Putting YHVH Back into the Class Room

As the hour glass for this age is rapidly running out of sand as our Savior Jesus is at the door, I decided to explain why I, as a mathematician, believe in an all knowing creator. More and more of those in the scientific community have come to the same conclusion as I, but I do not expect Our Father Who Art In Heaven to be allowed a seat in our classrooms.  I hope this article is given by all who read it to friends and family who either have no faith; have lost their faith; or are agnostics.

In the fall of 1973, the world’s most eminent astronomers and physicists gathered in Poland to commemorate the 500^th birthday of the father of modern astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus.  Assembled for the special symposia were some of the illustrious scientific minds of our time:  Stephen W. Hawking, Roger Penrose, Robert Wagoner, Joseph Silk, and John Wheeler, to name only a few.

Yet of the dozens of scientific lectures presented during the festivities, only one would be remembered decades later, echoing far beyond the hall in Krakow Poland where it was delivered, indeed far beyond the field of astronomy or even science itself.  Its author, Brandon Carter, was a well-established astrophysicist and cosmologist from Cambridge University.  The title of the paper was technical sounding and the tone of the presentation highly tentative.  “Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology,” Carter called it.  Yet there was nothing merely technical about the paper’s implications.  For the insights he presented, 500 years after Copernicus’s birth, spelled nothing less than the philosophical overthrow of the Copernican revolution itself.

Carter called his notion the “anthropic principle,” from the Greek word anthropeos, “man.”  The name was a bit off-putting.  And Carter’s definition of the idea was highly technical.  The anthropic principle consisted of the observation that “what we can expect to observe [in the universe] must be restricted by the conditions necessary for our presence as observers.”  In plainer English, the anthropic principle says that all the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common—these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life.

This discovery, already percolating among physicists in the early 1970s, came as something of a surprise to put it mildly.  For centuries, scientific exploration seemed to be taking us down precisely the opposite road—toward an ever more mechanistic, impersonal, and random view of the cosmos.  Twentieth-century intellectuals had commonly spoken of the “random universe.”  The predominant view of modern philosophers and intellectuals was that human life had come about essentially by accident, the by-product of brute, material forces randomly churning over the eons.  This conclusion seemed to follow naturally from the two great scientific revolutions of the modern era, the Copernican and the Darwinian.  With his sun-centered model of the planetary system, Copernicus showed that humanity was not in any sense “central” to the universe.  “Before the Copernican revolution, it was natural to suppose that YHVH’s purposes were specially concerned with the Earth, but now this has become an implausible hypothesis,” the atheistic scientist Bertrand Russell wrote in his 1935 classic, Religion and Science.  Darwin, moreover, had demonstrated that the origins of life and even of the human species could be explained by blind mechanisms.  In the wake of Copernicus and Darwin, it no longer seemed plausible to regard the universe as created, or humanity as a creature of YHVH.  “Man” should rather be understood, as Russell expressed it, as some kind of unfortunate accident or sideshow in the material universe—“a curious accident in a backwater.”

The philosophical, cultural, and emotional impact of this conclusion could hardly be overstated.  It explained the tone of despair and angst that came to characterize modern culture, the desperate feeling that humankind was alone and without moorings, and above all without YHVH.  It was this random universe cosmology that underpinned all the atheistic modern philosophies—from [Bertrand] Russell’s own positivism, to existentialism, Marxism, even Freudianism. With this nonsense being taught in our schools and universities, is it any wonder that the suicide rate among the young is so high?

But then the unexpected occurred.  Beginning in the 1960s, scientists began to notice a strange connection among a number of otherwise unexplained coincidences in physics. It turns out that many mysterious values and relationships in physics could be explained by one overriding fact. Such values had been necessary for the creation of life.  The physicist Robert Dicke was the first to draw attention to this relationship.  The scientist John Wheeler, one of the most prestigious practitioners of cosmology, became interested in the idea in the 1960s.  Then, at Wheeler’s urging, Carter presented the observation in full-blown form at the Copernican festivities.

