In last Sunday’s class we discussed the doctrine of God’s creation of the universe out of nothing. Within that discussion, the topic of the fine tuning of the universe came up. Scientists call this the Anthropic Principle. It is the idea that life on Earth can only be sustained by a mind-bogglingly intricate balance of forces and factors.
You can get an introduction to the Anthropic Principle here. The book below will give you a more thorough introduction.
The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery
Hugh Ross delivered a fascinating lecture titled Astrophysics Points to the God of the Bible (download MP3, 36 MB) that dealt with this topic.
One new angle he presented that I’d not heard before: the length of our day. An hour longer, and temperatures would skyrocket because of the extra sunlight we’d absorb. Now that’s global warming.
If our days were an hour shorter, in addition to the temperature impact, we’d have far more hurricanes and such.
Give the talk a listen on your drive in to work. It’ll blow your mind.