The Case For a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God

Strobel travels to interview two scholars, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Wesley Richards, to learn about the emerging science concerning the suitability of Earth for both life and scientific discovery. Richards begins by challenging the notion of the Copernican Principle, the long-held assumption that earlier humans thought that the Earth was at the center of everything (in both position and significance) and that science gradually overturned that perspective. On the contrary, Richards shows that ancient and medieval humans consistently thought that the Earth was, if anything, the dregs of the cosmos, and that emerging science is actually now starting to show for the first time that Earth may, in fact, be in a privileged position with regard to its placement in the universe.

Gonzalez presents the concept of the “habitable zone” in which the Earth exists, both with reference to its position in the galaxy and in the solar system. Earth occupies a uniquely favorable position within the Milky Way Galaxy—not too close to the dangerous, radiation-filled galactic center where supernovae are common, but not so far out in the sparse galactic halo that heavy elements necessary for life and rocky planets would be scarce.