{"id":3685,"date":"2024-05-24T07:24:27","date_gmt":"2024-05-24T11:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3685"},"modified":"2024-05-24T07:25:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T11:25:18","slug":"no-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/24\/no-accident\/","title":{"rendered":"No Accident"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

Indianapolis International Airport is situated far enough outside the urban sprawl of the Hoosier capital that incoming jets fly right over local agricultural fields.

Imagine that I am on a late summer flight and look down during our final approach and see nine words written in the standing corn: \u201cWelcome Glenn McDonald, you\u2019re back home again in Indiana.\u201d  

We should note that every now and then there really are such messages, not to mention product advertisements, \u201cwritten\u201d in corn, soybean, and wheat fields by the strategic removal of rows of crops. Generally these can be read only from the air, and require the consent of farmers who would otherwise be irked at the loss of perfectly good grain.

How could we explain such a message etched in the corn, seemingly directed at me? 

One possibility is that extraterrestrials have graduated from crop circles to \u201ccorn texts.\u201d That doesn\u2019t seem very likely. Another possibility is that fierce winds \u2013 perhaps a microburst or a tornado \u2013 ripped through that field and randomly left behind a complete English sentence. That doesn\u2019t seem very plausible, either \u2013 although it would be impressive if a tornado somehow knew that my first name is spelled with two N\u2019s.

The explanation that would immediately come to mind is that somebody \u2013 a friend or a family member \u2013 did this on purpose.

Somebody knew I was coming. Somebody knew I would be looking out that plane window.

That\u2019s the impression that astronomers and physicists have been wrestling with for about the last 50 years, as evidence continues to emerge that our universe is exceedingly fine-tuned for the existence of human life \u2013 let alone the existence of anything at all. 

There are currently more than 200 known parameters that have to be \u201cjust right\u201d for the cosmos to exist in its present form. Most are balanced on the razor\u2019s edge. Even slight deviations would create, so to speak, astronomical consequences.

They sure don\u2019t look like accidents.

For example, scientists have confirmed that if, at the beginning of the universe, the ratio between the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction \u2013 by even one part in one followed by 17 zeroes (also known as one hundred quadrillion) \u2013 then no stars would ever have formed.

But that\u2019s nothing. 

Roger Penrose, the Oxford physicist known for his collaboration with Stephen Hawking, asserts that the original \u201cphase-space volume\u201d of the universe requires fine tuning to a level of accuracy of one part in 10 billion multiplied by itself 123 times.

How big is that number? Penrose notes that you can\u2019t even write it down, since it would require more zeroes that all the particles that are known to exist in the universe. 

As the editors of Discover<\/em> magazine put it: \u201cThe universe is unlikely. Very unlikely. Deeply, shockingly unlikely<\/em>.\u201d

British astronomer Fred Hoyle admitted that his atheism was \u201cgreatly shaken\u201d by such discoveries. He wrote that \u201ca common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology\u2026 The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.\u201d

Paul Davies, a skeptical cosmologist who has gradually edged toward faith, writes: \u201cThrough my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact.\u201d

Physicist Freeman Dyson adds, \u201cThe universe in some sense must have known we were coming.\u201d

These are not Sunday School teachers, but contemporary scientists wrestling with their data. 

Materialistic science clings to the philosophical viewpoint that there is not, nor has there ever been, any meaningful connection between the natural world and anything one might call \u201csupernatural.\u201d If there\u2019s no such thing as a Somebody who knew we was coming, how are we to account for the existence of such an exquisitely fine-tuned universe?

So far, the prevailing assumption is that it just happened, all by itself<\/em>.

The cosmos somehow popped into existence, and then organized itself magnificently. 

Perhaps the universe was able to create itself \u2013 although no one has been able to explain how the cosmos could defy Aristotelian logic and serve as the cause of its own existence. It would then have to exist and not exist at the same time.

Like a personal message that suddenly appears in a cornfield, what are the odds that complex realities can come about by accident?  

Apparently the odds are good enough, say the scientists. After all, we\u2019re here. That\u2019s sufficient proof that something can come from nothing.

In light of the fact that that assertion is impossible to verify empirically, we begin to grasp how far certain scientist-philosophers are willing to go to reject the hypothesis that for centuries undergirded all of Western thinking: that a transcendent God created the cosmos, and fashioned it in such a way that it could sustain life.

As the Bible puts it, rather more poetically: \u201cThe Earth is the Lord\u2019s, and everything in it; the world, and all who live in it\u201d (Psalm 24:1).

Here\u2019s the question that makes materialist scientists uneasy:

Doesn\u2019t it require less faith to believe that some kind of intelligence created the universe and its perfect conditions, than to theorize that random particles somehow overcame inconceivable odds and configured themselves into what we see today?<\/em>

Or as Sir John Templeton once asked, \u201cWould it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?\u201d

It would be strange, indeed. 

Especially since it sure seems as if Somebody knew we were coming.   
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Indianapolis International Airport is situated far enough outside the urban sprawl of the Hoosier capital that incoming jets fly right over local agricultural fields. Imagine that I am on a late summer flight and look down during our final approach and see nine words written in the standing corn: \u201cWelcome Glenn… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[217,741],"class_list":["post-3685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-creation","tag-fine-tuning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3685"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3688,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685\/revisions\/3688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}