From setting orbits straight and creating moons, to manufacturing magnetic fields, secular science has consistently used chance cosmic collisions and near-misses to explain the origins of a host of fine-tuned attributes. This strong reliance on lucky coincidences reveals a bias toward “methodological naturalism.”

Since the Big Bang story of the origin of the universe has been refuted by a host of external observations and internal contradictions,¹ secular science has been forced to postulate additional, exceedingly improbable events to keep it afloat.

The rapture of seeing Saturn's rings in a telescope for the first time has been enough to inspire many young people to become astronomers. Galileo called them a "most extraordinary marvel." In today's age of planetary reconnaissance, we now have close-up data and pictures beyond his imagination.

"Surprise effect" was a term used by information-theory pioneer Claude Shannon to indicate the presence of information. In a string of symbols, it's not surprising to find randomness or patterns produced by natural law. It is surprising, though, to find a message. The SETI program, for example, looks for just such an information-bearing surprise in radio waves reaching earth.

It wouldn't make much sense to brag about knowing the diameter of a steering wheel to five decimal places on a car headed the wrong way with an engine about to blow, would it? Neither is it sensible to talk of "precision cosmology" in a day when major upheavals are being seriously considered by astronomers.