Modern astrophysics has revealed something startling about physical reality. Specifically, that certain parameters at the beginning of the universe appear to be precisely “dialed-in” for the emergence of intelligent, interactive life. These finely-tuned constants and quantities—such as the initial inputs of entropy, the strength of the strong nuclear force, etc.—have become known as “anthropic coincidences” since the probabilities against them being precisely what they are have become increasingly difficult to explain without the aid, specifically, of intelligent design.
To give a few examples:
Entropy: Physicist Roger Penrose says this about the initial conditions of low-entropy (that is: useable energy) at the beginning of our universe: “In order to produce a universe resembling the one in which we live, the Creator would have to aim for an absurdly tiny volume of the phase space of possible universes—about 1/10^10^123 [one part in ten, to the power of ten, to the power of 123] of the entire volume, for the situation under consideration.”
Gravitational Constant: Conservative estimates hold if the force of gravity varied by anymore than one part in 10^50 [10 to the power of 50], the universe would have either immediately collapsed back upon itself, or exploded throughout its expansion — either way, making the emergence of life impossible.
Expansion Rate: if the cosmological constant (which determines the expansion rate of the universe) varied by anymore than one part in 10^120 [ten to the power of 123], the universe would have (again) either expanded too rapidly or too slowly for anything interesting to happen, including—and especially—the emergence of organic, intelligent life.
The sheer, utter precision of this fine-tuning—and the probabilities of these constants and quantities being what they are, versus the range of what they could possibly be—is too enormous to be reasonably attributed to chance. Normal chance events assume the intersection of some previous, intelligible state of affairs. Fine-tuning, however, occurs right at the very beginning of the physical universe, so chance just isn’t a live explanatory option.
Furthermore, there is nothing “necessary” about these initial inputs and quantities. Ultimately, there is an enormous range of potential variance. And yet, they just so happen to be precisely what they are. We truly are in a Goldilocks universe.
In fact, these anthropic coincidences are so startling in their improbability, they’re what eventually caused the formerly atheist physicist Fred Hoyle to admit the following: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion beyond question.”
In other words, the best (and arguably only plausible) explanation for the discovery of fine-tuning is what religious people have believed all along: the existence of a fine-tuner. Specifically, the existence of a transcendent and intelligent, ordering mind. Namely, God.
[Example of The Teleological Argument in a conversation]
The teleological argument offers a powerful evangelization tool, since it effectively diffuses the tension people often perceive between religion and science. Fine-tuning not only dissolves that tension, but shows the deep compatibility between modern science and the existence of God, while allowing people to avoid the often-cited evolution debate, which is often emotionally-charged. Evolution, after all, depends on a finely-tuned universe; a point which is worth emphasizing!