Edwards says we cannot get our heads around how big the universe is. Matthew Cobb at Why Evolution is True corrects his numbers, which are out of date:
Here’s how astronomers breakout the visible universe within 14 billion light years:My argument is based on what Nicholas Everitt first wrote, but goes beyond it. The question Everitt broaches is whether, prior to the rise of modern science, we would expect to find this vast universe given a description of the Christian God of theism. We are to imagine asking what we would expect of such a God before the rise of modern science. What would we expect? Nicholas Everitt argues as follows:
Superclusters in the visible universe = 10 million
Galaxy groups in the visible universe = 25 billion
Large galaxies in the visible universe = 350 billion
Dwarf galaxies in the visible universe = 7 trillion
Stars in the visible universe = 30 billion trillion (3×10²²)
A new study suggests that 90% of the most distant (and therefore oldest) galaxies in the universe could be unseen, hidden by clouds of dust. That would mean that – assuming the same number of stars in each galaxy, and that older galaxies don’t deviate from this rule – that the number of stars in the visible universe would be 270 billion trillion or 2.7 x 10 to the power of 24).
Theism tells us that God is a being who is omnipotent and omniscient, wholly self-sufficient, with no needs, or lacks, or deficiencies of any kind. For reasons that are not entirely clear, God decides to create a universe in which human beings will be the jewel. Although he will have a care for the whole of his creation, God will have an especial care for human beings. He will give these creatures the power of free choice. Exactly what this power is, no one can agree...Because humans are the jewel of creation, the rest of the universe will be at least not unremittingly hostile or even indifferent to human flourishing. Even if the universe will not make such flourishing immediately and easily and painlessly accessible, it will make it at least accessible in principle for humanity at large. The question then to ask is: given this much information about God and his nature and his purposes, what sort of a universe would you expect to find? Which of all the possible worlds that God could create would you expect him to create, given this much knowledge of his nature and of his overall plan?I think Everitt's argument works. More importantly I have strengthened it quite a bit in chapter 24 of my book, Why I became an Atheist: Personal Reflections and Additional Arguments.
The description of God is so sketchy, and in particular the theistic hypothesis gives us so little information about his aims, that a large number of possible worlds are left equally likely. But among the more likely scenarios is a universe somewhat like the one presented to us in the story of Genesis. In particular, traditional theism would lead you to expect human beings to appear fairly soon after the start of the universe. For, given the central role of humanity, what would be the point of a universe which came into existence and then existed for unimaginable aeons without the presence of the very species that supplied its rationale? You would expect humans to appear after a great many animals, since the animals are subordinate species available for human utilisation, and there would be no point in having humans arrive on the scene needing animals (e.g. as a source of food, or clothing, or companionship) only for them to discover that animals had not yet been created. But equally, you would not expect humans to arrive very long after the animals, for what would be the point of a universe existing for aeons full of animals created for humanity’s delectation, in the absence of any humans? Further, you would expect the earth to be fairly near the centre of the universe if it had one, or at some similarly significant location if it did not have an actual centre. You would expect the total universe to be not many orders of magnitude greater than the size of the earth. The universe would be on a human scale. You would expect that even if there are regions of the created world which are hostile to human life, and which perhaps are incompatible with it, the greater part of the universe would be accessible to human exploration. If this were not so, what would the point be of God creating it?
These expectations are largely what we find in the Genesis story (or strictly, stories) of creation. There is, then, a logic to the picture of the universe with which the Genesis story presents us: given the initial assumptions about God, his nature, and his intentions, the Genesis universe is pretty much how it would be reasonable for God to proceed. Given the hypothesis of theism and no scientific knowledge [Emphasis is mine, John], and then asked to construct a picture of the universe and its creation, it is not surprising that the author(s) of Genesis came up with the account which they did. It is not that God would have had to proceed in the Genesis way, and it is not that every non-Genesis way would be extremely puzzling. There is in fact a wide range of possible universes which God could have created and about which there would not be a puzzle of the form ‘But how could a universe like that be an expression of a set of intentions like those?’ Nevertheless, we can still draw a distinction between universes which would be apt, given the initial hypothesis, and universes which would be inapt. The Genesis universe is clearly an apt one, given the theistic hypothesis; but a universe in which (say) most humans could survive only by leading lives of great and endless pain would be a surprising one for God to choose, given the other assumptions we make about him.
The question now to raise is ‘Is the universe as it is revealed to us by modern science roughly the sort of universe which we would antecedently expect a God of traditional theism to create? Is it an apt universe, given the admittedly sketchy conception we have of his nature and his intentions?’ The short answer to this is ‘No’. In almost every respect, the universe as it is revealed to us by modern science is hugely unlike the sort of universe which the traditional thesis would lead us to expect.
Nicholas Everitt, The Non-existence of God, pp. 215-16, seen in chapter 11 Arguments From Scale (pdf).
That's where someone can find my particular argument, which represents 2/3rds of that chapter. The best way to know what people would expect to find prior to the rise of modern science is to investigate what people thought of the universe before its rise.
Western believers used to claim God (or Zeus) lived on Mt. Olympus. But then someone climbed up there and he wasn't to be found. Then they claimed God lived just beyond the sky dome that supported the water, called the firmament. But we flew planes and space ships up into the air and found he wasn't there either. Believers now claim God exists in a spiritual sense everywhere. What best explains this continual retreat? Doesn't it sound more like the attempt to defend one's faith as science progresses, rather than progressively understanding what God is like? Dante's Divine Comedy shows this, most emphatically. Just look at how he described the heavens. Do some research on how popular his work was. Hint: it was so popular he is even called the "Father of the Italian language," more influential than Shakespeare was on the English language, and we know his influence was immense.
When saying the scale of the universe is not incompatible with an omnipotent omniscient personal omnipresent deity. The present scale of the universe is exactly what we would expect to find if such a God does not exist, whether I can convince someone of this or not.
Most arguments are convincing ones if the people hearing them have the necessary background knowledge. That is to say, most arguments only convince the already convinced. That does not make them bad arguments just because they cannot convince those who are not already convinced. Or else, there are probably no such arguments at all when it comes to the issues that divide us. Almost all of the arguments that convince people on these kinds of issues do so cumulatively. That is, people do not see the force of any of them until they see the force of them all. There is probably not a single argument that can bear the weight of being a convincing argument to Christian theists. So to judge Everitt's argument as if it must bear this weight is asking it to do the impossible.
Can we attempt to judge the strength of arguments like this anyway? Can we evaluate arguments like these based on how much force they have individually? And if so, where would Everitt's argument be placed on a scale of 1-10, with 10 having the most force and 1 having the least amount of force? I'm not sure we can even do this. Personal reasons are, after all, personal reasons. Just refresh yourselves with my AFI in the above link. For me this argument had a great deal of force as I was thinking about my former Christian faith, probably ranked 1.5 on that scale. Now if you imagine 1.5 as a really small amount of force, think again. Since there isn't an argument that would score a 10 let's say the most forceful argument would rank 3.0 on that scale. Come on, do you really think anyone atheist argument could be ranked higher? As I said, the case is cumulative whereby we add up the arguments before we come to reject faith.
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