“Suppose we went on a mission to Mars…

…and found a domed structure in which everything was set up just right for life to exist. The temperature, for example, was set around 70o F and the humidity was at 50%; moreover, there was an oxygen recycling system, an energy gathering system, and a whole system for the production of food. Put simply, the domed structure appeared to be a fully functioning biosphere. What conclusion would we draw from finding this structure? Would we draw the conclusion that it just happened to form by chance? Certainly not. Instead, we would unanimously conclude that it was designed by some intelligent being. Why would we draw this conclusion? Because an intelligent designer appears to be the only plausible explanation for the existence of the structure. That is, the only alternative explanation we can think of–that the structure was formed by some natural process–seems extremely unlikely. Of course, it is possible that, for example, through some volcanic eruption various metals and other compounds could have formed, and then separated out in just the right way to produce the “biosphere,” but such a scenario strikes us as extraordinarily unlikely, thus making this alternative explanation unbelievable.”

Robin Collins (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. He has graduate level training in theoretical physics and has written over thirty-five substantial articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics in philosophy of physics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind. He is one the world’s leading experts on the fine-tuning of the cosmos for life and its philosophical and theological implications, and is currently finishing two books on the topic: one that carefully explicates the physics and cosmology behind claims of cosmic fine-tuning and one that carefully works through the potential implications of the fine-tuning evidence.