Couldn't we argue that there is an infinite multiverse, and that in that multiverse there will inevitably be a universe "finely tuned" to make life possible, no matter how unlikely that is as long as the probability is above zero, and that life will by definition observe itself to be in such a "finely tuned" universe because that's the only type of universe where life could exist to make observations? This argument has the benefit that it applies to the cosmological constant but not to the spelling out "made by God" scenario.
Sure, this works, provided that your multiverse is generating universes with different constants. You would have to worry about, as mentioned in the other comments, Boltzmann brains, but I don't have an idea of how large of a problem that would be.
My thinking is that: Think about his deck of cards/royal flush example. We know quite a bit about the process of drawing cards from a deck and calculate the probability of a royal flush. (Also it's irrelevant whether you draw cards once or twice. You don't need to sample because you know the actual distribution.)
But do we know anything about the process that generates these physical constants and/or the universe? Is there something like a uniform random number generator that produces these numbers? He seems to assume something like a uniform distribution and then says "oh look it can't be by luck" but that's not warranted. That's my first issue.
The second issue is that even if the universe is finely tuned, I don't see how god is the only or a plausible explanation. Maybe there are lots of badly tuned universes and this one happens to be a finely tuned one. Maybe there are other explanations.
You say things and make claims with a lot of confidence and certainty for an early 20-something whose views on many subjects are guaranteed to evolve over time, even ones you think you’ve already figured out.
Instead of factoring in that provisionality, you strut into contentious debates with the presumption that you will quickly ascertain the correct position, say “QED” and move on.
Incidentally this is a predictable formula for provoking engagement on social media: making strong claims about controversial issues with a level of confidence that other participants don’t think you’ve earned, but persuasive enough that they’re compelled to respond. Well done.
Your life experience thus far has probably been that you’re usually the biggest brain in a room, and you’re constantly noticing mistakes and deficiencies in the work of people who are supposed to know more than you.
This leads you to rate your own judgement very highly, and assume that when you notice something you think is wrong, if the options are
1. You’re just smarter / a more rigorous thinker than those other people who disagree.
2. Maybe there’s something you don’t fully understand yet.
I disagree with every counter-argument you raise here. The one that Im going to mention is your response to the measure problem as I believe this gets the most wrong. The measure problem isn't undermined by claiming that it " has the problem of stupendously misstating the physics behind much of fine-tuning", rather you stupendously misunderstand the problem. First, Collins himself took the issue so seriously that he completely modified the argument to use a different space than the space of all epistemically possible universes. Leslie similarly modified his version of the argument to be about something different. Of the responses available you choose to go with "at small scales, but almost exactly cancel out at large scales" I suppose you're getting your information from Luke Barnes here, but this is about the furthest thing from solid physics you can imagine, particularly when it pertains to what "life" is supposed to mean across all epistemically possible universes.
"It also misstates probability. The value of the constants can only be calculated across scales consistent with the basic standard model, and only a tiny slice of values consistent with the standard model produce complex structures" which makes your FTA worse and not better...
"It doesn’t matter the total percentage of the dartboard that is occupied by red, because the surrounding region is almost all white—hitting the tiny red dot is thus astronomically improbable" this is handwaving and a mistake. It's akin to saying "what are the chances the this bit of the Earths atmosphere contains any elemental hydrogen considering that The Earth contains very little elemental hydrogen!" -- In that case, it is clearly relevant that the vast majority of our solar system and the universe is elemental hydrogen. However, contrary to what you said about the measure problem stupendously misstating the physics, Collins has to make this move just because of how seriously the measure problem undermines his argument!
