A Very Big Universe
In a debate at the University of Michigan, my opponent asked why the Universe was so vast if God made it just for us. When first asked this question years prior, I thought, “That is a good question”, and it seemed even better when I started looking into it.
As the Voyager 1 space probe was leaving our Solar System, astronomer Carl Sagan asked for it to turn around and take one more picture of Earth, which is the pale blue dot highlighted by the arrow within the vastness of space. If our Sun were shrunk to the size of a basketball, then the Earth would be the size of a head of a pin, 100 feet away. Because the Sun is so much larger (has more mass) than the Earth and other planets, it keeps these planets together by gravity, orbiting the Sun in our Solar System.
But, the Sun is just one of several hundred billion other stars all held together by the gravitational attraction of all the mass of those stars, gas and dust, dark matter, and a supermassive black hole residing in the center of a system called the Milky Way galaxy.
The Andromeda galaxy is one of the closest galaxies to ours. If you had a friend living there, and had a ship that could travel at the speed of light, you better pack a lot of toilet paper, food, and necessities for the generations after you, as it would take 5 million years for the round-trip. And, our galaxy is not alone, there are billions of other galaxies. If you were to hold up your little finger to the night sky, and if you were able to magnify the area of space just the nail of your little finger covered, then this image rendering from NASA is what you would see—and those are not stars—those are galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars.
The universe is vast, and is expanding.
What is the meaning and value of life? It depends.
It depends on what is true. From the absolute vastness of the Universe, we are led directly to this big question about life. If atheism is true, then Bill Nye the “Science Guy,” in addressing the 69th American Humanist Association annual conference, provided a summary answer:
I’m insignificant. … I am just another speck of sand. And the Earth really in the cosmic scheme of things is another speck. And the Sun is an unremarkable star. Nothing special about the Sun. The Sun is another speck. And the galaxy is a speck. I’m a speck on a speck orbiting a speck among other specks among still other specks in the middle of specklessness. I suck.
I like how he makes light of a heavy reality, but many other well-known thinkers, writers, songs, and paintings have displayed the heavier, more practical, side of this reality – we are Dust in the Wind.
If nature and natural law is all there is, then we are carried along by forces with only the appearance that we have some control, with no meaning or purpose to life, which is just accidentally caused, can be lost at any time, is all determined by natural laws, and without lasting or objective value, at least no more than other animals.
You may be thinking we have the capacity to love, and sacrifice for family, be a “good person,” and choose what our purposes in life are, but according to understandings from diverse fields of science – no we don’t.
Stephen Hawking states: “Though we feel we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.”[1]
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of helical structure of DNA, accurately in-line with the no-god-involved belief observes: “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”[2]
Distinguished Cornel University professor, William Provine, states: “Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear . . . There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.”[3]
Just like other animals, or plants, there can be no chosen purpose in life, aside from passing on DNA, because none of our thoughts and actions are free, but all entirely controlled by natural laws. It sounds good to take care of your children and pass on your genetics, but there are fish doing that too. Did the salmon in your salad have the same value as you? Even though humans have more mental capabilities than fish, never forget the same fact looming over every higher functioning organism: all thoughts, feelings and actions come from our brain, and all matter and energy in our brains only and always follow natural laws, therefore, all thoughts, feelings and actions are entirely controlled or determined by nature, not us.
And how much time do you spend thinking and talking about your great, great grandparents, who felt the same sense of value about their life just a spec of time ago? Nihilists, and those that believe nature and natural laws are all there is, understand this grim reality well.
It sounds extreme to say that if there is no God, then:
- Our existence is just coincidentally caused,
- With no objective meaning or purpose to life,
- We are carried along by forces with only the appearance of having any control,
- With all thoughts, choices, feelings and actions entirely determined by initial conditions and natural laws,
- Without lasting or objective value, no inherent rights,
- All we think we have can be lost at any time,
- And with nothing for us after this life ends, except decomposition into component chemicals.
Nevertheless, if nature and natural laws are all there is, then each of these points logically follow. You can find detailed support and explanations in numerous books by leading atheists, and from non-atheists as well as the logic follows regardless of one’s beliefs, and if you want more support or details why this is true, see the booklet: The Freedom Scale: Assessing Levels of Freedom Corresponding to Belief Systems.
[1] Stephen Hawking, Grand Design, pp.31-32
[2] Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994, p. 3
[3] Provine, W.B., Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy? The Debate at Stanford University, William B. Provine (Cornell University) and Phillip E. Johnson (University of California, Berkeley), videorecording © 1994 Regents of the University of California. (See also: Origins Research 16(1):9, 1994; arn.org/docs/orpages/or161/161main.htm.)
So, above is one possible answer to our big question. However, there is another possibility—Life, your life, is special, with meaning and value worth more than all the massive galaxies combined, because a personal creator made it all, specifically with us in mind. Sounds really nice, but just because it sounds good, that we have real value and importance endowed by a creator, with an actual purpose for what we go through in life, is not evidence that it is true.
I understand it may seem like there is no way there can be evidence to supply definitive answers, but that assumption gets overwhelmed when you actually start seeing the answers and evidence, including some of the most amazing and important discoveries in all science.
