time-Dependent Materials, Journal of Composites Technology and Research, Composite Science and Technology, Journal of Metals, Polymer Engineering and Science, and Journal of Materials Science, and refereed conference proceedings.

Dr. Bradley has secured over $5.0 million in research funding from NSF grants (15 yrs.), AFOSR (10 years), NASA grants (10 years), and DOE (3 years). He has also received research grants or contracts from many Fortune 500 companies, including Alcoa, Dow Chemical, DuPont, 3M, Shell, Exxon, Boeing, and Phillips.

He co-authored The Mystery of Life Origin: Reassessing Current Theories and has written 10 book chapters dealing with various faith science issues, a topic on which he speaks widely.

He has received 5 research awards at Texas A&M University and 1 national research award. He has also received two teaching awards. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Society for Materials and the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), the largest organization of Christians in Science and Technology in the world. He is President elect of the ASA and will serve his term in 2008.

You can read more about his recent research on how to use coconuts to make car parts in this article from Science Daily.

My favorite lecture of all

My favorite lecture of all is “Giants in the Land”.

He delivered that lecture at the University of Georgia in 1997.

Commentary

Mary explains how sinful humans can be rightly related to a holy God

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I recently wrote a post about the Bible’s teaching on why having correct beliefs about who Jesus was and what he did in history is necessary in order to be considered righteous by the God of the universe.

Mary wrote a comment in response that I am reproducing below.

Take it away, Mary.

 

 

Really good post, WK! This is an important question. And to be a good friend you need to answer it for your friend – gently, but clearly and honestly – because truth is more important to your friend’s wellbeing than their comfort. You’ve done this very ably here.

A few things I’d like to add:

Firstly, the questioner is coming with the assumption that there actually are such things as truly good people. This is a common assumption. The problem with it is that it makes light of the depravity of man and undervalues the holiness of God. We need to understand how perfect and pure God is. We need to understand how sinful and impure we are. The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This is confirmed for each of us by experience. Not only that, but our good works are as filthy rags to God. That sounds harsh, but we need to understand to what extent even our best actions are marred by depravity, by selfish motives. We have fallen not just a little bit short of God’s standard, but a lot. There is a vast chasm between us and God. The only thing we are deserving of is God’s judgment, God’s wrath. This is true of EVERYONE.

So the real question is really this: why does God let ANYONE into Heaven at all, rather than sending all of us to Hell? If it’s not because of our good works, then what is it?

The answer is that we go to Heaven because of Jesus’ good works. He is the only Person throughout the whole of history to live perfectly, to meet God’s standard. Because God loves these depraved, rebellious creatures that we are, Jesus comes to Earth, lives the perfect life which we don’t and then (astoundingly!) He takes the punishment which we deserve and gives us His righteousness. This is a magnificent gift with no equal. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death (so we’re in a bad way because all we’ve earned is death), BUT the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ (so God has offered us something we totally don’t deserve). Like any other gift it is offered but has to be accepted for it to be owned by the recipient. This is what is meant by “believing” – it is taking up that gift and placing one’s trust in Jesus’ work and not in our own work. It’s not about mere intellectual belief (although that is necessary), but about a relational belief. It’s about saying, “Jesus, I reject my own ability to be good enough and instead I accept Your gift of being good enough in my place. I place my trust in You. You have bought me with your own life and I belong to You”.

Does this mean that good works are unimportant? No. Here’s what is possibly one of the most well-known 2 verses in the Bible, Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” So it’s clear that salvation is by grace (God’s unmerited favour), NOT by works. But here’s the next verse, Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” So our new selves are GOD’S work, not ours, but the purpose for which He has recreated us is to do good works. Good works are not what saves us (only Jesus is truly good), but good works are the purpose for which God saves us. What are those good works? 1) Love God and 2) Love your neighbour. (WK referenced this in his post.) Loving God is something we can only do if we acknowledge God’s existence and once we are redeemed by God (i.e. have accepted the gift) and have His Holy Spirit in us, changing our desires and motivations. Loving our neighbour is also something we can do only to a limited extent before we are redeemed. This is because we need to have Christ-centred motives in our intentions towards that person in order to truly love them as we should. We can only have Christ-centred motives once we have been saved by Christ.

So what does this mean when we hear good, solid advice from respectable, decent non-christians. Firstly, we acknowledge that non-christians can indeed be correct about the right behaviour. What they can’t be correct about are the central correct motivations for that behaviour. They can’t be Christ-centred in their motivations. And there are also necessarily aspects of behaviour which are fundamentally affected by being Christ-centred.

Let’s take the example of marriage, seeing as that was raised. A non-christian can give good advice on marriage and how to build a better marriage. They can teach love, respect, fidelity, unselfishness, responsibility, etc. These are all good things. However, they won’t teach a Christ-centred marriage. They won’t teach that marriage is meant to be a picture of Christ’s relationship with the Church. They won’t teach how the husband is supposed to model Christ in serving his wife as her leader. They won’t teach how the wife is supposed to model the Church as it should be in submitting to her husband’s leadership. The won’t teach how marriage is a picture of the Gospel, of God’s unconditional love for us and our response to Him. This means that even though non-christians may give excellent advice, their advice is inherently lacking because it is not Christ-centred.