"One can also get their probabilities to nicely sum to 1 by taking a ~log prior across the values of the constants"
As with all of these things you make pithy statements like that about complicated mathematics and physics where what you should be doing is actually getting into the weeds and the details here. Take a single variable that varies over every value -inf to +inf and apply a uniform distribution, If we start with y = c (constant), taking log gives us log(c), which is still just a constant, the integral ∫_{-∞}^{∞} log(c) dx still diverges, taking the log doesn't help resolve the improper normalisation. Let's try varying it "only" over [0, inf) If our original variable is X with "density" c after transformation Y = log(X) the density of Y is given by the change of variables formula: f_Y(y) = f_X(x) |dx/dy| = c · e^y So, after the log transformation, our new "density" is exponentially increasing! This actually makes the normalisation problem worse, as ∫_{-∞}^∞ ce^y dy diverges even faster than our original integral.
It's not that I might not be wrong with my objections to fine tuning. It's not that you're incapable of understanding the points for and against these positions. It's that you confidently proclaim insanely controversial statements without mentioning any of the risky inferences and the multitude of assumptions involved! Please stop doing this. And if you're going to make statements about complicated aspects of theoretical physics and measure theory, don't just say simple sentences that obscure all of the complexity. Make everything as clear as possible, show your working, use diagrams, reference actual empirical data youre using. And stop talking about the intelligent people who disagree with you on these topics (many of whom are in fact physicists, statisticians and logicians who do understand the mathematics etc better than you) as "stupendously" misunderstanding their own fields. Consider that maybe you havent fully understood what you're arguing against and prove your worth in those domains before you go on to denounce them all in this way.
You must understand that the way you're writing is rage bait? Are you doing it for the engagement?
Ah yes, the famously successful strategy about writing rage bait for engagement about the measure problem. Are you joking?
I got the point about the Measure problem from talking with Aron Wall--an actual highly-respected physicist--as well as the paper by Hawthorne and Isaacs that I linked, as well as various other places including Barnes. I won't reply in much detail, because I have a lot of commenters and this comment is particularly long. You don't actually give a response to the argument you attribute to Barnes, beyond calling it not solid physicists. I must confess, what actual physicists say about it is more interesting to me than what you say.
I don't understand your response to the dartboard analogy. Conditional on the parameters being within the standard model range, the odds are ridiculously low they'd get the actual value. The point about life arising under different conditions are points I've addressed in other places and is also wildly implausible regarding the cosmological constant--if the world had no particles binding together, other life couldn't arise.
Regarding the log prior, I'm not a mathematician, and haven't performed the fancy math. However, I have read things from physicists making this point.
"This worry is profoundly misguided.43 It is unreasonable for
philosophers to dismiss the reasoning of physicists on the basis of
a misrepresentation of what the physicists say. Physicists do not
claim that the probability of life-permitting parameter values is
0. The reasoning that led to the judgment that the probability
was 0 was flawed and it’s inappropriate to ascribe such flawed reasoning to the professional consensus of a generation of physicists.
But for now we want to emphasize that the physicists simply do
not claim that the probability of life-permitting parameter-values
is 0. For example, physicists say that the cosmological constant
(which specifies the energy density of the vacuum) is strikingly
fine-tuned, that the odds of it having a life-permitting value were
roughly 1 in 10∧120. Physicists do not say that the cosmological
constant is maximally fine-tuned, that the odds of getting lifepermitting values were 0. Physicists did not come up with the number 1 in 10∧120 capriciously; the reasoning behind that number involves seriously fancy physics."
They, of course, elaborate on the charge in more detail.
I am not joking regarding the rage bait comment. The point is not that there's a lot of demand for actual obscure and tricky mathematical problems (which actually require mathematical skill to engage with), but that there is demand for pretending to be doing something deep, profound, scientific and cutting edge that requires none of those skills.
