Caramel Macchiato and Cosmic Complexity

Ordering a cup of coffee isn't as simple as it used to be. Tiny details must be straightened out before the barista can hand you your beverage. What size cup do you want? Do you want the stronger or the weaker brew? Room for milk?

It only gets more complicated from there. As a former Starbucks barista, I should know. Blending drinks is one quarter art and three-fourths science. The types and amounts of ingredients make drinks different from one another. So does the order in which the ingredients are incorporated. You could say designer coffee is an example of irreducible complexity.

One wrong detail can ruin a coffee beverage, no matter how small. Likewise, each element required to support life on Earth must be present and in the correct state. Every day at RTB I am amazed to discover more and more particulars that need to be in place for finicky advanced, carbon-based life to survive.

Not only does life require the right amount of liquid water, oxygen, nutrients, and resources, it also needs to inhabit a planet ideally situated in an ideal galaxy in an ideal universe. For example, features like the number of stars in the planetary system must be just-right in order to support advanced creatures. But not just any old stars will do for neighbors. They must have the right birth date, age, metallicity, orbital eccentricity, mass, luminosity change relative to speciation types and rates, and on it goes. In the coffee world, this kind of persnicketiness is on par with a grande, triple-shot, extra hot, completely wet caramel macchiato that needs to be remade three times.

Hugh Ross's book The Creator and the Cosmos lists 66 such vital features of the "galaxy-sun-moon-earth system," along with the probability that each parameter will fall into the required range for life. As Hugh points out, these statistics provide "evidence for…fine-tuning," rather than proof of random chance.

As with fancy caffeinated beverages, the plethora of ingredients for a life-friendly atmosphere must be exact. Of course, the fine-tuning doesn't stop with the environment. Life itself must be orchestrated to a tee, starting with the exquisite cell's design.