*I never understood why God received gender-based pronouns. God is neither male nor female, and it is certainly not a person—yet those who worship it subsequently brand It, denigrate it, with human character. You don’t do that for non-living entities, so why would a gender-neutral Creator need it?
Firstly, I credit Barr for his clear prose. Like Gould or Sakharov before him—or Bill Nye, for that matter—Barr has written quickly and cogently, explaining without condescending. And while, in the end, he falters, he does convincingly discredit (some of) those who would discredit him. For example, Barr saliently shows that the physicists who suspect God’s “hands were completely tied” in the creation of this life flub the basic understanding of God. As is inherent in its nature, God’s All Being would have simply worked another set of creation such that we would still be here, somehow, some way. God would have found a way.
As it is written with the scientific method in mind, I knew that the piece would follow a grand tradition of grating the line where scientists and deists have met since man first shouted “Eureka!”—the line Galileo trod, that Dawkins and his ilk now flout. It is the notion and the presence of the “God of the gaps,” the omnipresence that exists just beyond the grips of our scientific understanding. It began with weather: Rain, famine, drumming thunder all served as God’s communication, until we learned that they weren’t. God then moved on to and into geographic oddities, solar organization, material wealth, and, for some, America’s perceived providence. (In an odd nod to our ancestors, Bill O’Reilly recently claimed that we don’t know where the Moon came from, and thus that our “special place of being” was proven all the further.) These notions eventually—well, mostly—decomposed under the modes of science, and the God of the gap was pushed just a bit further into the ether.
In this piece, the suggestion of God—not proof, as Barr goes out of his way to illustrate—resides in the peculiarities and necessities of the sub-atomic world, which, extrapolated, end with your eyes, my feet, Ichiro’s swing, and Dubya’s smirk. Our existence, our recipe, requires very precise measurements—measurements with which we just so happened to have been endowed. The years are necessary. The deuterium is necessary. The proteins, and the Moon, and the troposphere were all necessary. Everything created us, says Barr. Everything was necessary. And it was, I suppose. Action, reaction, and all that—the slightest change, and this moment would be starkly different, if existent at all. Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is us. So it would seem.
Article comments
1 - duane
One of the best written science articles I have read in a long time. Very well executed. Educational and entertaining at the same time, without the usual lame analogies and implied "winks" at the nerdiness of it all. It's a fascinating subject, this fine-tuning. Although known and discussed for hundreds of years, more and more of the just-so aspects of the Universe are coming to light as research advances --- such as the Moon and its effects on evolution.
Muchos kudos to you for recognizing that not ALL possibilities need exist. There's a mathematical analogy: there is an infinite number of integers, but between each integer there is an infinite number of rational numbers not included in the set of integers. Between any two rational numbers there is an infinite number of irrational numbers. Uncountable infinities vs. countable infinities. In practice, countable means you can assign a unique label (or name) to each set member. People tend to think an infinite Universe, or an infinite number of finite universes, correspond(s) to the uncountable infinity --- that every possibility a la Twilight Zone exists. But maybe our existence consists of a finite number of finite Universes. It's hard to grasp.
2 - Mike
Barr is yet another in a long line of people who refuse to give up the notion of God. They are so emotionally attached to it that they ignore evidence, lack of evidence, and common sense in order to keep looking for reasons to support it.
Does a tree choose to drop a branch on a passing rodent? Do the Leonid meteors choose to attack Earth every year?
We are part of the universe. The only reason people think it was created for us is because we are here. Do they also believe lotteries are specifically designed for the few winners?
3 - ray hewett
The 'God of the gaps' argument is made and succeeds only because people don't take account of the idea of God being in all things, using all things, ie both what we understand and what we don't understand, to operate the cosmos.
4 - diana hartman
Barr's article was an interesting read especially with the strong start. It is a shame, as Michel notes, that Barr lost it there in the end. Alas, those citing perfections in the universe and/or strings of activity that brought humans about as proof of a divine creator conveniently forget to mention or even attempt to explain birth defects, pedophilia and Saved By The Bell DVDs.
5 - Heloise
Like this article. And I was given to wool gathering this week as it was Ken Wilber's BD and so I mused aloud about my connection with him and David Lane and philosophy. Lately Wilber has tried to answer a similar question without much success.
I like your conclusion too. You know what I think: the laws of the universe exist...it is we humans who do not exist. The laws are there minding their own business whether or not man can read the supernatural writing on the cosmic wall.
Heloise
6 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
"We might still be left with strong indications that the cosmos was made with us in mind, even if those indications do not add up to a proof. After all, the reasons that scientists like Weinberg, Dawkins, and Gould give for reaching the opposite conclusion are also not subject to proof."
And, yet, when someone presents a theory, the burden of proof falls on their shoulders NOT the skeptic's.
Seriously, how do know it wasn't The Flying Spaghetti Monster that created the cosmos in his image. I mean, we do have String Theory now & Spaghetti is rather "stringy", right? Hmmm....