"Conditional on the parameters being within the standard model range, the odds are ridiculously low they'd get the actual value. The point about life arising under different conditions are points I've addressed in other places and is also wildly implausible regarding the cosmological constant--if the world had no particles binding together, other life couldn't arise"
(1) I do not know if "particles sticking together" is necessary for life (and neither do you)
(2) I do not know what happens if you vary the laws (why are they fixed) ( and neither do you)
(3) I do not know what is necessary for life at all scales, times etc. (and neither do you)
(4) I do not know what metaphysical stipulations we are building into our assessment -- in epistemic possibility space I can imagine all kinds of non-natural teleologies apart from whatever the metaphysics is in the actual world ( and neither do you )
(5) I do not know what is outside of the "white" circle such that I cannot tell you anything about how expected something is even if you can establish what's going on in the "white" circle ( and neither do you )
(6) If you don't know what you're saying about mathematics, don't say its obvious and mention it as if it's your own idea, cite people, get an intuition for what they're actually saying and don't actively endorse it if you don't understand it.. try to explain it!
Your point is assume this, and this, and this and this and this and this and this and then I get to go on making my confident proclamations about how I've got the whole universe in a little box with a bow on it all without doing anything except thinking!
WRT your edit inserting the link: yes approximately 3-5 Christian physicists have said a lot of stuff about the fine-tuning argument with varying degrees of responsible caveats through to pure ideological overconfident drivel (vis a vis a typical Benthams substack article!)
//(1) I do not know if "particles sticking together" is necessary for life (and neither do you)//
Ah yes, the very plausible suggestion that life might arise when no two particles ever interact. Perhaps SETI should next look for life in spare atoms found in the random recesses of outer space. Note, even if you have some credence in this being right, this will poorly explain the fact that we have complex life, which theism will still better explain.
//(2) I do not know what happens if you vary the laws (why are they fixed) ( and neither do you)//
See my response in the section "What if you change a bunch of constants at once?" https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-fine-tuning-argument-simply-works. Same point applies. The reason the laws are fixed is that the argument is being made from the constants, and you generally are supposed to hold stuff that doesn't favor either side in the background when evaluating an argument. Note that as Collins and others have argued (including me in the linked article) you actually can get a fine-tuning argument going from the laws.
//(3) I do not know what is necessary for life at all scales, times etc. (and neither do you)//
I agree! But you don't need to know what is needed for life to know that there are some conditions under which life can't arise (like all particles fly apart after a period of time orders of magnitude shorter than a millisecond).
//(4) I do not know what metaphysical stipulations we are building into our assessment -- in epistemic possibility space I can imagine all kinds of non-natural teleologies apart from whatever the metaphysics is in the actual world ( and neither do you )//
Yes, I agree that atheism can explain fine-tuning by invoking teleology. Of course, fine-tuning will then still serve to eliminate most kinds of atheism (those that don't involve teleology). If the odds of teleology are low given atheism then the evidence will favor theism.
//(5) I do not know what is outside of the "white" circle such that I cannot tell you anything about how expected something is even if you can establish what's going on in the "white" circle ( and neither do you )//
But in the dartboard case, it's still surprising that the red dot was hit. If there's a non-arbitrary epistemically illuminated formed by minimally varying parameters, then hitting a tiny region in that area is unlikely.
//(6) If you don't know what you're saying about mathematics, don't say its obvious and mention it as if it's your own idea//
I didn't imply it was my own idea! Wtf??? Now, the point that you can take a non-uniform measure over probabilities is, in fact, obvious! How the details work out is something I'm not fit to adjudicate, but fortunately I don't have to, as physicists have performed the calculations! https://philpapers.org/archive/BARARL-3.pdf
It's funny that you accuse me of relying objectionably on armchair speculation, when this argument wasn't figured out from the armchair. It comes from findings in physics. If you have substantive issues with the things said by Isaacs and Hawthorne (not physicists, but good friends with Aron Wall, a very qualified physicist who I'm sure checked their work, and they say similar things in their unpublished manuscript written with Wall) I'd be happy to hear them.
