The Fine-tuning of the Universe: Does this point to God?
Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation… His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist
The laws of science… contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and 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.
Sir Fred Hoyle, astrophysicist
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.
Abstract
Extensive scientific evidence discovered in the last several decades indicate that the universe is not random in terms of its physical laws and physical constants.
The physical constants in particular appear to be very carefully fine-tuned (to very very high degrees of precision) to enable intelligent life to exist (as discussed below).
The fine-tuning of the universe has theistic implications and can rationally be considered as pointing to the existence of an Intelligent Designer who created and fine-tuned the universe.
The Christian God is such an Intelligent Designer.
What will it take?
Some of my Atheist friends say (in effect), "no matter what evidence you show me for the existence of God, I absolutely refuse to believe in a God."
And Jesus says, "yes, even if I sent a man back from the dead, you would not believe".
And some others say, "show me a miracle, and I will believe in God".
And some say, I wish to believe in God, please give me some reason to believe…
And so, for those whose minds are not completely closed on this topic ("those who have ears to hear and eyes to see"), God does provide evidence.
This post discusses one area of such evidence.
The workings of God The Christian God indicates that he works in at least three ways in the universe: (i) naturally, (ii) providentially, and (iii) miraculously.
Naturally: where God creates and maintains the regularity in the universe that we observe and categorize as "natural law".
Providentially: where God intervenes into the "natural" course of events, but in such a gentle manner that we are not able to say clearly that a "miracle" has happened. Some answers to prayer are of this kind, where we keep noticing "coincidences" that happen in correlation with prayer.
Miraculously: where God intervenes and over-rides "natural law"; where he steps in and causes something to happen, that would otherwise not have happened, given the "natural" course of events.
The signature of a Miracle So, what are the signatures of these kinds of events?
"Natural law" is associated with high-probability events (or families of events); in other words, events that keep happening the same way, and do the same thing again and again.