Let me preface my comment by pointing out that I’m quite the amateur when it comes to science. I know some things about astronomy/cosmology just from my own studies, but I haven’t taken a proper science course since my sophomore year of college, which was almost twenty years ago.

Having said that, I’ve always felt a random universe made more sense than a structured universe with rules and laws, especially in the absence of a creator/higher power. In fact, I recall a documentary in which Christopher Hitchens himself admitted that the fine-tuning argument was the most compelling argument that creationists frequently put forth. He rightly pointed out that a finely tuned universe doesn’t prove the existence of God or any other divine entity, but that you can’t just toss the argument out entirely without spending some time working on it and thinking about it.

As an agnostic, I’m content to wait until I’m dead to find out if there’s anything waiting for us on the “other side.” But from a purely scientific view, I find this topic fascinating because of the spiritual implications. If the universe is indeed random, the fine-tuning theory goes right out the window — at least, that’s how I see it. But if the universe is as orderly and structured as Einstein believed, we’re stuck with a really big question: how does an organized universe with its own set of rules and laws emerge purely by chance? That’s the question that has always fascinated me.