Who Ordered the Universe?

Evidence for God in unexpected places

Nick Hawkes

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857215994
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

Dr Nick Hawkes gathers evidence from science, history, and mathematics to seek out the signature of God. By surveying the various fields of study, he gathers a mass of evidence, concluding that faith in God is reasonable and that the evidence invites it. Addressing the big questions of origins and meaning, Hawkes considers the cosmos and the arguments for a Creator behind creation. He looks at biology, and the ideas of Darwin and Dr Richard Dawkins. He examines the significance of suffering and the phenomenon of mathematics - the code by which we understand how things work. He sifts through history and how it has been 'molded'. He considers the nature of truth, and whether it is ever knowable, and if so how; and he takes a long, hard look at ideas about the afterlife. What we believe is important. It becomes our identity, something we stake our very lives upon. Who Ordered The Universe? is essential reading for those battling with identity and their place in the world. It is the ideal gift for a non-Christian friend.

1

THE EVIDENCE OF GOD IN THE COSMOS

The universe is amazing – I mean, really, really amazing. It blows your mind.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that it is meant to. Certainly, the modernist dictum that “a scientific breakthrough a day will keep the need for God away” has started to look a little dog-eared in recent decades. The more scientists understand the universe, the more mysterious and spectacular it becomes.

This fact is not always appreciated.

I once listened to a symphony orchestra play Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No 2. Now, Rach was a bloke who knew how to use an orchestra. Big, rich tones poured out like a well-aged Shiraz. This was no sweet, demure work content to be played in the background. It demanded your attention and mugged your emotions. From my vantage point in the balcony, I glanced down on the people below… and was staggered to see someone engrossed in their smart-phone.

It seems that no matter what amazing spectacle you place in front of people, some will choose not to see it.

So, let’s agree to give ourselves permission to wonder and be amazed, to recover the childlike delight of saying “Wow!” – because I think we are meant to. I think God hangs his business card in the cosmos and invites us to see it. A 3,000-year-old songwriter certainly seemed to think so. The psalmist writes in the Old Testament:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

(Psalm 19:1–4)

I believe it is reasonable to suggest that the outrageous bigness and splendour of the cosmos is an invitation for us to consider the possibility of a Creator and perhaps learn a few things about him. Doing so should ensure that any conclusions we draw about God are in harmony with the best understandings we have of science.

It’s worth noting, in passing, that the Apostle Paul believed it was reasonable to expect people to ponder the significance of creation and to let this introduce them to the possibility of God. In fact, they were culpable if they did not:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

(Romans 1:20)

Now, that’s a bold statement!

Aren’t scientific truths and theological truths irreconcilable?

No.

Perhaps I should explain. If God exists, then all truth has its origin in God – including scientific truth and theological truth. Because the two truths both derive from the essence of who God is, the two disciplines cannot fight each other. They might answer different questions, but they must ultimately be compatible. Indeed, it would be reasonable to expect each discipline to give a deeper perspective of the other. Theology goes deeper than the “how” and “when” of science, and asks why things are as they are. It seeks to do more than say, “Things exist simply because they do.” Theology, therefore, puts science in a bigger context. This brings to mind Einstein’s famous aphorism, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”¹

It’s worth pausing here to talk a little about Einstein. If you do an Internet search for “Einstein and Christianity” you will discover an unseemly squabble between Christians wanting to claim Einstein was a Christian, and atheists who want to insist he was an atheist. Each wants Einstein, and his genius, to be on their side to lend them credibility.

The truth is actually much more interesting – and, I submit, significant.

Einstein was a brilliant scientist. He was not, however, a brilliant theologian. It is perhaps unfair of people to expect him to be one: theology was not his area of study. What is highly significant is that science took Einstein as far as it could towards God. Einstein’s scientific study convinced him of the existence of God. Like the philosopher Spinoza, he believed the universe and the physical laws of nature to be expressions of God. As such, science gave good reason to believe in a higher being. However, that was as far as he was able to go. Although he was firmly convinced of the historical reality of Jesus Christ, he was not a Christian. He didn’t believe in a personal God who had a plan for humankind. Rather, Einstein believed that humanity existed solely because of the cause and effect of physical laws – a view that has more in common with deism.

The fact that Einstein had this understanding is perhaps not surprising. Einstein’s parents were atheistic Jews, so he didn’t have a Christian heritage. He’d also experienced some overbearing behaviour from church institutions and this did nothing to endear him to conventional Christianity. Consequently, Einstein contented himself with being a theist. Why? Because that’s where science took him. For him to know a personal God, he would have needed to journey on from science – into a knowledge of Jesus Christ. He did not make that journey.

The significance of Einstein’s story is that science led one of the greatest minds of modern history to God. To suggest that science must inevitably do the opposite is therefore quite wrong.

The universe is very big and very mysterious

The first thing the cosmos suggests about God is that he has a majesty beyond that which our minds can comprehend. The night sky has amazed people from the Bronze Age to the age of the Higgs boson.

Here are some basic statistics.

We live on the third planet out from a middle-aged star called the Sun. That star sits three-quarters of the way along the edge of one of the spiral arms of a galaxy called the Milky Way, containing about 300 billion stars. If that wasn’t extraordinary enough, our home galaxy of 300 billion stars is just one of over 100 billion galaxies in the universe. And this mind-bogglingly huge universe exploded into being from a tiny, almost infinitely dense particle (called a “singularity”) about 13.7 billion years ago.

