posted August 23, 2025 06:31 AM
A Harvard scientist believes he has proved the existence of a higher power with a complicated scientific formula, sending social media into a philosophical spin.The Ivy League Astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon has all the qualifications to say he knows the universe and its forces better than anyone.
While science and religion seem to have been clashing on the origins of the universe for centuries, Dr Soon seems to have brought the two fields together with his theory about the universe and how we ended up living on Earth.
Speaking on The Tucker Carlson Network, the Smithsonian doctor outlined his belief in the "fine-tuning argument". The idea highlights how extraordinarily precise the universe's physical conditions are, and how their precision created the almost infinitely improbable conditions for life to be created, too improbable for just chance.
At the heart of this claim is a line of thought first voiced by Cambridge University physicist Paul Dirac back in 1963. Dirac argued the mathematical elegance of nature's laws pointed towards a higher designer.
In his work nearly six decades ago, Dirac added: "It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it.
"You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it.
"One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe."
Dr Soon echoes this on the talk show, he added: "There are so many examples of the ever-present forces that allow us to illuminate our lives. God has given us this light, to follow the light and do the best that we can."
His argument seems to be a more scientific take on the design argument, the one with the watch analogy we were almost all taught in school. The popular analogy explains this by comparing the universe to a watch.
Finding a watch, with its intricate mechanisms, implies a watchmaker. Similarly, the complexity of the universe suggests an intelligent designer.
Although not everyone is as convinced as Soon. A common argument against his fine-tuning argument comes in two ways.
First, we still have a very limited understanding of our universe. We operate as carbon-based lifeforms, but in another universe, with other physical life based on different materials may exist.
The other argument comes down to probability. Unlikely events happen all the time, and with the existence of our universe, it is a given that, however unlikely the chances were, it still happened.
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