_Ah yes, the very plausible suggestion that life might arise when no two particles ever interact. Perhaps SETI should next look for life in spare atoms found in the random recesses of outer space. Note, even if you have some credence in this being right, this will poorly explain the fact that we have complex life, which theism will still better explain._
Maybe they should, I don't know because I don't have a clear idea of life. Maybe the reason they're not doing that is because they have lots of evidence for carbon based life so thats a good space to start looking...
__See my response in the section "What if you change a bunch of constants at once?"__
Maybe, sceptical it will resolve my issues given how you typically handle these things.
__But you don't need to know what is needed for life to know that there are some conditions under which life can't arise__
I disagree, particularly in this case which is a really weird one (we're not looking for dogs or bears) I do not know. If you hadn't replied the way you did to the first question you might have found out more about some of the kinds of life I was thinking of, but instead of doing that ...
So no, this doesnt help. I can't do that in this case -- you do it, but that's because you're incautious.
__Yes, I agree that atheism can explain fine-tuning by invoking teleology. Of course, fine-tuning will then still serve to eliminate most kinds of atheism (those that don't involve teleology). If the odds of teleology are low given atheism then the evidence will favor theism.__
Maybe, but not a problem for total evidence. But we haven't even got that far because I don't think it's either an update anyone has to do, or an update where we can assign values...
__But in the dartboard case, it's still surprising that the red dot was hit__
Not to me, it's completely unsurprising given it's a gerrmandered story concocted by Collins to make this point... where else would it hit?
_ How the details work out is something I'm not fit to adjudicate, but fortunately I don't have to, as physicists have performed the calculations!_
If you don't understand what they're saying, as you've shown by not telling me what's wrong with the proofs I gave you that you can't do that, then you're in no position to adopt this view as your own.
Definitely rage bait imo. He knows he is writing for a mostly secular audience. I found here by way of ACX for instance. So he knows he could bait people with these “look physicists discovered proof of god in the 80s” type posts.
This is such a wildly implausible kidn of psychoanalysis. I mean, just look at the stats of my philosophy of religion posts vs my other posts. I get way more views from the other posts. The reason I write about POR is that I think there are true and important takeaways.
I think there's a major issue with your section about electrons in love and the four ways God could create. If God is all-powerful, and therefore could create suitable agents under any conditions, then we should think he's equally likely to bring about any possible combination of physical laws; no particular arrangement "counts in favor" of creation more than any other if he's capable of sustaining life to whatever degree he'd like in any conditions. But if that's the case, then we should assume the laws of our world would be basically randomly distributed across that entire probability space. And that means we should be just as surprised that we landed in the "capable of sustaining life without direct divine intervention" sliver as we would be if we were naturalists, right?
In other words, the fundamental oddity here - that the universe could have been all sorts of different ways, but it just happened to end up with the very specific set of laws that allow for life to develop naturally - seems equally surprising to the atheist and the theist, right? There's no reason we can see why the laws would have to be life-permitting if atheism is true, but there's also no reason we can see why the laws would have to be life-permitting (in the naturalistic sense we're considering) if theism was true either, since God has just as much reason to create us in the 99.99...999% of worlds where they aren't. I think this is an important asymmetry with the "Made by God, with love" case, because there, there *would* be some constraints on how exactly God could get that message across; the plausible candidates for communication are limited by our features as already-created human beings. The actually analogous case would be if we could learn things literally any possible way, but I'm not even sure what that would really mean or how to evaluate any sort of probabilities in response.
I agree with this. If observing fine-tuning is evidence for theism, then counterfactually observing that the universe isn't fine-tuned must be evidence against theism in that hypothetical world. So... would that be true? What would it look like to observe non-fine-tuning?
