I have some history with Mr. [Lawrence] Krauss. In an op-ed in 2014 for this newspaper called \u201cIs Science Increasingly Leading Us to God?\u201d\u009d I discussed the implications of a fine-tuned universe\u201d\u201dand stirred up swirling dust-devils of atheist outrage. Mr. Krauss attacked the op-ed in the New Yorker magazine with an essay called \u201cNo, Astrobiology Has Not Made the Case for God,\u201d\u009d dismissing the idea of a divinely ordered universe as sheer nonsense.<\/p>\n
How awkward. None other than Christopher Hitchens himself had taken the fine-tuned-universe argument seriously. In the 2009 documentary \u201cCollision,\u201d\u009d about his encounters with evangelical theologian Douglas Wilson, Hitchens says: \u201cAt some point, certainly, we [atheists] are all asked which is the best argument you come up against from the other side. I think every one of us picks the fine-tuning one as the most intriguing,\u201d\u009d adding that \u201cyou have to spend time thinking about it, working on it. It\u2019s not . . . trivial.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
If atheist activists want to be taken seriously, they must be willing to engage the facts. The fact is that Mr. Taunton has simply said that Hitchens late in life was \u201cnot certain\u201d\u009d of his atheism. Unable to tolerate this crack in the atheist facade, Mr. Taunton\u2019s critics reacted hysterically. The response lent credence to what many of us suspect\u201d\u201dthat atheists really do fear some facts, and, more than that, fear where those facts might lead.<\/p>\n