Hiding Behind Infinity

The Foolishness of the Age

In the debate between the pseudo-science of evolutionism and Christian belief one battleground is over what is called the "anthropic principle".  The idea is that the earth has and endless sequence of "just so" conditions that support human and other forms of life.  The physical structure of the world is precisely what it has to be in order to support life.  Without any one of these conditions, life would not be possible. 

Evolutionism insists that these "just so" pre-conditions and conditions for life are the product of random accidents.  But the more we learn about the number and intrinsic complexity of these pre-conditions, the more unbelievable the evolutionist hypothesis becomes.  This has been acknowledged by evolutionism and pagan cosmologists in a peculiar way, which we address below. 

But, first, let's consider some of the anthropic aspects of the material world.  Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey provide some examples:

Consider, for example, Earth's orbit. . . . If Earth were even slightly closer to the sun, all its water would boil away, and life would be impossible.  On the other hand, if Earth were only slightly farther away from the sun, all its water would freeze and the terrestrial landscape would be nothing but barren deserts.

And it's not only the landscape that is affected by the position of our planet.  The processes inside our bodies also rely on these hospitable conditions.  The chemical reactions necessary for life to function occur within a narrow temperature range, and Earth is exactly the right distance from the sun to fall within that range.  What's more, for all this to happen, Earth must remain about the same distance from the sun in its orbit; that is, its orbit must be nearly circular--which is in contrast to the elliptical orbits of most other planets in our solar system. 

Are these finely calibrated distances a product of mere happenstance?  Or were they designed to support life? [Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999), p. 62. Emphasis, authors'.]

The evolutionist position is that these are mere co-incidences, accidents, random "isms".  Colson and Pearcey provide some more examples of anthropicity:

For another example, consider the existence of water, that common substance we take for granted.  Water has a host of unique properties absolutely indispensable for life.  For example, it is the only known substance whose solid phase (ice) is less dense than its liquid phase.  This is why ice forms on the top of oceans and lakes instead of on the bottom, allowing fish and other marine life to survive the winter.  On the microscopic level, water molecules exhibit something called the hydrophobic effect, which gives water the unique ability to shape proteins and nucleic acids in DNA.  From a molecular standpoint, "the various properties of water are nothing short of miraculous," writes Michael Corey in God and the New Cosmology; "no other compound even comes close to duplicating its many life-supporting properties."  (Ibid., p.63)

Of course it's not just one condition of anthropicity that is at issue; it is that they are all interdependent.  The mutual interdependence of these factors exponentially lowers the probability of these occurring by chance.  Here is another "just so" condition:

The anthropic principle draws together a staggering number of "cosmic coincidences" that make life possible.  For example, the big bang had to have exploded with just the right degree of vigor for our present universe to have formed.  If it has occurred with too little velocity, the universe would have collapsed back in on itself shortly after the big bang because of gravitational forces; if it had occurred with too much velocity, the matter would have streaked away so fast that it would have been impossible for galaxies and solar systems to subsequently form. To state it another way, the force of gravity must be fine-tuned to allow the universe to expand at precisely the right rate (accurate to within 1 part in 10^60).  The fact that she force of gravity just happens to be the right number with "such stunning accuracy," writes physicist Paul Davies, "is surely one of the great mysteries of cosmology." (Ibid.)

Colson and Pearcey summarise anthropicity as follows:

The list of "coincidences" goes on and on.  It turns out that the slightest tinkering with the values of the fundamental forces of physics--gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces--would have resulted in a universe where life was utterly impossible.  The anthropic principle states that in our own universe, all these seemingly arbitrary and unrelated values in physics have one strange thing in common: they are precisely the values needed to get a universe capable of supporting life.  (Ibid.)

Funny that.  How do the atheistic cosmologists and evolutionists deal with the challenge of anthropicity?  The Unbelieving conjurers of chance feel the force of the problem.  A radical "solution" has been devised.  They have had to double down.  Anthropicity itself must be made a produce of chance.  But now its obvious that the probabilities are just so low they cannot be detected by an electron microscope.  What to do?  Well, let's postulate that there are an infinite number of other universes which exist.  If there are an infinite number of universes, even the lowest probabilities of something existing by chance cannot be ruled out.  But what is the evidence for the existence of these infinite number of parallel universes? Zippo.   They are just part of an artificial warranting concept, a speculation, to warrant the possibility of anthropicity existing in our universe by chance.   Here is one of the clearest exemplars in our day of the truth proclaimed in Scripture:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, has been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse. . . . Claiming to be wise, they became fools.  (Romans 1: 19-22)

The men and women feted as the most bright, the most intellectual, the most clever, the most wise, the spirit of genius in our age, reduced to such foolishness and desperate speculation.  And the rest of the chattering classes: the elites, the Commentariat, the scientists, the educators, the media, and the politicians  clap their hands, applauding the wonder of this nonsense.  What wonderful infinite clothes the emperor has.  How stunning!  How chic!

Another age had words for this kind of thing--words like superstition, fable, myth, and augury.