One way would for it to be the case that the fundamental laws of the universe seem non-mathematical, hence immune to any sort of principle-of-indifference-type arguments over "natural" parameter ranges à la Collins. But this sort of (practically magical) universe seems like it would be distinctly evidence *for* theism. Alternatively, it could have turned out to be the case that the fundamental laws were still mathematical, but vastly different so that most values of the constants were life-permitting. However, why think there are any such laws that are a) simple (and thus remotely low-prior), and b) not merely "cheating" in simplicity by e.g. simulating every possible computable universe in parallel? *Those* would clearly be evidence against theism. But if there aren't any - that is, if atheism-supporting, coarse-tuned universes are incredibly complex and low-prior - then learning that we aren't in such a universe can't be much evidence for theism.
I think a lot of fine-tuning people would want to say that we should consider all of the universes where life is simply impossible under the "not-fine-tuned" bucket, but I personally don't think you should assign significant prior to your own non-existence.
If we discovered the laws of physics weren't finely-tuned, but were simple and natural without parameters that fall in a narrow range, that would be evidence for theism. If it turns out that there are no laws like that, then fine-tuning wouldn't be additional evidence for theism but would serve to establish that a life-permitting universe is very significant evidence for theism (After all, a life permitting universe would then require fine-tuning!)
I think you should have a high prior in your non-existence. Most ways for the world to be wouldn't have anyone exist.
>If we discovered the laws of physics weren't finely-tuned, but were simple and natural without parameters that fall in a narrow range, that would be evidence for theism.
Sorry, I'm confused. Do you mean "that would be evidence for atheism" here?
>then fine-tuning wouldn't be additional evidence for theism but would serve to establish that a life-permitting universe is very significant evidence for theism (After all, a life permitting universe would then require fine-tuning!)
(Here I'd invoke the sort of anthropic consideration I mentioned in my previous comment and in the next paragraph here, that it would be completely neutral, since we should've begun with zero prior in non-life-permitting laws.)
>I think you should have a high prior in your non-existence. Most ways for the world to be wouldn't have anyone exist.
The traditional metaphor or thought experiment to convey the informal idea of priors is something like "what would you believe, and with what credence, if you woke up in a black box with no memories, but your full philosophical reasoning abilities." But it doesn't seem in such a scenario that I'd doubt my own existence, given that it's me who's the one figuring out all the appropriate credences. Now, I don't think this thought experiment should be taken too literally as the meaning of priors, but it still does seem like some other motivation for a contention like yours is needed. It feels really bizarre to imagine that I'm allowed to have a high prior in something like the Axiom of Choice or the consistency of Peano Arithmetic but not my own existence due to the difference in the former's metaphysical necessity - as if my a priori level of credence in modal claims about mathematics is significantly higher than my a priori level of credence that I exist!
There are some ways of trying to motivate the principle through firing squad-type thought experiments, but I don't think they go through.
> Creating a finely-tuned universe that naturally produces agents
How do we know that our universe "naturally" produces agents? We have no clear explanation for why we're conscious. Indeed, you describe elsewhere how consciousness is super weird. Given that we're working off of a sample size of 1, we have no idea how our world fits on the scale of weird/will "naturally" produced agents. If God really can just make things be conscious, we might be the equivalent of electrons falling in love compared to another universe of much more complex beings.
> If God really can just make things be conscious,
This is an angle I hadn’t considered. God presumably can bring about conscious beings however She wants. She could make electrons debate the nature of Her Mind for all we care.
But just to be cute, She chooses to secretly fine tune this universe’s physical constants, “guide the evolutionary process” and get conscious beings that way.
It’s all a bit too much for me to take in. I need to consider my place in the universe.
The only good counterargument to the fine-tuning argument that I know is “if Universes with all kinds of different laws naturally arise, and only a tiny fraction are suitable for life, then living beings will necessarily be in that tiny fraction so they should not be surprised that they are”.
The big problem with that argument is the notion that a multiverse makes Boltzmann brains more likely than universes capable of life.
There are many more reasons to reject the Boltzmann brain hypothesis.
You should read Wolfram on the topic. It doesn’t take much to create complexity in the form of computational universality, which is what you need to get a multiverse: within that multiverse the conditions suitable for life will be rare, but a multiverse itself does not need to be very fine-tuned as a whole.
