Fine Tuning Quotes

“Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics".

To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile.

Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life.”
― Paul Davies

“It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“In the discoveries of science the harmony of the spheres is also now the harmony of life. And as the eerie illumination of science penetrates evermore deeply into the order of nature, the cosmos appears increasingly to be a vast system finely tuned to generate life and organisms of biology very similar, perhaps identical, to ourselves. All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology - that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as a fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact.

Four centuries after the scientific revolution apparently destroyed irretrievably man's special place in the universe, banished Aristotle, and rendered teleological speculation obsolete, the relentless stream of discovery has turned dramatically in favor of teleology and design, and the doctrine of the microcosm is reborn. As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in the final days of the second millennium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished - the "defender of the anthropocentric faith.”
― Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe

“What several decades of research has revealed about Earth's location within the vastness of the cosmos can be summed up in this statement: the ideal place for any kind of life as we know it turns out to be a solar system like ours, within a galaxy like the Milky Way, within a supercluster of galaxies like the Virgo supercluster, within a super-supercluster like the Laniakea super-supercluser. In other words we happen to live in the best, perhaps the one and only, neighborhood that allows not only for physical life's existence but also for it's enduring survival.”
― Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home

“In 1992 came the first confirmed observation of a planet orbiting a star other than our sun.

We now know of hundreds of such planets, and few doubt that there exist countless others among the many billions of stars in our universe.

That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions—the single sun, the lucky combination of earth-sun distance and solar mass—far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings.

Planets of all sorts exist.”
― Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design

“Why does such fine-tuning occur? And the answer many physicists now believe: the multiverse.

A vast number of universes may exist, with many different values of the amount of dark energy.

Our particular hat containing zillions of universes, we happened to draw a universe that allowed life.”
― Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew

“The claim of fine tuning is subjective. As I stated before, no measurement in physics is perfect. The amount of precision we demand can be increased or decreased at our whim. We could have an approximate measurement that has a huge margin of error and call it finely-tuned if we so desire. Theists, in particular, have a lot of such desire. They so badly want God to be an indispensable part of our universe's creation, so they see finely-tuned constants.

They also tend to sweep under the rug the following fact: the vast majority of our universe is hostile to life, and they fail to consider that another hand in the proverbial deck might yield a better universe than ours, one teaming with life on every planet throughout the cosmos.”
― G.M. Jackson, Debunking Darwin's God: A Case Against BioLogos and Theistic Evolution

“Rather than being handed down from above, like the Ten Commandments, they [the laws of physics] look exactly as they should look if they were not handed down from anywhere...they follow from the very lack of structure at the earliest moment.”
― Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist

“Intelligent Design is an answer to fine-tuning that does not appeal to most scientists. The multiverse offers another explanation.

If there are zillions of different universes with different properties—for example, some with nuclear forces much stronger than in our universe and some with nuclear forces much weaker—then some of those universes will allow the emergence of life and some will not.

Some of those universes will be dead, lifeless hulks of matter and energy, and some will permit the emergence of cells, plants and animals, minds.

From the huge range of possible universes predicted by the theories, the fraction of universes with life is undoubtedly small. But that doesn’t matter.

We live in one of the universes that permits life because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to ponder the question.”
― Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew

“Our universe is what it is simply because we are here.

The situation can be likened to that of a group of intelligent fish who one day begin wondering why their world is completely filled with water.

Many of the fish, the theorists, hope to prove that the cosmos necessarily has to be filled with water. For years, they put their minds to the task but can never quite seem to prove their assertion.

Then a wizened group of fish postulates that maybe they are fooling themselves. Maybe, they suggest, there are many other worlds, some of them completely dry, some wet, and everything in between.”
― Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew

“Matter without any apparent life, i.e. abiotic matter, also supports our sustenance. Without Jupiter and Saturn orbiting out past Earth, life may not have been able to gain a foothold on our planet. The two gas giants likely helped stabilize the solar system, protecting Earth and the other interior, rocky planets from frequent run-ins with big, fast-moving objects. Sun and moon give us light and their pre-determined movements make our days and night liveable in terms of length and temperature. Due to the Sun and Moon’s gravitational pull, we have tides. Seas and rivers give us food and water. Likewise, forests, life in forests, mountains and bio-diversity together provide the ecological balance which helps in sustaining life.”
― Salman Ahmed Shaikh, Reflections on the Origins in the Post COVID-19 World

“In fact, this universe appears more epistemically probable given naturalism than it does given basic theism (BT).[12] In the words of cosmologists Hawley and Holcomb, "if the intent of the universe is to create life, then it has done so in a very inefficient manner," e.g. "Aristotle's cosmos would ... [have given] a much greater amount of life per cubic centimeter."[13] In fact, I've made the same point before:
A universe perfectly designed for life would easily, readily, and abundantly produce and sustain it. Most of the contents of that universe would be conducive to life or benefit life. Yet that's not what we see. Instead, almost the entire universe is lethal to life--in fact, if we put all the lethal vacuum of outer space swamped with deadly radiation into an area the size of a house, you would never find the comparably microscopic speck of area that sustains life.[14]
In other words, that we appear to be an extremely rare, chance byproduct of a vast, ancient universe almost entirely inhospitable to life is exactly what naturalism predicts, but not at all what BT predicts.[15]”
― Richard C. Carrier, Naturalism vs. Theism: The Carrier-Wanchick Debate

“I’ve been working really hard at fine-tuning my skills. Trial and error have been a great teacher for me. That’s something I didn’t quite understand how to utilize, to my advantage, when I was younger.”
― Robin S. Baker

“Trial and error is your best friend. It's all about perspective and your willingness to become better with every lesson.”
― Robin S. Baker

“There appears to be no end to the evidence of fine-tuning and design coming from scientific discovery.”
― Hugh Ross, Designed to the Core

“If a purposeful Tuner exists, it makes sense that the deeper our search into the features of the cosmos, the more evidence of fine-tuning this search will reveal. If no purposeful Tuner exists, then a deeper search will reveal less and less specificity and intentionality. A fine-tuner's attributes and purposes will become either increasingly clear or increasingly vague.”
― Hugh Ross, Designed to the Core

“My hope is that evidence for the exquisite fine-tuning observed at all astronomical levels, from the farthest reaches of the cosmos to the ground beneath our feet, arouses a profound sense of awe and wonder. My greater hope is that this awe and wonder will inspire readers to ponder the deep questions raised by a close-up glimpse of nature's unfolding story.”
― Hugh Ross, Designed to the Core