(aka – How can we see God – Part 3)

I recently took a small troop of Trail Life boys and their parents on a campout at a nearby lake. We were blessed by one of the leader’s love of astronomy. As he began setting up his collection of telescopes, I wasn’t sure if they weren’t weapons-of-mass-destruction. By day we saw sun spots that could swallow our earth, and the radiating fingers of solar flare activity.  By night we saw several planets, the moons of Jupiter, and the rings of Saturn.  We saw the nearby stars, globular clusters, galaxies, and nebula. We talked about the vast distances that the light had traveled to arrive at our home. We talked about how our own solar system was moving between two spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.  We talked about how the Kuiper belt outside our solar system and the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter stabilized our own orbit.  We talked about how the arrangement of the large planets shields us from large asteroid collision. We have previously talked about how the mass of our planet is exactly what is needed to hold onto water vapor (atomic mass 18) but allow methane (atomic mass 16) and ammonia (atomic mass 17) to escape.  The moon also is precisely at the maximum mass that could yield a stable oscillation, but provide the maximum tidal motions. I could go on listing many more examples of the majesty and beauty  and fine tuning of the physical world, but instead I will reference a growing list of fine tuning features necessary for life on earth.

Some have leaned on multiverse discussions to explain that life eventually had to appear given an infinite number of universes.  Such arguments admit that they find themselves in a hole, and do not address the fine-tuning we see on our earth.  There are an estimated 50 billion trillion stars in the universe.  Based on our solar system, there could be 5×10²³ planets.  However, excluding the fine-tuning of the universe, the fine tuning features required for advanced life on earth still greatly exceeds this number of planets by 10¹⁰³¹ times.

Some have looked at the vastness of the universe and concluded that it seems too wasteful.  I say that God has shown us the extravagance of His love.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4)