Fine Tuning of the Universe - Lecture Series by Dr Gasser Hathout

Lecture 3: The Initial Conditions of the Big Bang | Part 1

This lecture begins the science portion of the series, and begins at the beginning – the Big Bang.  It is the first of four (lectures 3-6) which explore how special and precise the Big Bang had to be to allow a the production of a universe which can support anything resembling life as we know it.  The Big Bang was not just any old explosion!  It was very finely tuned.  In this lecture, we explore how precisely the initial speed of expansion of matter in the Big Bang had to be to allow structures such as stars and galaxies to form.

Fine Tuning of the Universe

The notion of Fine Tuning of the Universe is a set of recent and profound scientific discoveries -- spanning only the last few decades -- which has had an unprecedented impact on the debate about the relationship of science and faith. It stands as the strongest set of scientific arguments supporting the existence of God, and the notion of a purposeful Creation. It is a critical counter to a mental culture which tries to paint the picture that science has rendered the notion of faith obsolete.

What is Fine Tuning? To quote Luke Barnes, an astrophysicist at the Sydney Institute of Astronomy, it is the discovery that “Even the smallest changes to the laws of physics as we know them tend to make a universe which is completely unliveable. This is called the fine-tuning of the universe, and is frankly one of the most baffling facts in all of science!”

In this lecture series, we will explore some of these discoveries together, and see how they impact the debate about the relationship of science and faith.