Well, the answer is that the chances that the universe should be life- permitting are so infinitesimal as to be incomprehensible and incalcula- ble. For example, Stephen Hawking has estimated that if the rate of the universe’s expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed into a hot fireball.* P. C. W. Davies has calculated that the odds against the initial conditions being suitable for star formation (with- out which planets could not exist) is one followed by a thousand billion bil- lion zeroes, at least.** [He also] estimates that a change in the strength of gravity or of the weak force by only one part in 10 raised to the 100th power would have prevented a life-permitting universe.† There are around 50 such constants and quantities present in the Big Bang which must be fine- tuned in this way if the universe is to permit life. And it’s not just each quantity which must be finely tuned; their ratios to each other must also be exquisitely finely tuned. So improbability is multiplied by improbability by improbability until our minds are reeling in incomprehensible numbers.