The cosmological constant

Peter’s Corner
I fitted another piece to an empty spot in my jigsaw puzzle, and marvelled at finding the only piece that perfectly fitted the shape and picture required for the empty spot. That reminded me how marvellously our universe is put together. It is like a jigsaw built not from cardboard pieces, but from physical and mathematical laws and numbers.
Did you know that scientists have discovered stunning coincidences between the values of some physical constants and the requirements for life? The numbers have amazingly exact values. This is called “fine tuning.” According to Michael Turner, famed astrophysicist, the fine-tuning of some of the constants is as unexpected as throwing a dart across the universe and hitting a precise one millimetre wide target.
One of those numbers is the “cosmological constant.” Some estimates based on observation put the number at about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 which is astounding! If the number were any different, the universe as we know it could not exist. (Also the theoretical values predicted exceed those based on observation by some 60 or 120 orders of magnitude.)
Whatever the value, it means that the jigsaw pieces of the universe fit together exactly. It means that both my jigsaw puzzle and the universe are designed, the one by mere mortals, the other by someone much more clever – God. The chance of either happening randomly is zero. A common atheist answer is that there are infinitely many universes (the “multiverse” idea) and one of them happens to be ours, and it happens to have the above value for the cosmological constant. But that has zero evidence, and no evidence is even possible, so the idea is unscientific.
It appears that atheistic faith believes in the existence of billions of unscientific unknown universes, yet refuses to believe in God and design in the known universe, despite great evidence for both.
Antony Flew, once the world’s top atheist philosopher, saw this fine tuning and now says there is a God. He said that “multiverse or not, we still have to come to terms with the origin of the laws of nature. And the only viable explanation here is the divine Mind.” I hope these words help you, as they have me, in your journey to surely trust the Creator. I gratefully acknowledge There is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese for background information for this article. ●
Peter Mikula is a mining engineer in Kalgoorlie who loves stargazing and talking with others about Jesus.