If there are infinitely many universes, could everything have arisen by chance?

No. Even in all the worlds one can imagine, the number of building blocks falls far short of what chance would need to produce the order of life. The simpler explanation is a Creator who made everything in due measure.

Life needs an order of unimaginable precision. That blind chance should produce this order is so unlikely that it can practically never happen. Some respond that the universe is infinite, or that there are countless universes. Somewhere, they say, the improbable must happen after all.

This answer sounds strong, but it does not carry far. Even in all the worlds one can imagine, the number of the smallest particles is limited. Count them all together and you arrive at an enormous number. Yet the number of attempts such a chance event would need is incomparably larger still. The gap between the two is so vast that one has to say honestly that it cannot happen this way.

In the end, those who hold this view are left with a strange sentence. Really we should not be here, and yet here we are. That is not an explanation, but an admission that the explanation is missing.

The Holy Qur’an offers a simpler answer. The verses above say that God created everything in due measure and that no flaw can be found in His creation. Whoever looks closely finds measure, order and harmony everywhere. These are the traces of a Creator who plans, not of a chance that wills nothing and knows nothing.

That we are here is therefore not a puzzle that could only be solved by endless throws of the dice. It is a sign that someone willed the world.