Category Archives: Recommendations

Fine-Tuning Video

Recommendations, Science, ,

This week I thought I’d share with you a great (and short!) video on the fine-tuning of the universe. Please click here: I think you will enjoy it.

The video shows how many important constants of physics (the video doesn’t say how many, but perhaps 31) are just about perfect for life, and that a small change in any of these constants would result in a universe without life. One example in the video (and in my book) is gravity. If the gravitational constant were a little bit stronger the universe would have collapsed in on itself. If it were a little bit weaker the universe would have expanded too rapidly and stars and planets would not have formed. How narrow is the range where life can exist? The video notes (I explain this on pages 76 and 77 of my book) that a change in the gravitational constant of one part in 1060 would make life impossible. That’s mind-bogglingly precise. It’s like shooting a rocket from Earth so precisely that it hangs in Earth’s gravitational field for billions of years, on the edge between falling back to Earth and escaping to space. To get 1060 marbles, you need a ball of marbles stretching 50 light years in each direction, past the Sun, past the Solar System, past dozens of nearby stars; a huge ball 600,000,000,000,000 miles in diameter. I’m told that Stephen Hawking developed the formula on which this calculation is based. What are the chances of blindly reaching into a pile of marbles 600,000,000,000,000 miles in diameter and picking out a specified, “marked” marble? Not likely, that’s for sure! Even Hawking admits this is “a remarkable fact”!

Design or accident? Next week we’ll look at the “God Theorem”; which proves you can’t try to explain this away with an infinite number of universes.

Thanks for reading.

From Nonbelief to Theism

Recommendations

Doug Ell’s telling of his personal journey from nonbelief to theism by following the evidence of science is a welcome antidote to the steady stream of distorted science from Richard Dawkins and the other ‘New Atheists’.

– Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of “The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery”

A Heart-felt Exposition for Design

Recommendations

Douglas Ell has written a well-informed, heart-felt exposition of the evidence for design in the universe. Having made the journey from skepticism to belief himself, he eloquently lays out his case in a manner that readers will find engaging, persuasive, and accessible. I recommend this book to anyone willing to listen to reason, no matter what their background.

– Dr. Ann Gauger, co-author of “Science and Human Origins”

The Compelling Story of a Young Scholar

Recommendations

Counting to God tells the compelling story of a young scholar’s loss of faith, and how the arguments for intelligent design helped him regain that faith. In the process, Doug Ell provides a highly accessible introduction to the evidence for design from physics, cosmology, biology, and other scientific fields.

– Dr. Stephen Meyer, Philosopher of Science and author of the New York Times best seller Darwin’s Doubt The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

Between Science and Spirituality

Recommendations

I highly recommend this thoughtful exploration of the relation between science and spirituality, two seemingly opposed descriptions of our world. Posed as a personal journey, Doug asks “How can we relate the descriptions of the spiritual and physical worlds?”  Doug takes on the biggest questions of our time: cosmology, the origin of the universe and the biochemistry of genetics in a relevant and accessible way.  Whether you agree with him or not, you will enjoy and learn from this book.

– Professor Peter Fisher, Head of the Department of Physics, MIT