Imagine a row of dominoes. The first domino is the Big Bang, in which the universe came into being around 13.8 billion years ago. The next stone stands for the formation of the first stars, followed by the emergence of the sun, then the Earth, life, and finally human beings. Something must have knocked over the first domino — that is, begun the chain of existence.
This brings us to the decisive question:
What could have brought forth such a vast and complex reality?
Was it a blind, impersonal force? Pure chance? Or rather an almighty, consciously acting Creator? Let us find out together.
Was it a natural force?
We begin with the idea that the universe came into being through a natural force or some kind of energy that knocked over the first domino — that is, created the universe out of nothing.
Now, this idea has the following problem:
Forces do not create objects out of nothing; they act only on objects that already exist. Therefore a force depends on the existence of the universe itself and requires space, time and matter in order to act. Gravity, for example, can attract objects, but for that these objects must first exist. So if we go all the way back to the beginning, before time, space or matter existed, how could a force then have acted on nothing to bring everything into being? That is absolutely impossible.
Furthermore, natural forces are not capable of making decisions; they merely act in a predictable way once the universe exists. Since the universe came into being at a particular point in time, there must have been a decision that led to its emergence. The first cause thus decided to bring the universe into existence. Such a decision requires a will and a mind. Therefore the first cause cannot be a mindless force.
Was it pure chance?
Now imagine there were infinitely many universes with trillions of stars and planets. And it were simply chance that in our universe, after the Big Bang, the perfect conditions prevailed to create a system in which life could develop on Earth. Sounds like a plausible story, doesn't it?
First point:
Even if we assume that our universe is only one of many, the real problem remains: what is the ultimate source of this entire system of universes? It makes no difference whether our universe emerged from another one or simply arose within a larger framework (as is assumed in some models).
If there is an overarching system that brings forth new universes, where then does this system come from?
The question of the beginning therefore does not disappear. It is only pushed back one level and thus is not answered.
Second point:
Chance does not actually bring about anything. It is not something that causes things; it is merely a word we use to talk about how probable it is that something will happen — like flipping a coin and predicting whether it will land on heads or tails.
When someone claims that life is pure chance, what he is really saying is: “I don't know how it came about, but somehow it must have happened.” Yet that is not an explanation, it is an evasion. Nothing can arise without a reason, and everything can be traced back to an origin. It is precisely this origin that needs to be understood.
Therefore, assuming infinitely many universes to explain the fine-tuning of our universe is like saying that a complete dictionary came into being by setting infinitely many monkeys at typewriters.
Perhaps, over trillions of years, a monkey will by chance produce a flawless dictionary, but even then the decisive question remains: where do the language, the grammar, the monkeys and the typewriters come from? More attempts change nothing about this. The question of the origin is thereby not answered, but ignored.
Let us ignore the first and second points for a moment and instead ask ourselves: is it rational to believe that the fine-tuning of our universe and of life on Earth could be the result of random events? To answer this question, imagine the following:
Imagine you find a 500-page book that explains step by step how to build the fastest car in the world. It contains precise information about the materials required, the exact dimensions, and how the individual parts must be connected to one another.
Would you believe someone who claims that this book came into being without any intelligence, by chance? Imagine a person told you that millions of monkeys had, over billions of years, randomly tapped away at typewriters and that at some point, purely by chance, a monkey produced this book. Sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, thought by thought, built logically upon one another, without contradictions, with a deep understanding of physics and engineering.
You would never believe that, would you?
Such a thing can never arise by chance. Such a work is a clear sign of an intelligent designer. The information in this book is too specific, too complex and too well structured to have arisen without intelligence.
Now imagine a library with 1,000 books, each 500 pages long, all containing technical drawings and encoded instructions for various cars and machines.
Could pure chance, or something without intelligence, be the source of these 1,000 coded books?
Obviously not. But did you know that you carry such a library within you?
The library within you: your DNA
It is your DNA. It is like a vast instruction manual, a biological library that contains over 3.2 billion “letters” (base pairs) of coded information. If you were to print this out, it would fill 1,000 books of 500 pages each.
