At Westminster, I’m leading us through a 3-part series called “Does God Even Exist? – The 1 Question That Changes Everything.” [Click here to link to a 45-second video intro.]

Each Sunday, I’ll present an argument for the existence of God. But since we only have a limited amount of time during my message (sermon), I don’t have time to respond to possible counter-arguments (or “pushbacks,” as I call them).

So, to deal with this, what I’m going to do is respond to some of the most popular pushbacks to the arguments for God’s existence in blog form the following week.

[For last week’s questions, click on the titles: Pushback Question 1 – If ‘something can’t come from nothing’ who created God? Pushback Question 2 – Doesn’t the Big Bang theory contradict what Genesis says about how long it took God to create everything?]

On September 24th for Part 2 I presented the argument from “design.” Basically it says that the universe, world and humanity are so perfectly designed, complex and beautiful at the same time, that they point to a divine Designer—to God. In fact, the complexity and beauty of the universe and world is so compelling, that it screams out against any argument which suggests we are here by chance and by a stroke of randomness. Theoretical physicist Paul Davies says that “the appearance of design is overwhelming.”

[To hear the full 22-minute podcast click here.]

In light of the argument for God’s existence from how amazingly designed everything is, here’s our third “pushback question.”

Our universe only appears to be designed. What if there are millions of universes and it just so happens that ours supports this kind of amazing life by chance?

This is not a new argument. It’s called the “multiverse theory.” And here’s how I (and others) respond.

The multiverse theory is an interesting idea. But here’s the thing. There is absolutely no evidence for it.

In Harper’s Magazine, M.I.T. Professor Alan P. Lightman goes out of his way to make this very point. He says that the arguments highlighting the design of the universe are so strong that some people have come up with a theory about a large number of universes, and that ours just so happens to be the one so incredibly fine-tuned to support life, even though there is no evidence to support it.

When you start making up theories with absolutely no evidence to support them you know you’re in trouble.

In fact, it takes more blind faith to believe in many universes (for which there is no evidence), than it does to believe that our universe was designed by a divine Designer.

Responding to this multiverse theory, cosmologist Edward Harrison says this: “The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes, or design that requires only one… Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument.”

The amazing complexity and fine-tuning of the universe is astounding. Davies says that the chance of our universe coming into existence like it is, is like a marksman aiming at a coin and hitting it. But the coin isn’t in the next room. It’s on the other side of the observable universe, 20 billion lightyears away!!!

This kind of evidience compelled the British philosophy professor Anthony Flew to change from atheism to belief in God in 2004. He said that, looking at the fine-tuning of life, biologists’ investigation of DNA “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved.”

Even Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist and the Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, marvels at the fine-tuning and sophisticated design of the universe. In his book A Brief History of Time, he writes:

“If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million millionths, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached its present size into a hot fireball. The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are religious implications.”

He thinks there are religious implications.

So do I.

There is simply no evidence that there are many universes, and that it just so happens that ours has produced this kind of life by chance.

The universe, world and humanity are so perfectly designed, complex and beautiful at the same time, that they point to a divine Designer—to God.