Atheists often promote the idea that the universe, the Earth, and human beings are not unique or special in any way, but are ordinary, meaningless natural byproducts of indifferent forces of nature. This is sometimes referred to as the principle of mediocrity. The best refutation of this is the extraordinary amount of fine-tuning of the laws and parameters of the universe that gave rise to human life. In other words, the universe is exactly the way it needs to be for you to be here, but the odds against that happening are staggering. The three explanations for this degree of fine-tuning are: chance, necessity, or design. In this lecture, I describe the laws and parameters of the universe that are finely tuned for human life and show that design is the best explanation for them.

1. THE FINE-TUNING
OF THE UNIVERSE
DR. SARAH SALVIANDER
Defending Christianity
February, 2018

2. “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of
the unfashionable end of the western spiral
arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded
yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of
roughly ninety-two million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue green planet
whose ape-descended life forms are so
amazingly primitive that they still think
digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

3. The Mediocrity Principle
The mediocrity principle
simply states that you aren’t
special. The universe doesn’t
revolve around you; this
planet isn’t privileged in any
unique way…
PZ Myers, biologist

4. The Mediocrity Principle
“...if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or
categories, it's likelier to come from the most numerous
category than from any one of the less numerous
categories.”
(Infogalactic entry on The Mediocrity Principle)

5. The Mediocrity Principle
Atheist demoralization:
• You aren’t special
• The world wasn’t created with you in mind
• You’re a meaningless byproduct of natural forces
• How could God be the reason for any of this?

6. Student responses to questionnaire:
• Feel small and insignificant
• No meaning in the universe

7. The Copernican Principle
you are here

8. you are here
The Copernican Principle

9. you are here
The Copernican Principle

10. you are here
The Copernican Principle

11. The Mediocrity Principle
The mediocrity principle used this way is
a naïve and childish viewpoint based on
the unimaginative idea that something
must be enormous or at the exact center
of the physical universe to be important
or remarkable.
Some astro lady

12. you are here

13. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet…
—Psalm 8:3-6

14. you are here

15. Two ways to approach this:
• Evidence for design of Earth and life on Earth
• e.g. Hugh Ross (Privileged Planet)
• See also Dr. Wilson’s “Rare Earth” presentations
• Evidence for design of the universe
• e.g. Luke Barnes (Letters to Nature and A Fortunate
Universe)
• Paul Davies (The Goldilocks Enigma)

16. Some of the finely-tuned aspects of the universe
• The laws of nature:
• Quantum regime – or no stable atoms
• Nature of electrons – or no chemistry
• Attractive nature of gravity – or no structure in the universe
• Short range of strong nuclear force – or no atoms
• EM force (likes repel; opposites attract) – or no atoms, no structure
• Cosmological constant – or the universe expands too quickly or collapses
• Primordial fluctuations – or no structure in the universe
• Low initial entropy – or no structure in the universe
• Nucleosynthesis – or no heavier elements for life
• Inflation – a fine-tuning problem either way

17. Some of the finely-tuned aspects of the universe
• Stars – synthesis of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen
• Forces and masses
• Mass of electron < mass of neutron – mass of proton
• Radius of electron orbit in an atom
• Energy of chemical reactions < energy of nuclear reactions
• Mass of electron / mass of proton
• Fine-structure constant (stability of proton, nuclear reactions in stars,
surface temperatures of stars)
• Dimensions of spacetime

18. An example – the cosmological constant

19. An example – the cosmological constant, L
Quantum field theory
predicts contributions that
are 10120 times greater than
the observed L

20. L is finely-tuned to one part in
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
or
one trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion trillion,
trillion, trillion, trillion.

21. Odds of winning the Powerball jackpot
Once: 1 : 292,000,000
Twice: 1 : 85,300,000,000,000,000
Three times: 1 : 24,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
You’d have to win the Powerball nearly 15 times in a row to approach
the same odds as L fine-tuning.

23. PRINCIPLE OF
MEDIOCRITY

24. Fine-tuning is not the
claim that our universe
is uniquely life-permitting,
but that life-permitting
universes are exceedingly rare.
Fine-tuning of the universe

25. If observers observe
anything, they will observe
conditions that permit the
existence of observers.
Anthropic principle

26. Fine-tuning is due to one of these:
• Chance
• Necessity
• Design

27. Chance?
Constraints on physical parameters:
Fine-structure constant: 10-5
Inflation: 10-11
Higgs vev: 10-17
Cosmological constant: 10-120
Fine-tuning of entropy: 1 in 1010^123
(10 to the power of 10123)

28. Fine-tuning of the universe
…our own universe is an extraordinary
place that appears to be fantastically
well designed for our own existence. This
specialness is not something that we can
attribute to lucky accidents, which is far
too unlikely. The apparent coincidences
cry out for an explanation.
Leonard Susskind, physicist

29. Fine-tuning is due to one of these:
• Chance
• Necessity
• Design

30. Necessity?
There is no requirement in any known physical
model of the universe that the constants and
other parameters of nature should be what they
are, which happen to be life-permitting.

31. Fine-tuning is due to one of these:
• Chance
• Necessity
• Design ✓

32. In fact, the universe is over-designed
It doesn’t need to be as big as we observe it
to be to have life
It could be the size of a single brain…

33. Who am I?
What am I?
Why am I here?

34. you are here

35. We expect 1010^123 more universes
that are just 10x smaller than ours
in a multiverse!
you are here

36. Multiverse to the rescue? No
• Not a falsifiable hypothesis
• Science-flavored, not science
• Well-supported modern cosmology does not predict a multiverse
• Some speculative models of the early universe predict a
multiverse
• Known physics à hypothetical physics à multiverse
• The multiverse hypothesis will always be untestable
• Doesn’t explain why we’re in such a “roomy” universe

37. Design is the best explanation
Designer must be:
• Purposeful
• Intelligent
• Powerful
• Transcendent

38. …what most people
call God

39. Summary
• (Some) atheists claim there is nothing special about the
universe, the Earth, or human beings
• But the universe is extraordinarily fine-tuned for human
life
• That fine-tuning is best explained by purposeful design
• God is a better explanation than the multiverse