What is your Verdict?
In every courtroom, jurors are asked to render a verdict based on the evidence. In criminal cases, the burden is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In civil cases, it is simply “more likely than not.”
I now ask you to sit as jurors in the greatest case of all. The questions are these:
Is there evidence for the existence of God?
Based upon that evidence, is it more likely than not that God exists?
Contrary to popular slogans, the issue is not the absence of evidence. The issue is whether the evidence is sufficient. I submit that the universe does not whisper but shouts design.
I. The Cosmic Lottery and the Illusion of Chance
Imagine your neighbor buys a single Powerball ticket (odds: 1 in 292 million). Now imagine he wins not only that jackpot, but every lottery on Earth at the same time. The odds are so astronomically small that no one would shrug and say, “Well, stranger things have happened.” We would rightly conclude: the game was fixed.
Yet this picture is child’s play compared to the odds of a life-permitting universe. Life depends not on one jackpot but dozens of them—all hitting simultaneously. The alignment of cosmic constants is so fantastically improbable that “luck” is no explanation.
The issue, then, is not a lack of evidence. It is our willingness to admit that evidence of design is staring us in the face.1
II. The Astonishing Precision of the Universe
A. Gravity’s Large Ratio (N)
The electromagnetic force is about:
N≈1.24×1036N \approx 1.24 \times 10^{36}N≈1.24×1036
times stronger than gravity between two protons. That’s a 1 followed by 36 zeroes.
Analogy: If every grain of sand on every beach in the world represented one possibility, you would need not one Earth, but a trillion-trillion Earths covered in sand to match the scale of that number.2
If gravity were much stronger, stars would burn too quickly. If weaker, stars would never ignite. In either case, life would be impossible.
B. The Cosmological Constant
The cosmological constant (Λ), which controls the expansion of the universe, is fine-tuned to about 1 part in 10^120.
Analogy: Suppose you had a dartboard as wide as the observable universe. Hitting any spot would be easy. But now imagine a target the size of a single atom hidden somewhere on that board. That would be an accuracy of ~10^80. And the cosmological constant? It is tuned 40 orders of magnitude tighter than that.
This is precision beyond comprehension.3
C. The Strong Nuclear Force
The strong nuclear force binds protons and neutrons. Calculations show that if it were just 0.5% stronger or weaker, stars would fail to produce carbon or oxygen in sufficient amounts.4
Analogy: It is like constructing a skyscraper where every steel beam must be placed with hair-width accuracy. Move one beam by the thickness of a fingernail, and the building collapses. That is the razor’s edge upon which chemistry stands.
D. Combining the Numbers
Sometimes people cite “1 in 10^500” as the odds of fine-tuning. In reality, that figure comes from estimates of possible universes in string theory, not from a neat multiplication of probabilities.5 Exact odds are unknowable without knowing how constants vary. What can be said with confidence is this: the set of life-permitting universes is vanishingly small compared to the set that are lifeless.
III. Aquinas and the Order of the Universe
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Fifth Way, argued that unintelligent things reliably act toward ordered ends. An arrow does not fly to its target without an archer. Likewise, natural laws do not guide matter with mathematical precision without a Lawgiver.
Modern science has only deepened the case:
The laws of nature are mathematically elegant.
They consistently act to allow stable matter and life.
And yet these laws have no intelligence of their own.
The inference is unavoidable: intelligence lies behind them.6
IV. Can the Multiverse Explain Fine-Tuning?
Skeptics often say, “What if there are infinite universes? If enough are rolled, one will look like ours.” This is the multiverse hypothesis.
But it fails:
No evidence. Not a single other universe has been observed.7
Pushing the problem back. What mechanism generates universes? What laws govern the generator? The question of order is not removed but relocated.
Finite trials don’t guarantee order. Mathematically, an infinite number of monkeys typing forever would eventually produce Shakespeare.8 But with finite monkeys—or finite universes—the chance of producing meaningful order is effectively zero.
Thus the multiverse does not dissolve design. It merely restates the problem in a larger arena.
V. The Rational Options
We are left with three possibilities:
Chance. The universe just “got lucky.” Mathematically absurd.
Necessity. The universe had to be this way. But no law compels these constants.
Design. The universe was intentionally set to permit life.
The only rational conclusion is design.
VI. The Sufficiency of Evidence
The claim that “there is no evidence for God” is not about facts but about perception. If one man won every lottery on earth in a single day, we would not call it “luck.” We would call it rigged.
And yet, the fine-tuning of the universe makes that scenario look tame. The evidence is not only present; it is overwhelming.
So, gentlemen of the jury, I ask for your verdict: The evidence of reason points not merely to possibility but to the existence of God.
Endnotes
Luke A. Barnes, The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 29(4), 529–564 (2012). ↩
Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers (New York: Basic Books, 2000), ch. 1. ↩
Steven Weinberg, “The Cosmological Constant Problem,” Reviews of Modern Physics 61 (1989): 1–23. ↩
H. Oberhummer, A. Csótó, and H. Schlattl, “Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe,” Science 289 (2000): 88–90. ↩
Michael J. Douglas, “The Statistics of String/M Theory Vacua,” JHEP 05 (2003): 046; R. Bousso & J. Polchinski, JHEP 06 (2000): 006. ↩
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.2, a.3 (Fifth Way). ↩
George Ellis, “Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology,” in Handbook of the Philosophy of Physics (2006), 1183–1285. ↩
Émile Borel, Probabilities and Life (1939).