In second grade, my teacher made a statement that literally shocked me to the core. I have not forgotten it after all these years. She said, "God so loved the Earth that he put the Earth just right from the Sun -- Not too far or the oceans would freeze over and not too close or the oceans would boil." This was an epiphany for me. I thought "That's right - The Earth IS just right from the Sun!" This was an amazing observation, my first exposure to an astronomical argument. I could see that there was some truth in her statement, since Mars is a frozen desert, and Venus is scorching hot. So the earth is in the Goldilocks Zone region of space, the right distance from the sun, just right for life.

But today, I can view my second grade teacher's statement from a different point of view. Today, astronomers have identified over 500 planets orbiting other stars, and they are all too close or too far from their mother star. Most of them, we think, cannot support life as we know it. So it is unnecessary to invoke God.

But now, cosmologists are facing this paradox again, but from a cosmic perspective. It turns out that the fundamental parameters of the universe appear to be perfectly "fine-tuned." For example, if the nuclear force were any stronger, the sun would have simply burned out billions of years ago, and if it were any weaker the sun wouldn't have ignited to begin with. The Nuclear Force is tuned Just Right. Similarly, if gravity were any stronger, the Universe would have most likely collapsed in on itself in a big crunch; and if it were any weaker, everything would have simply frozen over in a big freeze. The Gravitational Force is Just Right.

This begs the question of how many of the Goldilocks zones there actually are. If you begin to count them, you will soon realize that there are so many of these instances, it simply boggles the mind. The chance that our universe would be randomly placed in so many Goldilocks zones has been compared to a jet airliner being torn apart by a tornado and then suddenly reassembling itself by chance.

The paradox is: why does our universe reside in so many of these Goldilocks zones? Is it because God loved the universe so much that he chose to place it precisely in all these zones? Some theologians think so. They cannot believe that our universe is an accident. It almost appears as if the universe knew we were coming.