Today’s New Reason To Believe

Kenneth Richard Samples

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series I explored how believers (biblical theists) and unbelievers (atheists or skeptical nontheists) attempt to explain both belief and disbelief in God from their distinctive points of view. In this third and final article I will offer some suggestions that both believers and unbelievers can utilize to test and evaluate their beliefs about what may be the ultimate question of life: Does God exist? This query may be the most critical question in one’s comprehensive worldview.

1. Believers and unbelievers can grow in philosophical reflection by exploring whether their beliefs about God are based upon rational, nonrational, and/or irrational considerations (or even a combination thereof). Rational considerations involve things like arguments, facts, evidence, reasons, explanations, inferences, and so forth. Nonrational considerations may include things like intuition, feelings, needs, preferences, fears, desires, etc. Whereas irrational considerations arise when a person forms a belief that violates the necessary and irrefutable laws of logic or standard principles of reasoning. Of course, rational factors should be given priority. But nonrational factors may be quite compatible with what is first determined to be rational.

2. Both believers and unbelievers can test their beliefs about God’s existence by reflecting upon what is called the explanatory power and scope test. This important worldview test asks whether the theistic (biblical) view or the atheistic (naturalistic) view can best explain the facts of reality (“power”). And this test also attempts to measure the range of explanations offered by the respective viewpoints (“scope”). A viable belief system will both explain reality in sufficient detail and be able to account for a wide range of life’s important realities and phenomena.

3. Both perspectives can also utilize the pragmatic and existential worldview tests. The pragmatic test examines a belief system’s practicality and workability (useful results for humankind). The existential test explores whether a particular belief system is actually livable (provides meaning and purpose in life). A viable belief system should be externally workable and internally livable.

There are other ways of testing one’s important beliefs, but these three examinations can help believers and unbelievers in God to critically examine their perspectives. For more on the question of God’s existence see my two books, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth Claims to the Worldview Test (Baker, 2007), and Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions (Baker, 2004).

Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

It is hard to exaggerate the theological significance of big bang cosmology. Until the twentieth century the Bible was the only “text” explicitly describing the fundamentals of big bang cosmology—a Causal Agent beyond space and time, a beginning of space and time, a beginning of matter and energy, continuous cosmic expansion, and constant laws of physics—as well as implying other features, such as continuous cosmic cooling and the confinement of matter and energy to the cosmic surface.¹

Today, the scientific evidence for big bang cosmology is overwhelming. Nevertheless, because of its enormous theological implications, strong resistance to accepting this explanation for the universe’s beginning as truth remains. Atheists, pantheists, and Hindus, among others, reject it because it so strongly supports Christian theology. Within the Christian community young-earth creationists anathematize the big bang because it establishes that the universe is about 14 billion years old. Thus, big bang cosmology illustrates the principle that the more important and more specific the theological implications of a particular theory, the greater the need for additional evidence to establish its veracity.

In this context it is welcome news that two Mexican astronomers, Manuel Peimbert and Antonio Peimbert, and a Spanish astronomer, Valentina Luridiana, have improved by more than a factor of three what many astronomers consider the most definitive test for big bang cosmology. That test is the primordial helium abundance for the universe.

In the hot big bang creation model a certain fraction of the universe’s hydrogen gets fused into helium during the first four minutes after creation. The WMAP data showed that if the hot big bang creation model is correct the fraction = 0.24815 ± 0.00033.³ This fraction can be compared with measurements of the helium abundance in the universe’s firstborn stars and in the gas clouds or nebulae that formed the firstborn stars. Since the spewed-out ashes of burnt stars comprise the only other possible source of helium in the universe, measuring the helium abundance in the nebulae that gave rise to the first-formed stars tells astronomers how much helium the universe started out with before stars formed.

Astronomers had previously measured the helium fraction by two different means and two different samples of nebulae to be 0.249 ± 0.009 and in the gas clouds that formed the first stars to be 0.250 ± 0.009.⁵ Both of these measurements, however, failed to take into account the collisional excitation of hydrogen Balmer spectral lines as well as a few other complications in both the hydrogen and helium spectral lines.

Earlier, the Peimberts and Luridiana had shown that when all these factors are considered the primordial helium abundance measures to be 0.2391 ± 0.0020.⁶ Their estimate of the probable error in their measurement, though, did not include uncertainties that existed in the computations of certain atomic physics coefficients or in the collisional excitation of hydrogen Balmer spectral lines.

Thanks to new and much more precisely achieved computations of the relevant atomic constants, most of the uncertainty in the Peimberts’ and Luridiana’s original determination of the primordial helium abundance has now been removed. Their revised measure of the fraction of primordial hydrogen that is fused into helium by the big bang = 0.2477 ± 0.0029.⁷ This measurement is three times more accurate than the best previous determination. It is remarkably consistent with the big bang cosmic creation model, differing from its prediction by only 0.00045.

