Science provides excellent evidence for the existence of God

There are two points I will use to begin the debate, in both of which I draw mainly on the work of William Lane Craig. My first topic will follow the Kalam Cosmological argument which states; 1)The Universe began to exist 2)Things that begin to exist have a cause 3)Therefore the Universe has a cause The most current knowledge we have regarding cosmology shows that the Universe began to exist from absolute nothingness at a finite point in the past. In their article, "Inflationary Spacetimes are not Past-complete", Arvind Borde (physicist out of Tufts University), Alan Guth (Working out of Tufts & MIT, and the developer of the Inflationary Universe Theory), and Alexander Vilenkin (Tufts University and the developer of the Quantum Creation Theory) state that "a cosmological model which is inflating – or just expanding sufficiently fast – must be incomplete in null and timelike past directions." They show that according to our understanding of physics, any expanding universe or multiverse must have an absolute beginning. They make similar statements in other works as well. Guth is the person responsible for the statement that "The Universe is the ultimate free lunch," meaning that everything came from nothing. This statement (any many similar) can be heard in these podcasts from Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com... https://www.scientificamerican.com... On page 176 of his book Many Worlds in One, Vilenkin states, "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning." On page 180 in his new book, The Grand Design, Hawking states, "Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing in the manner described in chapter 6. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist." Notice that while the scientists listed above are atheists, they believe that the Universe had a beginning from absolute nothingness. When discussing the beginning, it is important to note that we are not just talking about matter expanding into existing time and space, but are talking about the coming into existence of time, space and matter at a finite point in the past. If there is no creator, what caused the Universe? I do not have room to argue for premise 2 at this point, but will argue it if you are interested in a later section. My second argument is that the odds of the Universe existing in a way that allows for life are so small as to be non-existent unless it was intentionally designed by an intelligent being. There are a number of constants in the Universe that need to exist within a very small range of options. If the strength of these constants (the strength of gravity and other forces, the rate of entropy, …) was slightly different, no life of any type could exist. If gravity were too weak for instance, stars would not form. If too strong, the universe would have collapsed quickly. Do scientists agree with this assessment? Here are a few quotes: Richard Dawkins, "The God Delusion" p 169-Physicists have calculated that, if the laws and constants of physics had been even slightly different, the universe would have developed in such a way that life would have been impossible." He then gives examples. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of P 129 "The laws of science as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of masses of the proton to the electron...The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life...." On page 141 of The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking tries to explain this problem away by saying "In other words, the quantum probability that the universe has more or less than three large space dimensions is irrelevant because we have already determined that we are in a universe with three large space dimensions. So as long as the probability amplitude for three large space dimensions is not exactly zero, it doesn't matter how small it is compared with the probability amplitude for other number of dimensions." In other words, it does not matter what the odds were that the Universe would exist in the way that it does. There is a 100% chance that it exists the way it does now, so we shouldn't ask about the odds. We should instead determine what path the Universe most likely to get here. John Leslie gives an excellent example of why this logic makes no sense. Let's say you are in front of a firing squad with 100 trained marksmen aiming rifles straight at your chest. You hear the command to fire, hear the roar of the guns… and notice that you are still alive. Should you be surprised to find that you are still alive? According to Hawking, no. Using the example given above, of course the bullets missed! If they had not missed you would be dead, and since you are alive it has already been determined that you are still alive, and as long as the probability amplitude for your being alive is not exactly zero, it doesn't matter how small it is compared with the probability amplitude for your being dead. In the real world of course we look for explanations for why the marksmen missed. The obvious explanation is either that one person decided to put on this mock execution for reasons known only to him (intelligent design). The idea that pure chance is the cause is so small it does not even deserve consideration. So how do scientists explain these facts? Let's see what Lawrence Krauss states in part 2 of the Scientific American podcast I referenced earlier… "But what's just been realized, of course, is by thinking about these fine-tunings that may be possible in nature that Alan was referring to, is that it's possible to fine tune the universe so that the Higgs is not observable. And if that were the case, Alan is absolutely right; the only really sensible explanation is since all of the evidence suggest that unless you really fine tune things, the Higgs should be observable at the LHC or a machine like it, then it would tell us that there are some other fundamental fine tuning in nature that would strongly suggest that the universe we see is not generic and is very special. And that would certainly provide evidence that we're an outlier and therefore there must be more universes." Notice the last sentence? If we find evidence that the Universe is not generic, it provides evidence that the multiverse must contain more universes than currently thought. Why do we need so many universes? Because the odds that the Universe exists in a way that allows for any kind of life are so small, that they cannot be realistically attributed to chance. This means that either an intelligent agent designed the Universe with the needed fine-tuning, or that there are so many universes that chance becomes an option. After all, hitting a one-in-a-million chance is very likely if you have 100 million shots. There is much more that can be said about the fine-tuning of the Universe (which is accepted by most every scientist including Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins), and if you want to investigate this further, I will be happy to do so. Using the argument for the beginning of the Universe and the fine tuning of the Universe, it seems like we have two real options; either something or someone created the Universe, or an infinite number of unobservable, untestable universes popped into existence from nothing for no reason at a finite point in the past. Frankly, the second "scientific" reason seems like a far greater stretch than the first.