Was the universe created out of nothing by a Supernatural Being? Many scientists are convinced it was.
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say supernatural') plan."1
Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle." Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 43.
Living organisms must originate from life that already exists (Law of Biogenesis). It is not a random event. Nothing explains how living cells are randomly made by non-living things. There is no chance that the earth, moon, and planets were randomly produced out of the big bang and then placed perfectly in space. Life itself cannot happen by a random act, nor can it become so diverse and complex.
Order exists in all environments, all species, and all things. Without order, chaos exists and lower hierarchy needs, such as survival, is all that prevails. While some chaos always exists, a greater order prevails.
In the last fifteen years, scientists who study the solar system, and the stars in our galaxy, have concluded that unless conditions were perfectly fine-tuned, life could never have arisen on planet Earth. Physical life is only possible because planets orbit with stability, stars burn with stability, and stars orbit galaxy cores with stability.2
The order of the universe speaks to design. Eight planets orbit the Sun in a regular, predictable pattern. Likewise, most planets have a moon or moons orbiting in a similar, predictable pattern. The Sun is the center around which everything else revolves.
Professor Robert Griffiths, the American physicist who in 1984 was awarded the Heinemann Prize in Mathematical Physics, once said, “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use!.”3
When Paul talks about what all people know about God, he points to the natural world as the foremost witness (Romans 1:20). “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature ─ have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”4 Moreover, in these early years of the twenty-first century, as we discover more and more about the conditions necessary for life, we find signs everywhere that we could not possibly be here by chance. Every detail of the basic structure of nature, even such things as how far away the moon is from the earth, must be fine-tuned to an unprecedented degree for life on earth.
In the design of the universe, in the construction of our solar system, and in the very systems of our own earth, there is immense evidence of planning. The Intelligent Design Theory provides strong evidence of fine tuning so clear that even a dogmatic atheist such as Sir Fred Hoyle was moved to affirm that "a superintellect [sic] has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology" to create a world for humans to live in.5
References:
1Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics) Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, 83.
2Hugh Ross and Guillermo Gonzalez, “You Must Be Here,” Facts for Faith, vol. 1, no. 1 (2000), 36–41.
3Robert Griffiths, Quantum Glory: The Science of Heaven Invading Earth,.(Phil. PA: XP Publishing, Kindle Edition, 2012), 204.
4Sir Fred Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: 20:16, 1982.
5The Bible is beautifully clear that "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1).