The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [72]
While random chance was insufficient to explain away the anthropic “coincidences,” perhaps there were other alternatives to the conclusion that the universe was the handiwork of a designer. It was time to put some of those to the test.
“What if there’s some undiscovered principle that makes the universe the way it is?” I asked. “Maybe the elusive Theory of Everything that physicists have been seeking for so long will turn out to require the parameters of physics to have exactly the values they do.”
Collins was unperturbed by the idea. “It wouldn’t bother me a bit,” he replied. “It simply moves the improbability of the fine-tuning up one level.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would really be amazing if this Grand Unified Theory—out of the incredible range of possibilities—managed to force all the fine-tuning dials to where they just happened to create a life-sustaining universe,” he said. “It would be like some predetermined law at the outset of the universe caused everything to fall into place so that when I came to the mountain, I saw a pattern of rocks spelling out welcome to the mountains robin collins.”
“So,” I said, “this wouldn’t destroy the argument for intelligent design?”
“Quite the opposite,” he replied. “It would amplify it, because it would show that the designer was even more ingenious than we first thought. As difficult as it would be to fine-tune the universe by adjusting all of the individual dials, it would be even more difficult to create an underlying law of nature that then forced all the dials into those specific positions. All that would do would be to make me even more in awe of the Creator.”
Some skeptics have attacked the fine-tuning argument from another direction, raising what has become known as the Weak Anthropic Principle. According to this idea, if the universe were not fine-tuned for life, then human beings wouldn’t be around to observe it. Consequently, they contend that the fine-tuning requires no explanation.
“You have to admit, there’s a certain intuitive appeal to that,” I said to Collins.
“I think John Leslie had the best answer to that,” he replied. “Suppose you were standing before a firing squad of fifty highly trained marksmen who were all aiming directly at your chest from a short distance away. You heard the order, ‘Ready! Aim! Fire!’ But you didn’t feel anything. You remove your blindfold and see you’re still very much alive. Not one bullet hit you.
“Now, you wouldn’t allow the skeptic to simply dismiss the situation by saying, ‘Oh well, if they had shot you, you wouldn’t be here to comment on the situation.’ No—the circumstances are still surprising and they would still demand an explanation. Did they conspire together to miss you? Was this a mock execution? And the same thing is true for the fine-tuning of the universe. It still demands an explanation. My assessment is that the best explanation is a designer.”
Despite Collins’s confidence, however, a more serious threat to the fine-tuning argument has been raised by some scientists in recent years. Many scientists would say that the so-called “many-universes hypothesis” looms as the most formidable challenge to the conclusion that the universe was crafted with artful precision by a transcendent designer. That, I decided, would be my next line of questioning.
THE METAPHYSICAL ESCAPE HATCH
Spiritual skeptic Martin Rees, who became a professor of astronomy at Cambridge when he was in his thirties and was named Astronomer Royal by Queen Elizabeth in 1995, could not ignore how the cosmic parameters are so incredibly choreographed to create a life-friendly universe. If the six numbers that underlie the fundamental physical properties of the universe were altered “even to the tiniest degree,” he said, “there would be no stars, no complex elements, no life.” 27
Declared Rees: “The expansion speed, the material content of the universe, and the strengths of the basic forces, seem to have been a prerequisite for the emergence of the hospitable cosmic habitat in which we live.” 28
One author nicely encapsulated