Conway’s game of Life has the opposite lesson than you think. He found the best set of rules of a given small level of complexity and they are already enough to build long-lives self-replicating computation-universal structures. It’s not known how much more complicated a cellular automaton would need to be for such structures to be likely to evolve from random initial conditions, but he did it in 2-D, there is plenty more complexity available in 3-D and that’s just for cellular automata and not the more complicated kinds of physics that we have.
So, I agree with your conclusion but not with the argument for it. The reason I think arguments based on abduction--explaining stuff about the world--are better is just that I've looked at many of them and find them more persuasive.
Well, I most arguments for God rely on facts about the world, though these facts are often very broad and general. E.g. they'll often mention that the world changes. A changeless world or timeless static state could perhaps exist sans God.
Now, regarding more general arguments like the contingency argument or ontological argument, if they're right, God is necessary, and thus a world oculdn't exist without him.
I think the empirical arguments for God are typically the worst because it brings together an audience of people who are not only unfamiliar with philosophy, but with the scientific field in question as well.
For example - the cosmological constant is in part meaningful because it is part of Einstein's field equations for the evolution of the universe. It is counterbalanced by the stress energy tensor, of which G, the gravitational constant, is a part of. This means that the lifetime of the universe is determined primarily by the mass energy content, the strength of G, and the cosmological constant - for which we don't know whether or not it is fundamental or composed of smaller measurable constants - like the stress energy tensor.
Now, when it comes to evaluating fine tuning, with this background evidence held constant, we are met with a variety of questions. Why did God choose to fine tune the cosmological constant and G? Why not make the equation simpler, or more complex? God made the cosmological constant stronger than G and the stress energy tensor - this means the universe will end in a big rip. Why didn't he make G stronger or add more matter to the universe so it will end in gravitational collapse? Why not set up the values to counterbalance each other so we have a steady state universe that will never end? And which one of these options is more or less fine tuned than the other? What would a fact of the matter look like here?
BB's engagement with physics impoverishes him in his ability to grapple with (or even consider) these questions because the infornation necessary to prompt them is not part of BB's background knowledge. It also isn't part of the background of many members of his audience, so I'm left with the psychological question of what those people get out of this sort of content. A cosmology textbook would set many people curious about fine tuning straighter than most of these surface level takes on it, but I guess I'm the turbo autist for wanting to understand physics and not just unqualified people's interpretations of it.
(1) Must depend on knowledge about our universe in some way
or (2) It doesn't.
If 1, then that's what you want. If 2, then we're arguing that God is logically or metaphysically necessary, or something like that. Not sure whether that conflicts with your 3—that depends on what it means for God to create things, which is pretty much asking what existence is, which is above my pay grade. (I'm also not sure whether your 2 is true—theoretically, someone could argue that God exists, but not require that the world be created by him.)
What about anthropic arguments? Those technically use (my) 1, since the fact that you exist is knowledge about the universe.
If the universe were finally tuned for life then we would likely see a universe in which life thrives in environment optimized for life's survival.
That is the opposite of the universe we see in which the vast majority of time and space is inhospitable to living things. Even in Earth's atmosphere, the only place in the known universe with life, living things constantly struggle for survival up against countless threats so dangerous that the majority of living things do not even mature to adulthood.
Yes it is unlikely for abiogenesis and then biological evolution to result in us, but unlikely does not mean impossible. The complete lack of optimization of the universe for living things makes the chance hypothesis significantly more likely than the fine-tuning argument in my view. I wrote this to fully explain my view;
"Suppose that physicists uncovered the initial state of the universe, and discovered that it was arranged to spell out the words “made by God, through love,” in every language."
This hypothetical points to evidence for God not because it is improbable, per se, but because it points to a contradiction. The natural laws we observe suggest that chaotic motion of stuff, be it waves in a pond or galaxies spinning around, doesn't form into neat, angular patterns like human language.
