l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent
design, anyone?
By
Eric Metaxas
Dec. 25, 2014 4:56 p.m. ET
In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have
accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science
progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it
turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is
that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising
place—science itself.
Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the
astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a
planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right
distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27 zeros
—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1
followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.
With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a
large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched
in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with
a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded
intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence
from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993,
but the search continues with private funds. As of 2014, researches have
discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by nothing.
What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear
that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His
two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of
potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number
dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.
Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a
2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light of new findings and
insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . . . . We
should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no longer be tenable
.”
As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit
zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in
the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even
we shouldn’t be here.
Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to
support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole
thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose
gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’
s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.
Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can
account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by
accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we
cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an
intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than
believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the
inconceivable odds to come into being?
There’s more. The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is
nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at
all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four
fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong”
and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a
second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not
exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the
electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest
fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could
have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.
Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and
the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical
that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would
be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a
row. Really?
Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his
atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “
a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect
has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . .
The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to
put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design
is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more
we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a
Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are
here.”
The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe
. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the
combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond itself.
Mr. Metaxas is the author, most recently, of “Miracles: What They Are, Why
They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life” ( Dutton Adult, 2014).
Correction
An earlier version understated the number of zeroes in an octillion and a
septillion. | N********n
发帖数: 8363 | 2 基本可以肯定GOD就是高级外星生命。人类是外星人在地球上搞的基因工程。 |
|