The Peimberts’ and Luridiana’s reassessment is also amazingly consistent with what the big bang creation model would predict from the primordial abundance of deuterium or heavy hydrogen.pdf). While the big bang creation model predicts that a large fraction of the universe’s hydrogen gets fused into helium during the first four minutes after creation, it also predicts that a tiny fraction of the remaining hydrogen will be fused into deuterium. In big bang cosmology the ratio of the primordial deuterium to primordial helium is highly specified. Therefore, an astronomical measure of the primordial deuterium abundance directly translates into a measure of the primordial helium abundance. That translation from the best available measurement of the primordial deuterium abundance = 0.2476 ± 0.0006.⁸

Such a remarkable fit between the observed abundance of primordial helium in the universe and the expected abundance predicted by the big bang cosmic creation model justifies great confidence in that model and consequently great confidence in the Bible’s story of cosmic origins and cosmic history. In my book, Creation As Science, our model predicted (on pages 185-86) that scientific evidence for the big bang cosmic creation model would grow stronger and individual evidences for the model would become more consistent.⁹ In contrast, atheistic and young-earth models predicted the opposite. Thanks to the Peimberts and Luridiana, the contrasting predictions have been put to the test.

As the researchers point out, we can look forward to additional tests.¹⁰ Another factor-of-three improvement in astronomers’ ability to measure the primordial helium abundance (a realistic goal for the next few years) will enable much tighter constraints on any possible variation in:

1. the lifetime of an isolated neutron;
2. the difference between the mass of the neutron and the mass of the proton;
3. the fine-structure constant; and
4. the gravitation constant.

Such a precise measurement also would decide whether or not certain decaying particles are present during the episode (between three and four minutes after the cosmic creation event) in which big bang nucleosynthesis (the manufacture of heavy elements from hydrogen) takes place. To put it another way, astronomers will soon be able to deliver an even more definitive and rigorous test for the big bang cosmic creation model. At the same time new research will provide a much more detailed model of cosmic creation, in which we can expect the details to show even more evidence for the supernatural design of the universe for the specific benefit of physical life, and human life in particular.

1. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 3rd ed. (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001), 23-29; Hugh Ross, Creation As Science (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2006), 67-77, 83, 87-102.
2. Manuel Peimbert, Valentina Luridiana, and Antonio Peimbert, “Revised Primordial Helium Abundance Based on New Atomic Data,” Astrophysical Journal 666 (September 10, 2007): 636-46.
3. D. N. Spergel et al., “Three-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Implications for Cosmology,” Astrophysical Journal Supplement 170 (June 2007): 377-408.
4. Keith A. Olive and Evan D. Skillman, “A Realistic Determination of the Error on the Primordial Helium Abundance: Steps Toward Nonparametric Nebular Helium Abundances,” Astrophysical Journal 617 (December 10, 2004): 28-49.
5. Masataka Fukugita and Masahiro Kawasaki, “Primordial Helium Abundance: A Reanalysis of the Izotov-Thuan Spectroscopic Sample,” Astrophysical Journal 646 (August 1, 2006): 691-95.
6. V. Luridiana et al., “The Effect of Collisional Enhancement of Balmer Lines on the Determination of the Primordial Helium Abundance,” Astrophysical Journal 592 (August 1, 2003): 846-65.
7. Peimbert, Luridiana, and Peimbert: 642-45.
8. Peimbert, Luridiana, and Peimbert: 645.
9. Hugh Ross, Creation As Science (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2006), 185-86.
10. Peimbert, Luridiana, and Peimbert: 636.

David H. Rogstad, Ph.D.

It was almost 37 years ago that I was working as a radio astronomer in Holland, preparing a paper that I was to present at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union taking place that year in Yteborg, Sweden. As a graduate student at Caltech some years earlier I had met a couple of Dutch radio astronomers who invited me to come to Holland as a “guest researcher” after I completed my degree. I am grateful to them for giving me and my family this wonderful opportunity to live in Holland for two years and work with them.

What made this particular time of special note was that I had some interesting research to present, but was having a very difficult time putting it all together. While this problem is not so unusual, what concerned me was the attendance of certain people at the meeting who would have influence as to whether I would have a job when I returned to the United States. I wanted to impress them with the quality of my research.

Anyone familiar with the academic environment knows that one of the principles often stressed is that research must be original. This idea was so impressed on me in my training that I felt absolute terror over whether my paper contained anything original at all! I spent a lot of time discussing it with my Dutch colleagues. I re-ran my simulations, re-worked my diagrams and re-wrote my conclusions, all to no avail. I was in such turmoil that I finally came to the conclusion that something was terribly wrong. Research, after all, was supposed to be fun and rewarding. For me it had become just a time of intense pressure.

It so happened that at this same time I was re-reading a sermon by one of my favorite authors, C. S. Lewis. In the chapter entitled “Membership” found in his book The Weight of Glory, Lewis takes issue with the notion that “to be ‘original’ is the main end of life.” He goes on to say

No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.

What Lewis calls attention to in this sermon is that anything we do is built on the work of others before us. Ultimately, the only person who is truly original is God. He is the creator, we are the creatures. The only thing we can do is reflect some of the glory that He incorporated into us when he made us in His image.

While this idea may not seem so profound in the telling, at the time it was a tremendously freeing insight. I was tied in knots trying to do something (be original) that was impossible. Now, of course, we know that what is usually meant by doing original research is that we are not simply copying what others have done. Instead we are adding some new insight or connection or piece of evidence that was not there before. I realized that even this new content had its origin in the Creator and I was merely a conduit for His originality.

Needless to say, this new perspective relieved my anxiety and gave me an opportunity to present a paper where my first concern was whether I brought Glory to God instead of myself. It must have achieved the other purpose, too, because I did end up getting a job back at Caltech, and went on to have a satisfying career in science at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for which I am very grateful to God.