The anthropic principle offered a kind of explanation for one of the most basic mysteries of physics—the values of the fundamental constants.  Physicists had never been able to explain why the values of the so-called fundamental constants—for example, the values for the gravitational force or the electromagnetic force—were as they were.  Moreover, there were certain mysterious mathematical relations among some of these constants.  For example, the forces binding certain particles seemed to be mathematically related to the number for the age of the universe.  Why should these forces be related to the age of the universe?  In the past, physicist had come up with rather exotic theories to explain these coincidences.

But there was a simpler way of explaining them, as Carter pointed out in his lecture.  If one examined closely the evolution of the universe, one would see that these precise values or ratios were necessary if the universe was to be capable of producing life.  In a certain sense, this finding was no surprise:  We would not expect to be observing a universe that had not produced us in the first place.  Still, the number of strange “coincidences” that could be explained simply because they were necessary for producing life in the universe was surprisingly large.

That was where Copernicus came in.  People had interpreted Copernicus’s theory to mean that humankind had no “privileged central” place in the universe, as Carter put it.  But the explanation was not so simple.  Too many values had seemingly been arranged around the central task of producing us.  So, as Carter stated (in a somewhat hair-splitting fashion), even if our position in the universe was not “central,” it was “inevitably privileged to some extent.”

Few people at the time seemed to be thinking deeply about the philosophical implications of this discovery.  But they were nothing short of astounding.  In effect, the “random universe” was out the window.  There was nothing random at all about the arrangement of the cosmos-as physicists quickly began to see.  The vast, 15-billion-year evolution of the universe had apparently been directed toward one goal:  the creation of human life.

The anthropic principle raised fundamental questions not only about the modern interpretation of Copernicanism, but ultimately about Darwinism as well.  It certainly showed that Darwin’s theory of “natural selection” could no longer be taken as an exhaustive explanation for the phenomenon of life.  The notion that the whole process could be reduced to the workings of a single, simple “blind” mechanism was fundamentally flawed.

Clearly, the “death of God” had been based on a fundamental misinterpretation of the nature of the universe that science had come up with by the late 19^th century.  Now that picture was being replaced by a new one, vastly more complex—and decisively more compatible with the notion that the universe had been designed by an intelligent Creator.

Indeed, what 20^th century cosmology had come up with was something of a scientific embarrassment:  a universe with a definite beginning, expressly designed for life.  Ironically, the picture of the universe bequeathed to us by the most advanced 20^th century science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus.  The irony is deepened by the fact that modern cosmology is the result of extending the concept of “evolution”—an idea once viewed as deeply inimical to faith.

What made the discovery of the anthropic principle possible was the advent of big-bang cosmology.  At the time Russell wrote Religion and Science, nobody knew in a scientific sense how the universe had begun, or whether indeed it had a beginning.  In the late 1920s, the physicist Georges Lemaître proposed that the universe had originated in a primeval atom, but this was a highly controversial idea.  Then in 1945 came the explosion of the atom bomb.  Shortly thereafter the physicist George Gamow (who had worked on the bomb project) proposed that the universe had originated in a similar original cataclysm.

But for roughly 20 years, scientists were divided between Gamow’s theory and the so-called steady state universe, or the argument that the universe had always been there.  It was Fred Hoyle, the leading proponent of the steady state theory, who coined the derisive term “big-bang-theory” to describe the position of his opponents.  The label stuck.

Then in 1964, a couple of scientists at Bell Laboratories, Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, stumbled on what was later known as cosmic background radiation.  Penzias and Wilson, who were working on communication satellites, were annoyed to find low-level “noise” emanating from every direction in the sky.  Physicists quickly realized what this noise was—an echo of the big bang billions of years before.  It became apparent that the big-bang theory was almost certainly right.

