The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [77]
“My guess is that nothing could deter you from inferring that dinosaurs existed, because this would be a natural extrapolation from what you already know,” Collins concluded. “On the other hand, the skeptic needs to invent a whole new set of physical laws and a whole new set of mechanisms that are not a natural extrapolation from anything we know or have experienced. You wouldn’t buy his story. No way.”
“You’re saying, then, that an intelligent designer is a natural extrapolation of what we already know?”
“Yes, I am,” he replied. “Think about it, Lee—we already know that intelligent minds produce finely tuned devices. Look at the space shuttle. Look at a television set. Look at an internal combustion engine. We see minds producing complex, precision machinery all the time.
“So postulating the existence of a supermind—or God—as the explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe makes all the sense in the world. It would simply be a natural extrapolation of what we already know that minds can do. And, what’s more, unlike the hypothesis that there are many universes, we have independent evidence of God’s existence, such as a personal experience of the Creator and the other sort of evidence you’re talking about in your book.”
THE BEAUTY OF PHYSICS
Collins took his last sip of tea at about the same time I finished my glass of water. “Let’s go get some refills,” he said, motioning for me to follow him down the hall.
Without students or faculty, the building was eerily quiet, our voices echoing slightly as we ambled down the empty corridor. “The day is too beautiful to be spending so much time indoors,” I commented as we arrived at a self-serve kitchen area.
“Yeah, perfect for a run,” Collins said.
I filled my glass with water while he blended his tea. Silence prevailed for a few moments, then Collins remarked: “Talking about beauty reminds me of another line of reasoning that points toward a designer,” he said.
“Really?” I asked. “Tell me about it.”
“Think about the extraordinary beauty, elegance, harmony, and ingenuity that we find in the laws of nature,” he replied as we headed back to the conference room.
“Whole books have been written about it. Weinberg once spent an entire chapter explaining how the criteria of beauty and elegance have been used to guide physicists in formulating the right laws. 47 The theoretical physicist Alan Guth said that the original construction of the gauge theories of fundamental particle physics ‘was motivated mainly by their mathematical elegance.’ 48
“One of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century, Paul Dirac, the Nobel Prize winner from Cambridge, even claimed that ‘it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.’ ” 49 One historian said mathematical beauty was ‘an integral part’ of Dirac’s strategy. He said Dirac believed physicists ‘first had to select the most beautiful mathematics—not necessarily connected to the existing basis of theoretical physics—and then interpret them in physical terms.’ ” 50
“And you see beauty in the laws and principles of nature?” I asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” he declared. “They’re beautiful, and they’re also elegant in their simplicity. Surprisingly so. When scientists are trying to construct a new law of nature, they routinely look for the simplest law that adequately accounts for the data.”
I interrupted with an objection. “Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?” I asked. “What’s beautiful seems so subjective.”
“Subjectivity can’t explain the success of the criterion of beauty in science,” he replied. “We wouldn’t expect purely subjective patterns to serve as the basis of theories that make highly accurate predictions, such as the success of quantum electrodynamics to predict the quantum