Contending For The Faith---Part 41

 

In St. Jude 1:3, we read, "Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." [Emphasis mine]. Contending For The Faith is a series of posts dedicated to apologetics (i.e.,  the intellectual defense of the truth of the Traditional Catholic Faith) to be published the first Monday of each month.  This is the next installment.

Sadly, in this time of Great Apostasy, the faith is under attack like never before, and many Traditionalists don't know their faith well enough to defend it. Remember the words of our first pope, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." (1Peter 3:16). There are five (5) categories of attacks that will be dealt with in these posts. Attacks against:

• The existence and attributes of God
• The truth of the One True Church established by Christ for the salvation of all 
• The truth of a particular dogma or doctrine of the Church
• The truth of Catholic moral teaching
• The truth of the sedevacantist position as the only Catholic solution to what has happened since Vatican II 

In addition, controversial topics touching on the Faith will sometimes be featured, so that the problem and possible solutions may be better understood. If anyone had suggestions for topics that would fall into any of these categories, you may post them in the comments. I cannot guarantee a post on each one, but each will be carefully considered.

A Fine-Tuned Universe

I wish to acknowledge the various sources I used in compiling this post, from hardcopy and online apologetics resources. I take no credit for the material herein. All I did was condense the information into a terse and readable post.---Introibo

The Vatican II sect has ceased to teach apologetics; and why should they? If all religions lead to God there's no reason to prove one right and another wrong. Moreover, Bergoglio even claimed atheists can go to Heaven, so why the need to prove to them God exists? For those of us who keep the One True Faith, we realize that we must make converts and spread the truth. The Vatican Council of 1870 defined: The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, may be certainly known by the natural light of human reason, by means of created things; "for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" (Romans 1:20)... (Emphasis mine). 

One of the proofs of God's existence, that may be used against atheists and agnostics is the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe. If we consider some of the standard beliefs about the nature of God, for instance, that God is omnipotent and supremely good, then it is not at all surprising that if God exists, he would create a world that is highly complex, ordered, intelligible, and well suited for the existence of life, including intelligent life that enjoys the possibility of knowing about the universe and its creator. It is at least less surprising than that such an orderly world would exist purely by chance. Unless the existence of God is inherently more improbable than fine-tuning by chance, it would seem that fine-tuning is evidence--indeed proof of God's existence. 

Let me clarify that the fine-tuning argument is not "Intelligent Design" as advocated by Philip Johnson and others beginning in the mid-1990s. That the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is a pretty solidly established fact and ought not to be a subject of controversy. By “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” but simply that the fundamental constants and quantities of nature fall into an exquisitely narrow range of values which render our universe life-permitting. Were these constants and quantities to be altered by even a hair’s breadth, the delicate balance would be upset and life could not exist. 

What could account for this fine-tuning? It could be necessity, chance, or by purpose. The first possible explanation for fine-tuning is physical necessity. This means that either the constants are necessary, brute facts of reality or that they deterministically derive from a deeper necessary law of physics. As physical necessity is not a very good theory to begin with (it doesn’t seem plausible that physicists will be able to derive the precise values from a deeper theory) and, more importantly, it doesn’t explain why the constants are fine-tuned (this just remains an immense coincidence), it’s reasonable to discard physical necessity as an explanation of fine-tuning.

The second possible explanation for fine tuning is chance. If there is only one universe, physicists calculate that it would be incredibly unlikely that the values of the constants would be in the small range that would allow our complex universe to exist. Chance only becomes plausible if there are a tremendous number of alternate universes with different values of the constants — a multiverse. However, the multiverse fails to be a good solution for numerous reasons. The multiple universe hypothesis is essentially an effort on the part of partisans of chance to multiply their probabilistic resources in order to reduce the improbability of the occurrence of fine-tuning. The fact that positing an untestable speculative theory of an infinite number of observable universes is a clear deviation from the tried-and-true scientific method is reason enough to discard chance.

