Perspective from the 19th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.
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This is the second blog in a series where I report what Google says about incredible statistics. Can you believe what it says? Who knows, but still incredible!
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The more I find out about the universe the more I CHOOSE to believe in God as creator.
What exists could not have just happened by chance. There had to be an architect, God.
The issue of God and science arose recently in a Links Players Group Bible Study I attend at the golf course where I am a member in Salem, Oregon, Illahe Hills Golf and Country Club.
The writer of the lesson asked the question about science and God and those of us around the table came down on the side of answering, “yes, God and science exist together.”
Buoyed by that discussion, I decided to do a little more research, if you can call consulting Google research. In any event, that’s where I went to gain more information.
For instance, regarding the galaxy where we exist, the Milky Way. It is huge, beyond human comprehension.
- At the speed of light, which is about 186,000 miles per second, it would take 100,000 to 200,000 years to cross the Milky Way.
- At the speed of the fastest human-made spacecraft, NASA’s Voyager, it would take roughly 1.7 billion years to make the crossing.
- And, walking at a standard human pace of about 3 ½ miles per hour, it would take about 21 billion years to make the crossing.
As startling and compelling as these facts are more for me, recognize this: These facts only apply to the Milky Way, not to other galaxies beyond our own, such as Andromeda.
Meanwhile, Google reports that arguments for the existence of God based on the universe are traditionally grouped into several major philosophical, scientific, and theological categories – these:
Category #1: Cosmological Factors (The Origin of the Universe)
- The Beginning of Time: The prevailing scientific consensus is that the universe had a definitive beginning roughly 13.8 billion years ago (the Big Bang). Philosophers argue that anything that begins to exist must have a cause, pointing to a creator outside of time and space.
- Contingency: The universe does not have to exist; its existence is contingent on something else. This points to the necessity of a non-contingent, self-sustaining “Being” that brought everything else into existence.
Category #2: Teleological Factors (Fine-Tuning and Design)
- The Fine-Tuning of Physics: The fundamental constants of nature — such as the strength of gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the mass of subatomic particles — are set to unimaginably precise values. If any of these values were altered by even a hair’s breadth, matter could not form, stars could not exist, and life would be impossible.
- Cosmic Order: The universe operates under uniform, predictable laws of physics rather than chaotic, random behavior.
Category #3: Biological Factors (Complexity and Life)
- The Complexity of DNA: DNA functions like a highly sophisticated digital code or software program, containing complex, specified information. In human experience, information codes always originate from an intelligent mind.
- The Origin of Life: The transition from non-living chemicals to a living, self-replicating cell involves a massive leap in complexity that science has yet to fully explain purely through materialistic processes.
- Irreducible Complexity: Certain biological systems (like the bacterial flagellum or the blood-clotting cascade) require all their individual parts to function. They could not have evolved step-by-step because the intermediate stages would serve no survival purpose.
Category #4: Experiential and Rational Factors
- Consciousness: The existence of subjective experience, self-awareness, and a mind capable of abstract thought is difficult to explain purely through the collision of blind physical particles.
- Objective Morality: The universal human recognition of objective right and wrong implies a standard or a lawgiver outside of human opinion.
Then, armed with the facts above, though I don’t fully grasp them, I was prompted to go on to examine what is meant by the term “fine tuning.”
Here is a summary of what I found:
Key Examples of Fine-Tuning
- The Strength of Gravity: If gravity were different by even one part in 10⁶⁰, stars and galaxies could never have formed — either collapsing inward too fast or dispersing too quickly.
- The Cosmological Constant: This drives the expansion rate of space. A change of just a fraction in its value would have caused the universe to either collapse back on itself or fly apart too fast for matter to cluster.
- The Strong Nuclear Force: If it were slightly weaker, atomic nuclei couldn’t bind together (preventing heavy elements). If slightly stronger, all hydrogen would have converted immediately into helium.
Do I understand what I just wrote? Well, at least not fully, if it at all.
So, persevered to find examples and of fine tuning, such as:
- The Aircraft Carrier Analogy
The Analogy: Imagine comparing the mass density of the universe to a massive aircraft carrier (like the USS John C. Stennis, which is more than 1,000 feet long and weighs 100,000 tons).
The Lesson: If you subtract just a billionth of a trillionth of the mass of a single electron from that entire ship, it would sink.
- The Bullseye Across the Universe
The Analogy: The expansion rate of the Big Bang had to be calibrated to an accuracy of 1 part in \(10^{60}\).
The Lesson: This level of precision has been compared to firing a single bullet from the edge of the observable universe (20 billion light-years away) and hitting a 1-inch target. If it were off by a tiny fraction, the universe would have either collapsed back in on itself or expanded too fast for galaxies to form.
- The North American Dimes Stack
The Analogy: To visualize the 1 in \(10^{37}\) precision of the strong nuclear force, imagine stacking dimes across the entire North American continent, piling them all the way up to the moon, and then repeating that entire stack a billion times over.
The Lesson: If you paint one single dime red and hide it in that unimaginable mountain of silver coins, the odds of blindly picking the red dime on your first try represent the fine-tuning of the strong nuclear force. Change it by even a fraction, and atomic nuclei (and life) fall apart.
So, my finite mind glazes over as I review facts such as those above.
For me, the question of God and science boils down to a simple, yet profound, word: Choice.
I choose to believe that God created the universe. It did not happen just by chance. A lot evidence supports my view, but in the end, again, it boils down to choice.
I choose to believe in God as creator.
