Origin of the Universe and Life

Drawing from the content of a meeting titled "How Did It All Begin?" held at Covenant Fellowship Church in Philadelphia in April of 2013, this discussion looks at the subject of origins. At that conference, John Lennox gave two addresses titled "Beginning of the Universe" and "Beginning of Life".

Beginning of the Universe

When one looks at the question of how the universe began from the framework of physics, astronomy and cosmology, the picture is congruent with the picture one gets from Genesis. In particular, the standard model of physics points to a beginning of the universe in the finite past, and the modeling of processes in the universe finds a scenario which is exceptionally fine-tuned to a framework in which intelligent life is possible.

Some of the focal points for the modeling of the universe:

• The expanding universe projects back to a beginning
• The expansion rate is just right to make atoms and galaxies possible.
• The balance of the fundamental forces is on a razor's edge.
• Carbon hanging by a thread (The Hoyle resonance)

Hoyle: "I do not believe than any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars."

Hawking & Mlodinow: "Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5% in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. "

Expanding Universe

The galaxies we see in all directions are moving away from the Earth, as evidenced by their red shifts. Hubble's law describes this expansion.

The fact that we see all other galaxies moving away from us does not imply that we are the center of the universe! All galaxies will see all other stars moving away from them in an expanding universe. A rising loaf of raisin bread is a good visual model: each raisin will see all other raisins moving away from it as the loaf expands.

The fact that the universe is expanding then raises the question "Will it always expand?" Since the action of gravity works against the expansion, then if the density were large enough, the expansion would stop and the universe would collapse in a "big crunch". This is called a closed universe. If the density were small enough, the expansion would continue forever (an open universe). At a certain precise critical density, the universe would asymtotically approach zero expansion rate, but never collapse. Remarkably, all evidence indicates that the universe is very close to that critical density. Discussions about the expansion of the universe often refer to a density parameter Ω which is the density divided by the critical density, such that Ω = 1 represents the critical density condition.