How Do We Get an Answer to the Question "How Did the Universe Come into Existence?"

The real arbiter for what we can know about the Reality (here as "First Cause") that brought forth the physical Universe is not science because science cannot elucidate that Reality’s identity, the identity of what is the cause of that which has historically unfolded for a complex, interdependent sum, namely, an environment with life that is able to affect that environment for its  continued support of life. What is the ultimate arbiter here? History and the logico-mathematical nature of human consciousness are together the Arbiter when it is seen that they sufficiently cooperate for demonstration of the utter unreasonableness in theories that hold that there is absence of intelligent design in some structures (e.g., a living cell), although the complexity of the structures immediately makes appeal to reason that the structures were not engineered by stochastic processes (aka “Serendipity” writ large despite the astronomically low probability for that Serendipity’s existence). And yet, that unreasonableness is what scientists of Scott Todd’s ilk want us to embrace. 

Scott Todd has written: “Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. Of course the scientist, as an individual, is free to embrace a reality that transcends naturalism.”

Scott C. Todd

Department of Biology, Kansas State University, 18 Ackert Hall, Manhattan, Kansas 66506, USA

By this definition of science, Todd would make science to be the handmaiden of Unreasonableness. Scott C. Todd apparently assumes this: ‘Our Universe as we know it has no physical realities that must, in principle, be seen to be the result of some supernaturalistic cause or causes for a rejection of materialistic causes.’ His doctrine is simply opinion, and in no way can be logically demanded for an accordance with his understanding of science, because his science is one that he has defined in such a way that, in principle, is no more than what flows from his premise that no Universe can be created and put into the service of its Creator and thereafter He use it for sake of beings that cannot naturally share that Creator's supernatural realm of existence.  Again, Todd’s view of what can or cannot exist in accord with true science is his pure, unadulterated opinion.

Yes, it is true that all theories that seek to elucidate the nature of Reality as it existed before the “Big Bang” (aka the pre-Planck era) amount to Opinion writ large wherein we see the same commonality informing all of them: they are and must ever remain void of any probative value whereby they might end speculation as to the nature of pre-Planck era Reality, this because, as much as we want otherwise to know, there is no naturalistically—scientifically—knowable cause that brought into existence the Planck era in cosmogony. Yet most men of science with notable exceptions (e.g., Einstein and Hawking) are agreed that scientific analysis of the observable Universe tells us that the Universe did have a beginning. Then reasonable argument can be made that the Universe, as we know it to be, is able to have at least one piece of its real estate supporting life on it because it was so purposed/designed for that end. All that need be postulated here—and we do so in a commonsensical way because the thing postulated is preeminently reasonable whereas the alternative goes lacking in any commonsense postulation of it--is that planet Earth had for realization of life on it the same science-transcending (supernatural) Reality that brought into existence the Planck era and all else that obtained post-Planck era for the structure of the Universe as we know it. Our Universe is a post-Planck era structure in which, per string theory, anyone of 10^500 different Universes might have resulted, but that in all of them except for one—ours—the result would have been for a Universe unable to support life as we know it. But the astronomical odds against Serendipity having brought into existence a Universe according to any one of the other cosmological theories that are not any of them string theory still result in a Universe too finely tuned in its physical constants but that infinitesimally small variations in the values of those constants must result in a Universe unable to support life. To reiterate, any one of those putative Universes might have been structured in accordance with values of physical constants given in mathematical equations that show us that none of those Universes could have supported life even though the values of the fundamental physical constants need not have varied but by so infinitesimally small a value from the ones that science knows exist for ours, and yet life could not have been supported in any of them but ours. 

Put even more simply as respects all the above, true science does not and cannot truthfully contradict/contravene belief in divine revelation that gives us to know that there is the supernatural realm (Heaven) where the Creator lives apart from Nature, our Universe. 

Science cannot show us the how and the why for the Universe’s coming into existence at the time it came into existence. It can show us that an unfathomable amount of energy was manifested in the beginning of the Planck era (the “singularity”) of the Universe and after its origin. Science, however, cannot show us what was real before there began a chain of causes and their effects within the Universe which established the values of the fundamental physical constants. It, however, is a matter of his unfounded opinion when a scientist asserts that nothing can be offered for some description of Reality that pre-existed the Universe. History since the birth of the Universe works hand-in-hand with another reality, logico-mathematical reasoning; those realities transcend the reality of real science because they establish establish beyond any reasonable doubt justification for belief in another reality, namely, the reality of a reasoning Creator, God, and science alone cannot do that.

What scientists have proved is that the value of the physical constants responsible for the Universe to be configured as it is—call the configuration X—, and not for there to be or ever to have been a Universe with some configuration not X, has odds against X set at being just a certain 1 out of 10^500 possibilities for X to be what it is, for there were 10^500 - 1 other possible configurations that might have been the configuration of the Universe. In the stream of time since the birth of the Universe there has occurred a HISTORY of appearances of an astronomically large number of highly complex organizations of physical realities within X that capture our attention precisely because we realize that each one of the organizations is a sine qua non for the appearance and support of life on earth as we know it to be. And therein lies justification for the faith/confidence of those believers/theists who accept that the Bible reveals that it pleased God to purpose the creation of the Universe. 

No, science cannot make comment to us believers as to why God purposed to create life here on earth. That is an explanation revealed in the Bible. It is, however, unfounded opinion of atheists who say that if science cannot make comment on God’s mind, then that failure is because there is no intelligent Creator for scientists to get to know in the first place—that there never has been a real God. Our rejoinder to them may include asking them, “What scientific/naturalistic methodology do you say you need to employ before you can say either “We have verified God’s existence” or “We have disproved God’s existence”? 

Quite simply, there isn’t any such methodology because the heart of the scientific method is its manmade framework for testing if there is predictability for repetition of an effect that should identify its cause. That methodology, whenever it is possible to use it, does not logically allow us to hold that one man’s opinion about the result of the methodology is as reasonable as another man’s contrary opinion. But science does not have a methodology for establishing the reasonableness of our beliefs as respects every reality that is purported to  exist. That reasonableness, or lack of same, as respects some belief in some purported realities will be shown when it accords with the reality of logic-mathematical reasoning and actual history, or does not so accord.

Logico-mathematical reasoning is a “tool” in science; it is itself a stand-alone reality not provable by science, but yet is a reality that sufficiently stands against atheistic scientists because it exposes the utter unreasonableness of their opinions. Logico-mathematical reasoning is a reality that exposes the worst of opinions when certain biologists and astrophysicists (materialists) will ignore the astronomically low probability for a Universe so finely tuned for existence of life and for the programming of a cell’s DNA for manufacture, regulation, and repair of intracellular entities—including the DNA molecule itself—, but that all of it is supposedly the result apart from the intelligent design of a Creator.