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Existence of God: In the News

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The Universe and Its Laws

by  Eric Lyons, M.Min.

In a recent issue of New Scientist titled “How the Universe Got Its Laws and Our Surprising Role in Shaping Them,” Paul Davies of Arizona State University made some observations that creationists find noteworthy, given his prominence as an evolutionist. He described the alleged 13.7 billion-year-old Universe (2007, 194[2610]:30), which supposedly is the result of mindless, naturalistic, random processes, as “uniquely hospitable” (p. 30), “remarkable” (p. 34), and “ordered in an intelligible way” (p. 30). He admitted to the many examples of “uncanny bio-friendly ‘coincidences’” and “fine-tuned properties” of the Universe (p. 30). He then wrote: “Like Baby Bear’s porridge in the story of Goldilocks, our universe seems ‘just right’ for life. It looks, to use astronomer Fred Hoyle’s dramatic description, as if ‘a super-intellect has been monkeying with physics’” (p. 30).

Still, although Davies admitted that it appears a being of “super-intellect” lies behind the law-driven Universe, he pressed on to find a natural phenomenon to explain “why the universe is as it is” (p. 31). To Paul Davies and other evolutionary scientists, any explanation outside of nature itself is a cop-out. The laws of physics that govern the Universe, and that “are strangely independent of the universe,” must have a naturalistic explanation. So how did the Universe get its laws?

Davies conveniently suggested that we must abandon the orthodox view that the laws of physics are immutable and universal. “Laws” of physics must be considered “flexi-laws.” If you concede this possibility, then the “laws of physics are inherent in the physical universe, and emerge with it” (p. 33, emp. added). The laws “start out unfocused, but rapidly sharpen and zero in on the form we observe today as the universe grows” (p. 33). “[W]ith flexi-laws,” Davies suggested, “the way lies open for a self-consistent explanation” (p. 34).

The fuzzy primordial laws focus in on precisely the form needed to give rise to the living organisms that eventually observe them. Cosmic bio-friendliness is therefore the result of a sort of quantum post-selection effect extended to the very laws of physics themselves (p. 34).

In other words, the laws of physics just evolved to their current status like everything else in the Universe.

While several evolutionary scientists around the world continue to spend countless hours and untold amounts of money “attempting to place the concept of flexi-laws and quantum post-selection on sound mathematical footing” (p. 34), the fact remains that laws of science are called “laws” for a reason: there is no known exception to them. In truth, Davies’ thoughts are no more rational than those of biologists who testify to the law of biogenesis, but then conclude that millions of years ago life must have spontaneously generated.

Davies and others apparently cannot tolerate the thought of the absence of a naturalistic explanation for the origin of our law-driven Universe. When all naturalistic explanations fail to clarify what exists, instead of rationally concluding what such results imply (i.e., that their must be a Supernatural explanation separate and apart from the physical Universe), men like Davies simply come up with another new complicated theory that defies both natural law and common sense.

Naturalistic explanations for the Universe and its laws leave an explanatory void that only a Supernatural Being (i.e., God) can fill. Indeed, laws demand a lawgiver. “The things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Hebrews 11:3). “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, emp. added).



Davies, Paul (2007), “Laying Down the Laws,” New Scientist, 194[2610]:30-34, June.

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