So how can we know which of those two possibilities is true, purely natural chance or a purposeful creator? No real value & meaning, or infinite meaning established by an authority? We determine which answer is accurate to reality the same way we do with other questions in life, we follow the evidence where it leads.
Why so BIG, because it had to be EXACTLY THAT BIG
The question posed by my debate opponent at the beginning of this blog is so perfect. The question gets at the primary BIG question (Does God exist?), which also answers the secondary BIG question (What’s the purpose of life?).
Only 2 options: either there is no God, it’s all just nature and natural laws, and correspondingly, there is no real meaning to life as noted in the previous section, or God does exist, and there is infinite meaning and value to life established by an Authority.
We discover which answer is accurate to reality the same way we do with other questions in life, we follow the evidence where it leads. And the evidence is in, below is one example. Why is the universe so vast, and we are just living in the tiniest spec of it, if we are so special? Answer: because it had to be PRECISELY that vast!
The natural sciences have discovered many, many precise balances and aspects of the universe, which had to land exactly within a razor thin range for life, especially our life, to exist. We have found we live in a Goldilocks universe where everything is just right, including how vast our universe happens to be.
As noted in The Big BEGINNING blog, the universe came into existence phenomenally small considering what it would expand to, and dense and hot, and immediately started expanding and cooling off. Within the first 3-4 minutes of its existence, the universe’s temperature fell through a temperature range of 200 billion down to 17 billion °C.
This latter temperature is similar to the core of our Sun, which allows nuclear fusion to start combining (H)ydrogen atoms into (He)lium and releases remaining energy in the form of heat and light.
Scientists have discovered if the universe had less mass or mass density (mass is a measure of how much matter is in something) then it would have cooled faster, had less time to fuse H into He, and resulted in a universe incapable of producing elements heavier than He, such as Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N), Oxygen (O) and other elements necessary for life—we would have a hot air balloon universe—no life. If the universe just happened to have a bit more mass at the beginning, then too much H would be fused into He, and our universe would end up being a heavy metal universe, Metallica fans would be pleased, but no fans would exist because the universe would only be composed of metals of Iron (Fe) or heavier—and again, no life possible.
In addition, the amount of stuff that makes up our vast universe, was also involved in another precise balance, which operated from the beginning of the universe. This balance is between two massive forces acting against each other: GRAVITY, which acts to pull everything together, and an EXPANSION force, which acts to push things apart.
The strength of the gravity force depends on how much stuff makes up the universe and how close together it all was near the beginning. The expansion of space comes from what has been called dark energy, it is all through the fabric of space, and is stretching out space.
If the universe didn’t have all the stuff that would eventually make up all those billions and billions of galaxies, then the expansion force would be too strong for the gravity, and space would expand too quickly, gas and dust could not collect by gravity to form galaxies, stars and planets. If there was just a bit more mass, making gravity too strong for the balance near the beginning, everything would pull together, crushing it all into neutron stars and black holes, which means no molecules and no life.
How precise does the balance match what is necessary for life? If, this mass density differed by 1 part in 1060, no life would be here to consider this fact. Let’s put this astronomical number in simpler terms, if at the beginning of the universe, by chance there had been less than a dime’s worth more or less mass—no life could exist!
And these odds are being generous as scientists looking into this seemingly impossible balance tried to explain it away using dark energy, the force contained within the fabric of space stretching out the Universe. Yet, as has been the trend in studying the perfect balances or “fine-tuning” found throughout nature, it was discovered the precise balance provided by this expansion force is even more precise, as if by chance this force differed by 1 part in 10120, then we would not be here to marvel at it.
So how did the universe just happen to begin with the perfect balance of gravity and expansion, and just the right mass to enable the creation of all the elements needed for life, when it could have, by chance, begun with any other amount of mass and have no life? Only 2 possibilities, either (1) an intelligent agent ensured the precise condition was met, or (2) it happened naturally by chance.
Hoping to Win the Mega-Millions Jackpot? Over and Over Again!
Let’s put 1060 into a situation where you can see the significance of this number. You have a better chance of winning the Mega Millions State Lotto 7 times in a row, than the universe did to land on the precise value it did in this case. If one person won the lottery 7 times in a row, what would you be thinking? How lucky? Or, would you rationally be thinking something is going on, some intelligent agent must be acting?
If you are betting against an intelligent agent being behind the creation of the universe, then you are basing your life, and possibly eternity, on a very bad bet.
And there better not be more examples … Yet there are numerous examples, in fact, on average, every month or so, a new example is published in scientific literature, and mathematically increases the evidence literally by a million times that an intelligent creator is the only reasonable, logical, sufficient, and evidenced-based cause of the universe—chance has no chance. If you want further details supporting the necessity of intelligent and purposeful agency behind the creation of the Universe, see blogs: Possible Causes of the Universe: There can be only 1; Personal Cause or Purely Nature—We know the Difference; The FINE-TUNED Evidence.
Therefore, the vast, vast Universe was produced with an even vaster purpose for you in mind. This idea doesn’t just sound nice, it is the only one supported by the evidence. And if there is an intelligent agent creating the universe with a purpose involving you, then it follows there is real purpose and meaning to your life.
This brings us to the final step—getting a graphic display of your purposes and hope of reaching them—found in the part 3 blog— Graphing Your Purpose.
