Tuesday 10 October 2017

04 Argument from design, the Fine Tuning of the Universe

If you have ever attended a symphony concert, you will remember the orchestra tuning up at the beginning. The individual instruments are already kept in perfect condition, but they have to be tuned to each other. The first violin plays a chord and everybody else tunes to it. If this important step were neglected, the orchestra wouldn’t sound as good.

Our universe is fine tuned to a much greater degree than any orchestra. Constants, such as gravity, magnetic force, speed of light and many others, have to be tuned to an amazing degree or life on earth would not be possible.

For example if the gravitational constant was a bit stronger, by a value of 1 divided by 10 with 60 zeroes after it (an extremely small fraction) the big bang would have pulled all atoms together into a big crunch. If it was weaker by a similar amount, it would have spread the atoms out so widely that they never would have gathered into stars and galaxies.

The other constants of nature possess this same feature. Change any of them, and the resulting universe becomes very different. And remarkably, every one of these different values leads to a universe without life in it.

Which makes us ask the question, Is this universe the result of chance? It is much more reasonable to see this as evidence for the existence of a designer.

Imagine you lived on the edge of town, with a large vacant paddock next door, and you went away for a few years.  When you returned, you saw several new houses, one house under construction and foundations for others. There were frames stacked up, and trenches for plumbing. Would you say this was randomly produced by blind chance, or evidence for a designer and a builder? The evidence for design in our universe is much stronger than for the construction of a new housing estate.

The fine tuning argument may be new to you. I recommend you look at a short video online.




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