With the elimination of two of the three possible explanations of fine-tuning, we are left with the only remaining explanation: the values of the constants are the result of intentional design by an intelligent agent, Whom we call God. 

Below is a list of different parameters which the universe must have values falling within narrowly defined ranges for physical life of any conceivable kind to exist. None of the information is mine; it comes from many sources, and I take no credit---Introibo

I would like to credit the following sources as indispensable (but not an exhaustive list):

Bernard J. Carr and Martin J. Rees, “The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World,” Nature, 278 (1979), pgs. 605-612.

John M. Templeton “God Reveals Himself in the Astronomical and in the Infinitesimal,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, December 1984 (1984), pgs. 194-200.

Jim W. Neidhardt, “The Anthropic Principle: A Religious Response,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, December 1984 (1984), pgs. 201-207.

Richard Swinburne, “Argument from the Fine-Tuning of the Universe,” in Physical Cosmology and Philosophy, edited by John Leslie (1990), pgs. 154-173.

For a Life-Permitting Universe, There Must be A:

strong nuclear force constant: if larger: no hydrogen; nuclei essential for life would be unstable; if smaller: no elements other than hydrogen

weak nuclear force constant: if larger:  too much hydrogen converted to helium in Big Bang, hence too much heavy-element material made by star burning; no expulsion of heavy elements from stars; if smaller: too little helium produced from big bang, hence too little heavy-element material made by star burning; no expulsion of heavy elements from stars

gravitational force constant: if larger:  stars would be too hot and would burn up too quickly and too unevenly if smaller: stars would remain so cool that nuclear fusion would never ignite, hence no heavy-element production

ratio of electron to proton mass: if larger: insufficient chemical bonding for stable molecules to be possible, if smaller: insufficient chemical bonding for stable molecules to be possible

polarity of the water molecule: if greater: heat of fusion and vaporization would be too great for life to exist; if smaller: heat of fusion and vaporization would be too small for life’s existence; liquid water would become too inferior a solvent for life chemistry to proceed; ice would not float, leading to a runaway freeze-up

ratio of proton to electron charge: if larger: inadequate chemical bonding; if smaller: inadequate chemical bonding

axial tilt of Earth: if greater: latitudinal surface temperature differences would be too great; if less: latitudinal surface temperature differences would be too great

Getting things "just right" in any singular category above would be astronomical; for all of them combined--all but impossible absent an Intelligence.

Scientists now know that any of these constants, if they were changed even a small amount (sometimes a few percent bigger or smaller), the complex universe as we know it wouldn’t exist. In other words, without the constants being precisely fine-tuned, there would only be fundamental particles — they wouldn’t come together to form atoms, molecules, planets, stars, galaxies, or life.

Conclusion

The argument from fine-tuning is a great refutation to use against atheists and agnostics. When atheists object "that's not evidence," ask them what they mean by "evidence." If they mean God cannot be the result of a scientific demonstration, they are correct. Yet we know many things with real evidence outside of a scientific demonstration; to say otherwise is scientism not science. If they persist that only scientific demonstrations give truth, ask them how that very contention ("only scientific demonstrations give truth/produce evidence") was scientifically demonstrated. Second, ask if they believe his/her mother loves (loved) him/her. If they say "yes," ask them how it was scientifically demonstrated. Yet, they have evidence and are totally justified to say their mother loved them.

Finally, I'd like to quote the great St. Athanasius who mention fine-tuning so many centuries ago. Not far into On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius celebrates the evident beauty and design of the cosmos. Here is a paragraph worth quoting in full:

[Some] say that all things are self-originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these; they deny that there is any Mind behind the universe at all. This view is contrary to all the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of Mind, though they existed, they would be all uniform and without distinction. In the universe everything would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact the sun and the moon and the earth are all different things, and even within the human body there are different members, such as foot and hand and head. This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all. (p. 27)