The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [101]
“Wait a second,” I said. “Doesn’t the water vapor in our atmosphere cause cloudiness that can hinder astronomy? That’s why putting a telescope in space has been such a breakthrough.”
“Actually, astronomers prefer a partly cloudy atmosphere to one that’s completely cloudy or always windy and dusty,” Gonzalez said. “Besides, we’re not saying that every condition of measurability is uniquely and individually optimized on Earth. Our argument depends on what’s called an optimal negotiation of competing conditions.
“As Henry Petroski said in his book Invention by Design, ‘All design involves conflicting objectives and hence compromise, and the best designs will always be those that come up with the best compromise.’ 44 To come up with discoveries in a wide range of scientific disciplines, our environment must be a good compromise of competing factors—and we find that it is.”
Another interesting connection between habitability and measurability involves plate tectonics. As Gonzalez and Richards explained earlier, plate tectonics is essential to having a livable planet. One byproduct of the movement of these crustal plates is earthquakes, which, in turn, have provided scientists with research data that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
“Thousands of seismographs all over the planet have measured earthquakes through the years,” Richards said. “In the past few decades, scientists have been able to use that data to produce a three-dimensional map of the structure of the Earth’s interior.”
Over and over again, he said, the extraordinary conditions that create a hospitable environment on Earth also happen to make our planet strangely well-suited for viewing, analyzing, and understanding the universe.
“Is that merely some sort of cosmic quirk?” Richards asked. “Are we just lucky? I think wisdom entails the ability to discern the difference between mere coincidence and a meaningful pattern. We have more than a coincidence here. Much more.”
THE TRILEMMA OF LIFE
When trying to explain the existence of life, said Gonzalez and Richards, we face a trilemma. One possibility is that some natural necessity, like the laws of physics, inexorably leads to life. Advocates of SETI—the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence—like that possibility. However, more and more scientific discoveries are showing how incredibly improbable it is to marshal the right conditions for life. Many scientists are concluding that intelligent life is, at minimum, far rarer than was once thought. In fact, it may very well be unique to Earth.
The second possible explanation is chance: life is a fluke. Create enough planets circling enough stars and the odds say at least one of them will have life. Brownlee and Ward, who wrote Rare Earth, seem to gravitate toward this explanation.
But there’s also a third possibility: life was created. After studying all of the extraordinarily rare circumstances that have contributed to life on Earth, and then overlaying the amazing way in which these conditions also open the door to scientific discoveries, Gonzalez and Richards have landed in this camp.
“To find that we have a universe where the very places where we find observers are also the very best overall places for observing—that’s surprising,” Richards said. “I see design not just in the rarity of life in the universe, but also in this very pattern of habitability and measurability.”
I turned toward Gonzalez. “What’s your conclusion?” I asked.
“My conclusion, frankly, is that the universe was designed