By the 1970s, with the big-bang theory firmly established, physicists began to think about alternative scenarios for the universe’s evolution.  Carter and other scientists would discover an increasingly daunting and improbable list of mysterious coincidences or “lucky accidents” in the universe—whose only common denominator seemed to be that these characteristics were necessary for our emergence.  Even the most minor tinkering with the value of the fundamental forces of physics—gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear strong force, or the nuclear weak force—would have resulted in an unrecognizable universe consisting entirely of helium, without protons or atoms, a universe without stars, or a universe that collapsed back in upon itself before the first moments of its existence were up.

As recently as 25 years ago, a reasonable person weighing the purely scientific evidence on the issue would likely have come down on the side of skepticism.  That is no longer the case.  The burden of proof has shifted.  The barrier that modern science appeared to erect to faith has fallen.  Of course, the anthropic principle tells us nothing about the Person of God or the existence of an afterlife.  But it does offer as strong an indication as reason and science alone could be expected to provide that a creator does exist.

The scientists have now confirmed three things: namely that there was a Supreme Being that created the Universe from nothing, that a Supreme Being created the universe just right for life and that the DNA coding reveals intelligence and a Supreme Creator. If you read forward in the DNA, you find one message. If you read backwards, you find another message. How could evolution possibly account for this? It is further clear evidence of a brilliant Mind at work! YHVH Almighty has truly left His “signature” in every cell of every life form—including you and me—the obvious and wondrous design of DNA.

It is hard not to see the evidence for the Big Bang as a stunning example of where science and theology intersect. Astrophysicist Dr. Robert Jastrow phrased it this way in his book God and the Astronomers (New York, W.W. Norton, 1978, p. 116): “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Why? Because, as Jastrow explained in a subsequent interview, “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. . . That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact” (“A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths: Interview with Robert Jastrow,” Christianity Today, August 6, 1982, pp. 15, 18).

Recent discoveries about DNA have left scientists flabbergasted, and the evidence points clearly to a supreme Intelligence having imbedded an incredible multifaceted code in our genes.

Remarkable discoveries about the mind-boggling complexity of DNA are providing solid evidence of the divine creation of life. In fact, it was mainly for this reason that Sir Antony Flew, the late world-famous philosopher who had been the leading atheist in England, renounced his atheism a few years back and accepted the existence of a creator.

Regarding whether recent research on DNA had influenced his change of mind, he said: “Yes, I now think it does … almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together” (There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, 2007, p. 75).

He went on to say: “I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source”.

“Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than a half century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science. Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to a creator.   The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature” (pp. 88-89).

Initially, scientists believed that DNA was a somewhat simple genetic code with extraneous material. But now they have found the code to be astoundingly complex, multilayered and even bidirectional—with no so-called “junk DNA.” This should lead us to do a double take as we learn what this code means and what its relevance is to YHVH’s existence.

The arrogance of anti-God “science” is noted in Col. 2:8 ,Ps. 19, Rom. 1.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to YHVH.  (Col. 2:8)

Here are two famous quotes from well known scientists who clearly understood the Divine Presence and Superb Mathematician of our Divine Creator YHVH.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) quote:

“Divine Mathematician” whose mind could be discovered in the precise mechanics of the universe.

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) quote:

“Divine Presence” who set the universe in motion.  “the most beautiful system of the Sun, planet and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominance of the intelligent and powerful Being.”

Proof of a Divine Creator in the Human Body

There is enough evidence of a Creator in the human body alone to convince anyone willing to think about it that we are not the product of random chance over a long period of time.

The human brain has 10 billion nerve cells interacting in coordination to allow us to function as we do. Your eyes have about 100 million receptor cells in each retina, which also contains four other layers of nerve cells. The system makes billions of calculations per second, traveling through your optic nerve to the brain, which has more than a dozen separate vision centers to process it. Your skin has more than 2 million tiny sweat glands, about 3,000 per square inch, to regulate your temperature.