This code tells our body:
- How our eyes perceive and recognize light
- How neurons in our brain form connections in order to store memories
- How T-cells track down intruders in our immune system
- How our heart beats in perfect rhythm
- How our inner ear keeps our body in balance
- How insulin regulates blood sugar
- How our body maintains its internal temperature
- How our liver detoxifies harmful chemicals
- How our stomach produces acid and enzymes to digest food without digesting itself
- How our skin heals wounds
- How each cell finds its place in the body during development — for example, how a liver cell knows that it must not end up in our eye or brain
- How our DNA can be read differently in different tissues, so that the same code builds skin, bones and organs by means of gene regulation
- Even the process of human reproduction is controlled by this code: a sperm cell finds an egg cell, and as soon as it penetrates it, the egg cell sends out a chemical signal to block all other sperm cells, so that only one fertilizes the egg
- And much more
All these astonishing things are controlled by the perfectly ordered sequence of DNA letters. So here the question arises:
Could this vast library of coded, life-giving information simply have arisen by chance?
Absolutely not. The probability that 3.2 billion pairs of letters in our DNA should come together perfectly by chance to form this vast library of precise, vital instructions — which create and control every function of our body — is so astronomically small that it is simply impossible. Complex information never arises spontaneously out of nothing. It always comes from an intelligent author. Therefore DNA points to a Creator.
An unbroken chain of coincidences?
The claim that the universe and life arose purely by chance means that everything — from the first atoms after the Big Bang, through stars, planets and natural forces, to amino acids, the first living cell and DNA — is the result of an unbroken chain of pure coincidences that followed one another perfectly.
Imagine you had to flip a coin a thousand times, and every single time it had to come up heads, never tails. A single deviating flip would bring the whole system crashing down.
This is essentially what people are saying when they claim that the universe and life arose by chance without any plan or guidance — as if all the decisive conditions had lined up ideally, all by themselves, to bring forth life on Earth.
Let us consider just a few of these conditions that are supposed to have occurred by chance.
- The Big Bang had to have the perfect rate of expansion. Had it been too fast, no galaxies would have formed; had it been too slow, the universe would have collapsed before anything came into being.
- Gravity had to have exactly the right strength. Had gravity been stronger, stars would have burned too quickly; had it been weaker, matter could not have clumped together into stars, planets or galaxies.
- The nuclear force had to be precisely balanced. Had it been stronger or weaker, atoms would not have held together.
- The electromagnetic force had to be exactly right. Had it been stronger or weaker, it too would have made life impossible.
- The Earth had to form in the perfect place. Were the Earth closer to the sun, it would be too hot; were it farther away, it would be too cold, which would make life impossible.
- The tilt and orbit of the Earth had to be exactly right. The Earth's tilt of 23.5 degrees is the main reason for the seasons and is exactly right for life to flourish.
- The moon had to form at exactly the right distance. Had it been too close, the tidal forces would have destroyed the Earth.
- The sun had to be the right size to make life on Earth possible. Had it been too large, it would have had a short lifespan and an unstable energy output; had it been too small, it would not provide enough light and warmth for life to develop.
- The oxygen content in the atmosphere had to be precisely balanced. With more or less oxygen, life on Earth as we know it could not have developed.
We are speaking here of hundreds or perhaps thousands of precise conditions that had to be perfect in the universe and on Earth for our existence to become possible. The probability that such precise conditions should arise by chance, step by step, is so astronomically small that this assumption contradicts all logic and reason. It is not merely improbable, it is absolutely impossible.
Unless you would believe someone who claims that he flipped a coin a thousand times yesterday and that it landed on heads every single time, without any trickery.
The coin-flip analogy is actually misleading, since a coin has only two sides and so each flip has a probability of 50%, which is far too high. In reality, the probability of the events that led to human life is far smaller. So if we compare the universe to a game of chance, then it is not like flipping a coin, but rather like winning hundreds of lotteries one after another, without losing even once, and with only a single ticket each time. That is impossible even with unlimited attempts.
This means that we are not here by chance. No amount of time and no number of universes could have created this kind of order. The only logical and scientific conclusion is therefore that the universe was created by an almighty and all-knowing Creator.