As for the Earth itself (not the universe), it does appear to be fine-tuned for life. Being set at just the exact distance to not be too cold or too hot is something that I can't just take as a coincidence, considering the fact that mankind has yet to find any place similar to our wonderful planet. Indeed it is the "best one possible". This doesn't go to say that the universe doesn't have any other hospitable places that we just haven't run across yet or that the universe as a whole isn't an amazing creation in itself. I'd like to share a statement from a Professor Paul Davies that I found to be extremely thought-provoking.
Professor Paul Davies writes in The Mind of God: “The existence of an orderly, coherent universe containing stable, organized, complex structures requires laws and conditions of a very special kind.”
After discussing a number of “coincidences” that astrophysicists and others have noted, Professor Davies adds:
“Taken together, they provide impressive evidence that life as we know it depends very sensitively on the form of the laws of physics, and on some seemingly fortuitous accidents in the actual values that nature has chosen for various particle masses, force strengths, and so on. . . . Suffice it to say that, if we could play God, and select values for these quantities at whim by twiddling a set of knobs, we would find that almost all knob settings would render the universe uninhabitable. In some cases it seems as if the different knobs have to be fine-tuned to enormous precision if the universe is to be such that life will flourish. . . . The fact that even slight changes to the way things are might render the universe unobservable is surely a fact of deep significance.”
And then one more quotation from our science-focused magazine "Awake!" (which happens to be my favorite);
Professor Paul Davies writes in The Mind of God: “The existence of an orderly, coherent universe containing stable, organized, complex structures requires laws and conditions of a very special kind.”
After discussing a number of “coincidences” that astrophysicists and others have noted, Professor Davies adds:
“Taken together, they provide impressive evidence that life as we know it depends very sensitively on the form of the laws of physics, and on some seemingly fortuitous accidents in the actual values that nature has chosen for various particle masses, force strengths, and so on. . . . Suffice it to say that, if we could play God, and select values for these quantities at whim by twiddling a set of knobs, we would find that almost all knob settings would render the universe uninhabitable. In some cases it seems as if the different knobs have to be fine-tuned to enormous precision if the universe is to be such that life will flourish. . . . The fact that even slight changes to the way things are might render the universe unobservable is surely a fact of deep significance.”
And then one more quotation from our science-focused magazine "Awake!" (which happens to be my favorite);
Atheists, of course, have their counterarguments. Some shrug off the apparent fine-tuning in nature, saying: ‘Of course the observable universe is capable of supporting human life. If it weren't, we wouldn’t be here to worry about it. So there’s really nothing to explain. We’re just here, and that’s all there is to it.’ But do you find that a satisfying explanation for our existence? Another argument is that it will someday be proved that only one possible set of numbers can work in the equations that express the fundamental laws of nature. That is, the dials mentioned above had to be turned to the right settings for the universe to exist at all. Some say, ‘It’s that way because it had to be that way!’ Even if this circular reasoning were true, it would still not provide an ultimate explanation for our existence. In short, is it just a coincidence that the universe exists and that it is life-supporting?
