God - 1, Random Chance - 0

Sitting in physics class today, I was reminded of a concept learned in philosophy last year and on which a large part of the cosmological argument rests. Our physics teacher had us working on the infamous "interactive physics" packets, and we were running a computer program that simulated the orbits of three planets around a star. Our current unit of study deals with the theory of gravitation. In this computer simulation, it was necessary to adjust the distance of each planet from the sun and each planet's velocity (these being the two factors which affect gravity and the way a body orbits another). The usual result of our attempts to make the planets perfectly orbit the star was that they would either collide with the star and burn up or fly off into the vastness of space. No matter how many combinations we tried, we could not find the perfect one that would make all three planets perfectly orbit the star. Eventually the bell rang, and we needed to close the program and continue on with our school day.

So, no matter how many times we tried, we could not find the perfect combination of a.) distance from the star and b.) initial velocity of the planets to get them into orbit. We had problems getting three planets to rotate around one star without them either suffering a fiery death in the sun's flaming brilliance or freezing in the cold grandeur of space. There are nine planets in our solar system alone (ehh, well, give or take a few depending on which position you defend). I can tell you with much certainty, it would have taken us a very long time to figure out how to get nine of those things to orbit. There is certainly more than a single star that has planets rotating around it in our universe. Stars and planets removed, even stars and some galaxies orbit other celestial bodies. So pretty much there are probably billions and billions and billions of perfectly orbiting bodies in existence.

Now the question posed by all of this is that am I supposed to believe that all of these rotating bodies just happened to be the right distance away from the source of gravity pulling on them? They just all happened to be traveling at the exact speed needed so that they neither get sucked in by gravity or fly off again randomly into space? I think that takes a little more faith than I am willing to provide. If that is the result of random chance, I would sure hate to play poker with the universe.

There is a set of approximately 21 different numbers that govern the laws of the universe and that are so finely tuned that if they had been any different, either the universe would not exist or life in our universe would not exist (the anthropic principle). The atomic weight of the proton and the gravitational constant are just a couple examples of these highly important but often overlooked features of existence. The above example also illustrates this well. If earth were moving any slower than it is now, it would fall into the sun. If earth were moving any faster, it would fly off into space. Of course earth's distance from the sun plays a crucial role in this as well. Any closer to the sun and we would likely all burn up from heat (man, that would be what I call global warming). Any farther away and we would all likely freeze. Everything so perfectly exists as it does for no other reason than because it was made that way. The chance of the universe existing randomly and so it could be capable of supporting life at the same time is somewhere around the ballpark of one in ten billion...to the twenty-fourth power (now I really don't want to play the universe in poker). How anyone can claim to be a sound scientist and yet claim that existence exists by random chance is beyond my understanding. It takes more faith than I am capable of possessing.

The more rational and more factual understanding of the order of things must include some sort of intelligent designer. It is much more reasonable to believe in an omnipotent God whose ways and thinking are beyond our own than to claim that everything is an accident of near infinitely impossible proportions. So when it comes down to teaching faith versus science in school classrooms, I am pretty sure I know which side is which now. They need to stop teaching faith and start teaching some real science.

~Tribal