From Chapter 13 – Design or Happenstance? © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
Let’s go out on a limb and assume that the fine-tuning argument is sound (although it isn’t) and provides a strong case for the existence of a supernatural creator that actually did fine-tune the properties of nature. [The fine-tuning argument states that numerous properties and constants of nature have the precise values required for life to exist, and this is exceedingly unlikely to have occurred by chance.] Proponents of the argument assume this is the God of their religion. In the Western world this is predominantly the God of the Holy Bible. Without thinking it through, proponents imagine that dots have been connected between the fine-tuning argument and the God of the Bible. There are no dots connecting the two. There is, however, a formidable wall keeping them forever apart. The next two statements concisely summarize why this is so:
- The God of the Bible is untenable without special creation.
- Special creation and the fine-tuning argument are untenable together.
The Genesis six-day creation is vitally important when considering the nature of the God of the Bible because it explains the origin of everything in the universe, it is presented as literal truth, and the Bible is supposedly the infallible word of God. Adam and Eve are an indispensable part of the creation story. The unbroken string of begets from Adam and Eve to the Jewish patriarchs requires a world that is only a few thousand years old. The sinful nature of humans, emphasized throughout the Bible, is directly tied to Adam and Eve’s literal defiance of God. The Gospel of Luke places Adam in Jesus’ genealogy. Jesus taught about the Genesis creation and Adam, Eve, and their son Abel in literal terms. The apostle Paul preached literally about Adam, Eve, how death came to the world because of their original sin, and that Jesus was the second Adam. The Bible states clearly that God created us in his image. Hence, we are an inseparable part of his special creation.
It should now be evident that in no way did the God of the Bible fine-tune the creation of the universe, then wait for billions of years of cosmological evolution to pass before the required chemical elements, stars, planets, galaxies and habitable zones were available for the evolution of the simplist life forms, then go through a few billion more years of biological evolution, combined with the occurrence of numerous cosmic accidents that were needed to clear the way for our existence, only to then inspire a holy book for us that says everything in the universe was actually created only six thousand years ago during six 24-hour days of special creation, and inseparably link this book’s creation account to numerous other parts of the book, including many moral imperatives, and the teachings of his Son and his Son’s most influential apostle, and require that this fantasy version of creation be accepted as truth so the book can ostensibly maintain its integrity!
An avalanche of evidence has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Adam and Eve and the Genesis six-day creation story are myths. Modern cosmology contradicts biblical cosmology across the board. The fine-tuning argument is incompatible with the God of the Hebrew Bible and the God of the New Testament and also the God of the Qur’an. If the fine-tuning argument were a round peg, then Judaism, Christianity and Islam would be a trinity of square holes. However, the fine-tuning argument is compatible with the god of deism—a supernatural agent that initiated the creation of the universe and then allowed it to evolve without intervention.
