Victor Stenger is a physicist and philosopher at the University of Colorado. I strongly recommend his articles and books because they are a brilliant exposition of the case for atheism and scepticism. One of the subjects that he takes on is the 'fine-tuning' argument.
The argument roughly goes like this; the complexity and orderliness of the universe cannot possibly be the result of pure chance, surely there was a designer, a god, who purposefully designed the universe and life as we know. Surely natural causes are not sufficient to produce the wondrous universe in which we live.
Normally I have linked to web pages, but today I want to link to an article in portable document format (PDF). Stenger does an admirable job of taking on the fine-tuning arguments, and will let the essay speak for itself. However, I want to make one point here. If the universe's constants are fine-tuned, why is the overwhelming majority of the universe a vast expanse of territory which is inhospitable (positively hostile) to the emergence of life? Humans have only been on this planet for a tiny minority of the Earth's 13.7 billion-year history. The Earth has been bombarded with asteroids, undergone mass extinctions, with the majority of species that have existed being wiped out in cataclysmic events. And all this time, the all-powerful loving god just sat there and did nothing? What kind of god is this that is omnipresent and omniscient, yet just allows massive catastrophes and calamities to befall their purported creation? Worse still, when life's very existence is threatened, this designer does nothing in their power to stop extinctions or do anything to avert a catastrophe.
Quite a cruel, sadistic god if you ask me.
You can read Stenger's essay here.
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