Following Denyse O’Leary, I referred earlier today to the curious but, on reflection, not surprising messy nature of the “magic” numbers that rule our universe and made the cosmos possible from the inception of physical existence at the Big Bang. This incredible fine-tuning forms one thread in Stephen Meyer’s upcoming book Return of the God Hypothesis. It’s remarkable, as even atheists admit.

Christopher Hitchens was caught on camera (I don’t think he was unaware he was being recorded) admitting how noteworthy it is. Günter Bechly came across this on YouTube, adding, “Looks like it was still from his healthy days.”

Hitchens concedes, “I think every one of us [meaning, champions of atheism] picks the ‘fine-tuning’ one as the most intriguing” of the arguments for intelligent design. He says, “You have to spend time thinking about it, working on it. It’s not trivial. We all say that.”

He also recalls a poignant story of a conversation with Richard Dawkins. Hitchens imagines “converting” the world to atheism. If he succeeded, with just one holdout left to go, he would leave that single religious individual to his faith. Dawkins, interestingly, indicated that he would not. Perhaps this tells you something about the difference between the humane atheist and the fanatic.