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The Laws of the Universe Provide Evidence
2008/03/03 04:48:47瀏覽425|回應0|推薦1

     After discussing the evidence of the whole world, let’s further expand our sight to include the entire universe. Although our footprints are not beyond the orbit of the moon at this time, we are confident that we know our universe pretty well because of the discoveries of scientific laws. Modern science tells us that the universe is governed by some beautiful, systematic, and everlasting laws. We will investigate these laws and try to find some evidence for the existence of God.
     Modern people can’t live without electricity. It provides methods to convert one form of energy to another. It provides an effective way to transport energy. It provides many ideas for utilizing energy to make our lives more comfortable. It provides a medium, radio, for people to communicate at the speed of light. It provides the possibility to operate extremely small objects with which we can build computers. We have this marvelous tool because of some physical laws governing our universe. Life on earth utilizes only a minute portion of electricity’s full potential. Besides electrochemical reactions in the neuron systems of advanced animals, some fish use electricity for hunting. Among all living things, these are the only events involving electricity. There is no other life form taking advantage of electricity in any way similar to modern human applications. All these applications are gifts to us from our universe.
     Our periodic table is another example that the laws of the universe play a pivotal role in the progress of our civilization. We have nearly one hundred different elements existing naturally. As a result of the standard model, we have a list of such elements. Only ten elements are essential and less than forty elements relate to life on earth. Many elements are not necessary for our existence. However, they are important to our modernization. For example, gold, silver, and platinum are precious metals helping trade; lithium, titanium, tin, tungsten, and mercury are metals important to industry; helium, neon, and argon are noble gases widely used in industry; uranium is essential for nuclear power. If the standard model had changed a little, we might have only fifty different stable elements. Intelligent beings evolving under this chemical setting would be possible, but it would be impossible for them to develop an industrialized world.
     As another example, let’s talk about the amazing properties of plastics. Plastics are absolutely artificial products widely used in all areas of modern life. We can make plastics because some special properties of carbon atoms allow us to create a big molecule by joining many small molecules. In this way, liquids similar to gasoline are turned into moldable, insulating, waterproof, and incorruptible solids. The chemical knowledge for producing plastics is not elementary. It is anything but natural. We knew how to make plastics after we knew how to build a plane. However, plastics are so cheap now that people in industrialized countries use them to pack soft drinks or snacks.
     A car is another illustration. It’s so common that we seldom think about how it is made. Many different kinds of materials are necessary to make a car. The body of a car is made of steel. Steel is an industrial material, and its chemical composition is simple. It is not supposed to be in contact with other objects, but it is hard enough to protect people inside when a crash does occur. The tires of a car are made of rubber. Rubber is an organic material, and its chemical composition is complex. It is supposed to be in contact with the ground, and it is soft enough to absorb the roughness of roads. Both of these completely different materials are luckily available in the world. Additionally, we need gasoline for burning to supply energy; we need cloth or leather to cover the seats upon which the drivers and passengers can sit comfortably; we need glass, a transparent material, for windows; we need electrical devices for various controls. It’s strange that we can find all the materials we need on earth to build a car, although the earth doesn’t exist for the purpose of building a car.
     A computer also gives an illustration. The key technology for making a modern computer involves the strange properties of silicon. A normal conductor, a common electric wire for example, allows two-way electric flow. However, if we put a small amount of some other elements into pure silicon, we get a semiconductor, which allows only one-way electric flow. We may cleverly arrange millions of semiconductors on a chip smaller than a fingernail. Such a chip can do billions of computations in a single second. The physical laws for making semiconductors were hidden in nature and had waited billions of years to be discovered. A computer also uses lasers to read and write data on compact discs and vacuum tubes or LCDs to display images. Lasers, vacuum tubes, and LCDs all involve physical events that began happening in the universe less than two hundred years ago. The existence of modern computers relies on numerous amazing applications of advanced physics.
     All of the above suggest that there should be a God. There should be a God who designed the laws of the universe and created it. These rules allow heavy atoms to exist and to be abundant somewhere. They also allow self-replicable chemicals to be generated by chance at the place where heavy atoms are abundant. They also allow these chemicals to evolve into advanced intelligent beings with a small possibility. Besides, God added some special structures to these laws so that those advanced intelligent beings would progress to the Industrial Age and the Information Age. They would invent some fancy machines by these fascinating laws of the universe. God set the laws this way, because he knew that when there would be billions of those intelligent beings, there would be problems required to be solved by those fancy machines.
     When there are billions of people in the world, people need electric appliances for conveniently living with many others in a big city. People need cars, trains, ships, and planes for transportation. People need computers for managing and computing large quantities of data. People need many other modern inventions to solve many other modern problems. God had already taken care of these problems before creation. People can’t invent these fancy appliances without appropriate scientific laws, regardless of how smart they are.
     Although there are scientific laws that helped us build a more convenient, more comfortable, and safer world, we have begun to realize there is simply no way for our world to be as advanced as those imaginary worlds described in some sci-fi movies or novels. It verifies our statement that the laws of the universe are essential for technical revolutions. They give possibilities and set limitations. There are also things that are possible but too difficult to realize, due to lack of resources or complex problems that even the smartest scientists can’t solve. The more advanced we are, the harder it is to make further progress. It is the case we have now. This situation suggests that there is a God who designed these things purposefully, so as not to allow technical applications to destroy the basic setting of life. We are unable to input knowledge directly into our brains so that we no longer need to study. We are unable to create a more productive world so that we are served by robots, and no longer need to work. We are unable to generate and feed babies in biological factories so that families would become obsolete. We are unable to make anyone immortal. We are unable to build a time machine to change the past. We are unable to travel beyond our solar system as in the scenes of Star Trek. All these things haven’t happened — and we expect they never will, otherwise the main purposes of life would be ruined.
     The anthropic principle can’t explain this. Scientific laws necessary for modern technological progress — especially in the last century — are fascinating coincidences and they have nothing to do with our existential status. If there is no God and our species is merely a result of a random process, we would be more likely to live in a world described by the following. We would have established a civilization and developed to a level similar to the living standard and industrial productivity of Europe in the nineteenth century. However, there would have been no substantial breakthroughs after that. For lack of corresponding physical conditions, we could not have landed on the moon, built the Internet, or made a motion picture like The Passion of the Christ. People would have argued whether or not God exists with, “The physical laws seem too perfect for our existence, so there must be a God who designed the universe,” or, “There is no God. There are a billion billion universes with different physical constants and different physical laws and we are living in the one that is perfect for generating an intelligent species,” until several million years would have passed and we would have become extinct. This is how the story would end.
     Although the academic circle has already established theories about the history of the universe and how human beings as well as all life forms on earth came into existence without supernatural interference, the evidence provided above are interesting points worthy of our attention. If there is no God who carefully planned the laws of the universe for the coming of the Modern Age before he let the evolution of the universe begin, people living in the industrialized nations of the twenty-first century seems lucky beyond measure in the enjoyment of such a convenient and diverse lifestyle.

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