Your heart beats an average of 75 times per minute, 40 million times per year, or two and a half billion times in 70 years. It pumps about 3,000 gallons of blood per day. Your body is supported by more than 200 finely designed bones, connected to more than 500 muscles and many tendons and ligaments. Some muscles respond to your conscious will, whereas some react automatically. Your digestive system contains about 35 million glands that secrete juices to digest your food and sustain your life. I haven’t even mentioned your lungs, your other senses (hearing, taste, smell, and touch), your endocrine glands, your immune system, and much more. And it all works together!

And this is just the human body. When you consider the complex balance of the natural world, with the hydrologic cycle, the way that plants grow and process carbon dioxide to produce oxygen, the seasons, the balance between insects and birds and the other animals, it is simply absurd to suggest that it all came about by sheer chance over time without the Creator!

Now consider our divine creator YHVH, Father of Abraham Isaac and Jacob’s splendor above the heavens. Of course, at one time we had no telescopes to show how big the universe is.  The sheer vastness of outer space and the coordination of it all is astounding. If you could travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, it would take you 8 minutes to get to the sun. To go from the sun to the center of the Milky Way would take about 33,000 years. The Milky Way belongs to a group of some 20 galaxies known as the Local Group. To cross that group, you’d have to travel a million years. The Local Group belongs to the Virgo Cluster, part of an even larger Local Supercluster, which is a half-billion light years across. To cross the entire universe as we know it would take you 20 billion light years (National Geographic World [Jan., 1992], p. 15).

When a person looks up at the night sky with the naked eye, on a clear night with no artificial light distractions, one is able to see twenty million million stars or the equivalent of all the sand in all of deserts on all the earth.  And Psalm 147.4 tells us that YHVH Almighty has counted all the stars and given them names.  He knows all of the stars just as well as He knows how many hairs are on your head as per Matthew 10:30. 

And yet supposedly intelligent scientists see all of this and then attribute it to “nature” or random chance! Sir Isaac Newton had an exact replica of our solar system made in miniature. At its center was a large golden ball representing the sun. Revolving around it were small spheres representing the planets, attached at the ends of rods of varying lengths. They were all geared together by cogs and belts to make them move around the sun in harmony.

One day as Newton was studying the model, a friend who did not believe in the biblical account of creation stopped by. Marveling at the device and watching as Newton made the heavenly bodies move in their orbits, the man exclaimed, “My, Newton, what an exquisite thing! Who made it for you?”

Without looking up, Newton replied, “Nobody.” “Nobody?” his friend asked. “That’s right! I said nobody! All of these balls and cogs and belts and gears just happened to come together and wonder of wonders, by chance they began revolving in their set orbits and with perfect timing!” His unbelieving friend got the message! (From “Our Daily Bread,” 1977.) But Newton’s model was nothing compared to the vastness and complexity of the universe! Truly, YHVH has displayed His splendor above the heavens!

As Isaac Newton wrote in the second edition of the Principia:

“The true creator is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being. His duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity. He governs all things.”

Isaiah 55:8-9 explains the mind of our Divine Creator, the Father of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.

      “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

            Neither are your ways My ways,” declares YHVH.

      “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

            So are My ways higher than your ways,

            And My thoughts than your thoughts.  (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Isaiah 55:8 clearly states that our creator’s thoughts are not your thoughts.

Let me show you two examples of the mind of our creator at work.  

The Prophetic Names from Adam until Noah

First let us look at the prophetic names from Adam until Noah.  YHVH gave us the genealogy of Adam and Noah in Genesis Chapter 5 for a reason, even though everyone but Enoch and Noah were wiped out in the flood.  This is one of those chapters which we often tend to skim over quickly as we pass through Genesis as we think it’s simply a genealogy from Adam to Noah. But YHVH always rewards the diligent student. In our Bible, we read the names of the individuals in Hebrew. But what do these names actually mean in English?

