Bloomsburg University Dr.Robert C. Newman
7 February 2001 BiblicalSeminary/IBRI
e-mail: rcnewman@ibri.org
INTRODUCTION
SAGAN
This is nota scientific statement, but a religious one
Does CarlSagan have a religion?
WHAT IS
Webster
Sagan doesn=t have a religion by first two meanings here, but 3rd:
AAny specific belief, worship, conduct, etc., often involvinga code of ethics and a philosophy@
RoyClouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality, 21-22:
AA religious belief is any belief in something or other asdivine@
A>Divine=
Sagan has areligion in this sense, as we shall see that he believes the universe has alwaysexisted.
THE BIGBANG (Cosmos,
In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began anexpansion which has never ceased. It is misleading to describe the expansion of the universe as a sort ofdistending bubble viewed from the outside. By definition, nothing we can ever know about was outside.
Here Saganseems to indicate that he believes there is nothing outside the universe, or atleast, that we can never know about anything beyond our universe.
HOW ITALL BEGAN (Cosmos,
In many cultures it is customary to answer that Godcreated the universe our of nothing. But this is mere temporizing... if we decide [where God comes from] tobe unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universeis an unanswerable question? Or,if we say God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universehas always existed?
Here we seethat Sagan is very reluctant to allow the postulation of a God to help inunderstanding the universe.
SAGAN
B Sagan wants to be open to the evidence of nature
B He does not in principle
But is itreally true that we are faced with a lack of evidence for God?
ORIGINOF LIFE (Cosmos,
Saganadmits there is much we don=t understand about the origin of life, including the origin of thegenetic code (the information stored in DNA molecules).
COMPLEXITYOF LIFE (Article
The information content of a simple cell has beenestimated as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred millionpages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (13:1083B)
Saganhimself, in his article A
RECOGNIZINGA MESSAGE FROM AN EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
In hisscience fiction novel Contact, made into a film just a few months before he died, Saganimagined what it would be like to receive a message from higherintelligences.
How mightwe recognize such a message?
B Strong signal
B A string of a few dozen prime numbers would be decisive
We want tolook at a 15-minute clip from this film.
FILMCLIP FROM CONTACT
Starts withEllie Arroway=
CONTACT:
For somereason, the book ends very differently than the film. The hero, Ellie Arroway, comes to believe in the existenceof God because she is confronted with what seems to her (and to Sagan?)Incontrovertible evidence.
Ellie findsthat in the infinite run of the digits of the number
THE FILMDOESN=
Whynot? Did Sagan have secondthoughts? Did Hollywood veto thisending? Did Sagan back away from
I fear thatpart of the reason for this was that Sagan didn=t like the idea of God sending messages.
MIGHTGOD SEND SUCH A MESSAGE?
If Godexists, he certainly might!
Where wouldhe put such a message?
But thereis good evidence that he has also put such a message in:
B The structure of the universe itself
B Living things
THEUNIVERSE AND GOD=
Severalbooks, dating back as early as 1913, but most since the mid-1980s, have pointedto a marvelous A
B Lawrence Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment
B Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe
B John Barrow & Frank Tipler, The Anthropic CosmologicalPrinciple
B Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos
B Michael Denton, Nature=
FINE-TUNINGOF THE UNIVERSE
There arefour known basic forces in the universe:
B Strong Nuclear Force (strength = 1)
B Electromagnetic Force (strength = 1/100)
B Weak Nuclear Force (strength = 1/100,000)
B Gravity (strength = 1/1039)
Asdivergent in strength as these forces are, if their strengths were only veryslightly different, the results would be disastrous!
THESTRONG FORCE
The strongforce is apparently the external appearance of the force that binds theso-called A
B 50% weaker, no stable elements in the universe
B 5% weaker, deuterium not stable, stars won
B 5% stronger, diproton stable, stars explode!
The strongforce is tuned to +/- 5% for our universe to function!
THE WEAKFORCE
The weakforce is some 100,000 times weaker than the strong force, and of even shorterrange. It is more obscure to thenon-physicist than the other forces, but is involved in the decay of neutrons.
B few % weaker:
++ too little helium formed in big bang, too few heavy elements
++ heavy elements stay trapped inside stars
B few % stronger:
++ too much helium formed in big bang, too many heavyelements
++ heavy elements stay tapped inside stars
The weakforce must be fine-tuned to a few % to have any heavy elements (carbon andheavier) outside stars where they can be used for planets and people!
ELECTROMAGNETICFORCE
The e-mforce is very familiar to us, being involved in all our electricaldevices. It is also what makessolid objects solid.
If not forthis equality, electromagnetism (being much stronger) would overwhelm gravity,with the result that there would be no universe of galaxies, stars andplanets. Electromagnetism isfine-tuned to one part in 1040!
GRAVITY
Gravity isalso very familiar, though it is the weakest of all these forces.
There is avery close balance between gravity and the expansion of the cosmos:
Gravity isfine-tuned to cosmic expansion at the big bang to one part in 1060!
FINE-TUNEDUNIVERSE
Combiningthese cases gives fine-tuning to one part in 10100.
So toexplain this fine-tuning by chance, we have to imagine marking one electron(say) in all the 1020 universes and then trying to find it purely byguesswork! Would you want to stakeyour life on a chance like that?
To makesuch a fine-tuned universe by chance, we something like 10100universes formed by chance in order to expect that just one of them would turnout with this level of fine-tuning. Do we really have any evidence for another 10100 universes?
Besides thefour cases we examined above, Hugh Ross gives 22 more in his book Creatorand the Cosmos.
SIR FREDHOYLE ON A DESIGNED UNIVERSE
A far moreminor feature than the ones we have examined (the detailed spacing of nuclearenergy levels for carbon and oxygen) led former atheist Sir Fred Hoyle to makethe following statement:
... a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as wellas with chemistry and biology
The Universe: Past and Present Reflection,
LIFE ANDGOD=
Livingthings are also a striking example of organized complexity.
B Recall Sagan=s remark about the E coli
++ info content = 1012 bits
++ = 100 million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sir FredHoyle and his associate Chandra Wickramasinghe spent a number of yearsinvestigating the complexity of living things. They came to the conclusion that life could not beunderstood in a worldview where there is no mind behind the universe.
The chance that higher life forms might have emerged [bychance] is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through ajunk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.
Nature (12 Nov 81): 105
RECOGNIZINGA MESSAGE
If we goback to the scenario visualized by Sagan in Contact
B Strong signal: seen in all living things
THERELIGION OF CARL SAGAN
B If he was really open to the universe
B If he was really willing to consider the supernatural
Why didn
Why did hedraw back from A
Whyindeed? Will you?
TheAuthor:
Robert C.Newman is Professor of New Testament at the Biblical Theological Seminary inHatfield, Pennsylvania, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Biblical ResearchInstitute there.
Dr. Newmanis a graduate of Duke University (BS) in physics, of Cornell University (PhD)in theoretical astrophysics, of Faith Theological Seminary (MDiv), and ofBiblical Theological Seminary (STM) in Old Testament. He has taken additional graduate work in cosmic gas dynamicsat the University of Wisconsin, in religious thought at the University ofPennsylvania, in biblical geography at the Institute for Holy Land Studies (nowJerusalem University College), and in biblical hermeneutics and interpretationat Westminster Theological Seminary.
Dr. Newman