You can’t help but get the feeling that God might have been showing off, just a bit.

The universe is certainly big. We have to measure the distances between galaxies and stars using the speed of light. As light scurries on at the goodly pace of nearly 300,000 kilometres per second, you can imagine it would cover a fair distance at that speed over a whole year. We call this distance a “light-year”, and that’s what astronomers use to measure the distance between stars and galaxies.

The nearest star to our Sun (Proxima Centauri) is a paltry 4.3 light-years away. This compares favourably with the distance to our nearest neighbouring galaxy, which is 163,000 light-years away. All this, and you haven’t yet begun to seriously journey across the universe. Oh, I forgot to mention: the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, so it’s getting bigger all the time!

The universe is not only big, it is mysterious. In fact, only 5 per cent of it is visible, with 27 per cent of it thought to be composed of “dark matter”, and 68 per cent thought to be composed of “dark energy”. Dark matter neither absorbs nor emits any form of electromagnetic radiation, so it can’t be seen. We only know it’s there because of the gravitational effect it has on other heavenly bodies.

Dark energy is something of a hypothesis only. Scientists have very little idea of what it is, but they think that it is the energy that is causing the universe to expand at an ever-accelerating rate. Certainly, some sort of force is doing this and overcoming the natural tendency for gravity to cause the heavenly bodies to crunch back together again.

You’re a star

Let’s talk about stars. Our Sun has a diameter about 109 times greater than the Earth. That’s pretty impressive. Now imagine a star that is 1,500 times bigger than the Sun. That’s the size of the red supergiant NML Cygni. To put that into perspective, if you placed Cygni at the centre of our solar system, its surface would extend beyond the orbit of Jupiter and half way to Saturn. That’s big!

Stars are a crucial part of our universe – and the mechanism by which they are made is fascinating. They are made on tendrils of cosmic dust. These are known as elephant trunks and they poke out of giant dust clouds. The elephant trunks are often a light-year long, so they’re pretty big. Blobs of dust float off them into space. Gravity then causes the dust in these blobs to clump together, and to do so with such force that hydrogen is fused into helium, producing a massive release of heat. When that happens, hey presto! You have a star. Gravity keeps pressing in, causing this reaction to continue over billions of years.

This amazing scenario has given enough time to allow life to evolve on the third planet out from a middle-aged star – planet Earth.

Stars like our Sun are, in fact, giant ovens that cook up hydrogen and helium to form all the atoms in the periodic table up to the weight of iron. Heavier elements can only be made by the exceedingly high temperatures and pressures that occur when very big stars die in supernova explosions. All dying stars then scatter their atoms into the cosmos. Some of these atoms then clump together to form planets such as our Earth.

It’s worth pondering a moment what this means. Look at yourself in a mirror. Every atom that exists within you was once cooked up inside a star. You are made of star stuff! You truly are a walking cosmic drama.

The fact that the universe is capable of producing stars stable enough to burn long enough to allow life to develop is consistent with the principles taught in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. The biblical creation accounts make it clear that because a rational God has caused the universe to exist, it is a rational, stable place. You may not be impressed by this, but it is actually very different to most of the thinking that was around in ancient times.

The Genesis account of Noah’s ark and the flood has some similarities with the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. In fact, it’s quite possible that the early biblical authors felt free to borrow its framework in order to write God’s story. But in doing so, they made an important distinction. Whereas the ancient Mesopotamians were terrified that the world would collapse into chaos at any moment, the writers of Genesis wanted us to understand that God’s creation was stable and presided over by a benevolent God.

This matches what we see. The fact that the universe appears ordered and operates according to beautiful mathematical equations suggests the existence of a mind. While our universe is one in which suffering and extinctions occur, this should not blind us to the fact that it is amazingly well ordered and appears to be finely tuned in order to allow life. Scientific observation therefore supports the teaching of Genesis, which says there is a mind behind the order of the universe.

Multiverses and turtles

An objection to this thinking has come from those who believe our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes – which, because there are an infinite number of them, must eventually chance upon a set of scientific rules able to develop intelligent life. After all, if this were not so, we wouldn’t be here to observe ourselves.

We’ll talk more about “multiverses” later, but the challenge to the existence of God posed by multiverses can be met in part by saying this: It isn’t just that we exist which is the miracle; it is the manner of our existence. The self-observing life form we call “humanity” is not simply a blob of brain able to know itself to be alive for a brief moment of time. It is significantly more. It is Mozart. It is Mother Teresa. It is humour, compassion, creativity, love, heroism, and science. It is also a shy but persistent ache that compels 96 per cent of us to reach towards a higher being, someone who will give us meaning. The life form that is us really is very remarkable – too remarkable, I suggest, to lazily dismiss as simply the chance product of an infinite number of universes.

So, it is not just a case of life existing but of appreciating the manner and nature of that life.

I’ve heard someone explain the significance of this with an analogy.

Suppose some drug smugglers had tampered with your travelling case while you were touring in a foreign country, and customs officials had found ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Professor David Wilkinson
• Introduction
• 1. The Evidence of God in the Cosmos
• 2. The Evidence of God in Nature
• 3. The Evidence of God in Suffering
• 4. The Evidence of God in Mathematics
• 5. The Evidence of God in Society
• 6. The Evidence of God in Truth
• 7. The Evidence of God in Death
• Notes
• Bibliography