The Law Governed Realm
Episode 3 of
The Book, The Clock, and The Law Governed Realm

A Fined-Tuned Universe:
“Intelligent design,” as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Townes has said, “as one sees the universe from a scientific point of view, it seems to be quite real, that this is a very special Universe: remarkably, it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren’t just the way they are, we couldn’t be here. The sun couldn’t be here; the laws of gravity, the nuclear laws, magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be exactly how they are for us to be here alive.”

Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.
T. E. Hulme (1883-1917)

Many renowned physicists as Einstein, Eddington, Ellis, Friedman, Penzias, Penrose, and Steven Hawking, have wrestled with the universe, space-time, eternity, and the “Big Bang.” Many have wrestled with how it all began—did the universe start in an infinitely tight curve, a singularity? Many of these brilliant men died without answers and fought the concept of an intelligent designer, creator, and God. The harder they tried to prove their materialistic worldview, the more the evidence shined on God, the creator. They fought the Big Bang, yet science and discovery have empirically determined the universe and space-time have a beginning and are expanding. I will not go into the details of the history of these discoveries because I struggle with the boredom of mathematics and the stubbornness of people to only see what they want to see. Why is it so hard to accept what is right before them—God?

I am a simple man of average intelligence, indeed failed in advanced mathematics and squeaked by in all sciences. Of all the sciences, I did well in biology. Yet, God has blessed me with the most powerful skill, talent, trait, knowledge, and wisdom, “Common Sense.” Every morning, I rise at 3:00 to pray for God’s direction and that He blesses me with His wisdom and a discerning mind. I am a man blessed with “Common Sense,” and God has given me the sight of the unseen. Therefore, I apply this God-given talent to see beyond the material into science and other things beyond my intellect. An example is the “Common Sense” approach to a fine-tuned universe—so finely tuned that an infinitesimal change would void everything we know, even life.

The world’s greatest minds have come to the same point as this small-town farmer, who has no PhD and knows what makes his crop grow. The farmer says God gives the rain, and good soil appended with manure makes for an abundant crop—the PhD as  Clifford Longley argued that the theistic design hypothesis provides an obvious and “Commonsense” explanation for the anthropic (the universe must have properties that make inevitable the existence of intelligent life—God) fine-tuning evidence. Attempts to explain the evidence by invoking chance alone or multiple other universes seemed to him to betray a kind of metaphysical special pleading, even desperation. As Longley explained, the anthropic design argument” is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled.” Longley continues: “To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare because it may have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years.

We live in a finely tuned universe that science tries to comprehend when the answer is illuminated before each physicist; God placed every star and, in a moment, spoke everything we see and know into existence. Science is in search of the why and how instead of truth. God gave us truth; God wrote the book of truth so we can be anchored in His Glory, knowing the hope He alone provides. God graces those who ask for the wisdom to understand, even the most straightforward mind of a plains small-town farm boy. God said, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”—James 1:5

Yet brilliant scientists go to their deaths insisting that monkeys wrote Shakespeare. In the Bible Exodus 32:9, God called these people “stiff-neck”—9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. For myself, with a simple farmer’s commonsense view, I struggle to understand the stiff-neck view. Scripture addresses this in 2 Corinthians 4: 3But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the Glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

Stars and The Soul
Poet: Henry VanDyke

“Two things,” the wise man said, “fill me with awe:
The starry heavens and the moral law.”
Nay, add another wonder to thy roll,—
The living marvel of the human soul!

Born in the dust and cradled in the dark,
It feels the fire of an immortal spark,
And learns to read, with patient, searching eyes,
The splendid secret of the unconscious skies.

For God thought Light before He spoke the word
The darkness understood not, though it heard:
But man looks up to where the planets swim,
And thinks God’s thoughts of glory after Him.

What knows the star that guides the sailor’s way,
Or lights the lover’s bower with liquid ray,
Of toil and passion, danger and distress,
Brave hope, true love, and utter faithfulness?

But human hearts that suffer good and ill,
And hold to virtue with a loyal will,
Adorn the law that rules our mortal strife
With star-surpassing victories of life.

So take our thanks, dear reader of the skies,
Devout astronomer, most humbly wise,
For lessons brighter than the stars can give,
And inward light that helps us all to live.

Wake your soul, look into the heavens above, and pray for Wisdom to know the truth.