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Quarter 1997 Issue (Vol. 11, No. 3) [graphic excluded]
by Dr. Hugh Ross
If you saw Contact, the movie based on Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, you couldn’t have missed its explicitly stated, oft-repeated theme, "If there isn’t life out there, it’s an awful waste of space."
This theme has been expressed by others, by Stephen Hawking, for one, in A Brief History of Time, which to date has sold nearly 30 million copies. Hawking, who will accept no label on his theological beliefs, insists that the God of the Bible could not be the universe’s Creator. He would not have wasted so much energy and matter. Given Christ’s message that human beings apparently matter most to God, Hawking concludes, God would have made just one star, one planet, and one moon—one home for the human race. The fact that we observe ten billion trillion stars establishes, writes Hawking, that someone besides Christ made the cosmos.1
This line of reasoning I have heard parroted on several dozen university campuses, and it sure echoed loudly through Contact, both the book and the movie. And its impact has been documented by a recent Harris poll reporting that nearly two of three Americans believe life exists elsewhere in the universe, though probably not in our solar system.
No one seems to notice the blatant violation of Gödels incompleteness theorem. We humans do not—and cannot—know everything about the cosmos that contains us. How can we judge, since we did not make the universe or ourselves, what constitutes "waste" from the Creator’s perspective? And can we really state with certainty that God had no other purpose in creating the universe than making human beings?
The Bible reveals that God created the universe and people to bring about the permanent conquest of evil. Once evil is conquered, God will replace our cosmos with a brand new one, a universe (or realm) with radically different physical laws and dimensions. 2, 3 The Apostles Paul and John suggest that the law of decay, what physicists term the second law of thermodynamics, belongs to that conquest in process.4 That thermodynamic law, along with the four fundamental forces of physics complementing it, necessitates a cosmos as vast as the one we occupy.
Let me explain the reasoning behind this bold claim. First, a certain level of entropy is essntial for life’s existence. Entropy describes the energy released, or radiated away, as a system produces "work." If the universe were too entropic, i.e., too efficient a radiator, stars and planets would never have formed. If it were insufficiently entropic, i.e., too inefficient a radiator, all the mass of the cosmos would have quickly collapsed into neutron stars and black holes.5
In correlation to the cosmic entropy level needed for life, the mass density of the universe must be fine-tuned to support the nuclear fusion that is also necessary for life. Mass density is a catalyst for nuclear fusion. If the universe’s mass density were any smaller than we measure it to be (producing fewer than ten billion trillion observable stars), less nuclear fusion would take place and the cosmos would never generate any elements heavier than helium. If the mass density were any greater (producing more than ten billion trillion observable stars), more nuclear fusion would occur and all the elements would quickly become as heavy as, or heavier than, iron. Either way, life-essential elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and potassium would be missing.6
The existence of even one planet like ours, a planet supporting complex creatures through whom God has chosen, expressly, to conquer evil with His triumphant love, requires the existence of ten billion trillion observable stars. He seems to have spared no expense.
I see the ten billion trillion stars as a vehicle for communicating God’s glory, righteousness, and love.7, 8 Our solar system’s exact location in the Milky Way galaxy makes possible our view of the ten billion trillion stars.9 If our position were slightly different in one direction or another, we either wouldn’t exist at all or we would see nothing but nearby stars and nebulae. Where we are, we can see clearly into and out of our galaxy, deciphering what a galaxy is and recognizing that many more galaxies (and other objects) exist far beyond us. And because we can see both into and out of our galaxy, astronomers have been able to gather data telling us about our Creator. Our findings thus far, with more to come, tell us that the Creator transcends matter, energy, and ten space-time dimensions; has the power to create space-time dimensions; has capacities and qualities far beyond what we can think or imagine.
The cosmos evidently fulfills God’s purpose for the angels, as well. Though unconfined by the space-time dimensions of our universe, angels are said (in Scripture) to wonder at us human beings. Observing our efforts to live as God’s children evidently enhances their grasp of God’s character, specifically His grace.10
Through the years we may find many more as-yet-undiscerned reasons for the proportions of our cosmos with its ten billion trillion stars. Hawking, along with his and Sagan’s disciples, may have difficulty recognizing or acknowledging these or other purposes for the vastness of the cosmos, for they seem to believe "the cosmos is all there is."11 The Bible reveals that our universe, so vast and awesome from our perspective, is but a small and temporary part of God’s creative plan.
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