That’s rather remarkable:

Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow; (but) the Blessed God shall come down teaching (that) His death shall bring (the) despairing rest.

The prophetic meanings of the these names is the Gospel hidden within a genealogy in Genesis!

Evidence of Design

The implications of this discovery are more wide spread than is evident at first glance.

It demonstrates that in the earliest chapters of the Book of Genesis, YHVH had already laid out His plan of redemption for the predicament of mankind’s rebellion. It is a love story, written in blood on a wooden cross which was erected in Judea almost 2,000 years ago.

The Holy Scriptures, 66 books penned by 40 different authors, are an integrated message system, the product of supernatural engineering. Every number, every place name, every detail, every jot and tittle is there for our edification, our discovery, and our amazement.

Isaiah 46:10 states that our creator declared the end from the beginning.

Declaring the end from the beginning And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;  (Isaiah 46:10)

New Jerusalem Lowered From Heaven

Now let me show you another example of the mind of our creator that you will see for yourself one day if you are a saved Christian. When the city of new Jerusalem is lowered from heaven during the beginning of the millennium, Revelation 21:19-20 states that the foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation stone was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; and the twelfth amethyst. These twelve foundations represent the Twelve Tribes of Israel. However there is something strange here. Why are two of the most precious gems missing from the list, namely diamond and ruby. The answer will astound you.

In the past century, it has been discovered that gems can be classified as either anisotropic or isotropic, and only recently with the discovery of lasers, have scientists discovered cross polarized light, which can be used to identify whether a gem is anisotropic or isotropic. When viewed in crossed-polarised light (similar to “pure” light), anisotropic stones produce a colourful array of colours, whereas isotropic stones lose all of their colour and appear black.

It’s interesting that, in Revelation chapter 21, there are 12 gems mentioned to be inlaid for decoration of the New Jerusalem, and ALL of these 12 gems are anisotropic gems, i.e., gems that can show colourful patterns under pure light…

Interestingly, neither diamond, rubies or garnets are mentioned, despite the fact that these group of gems are very common! For instance, the precious stones are generally considered to be diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald, with all other gemstones being semi-precious. Turns out, it’s because they are isotropic, when pure light passes trough them, there is no beauty at all…

Of the 28 stones that are normally regarded as gemstones, only 16 are anisotropic. Since anisotropic behaviour has only been discovered in the last century (and John wrote Revelation almost 2000 years ago), the odds of 12 stones picked randomly being in that one group, is about 1 in 1,000! In fact, this analysis assumes that all gems have the same probability of being included, but this is not the case (as some gems are considered more precious than others). Hence, the actual probability is much much lower than 1 in 1,000 for naming all the 12 gems, that are all anisotropic gems, in the book of Revelation, which was written in AD95!

There are around 4000 naturally available gems and a very large portion of these gems are too rare to be used. For the usual ones, there are 143 gems, of which 109 gems are anisotropic and 34 are isotropic. So, the probability of the Book of Revelation mentioning 12 gems that are anisotropic gems are 109/143 x 108 / 142 x 107 / 141… x 98 / 132 or a 3.3% chance which is very very low

Keep in mind that there are a few assumptions being made here, i.e. the stones are a literal description of heaven (which I believe they are) and that the light in heaven which will be brought to earth will be like “pure” light, which emanates through the gems…

Could it be possible that in choosing the stones for the foundation of the new city of Jerusalem, YHVH deliberately avoided stones that would lose their colour and instead chose stones that disperse light which purposely produce a brilliant rainbow, effectively reminding us that YHVH is indeed the Alpha and the Omega (Greek) and the Aleph Tav (Hebrew)!

* This post is the seventh installment of a continuing series by chapter on deciphering the prophecy of Revelation and the Holy Scriptures through the use of Holy Gematria. Please click on Contributor Profile below my name at the top to see my previous articles on the Book of Revelation.   The Gematria calculator at gematrix.org was used for all calculations and the NASB77 version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.