9Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it 9Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” 10Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 11He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. 12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? 12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? God proves he is able to help because he is calculated in creation 1. PERFECT PLACEMENT Image courtesy of NASA / JPL Image Source: Osiris-Rex NASA spacecraft captures Earth-Moon image from nearly 63 million kilometers away 23.5 degrees Image Source: Osiris-Rex, NASA 1. PERFECT PLACEMENT 2. ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE Muana Kea Credit: Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii The Extended Groth Strip Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Davis (University of California, Berkeley) Name:Ursa Major Type:Milky Way Around midnight, (Sandra) Faber wrapped up her observations and we stepped out for a few minutes under the night sky. “I take comfort in the fact that it is a beautiful universe, and we belong here and that we fit,” Faber mused. “This is our home.” (Sandra) Faber, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was referring to the idea that there is something uncannily perfect about our universe. The laws of physics and the values of physical constants seem, as Goldilocks said, “just right.” If even one of a host of physical properties of the universe had been different, stars, planets, and galaxies would never have formed. Life would have been all but impossible. When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants— the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc.— that have precise values. Francis Collins Scientist The Language of God If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people. Francis Collins Scientist The Language of God That night in Hawaii, Faber declared that there were only two possible explanations for fine- tuning. “One is that there is a God and that God made it that way,” she said. But for Faber, an atheist, divine intervention is not the answer. “The only other approach that makes any sense is to argue that there really is an infinite, or a very big, ensemble of universes out there and we are in one,” she said. 1. PERFECT PLACEMENT 2. ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE 13Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? 14Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? 25To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. 26Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Author: ROBERT KRULWICH Interview: DAVID BLATNER Science writer David Blatner, in his new book Spectrums, says a group of researchers at the University of Hawaii, being well-versed in all things beachy, tried to calculate the number of grains of sand. Author: ROBERT KRULWICH Interview: DAVID BLATNER They said, if you assume a grain of sand has an average size and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly (and we're speaking very roughly here) 7.5 x 1018 grains of sand, or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains. Author: ROBERT KRULWICH Interview: DAVID BLATNER ...Get a Hubble telescope and a calculator, so now we can count distant galaxies, faint stars, red dwarfs, everything we've ever recorded in the sky, and boom! Now the population of stars jumps enormously, to 70 thousand million, million, million stars in the observable universe (a 2003 estimate), Author: ROBERT KRULWICH Interview: DAVID BLATNER ...so that we've got multiple stars for every grain of sand — which means, sorry, grains, you are nowhere near as numerous as the stars. 26Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Knows creation by name... Knows creation by name… Knows your every struggle... 27Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Knows creation by name… Knows your every struggle... 28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. God is Everlasting 29He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 30Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. God is Everlasting God is Empowering Luke 12.6-7 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. .