Let me first summarise a number of ideas that we have covered that make it reasonable to believe in a transcendent creator and designer of the universe and the point and source of absolute moral values. What follows (Today and tomorrow) I have summarized from an interview with Dr William Lane Craig. If you want to digest the whole one hour interview, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5w4fBtOHME I would also like to recommend Dr William Lane Craigs web site : ReasonableFaith.org

Everything that exists has an explanation of why it exists: Mountains, people, trees, chairs and galaxies. Even numbers, sets and other mathematical objects have an explanation. It is impossible for them not to exist. Everything that exists has an explanation. The universe itself must have an external explanation. This cause would have to be something that is beyond the universe and therefore beyond space, beyond time, beyond matter and energy; a non-physical, immaterial spiritual entity which has brought the universe into being. The only thing that we know that could fit that kind of description would be an unembodied mind, a consciousness, a sort of transcendent consciousness without a body that brought space, time, and all of its contents into existence. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Things just don’t appear from nowhere. The universe had a beginning immeasurably long ago. Both philosophy and contemporary science support this idea. This leads us again to a transcendent being beyond space, beyond time, beyond matter and energy who has brought the universe into being. Time (God’s clock) began when the universe began, and contemporary cosmologists tells us that was about 14 billion years ago. (Don’t ask me how they know that – I think it is a leap of faith!)

What scientists have discovered is that from the very moment of the Big Bang, the universe was fine-tuned with literally an incomprehensible precision and delicacy for the existence of intelligent life such that if these constants or quantities had been altered by less than a hair’s breadth life would have been impossible and there would be no life of any sort throughout the entire cosmos. The question is: how do you best explain this appearance of design? Physical necessity would say the universe has to be this way. It must be finely tuned. But that is extraordinarily implausible because, you see, these finely tuned constants and quantities that we are talking about are independent of the laws of nature. They are not determined by nature’s laws. They are just arbitrarily put in at the beginning inexplicably. So, they are not physically necessary.

 Now somebody might say this is just due to chance, it’s just a lucky accident. But the problem with that alternative is that it has no appreciation of the fantastic odds that we are talking about here. For example, if the subatomic weak force had been altered by as little as one part out of 10100 – that is ten followed by one hundred zeroes – the universe would not have been life permitting. There is a dozen or more of these kinds of constants and quantities, all of which have to fall into this exquisitely narrow range of life-permitting values in order for the universe to be life-permitting. So, the idea that this happened just by chance is just infinitesimally probable.