Am I significant in the universe, or just an accident?
by Mike Poole
Am I significant in the universe, or just an accident?
Less than two meters tall and only lasting about 70 years — can we matter in a universe that is so big and so old, so dark and so cold?
Christians and others have argued both for and against our exclusivity in space. ‘Surely,’ say some, ‘God would not have put all His animals and plants on one planet, leaving all others empty.’ Other people regard life-as-we-know-it as unique.
Some who are unsympathetic to Christianity claim that if Earth is the only planet of its kind, life must have been an unlikely cosmic accident and can’t have been divinely planned. Others, equally unsympathetic, maintain that if there are other inhabited planets, Earth cannot be special or have been visited by God in the Incarnation (heads I win; tails you lose!).
But the fact remains that many people feel insignificant when looking up on a clear night. The psalmist, awed by what he saw, said, ‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars … what is man?’ (Psalm 8:3–4). He could have counted about 1,500 stars with his naked eye.
We now know that our home galaxy, the Milky Way, contains about 100 billion stars. And there are another 100 billion galaxies each of 100 billion stars! The numbers are impossible to imagine. The old Wembley Stadium could hold 100,000 people, but it is difficult to picture a million Wembleys – and that is only the number of stars in one galaxy. What about the other 99,999,999,999 galaxies?
The Goldilocks Effect
But some 30 years ago it was realized that if the constants of nature, like the gravitational pull, were minutely different, life as we know it could not have arisen. Like the story of Goldilocks in which Baby Bear’s porridge, chair and bed, were ‘just right’, so with these constants.
The existence of these ‘cosmic coincidences’ has been dubbed the Goldilocks Effect, although its more formal name is the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. To estimate just how small the differences in the constants would have to be for life not to have arisen requires a look at how, according to current thinking, we were created…
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bethinking.org – Am I significant in the universe, or just an accident?
Since the linked site won’t allow comments, I’ll post one here. We seem to be an accident. If you are satisfied with saying, “well, we don’t know the answer to the why questions, so god did it,” then this is a good apologetic for your own mind. But it shouldn’t convince anyone who doesn’t already believe or have a cursory knowledge of cosmology.
Eric,
Thank you for your comment. I honestly mean no offense here, but if I had a nickle for everytime I heard the ‘god-of-the-gaps’ argument I’d be a rich man today. You wrote that, “We seem to be an accident’, and I sincerely wonder how you’ve arrived at that conclusion– especailly since many atheist and agnostic scientists have even admitted that the universe ‘appears’ to be designed for order and purpose.
The case for Christianity is not simply a matter of Christian apologists and thinkers throwing up theirs hands and proclaiming, “We don’t know, so let’s just say ‘God did it'” If that is your impression, then I would speculate that you have not taken a very in depth look at the case for Christiany, which is a cumulative one: The evidence from design–in the universe, in biology, and in the uniqueness of our planet and it’s location in our galaxy; the uniqueness of man; the argument from objective morality; the case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead (the alternative explanations fall far short)and for the reliabilty of the New Testament.
I could go on and on as volumes of books have been written about thses evidences (and others) and you will find hundreds of articles on The Poached Egg (and elsewhere) written about them as well.
I would challenge you, Eric, to look hard into these things and come to an educated conclusion based on your own investigation rather than just listening to anti-theist propaganda about ‘the-god-of-the-gaps’.
Greg – I was referring to the linked article’s content, saying “If you are satisfied with saying, “well, we don’t know the answer to the why questions, so god did it,” then this is a good apologetic for your own mind.” I not trying to make a sweeping generalization about all believers.
Regarding the case for christianity, I am well-versed and familiar with the most popular, well-tested, and convincing arguments for god’s existence. They used to convince me, but after several years, they made less and less sense. As I was exposed to other thoughts about the world from other peoples and viewpoints, my own seemed to narrow and ignorant. I still feel this way about my former faith to this day, and am yet to hear an even mildly convincing argument for christianity, let alone god.
But even if the arguments from design (cosmology, biology), fine-tuning, uniqueness of man and morality were convincing to me, they still don’t get me to a god of christianity. At best, I would become like Antony Flew and become a deist. But I don’t find them convincing, as I said.
Once my faith was not the biggest and most important thing to me I was able to actually ask myself whether it was worth believing or not. Before that I could never really consider that it could be false. I would be troubled by something that seemed to argue against my faith like evolution and run to see what the answer was to that issue. I only looked to make sure there was an answer and then I felt ok about it. I was never very skeptical about the answers I was getting. I have taken the time to look again at them, to see how they fare, and it turns out they are only convincing to the already-believing brain.