The universe existing as it does with life isn't a question of measurable probability. "If the values were set in a different way..." implies that there are values somewhere being set. We don't know this.
Wouldn’t an even greater level of fine-tuning be required for the conditions to be right to create a perfect being who created the incredibly fine-tuned universe we live in? I still don’t get how any of this shrugs off infinite regress.
No, because God doesn't have parameters set to a precise range. He has one core property--being perfect or being a limitless consciousness or something like that--set to infinity. No tuned parameters needed!
“Set to infinity” doesn’t even make sense given infinity is a procedure rather than a value and you can’t “set” values in God. Though I know you like to imagine yourself doing so! Naming a single attribute with a word “perfect” does not mean you count “one complexity unit” in your explanation… Gods causal powers and the infinite degrees of freedom within His psychology make Him an infinitely complicated explanation. Why does he do this rather than that? You don’t get out of it by saying “God does everything” either because he can (epistemically) be imagined to not…
I don't think this is the right way to pose things, as the theist would say that God is necessary, not created based on conditions.
>who created the incredibly fine-tuned universe we live in
If your argument is that fine-tuned results require fine-tuned causes, that isn't true. What we mean by fine-tuned constants is that they seem quite improbable if we attempt to explain them by simple probabilistic models. We do not mean to say that they remain extremely improbable after consideration of our suggested explanations. This can be seen easily in the case of someone who is cheating at poker or something—the results look fine-tuned, but actually have a simple explanation.
As I read you, you are saying:
Fine tuned things are unlikely (definitionally).
Fine tuned things require explanations that are at least as unlikely.
Therefore, our proposed explanation, God, must be at least that unlikely.
Porting that over to cards:
50 royal flushes in a row is fine tuned.
Let's propose the explanation: he cheated.
Well, the explanation must be at least as unlikely as the probability motiving us calling it fine-tuned. (this is the erroneous step)
So the chance that his royal flushes were due to cheating is less than or equal to the probability that he got those by chance.
Once we've ported it over, it seems quite clear that this is absurd. Does that make sense? Or do you dispute the comparison? I hope I'm reading you correctly.
I know nothing about philosophy. I’m what you folks call a midwit and no doubt misrepresented myself. I’ll try again:
I don’t deny that cheating is the likeliest explanation for 50 straight royal flushes, and I firmly believe that complex, unlikely results can arise from simple, common processes (though that seems to suggest to me that god isn’t really necessary as an explanation for anything). I just don’t see how proposing god as the wellspring of all things doesn’t end up leaving you holding the bag of then proposing the wellspring of god.
First, I think the usual position is that nothing is the wellspring of God, but exists necessarily, from himself. I'm sure people do a lot of technical philosophy about this, but I don't know it.
Second, if we supposed that weren't the case, then our problem wouldn't necessarily be about fine-tuning any more. It was this latter thing that I was trying to address, mostly, in that previous comment.
>though that seems to suggest to me that god isn’t really necessary as an explanation for anything
The suggestion there, I think, would just be that God is the simple explanation. But sure, if you can find some other reason to explain the fine-tuning, then there's no longer a fine-tuning argument to be made any more.
I appreciate the explanations. Thanks for your patience.
>First, I think the usual position is that nothing is the wellspring of God, but exists necessarily, from himself.
I was under the impression that science typically resists claims like this. Doesn’t this seem more like a dead end than a starting point? How is this more sensible than saying everything exists necessarily, from itself? How doesn’t adding god just complicate a simpler explanation?
> The suggestion there, I think, would just be that God is the simple explanation.
I guess I agree it’s simple in the same sense that Zeus hurling thunder bolts from the heavens is a simple explanation for lightning.
God is a hidden conscious being (how we figured this much out I’m not sure) whom we can’t fathom or hope to explain, who is without cause, who is perfect in his every action (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and has no limit in his ability to create, control and perfectly judge all things. In what sense is this simple?
