One of the arguments that Christian apologists love to trot out is the idea of a fine-tuned universe.
Christian author Eric Metaxas wrote a whole piece for The Wall Street Journal about it not too long ago.
The apologists say that the physics required for the universe and us to exist are so precise,
and changing any one of those constants would basically make life on this planet impossible.
If Earth were slightly out of orbit, we'd be screwed.
If massive Jupiter wasn't pulling asteroids into its own orbit and out of our way, we'd be in trouble.
If gravity wasn't as strong -- or weak -- as it is,
the whole universe wouldn't work right and we wouldn't be here.
Therefore, God must have set the whole universe into motion
just perfectly. Everything working according to his will.
There's just no way it could have happened like that on its own.
There are so many things wrong with this argument.
The simplest response is that, regardless of the impossible odds,
the truth is, if they really were impossible, we wouldn't be here right now contemplating the "miracle" of existence.
There's a famous analogy that author Douglas Adams used.
It's like a puddle in a hole, who thinks:
"Wow! This hole perfectly fits my shape. It's like it was made for me."
No! It's more like you found a way to fit into the hole.
Similarly, the universe wasn't created for us.
We evolved to fit the universe.
And if the parameters weren't right for us to exist,
then we wouldn't be here right now talking about it.
Let me offer a different way of looking at this.
Forget the universe. Just look at your own life
and how many improbable things had to happen
for your life to turn out as it did.
I remember auditioning for a competitive public speaking team in high school forensics.
And I made it, and that totally changed my life.
I still coach a forensics team today.
I mean, if I was sick that day, or I chose not to audition for whatever reason, my life would be very different right now.
Or what about when I was standing at a bus stop during college
and ended up striking up a conversation with another girl who was also standing there?
We ended up dating for two years, and that changed my life.
And of course, you have to think about the countless number of our ancestors meeting and mating,
and all the things that had to go right for you to be here today.
The one magical sperm finding the egg
and all the ways things could have gone differently.
Our lives are nothing but a large string of coincidences pulled together.
Each one seems incredible on its own
and it really would be impossible to predict it all in advance.
But you have to travel down some path.
It only looks "miraculous" in hindsight.
And we don't get to see what the alternatives could have been.
We only see the final result.
One last example:
get a deck of cards and shuffle them really well.
Then look at the order of those cards.
The odds that they would have been arranged in that way
is astronomically small, but it had to go in some order.
It's only weird if you ask yourself
why it had to end up in that way, as if there was some divine hand
guiding that order.
So, back to fine-tuning.
The universe works the same way.
If some of those constants were different,
it's true. We may not be here today; not as us.
But maybe some other planets and other life forms could have evolved.
Or maybe we would have adapted to different conditions.
Who knows?
But to say that the universe was fine-tuned just for us
requires this assumption that we're special
and that the universe was geared toward creating us.
It's a very arrogant approach to the world
and it's not based in any evidence.
Sorry. We're just not that important.
And you know what? If the universe really were fine-tuned,
maybe more of it would be hospitable to life.
It's not. Way more than 99% of the universe is a giant death trap for us.
The universe being fine-tuned is a silly argument.
And if anyone uses it,
it tells you far more about that person's flawed way of thinking
than it does anything about how we came to exist.
My name is Hemant Mehta and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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