Grinding Gears?

multiple gears

 

I was talking with a friend recently, who works at a gear manufacturing facility. Our conversation led to the discussion of the tolerance level of fine tuning required to make gears that will mesh together. He said that most of the gears that they make, are manufactured with the help of computer programs that measure to the thousands of an inch. One thousands of an inch is an impressive display of tolerance level, in order for these gears to seat properly.

From there, our discussion moved to the  amount of fine tuning that it takes in order to have the universe that we do, and for life to exist.  The comparison of the precision of the gears compared to the fine tuning of the universe is much less to a  staggering degree. In order for us to be here, the tolerance on the gauges would have to be one in trillions and trillions and trillions…

It seems quite ironic that if we look at the construction of gears, we have no doubt that they are manufactured. They are the product of design, without question. Why is it that when the fine tuning of tolerance is multiple trillions of times more complex, many doubt that the universe was designed?

blueprint

It is also interesting that protein structures present in all living cells are in the manufacturing business. Many of the processes involved are vital for the cell (and us) to survive, require the construction of proteins. These proteins are made up of long amino acid chains that carry information in them that was designed by blueprints constructed by DNA. This information is then translated into a folding mechanism to transform these chains into a 3 dimensional object.  Hmm, sounds like a manufacturing process to me.

So, the dichotomy is obvious, gears are designed, proteins are not. How could that possibly be right?