Return of the God Hypothesis: Breakthroughs in Physics, Cosmology, and Biology Seeking Evidence for the Existence of God

by Stephen C. Meyer

even if we concede as a logical possibility that an immanent intelligence might explain the origin of life on earth (since such an entity could possibly precede it), the panspermia hypothesis does not explain either the ultimate origin of life in the universe or the fine tuning of the universe—to say nothing of the origin of the universe itself. Instead, if intelligent design best explains the fine tuning of the universe, then the kind of intelligence necessary to explain the fine tuning of the universe must in some way preexist or exist independently of the material universe. Indeed, any designing intelligence responsible for the cosmological fine tuning must have had the capability of setting the parameters and initial conditions from the beginning. Since both theism and deism conceive of God as having an existence independent of the material universe—either in a timeless eternal realm or in another realm of time independent of the time in our universe—both can account for (a) the origin of the universe in time (i.e., at a beginning) and (b) the fine tuning of the universe from the beginning of time. In other words, since both theism and deism posit the prior (either ontological or temporal) existence of a transcendent intelligent agent, the creative and causal act of such an agent in choosing to design the universe with a specific suite of life-permitting parameters would explain the origin of the fine tuning from the beginning of the universe.