The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [66]
The principle, as Glynn learned, essentially 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.” 5
In his subsequent book God: The Evidence, Glynn credits the absolutely incredible fine-tuning of the cosmos as being among the key reasons why he concluded that the universe must have been the handiwork of a master designer.
“As recently as twenty-five 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,” he said. “Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis. It is the simplest and most obvious solution to the anthropic puzzle.” 6
THE PRIMA FACIE EVIDENCE
Alister McGrath, the erudite theologian who studied molecular biophysics at Oxford and wrote the ambitious three-volume series A Scientific Theology, has a penchant for penetrating to the core of complex issues. In the case of the anthropic principle, he managed to summarize the essential challenge in two succinct questions, which he posed with a dash of British understatement: “Is it a pure coincidence that the laws of nature are such that life is possible? Might this not be an important clue to the nature and destiny of humanity?” 7
Those two questions formed my roadmap as I sought fresh answers concerning how and why physics so precariously balances life on a razor’s edge. I already knew that an increasing number of scientists and philosophers have been following the clues to their own conclusions in recent decades, including “some who are innocent of any influence from a conventional religious agenda,” in the words of physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne. 8
“It is quite easy to understand why so many scientists have changed their minds in the past thirty years, agreeing that the universe cannot reasonably be explained as a cosmic accident,” said Walter Bradley, coauthor of The Mystery of Life’s Origin. “Evidence for an intelligent designer becomes more compelling the more we understand about our carefully crafted habitat.” 9
For instance, the once-skeptical Paul Davies, the former professor of theoretical physics at the University of Adelaide, is now convinced that there must be a purpose behind the universe.
“Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact,” he said in his book The Mind of God. “I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.” 10
Saying that “many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument,” cosmologist Edward Harrison has come to this conclusion: “The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design.” 11
The eminent astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle put it this way: “I do not believe that any scientists who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars.” 12
That observation, and others like it from Hoyle, prompted Harvard astronomy professor Owen Gingerich, senior astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, to comment: “Fred Hoyle and I differ on lots of questions, but on this we agree: a common sense and satisfying interpretation of our world suggests the designing hand of a superintelligence.” 13
Oxford-educated John Leslie, who catalogues many anthropic examples in his eye-opening 1989 book Universes, said he believes that if ours is the only universe—and there are no scientific data proving any others exist—then