Discuss the below:
Q: Analyze the Mark Mahin argument for the existence of God based on the flatness problem. From the big bang to actual and critical density of the universe.
One of the main problems of cosmology is what cosmologists call the flatness problem. This can be defined as the problem of why the universe's actual density was almost identical to the critical density when the universe began to expand. Matter and energy are two forms of the same stuff: mass-energy. The universe's actual density is the average amount of matter or mass-energy per unit of space. If the universe's actual density is greater than a particular density called the critical density, the universe will eventually stop expanding; if it is less than this density, the universe will expand forever. Both the actual density and the critical density change as the universe expands. From the fact that after more than ten billion years of expansion the universe has an actual density that is fairly close to the critical density, cosmologists conclude that at the time of the big bang the difference between the actual density and the critical density was amazingly small. Alan Guth of MIT has said that when the universe had an age of only 10-35 second (that is, at a time only a hundred billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after it began to expand) there was a difference of less than one part in 1049 between the actual density and the critical density. (The number 1 followed by 49 zeros is the same as 1049. One part in 1049 is a ten trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth.) Professor Paul Davies has estimated that when the age of the universe was 10-43 second the actual density differed from the critical density by no more than one part in 1060. Davies has said that if these two factors had differed by only one part in 1057 at that instant rather than one part in 1060, our expanding universe would not even exist; for the universe would have collapsed into oblivion after only a few million years. Cosmologists know of no reason why the actual density could not have been many times smaller or greater than the critical density at the beginning of the big bang, so there is a need to explain why the difference between them at this time was so amazingly small. . . .
Discuss the theological relevance of the flatness problem . . . I previously cited one scientist's estimate that at 10-35 second after the universe began to expand its actual density differed from the critical density by less than one part in 1049, and another scientist's estimate that when the universe had an age of 10-43 second this difference was no more than one part in 1060. It is generally recognized that there is no reason why the actual density could not have initially differed from the critical density by a factor of more than a million times, so it is hard to believe that such a close correspondence between the actual density and the critical density was due to mere chance. The most plausible way to explain this correspondence is to assume that God created the universe with an actual density that initially differed from the critical density by less than one part in 1040, because God wanted life to appear in the universe, and life probably would not have appeared if these factors had not been almost identical when the universe began. (I previously cited a scientist who said that if these two factors had differed by only one part in 1057 when the universe had an age of 10-43 second, the universe would have collapsed into oblivion long ago.)
Ref:Mark Mahin. 1985. The New Scientific Case for God's Existence. Boston, MA: Mindlifter Press.