…the universe is a very inhospitable place. As far as we know, there’s no other place in it that can support human life except this little dot of a planet called Earth.
Scientists have so far discovered 122 “anthropic constants”— conditions that had to be present in the universe for people to be able to live on Earth:
- The Earth had to be just so far away from the Sun in order for it not to be too cold or too hot. Our planet happens to be just the right distance away from our star
- The Earth had to rotate at just the right speed, 24 hours. If it took longer, temperature differences between night and day would be too drastic. If it took less time, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great
- There had to be just the right amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. A greater level would result in a runaway greenhouse effect (it would be too hot), and a lesser level would result in an insufficient greenhouse effect (it would be too cold)
- Jupiter had to be right where it is. Its gravitational field sucks away asteroids and comets that could strike Earth.
An astrophysicist named Hugh Ross calculated the probability of all these conditions happening by accident for any planet in the universe: Assuming that there are 10 to the 22nd power planets in the universe (that’s a 1 with 22 zeros after it), he said there’s just 1 chance in 10 to the 138th power (that’s a 1 with 138 zeros after it) that all these constants happened by accident for Planet Earth. That’s a stunningly high number: that number is higher than the number of atoms in the universe! (There are “only” 10 to the 70th power atoms in the universe.)
Think about that. Everything is made up of atoms; an atom is a million times smaller than the thickness of a human hair; the smallest speck that can be seen under a regular microscope contains more than 10 billion atoms. Imagine how many there must be in the universe. But this astrophysicist says there’s just 1 chance in a number greater than the number of atoms in the universe that all the constants necessary for life came together by accident for Earth.
In other words, it’s virtually impossible that all of these constants came into place by accident for Earth. The only alternative is that a Creator did it on purpose.
Reference: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, pp. 104-106
From: http://www.illustrationsforsermons.com/
The anthropic principle was formulated as a response to a series of observations that the laws of nature and parameters of the universe take on values that are consistent with conditions for life as we know it rather than a set of values that would not be consistent with life on Earth. The anthropic principle states that this is a necessity, because if life were impossible, no living entity would be there to observe it, and thus would not be known. That is, it must be possible to observe some universe, and hence, the laws and constants of any such universe must accommodate that possibility.
Image: Australia Post celebrated its 2015 Stamp Collecting Month (SCM) with the launch of the ‘Our Solar System’ stamp collection. The collection featured eight spectacular planets that orbit our Sun. Courtesy: https://australiapostcollectables.com.au