I’ve been thinking about writing another nonfiction book in the same vein as Divine Evolution and Counterargument for God. The tentative title of this planned new work is God or Good Luck? The difference between this new book and those first two books is that I don’t plan on quoting anybody else, only to cite their work and suggest to my readers that they should investigate on their own. No footnotes, or end notes, and no need for a bibliography. In my opinion, not only should you doubt everything I say and investigate it on your own, you should take that approach with anything you read, no matter who wrote it.
This time I plan to begin my argument at the beginning and take it straight through to the end in the most coherent manner possible, so the point I’m trying to make is so crystal clear and no one could possibly claim to be confused, not even my harshest critic (who skipped over most of the book he critiqued). Even the title of this proposed new book is pretty self-explanatory…the best explanation of “everything” or anything can be easily boiled down to a dichotomy of only two real choices: it’s either God or good luck. Any and every other potential answer can ultimately be shown to be an inferior (and inadequate) substitution for one or the other–whether that suggested alternative is claimed to be science, nature, multiverses, quantum physics, string theory, an invisible wizard who lives in the sky, or even a flying spaghetti monster. Every one of them is a form of good luck, or represents a god.
Absent a creator God, the existence of our universe becomes an enormously improbable event. In that scenario, we cannot say the universe has any reason for coming into existence. Before anyone tries to argue that my binary solution to the origin of our universe is a false dichotomy (meaning there must be a third explanation for the existence of the universe), but I cheerfully reply in advance that they couldn’t be more wrong (and there are gradations of wrong) and will use the remainder of this article as my best explanation why they’re wrong.
First, I’ll begin by stating two relatively simple facts in the same sentence: the universe exists, but the universe has not always existed. The first fact (the universe exists) is not really worth arguing, unless one is so biased against the idea of a supernatural Creator/God that one prefers the idea that we actually exist only in simulation, aka “The Matrix.” Personally, I tend to think that argument is silly, but I don’t want to belittle anyone who might think otherwise, especially if that person is an esteemed and famous scientist named Neil DeGrasse Tyson. However, the reader should also note that while Tyson insists that he can’t argue against the idea that our world is only a computer simulation that some kid has running in his parent’s basement, he doesn’t exactly argue for the idea, either. It’s kind of a weasel argument he’s making, to be brutally honest. And more importantly, it’s a losing argument, because a simulated environment is a manufactured (artificial) environment, which by definition requires a supernatural Intelligent Designer that we might as well call God.
It’s interesting to note that Tyson describes a childlike and childish god similar to the character “Q” from an episode of the original Star Trek series as the architect of his Matrix universe because that seems to reflect his rather condescending attitude toward what is clearly a superior form of intelligence. Tyson and I are both describing a mysterious entity with awesome powers far beyond our human comprehension. However, because Tyson’s god is not the most powerful entity in his “version” of reality, he has created an infinite regress where his god has an unexplained origin and limited powers. The god of Tyson’s Matrix isn’t even the most powerful entity in his own universe. Not much of a god, in my opinion. Conversely, my creator God has unlimited power and ability, and no superiors. As much as my atheist friends like to say “God did it!” as a joke, I’ve got to admit that it’s true. God created the universe. God created life.
Or, good luck did. Take your pick, but choose wisely.
Early in my career as a software developer I learned the KISS principle, an acronym meaning “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” The best, most elegant solution to any problem is the simplest. It might sound harsh, but it’s pretty good advice, although I suppose I could think instead Keep It Simple, (for) Herman because sometimes it helps to personify the lowest common denominator by giving it a name. Or, change “stupid” to “silly” if you prefer.
We’ve already simplified the problem to some degree by skipping the question of whether the universe is real or a simulation to focus on the more interesting question–if we accept the science showing that the universe had an origin, the next logical question becomes this: was the universe created by accident, or on purpose? Critics will want to argue those are not the only two possibilities, and my question in reply would be okay, so what is this third alternative? Another way of saying “the universe was created by accident” is good luck, although in reality accidents are quite often bad luck, at least as we perceive them. Accidents tend to create chaos, not harmonic precision. However, it would be intellectually dishonest to suggest there is no such thing as a “lucky break.”
Those who believe some variant of good luck created the universe are inevitably atheists, because nobody would believe in a God who never did anything, but unlike my atheist friends who don’t believe in a supernatural Creator, I do believe in good luck, but not luck on the order of magnitude to get a universe from nothing and life from inanimate matter simply because the perfect confluence of events happened to occur at just the right time, over and over and over again. Assuming that we accept on face value what science has accepted in regard to the origin of our universe, we should accept the scientific evidence called redshift (discovered by Edwin Hubble) and CMB (for Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson). Those two pieces of cosmological evidence is what elevated the Big Bang from hypothesis to theory, and that means we must discard any steady state (eternal) universe hypotheses in favor of the Big Bang. Every known piece of available scientific evidence supports the argument that our universe had an origin.
Something created the universe from nothing, and nothing in this context means not even a single oxygen molecule. Was this creative something God, or good luck? What other explanation could exist? If you insist on having the question rephrased because of the “G” word, okay–was the universe created on purpose, or by accident? The idea of a planned accident is oxymoronic by definition, so it isn’t really a viable third alternative. I’m sure someone will want to insist there must be some other possibility, and they are welcome to speculate what that might be in the comment section.
Really well-designed, complex plans allow for multiple variables, have well developed error correction processes that handle exceptions — not unlike that operating system known as our subconscious manages our all “trivial” motor functions that make life possible through biological processes we often take for granted such as breathing, processing food into energy, and our immune system. If we are to believe in luck, we have to believe in the sort of luck that can explain the existence of complex, sophisticated systems that appear to be designed for a specific purpose. One of the clearest signatures, or indicators of design, which strongly implies purpose, is the ubiquitous presence in nature of patterns such as Mandelbrot’s fractals or Fibonacci’s spirals, formed with mathematical precision on scales ranging from microscopic to inter-galactic.
The best evidence that our universe was created on purpose are fine tuning and inflation. Fine tuning refers to physical evidence that the special composition of the universe was made possible by the precise calibration of six individual cosmological constants, and even the slightest change to any of these fine-tuned values would have caused our universe to collapse before it ever formed. Physicist Sir Martin Rees identified these six “fine tuned” cosmological values, and Sir Roger Penrose calculated the statistical probability that those six numbers would be perfectly calibrated were at best only 1 in 10 to the 300th power, which is a miniscule fraction of a single percentage point. That same fraction represents the probability of good luck as the best explanation for the existence of our universe.
Inflation is the term used to describe a period of accelerated expansion that immediately following the creation of our universe, which physicist Stephen Hawking claimed was perfectly timed and executed so flawlessly that the slightest variation in start or duration, even one in a million-million, and the creation of our universe would have failed.
When humans typically play the odds, we like them to be in our favor. A fifty-fifty proposition is only a flip of a fair coin, and those aren’t great odds. If you ask someone how sure they are about something and they say “99 percent sure”, you feel pretty good about the probability that the person you asked was right, because they are expressing great confidence. Conversely, if that person said “a tenth of one percent sure”, you wouldn’t feel very good about the odds of success at 0.1 percent.
Problems like this are probably why Werner Heisenberg famously said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural science will turn you into an atheist, but God is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass.” If the scientists are right and our universe had an origin, it could only have happened by accident or on purpose.Good luck or God are the only two possible explanations for First Cause of the Big Bang. If the fine tuning math is right, the probability of good luck is extremely low. If inflation estimates are correct, the odds against fine tuning would get even worse.
The bottom line is if you believe in the sort of good luck required to create our universe from nothing, you should never go gambling in Las Vegas.
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