Bradlaugh at Secular Right posts this marvelous video based on the Hubble Deep Field photo, but he draws from it an odd conclusion:
He writes:
I have heard Heather (MacDonald) say that she has never been afflicted with any musings about the significance of human consciousness, or the place of humanity in the universe. (I hope I am not misquoting her.) I can't say the same. Images like this fill me with wonder, with something quite close to terror, and with something considerably closer to despair.
They also of course make the notion of a loving god with a particular interest in humanity, seem pretty darn ridiculous.
Just how does the fact that the universe is huge make the idea of a personal God who cares about us ridiculous? Is God's concern for humanity somehow contingent upon the size of the universe? Does your love for your children depend on the size of your house?
Cosmologists have demonstrated that in order for life to appear anywhere in the universe - given that the universe began in a big bang - the universe has to be about as old as it is and thus as big as it is (since it's been expanding since its origin).
It also has to have about the precise amount of mass/energy that it does, in fact, contain. More or less matter and the universe would have either collapsed or blown itself apart long ago.
In other words, if God created the universe as a home for humans, and did so along the lines that modern cosmology has elucidated, then in order for us to exist on this tiny speck, everything else must be almost exactly as it is to a breathtakingly precise order of magnitude. In order to create us God had to create the whole universe, all 100 billion galaxies. They are there so that we can be here.
Like Bradlaugh, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer size of the world, but unlike him I feel the opposite of terror and despair. The thought that God cares so much for us that, like a man who lavishes everything He can upon His beloved, He fills the whole of space with marvels beyond our imagining fills me with a sense of confidence and awe.
HT: Hot Air
RLC