I think you kind of just logically need to have something that's uncaused, unless you want a causeless infinite regress, I suppose. Why is this simpler than saying everything exists necessarily? I'm not actually sure. Maybe because you end up postulating fewer such beings, but I don't trust that answer all that much.
I think, in respect of it being an explanation of fine-tuning, it's considerably simpler than your Zeus example—postulating that someone wants life, for whatever reason, seems far simpler than needing separate explanations for every thunderbolt. That said, I get your point (though I think some of the things that you specify are unnecessary at least in regards to fine-tuning—perfection, continued control, and judgment don't seem strictly necessary here for this purpose).
I think when people are saying that God is a conscious being, that's somewhat equivocal—classical theists, at least, think that God is atemporal, without passions, and omniscient, which is quite different from what consciousness looks like for us.
>I get your point (though I think some of the things that you specify are unnecessary at least in regards to fine-tuning—perfection, continued control, and judgment don't seem strictly necessary here for this purpose).
You’re right. I agree they’re unnecessary for explaining fine-tuning, or much of anything, though they commonly accompany theism. I was smuggling in objections to related claims I’ve read in other essays posted here that you may or may not defend. Thanks for pointing that out.
Lots of atheists think that certain phenomena have no explanation—for example, that there's no explanation for why the world exists. To me, it seems that atheists should make the same move and hold that whatever laws govern the actual world need no explanation.
By contrast, such a view is less plausible when it comes to categories of phenomena that we think should have explanations, like historical events, which is why atheists are obliged to provide a naturalistic account of claimed miracles. In the same way, initial conditions spelling out "made by God" would need an explanation, since we have independent empirical reasons to believe that linguistic phenomena need explanation. Is my reasoning fallacious?
Couldn't we argue that there is an infinite multiverse, and that in that multiverse there will inevitably be a universe "finely tuned" to make life possible, no matter how unlikely that is as long as the probability is above zero, and that life will by definition observe itself to be in such a "finely tuned" universe because that's the only type of universe where life could exist to make observations? This argument has the benefit that it applies to the cosmological constant but not to the spelling out "made by God" scenario.
Absolutely. Bentham addresses that argument in his “The multiverse” section of his essay here: https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-fine-tuning-argument-simply-works
After reading it, I still don’t think it decisively refutes the argument you allude to, but I could certainly be missing something.
I was likewise unpersuaded by that essay and wrote a rebuttal (defending the multiverse explanation) if anyone is interested:
https://unboxedthoughts.substack.com/p/against-some-fine-tuning-arguments
I will note that in that article you do not address most of the arguments I give (e.g. fine-tuning for discovery, Boltzmann brains, etc).
Nope, that's fair: it's only a partial rebuttal. I don't get into Boltzmann Brains or the scientific discovery argument.
Maybe you could try doing a more detailed rebuttal later on?
Sure, this works, provided that your multiverse is generating universes with different constants. You would have to worry about, as mentioned in the other comments, Boltzmann brains, but I don't have an idea of how large of a problem that would be.
Gee, it's a good thing that NONE of my objections to the Fine-Tuning Argument, each of which are pretty standard, are addressed in this post.
What are the standard objections?
My thinking is that: Think about his deck of cards/royal flush example. We know quite a bit about the process of drawing cards from a deck and calculate the probability of a royal flush. (Also it's irrelevant whether you draw cards once or twice. You don't need to sample because you know the actual distribution.)
But do we know anything about the process that generates these physical constants and/or the universe? Is there something like a uniform random number generator that produces these numbers? He seems to assume something like a uniform distribution and then says "oh look it can't be by luck" but that's not warranted. That's my first issue.
The second issue is that even if the universe is finely tuned, I don't see how god is the only or a plausible explanation. Maybe there are lots of badly tuned universes and this one happens to be a finely tuned one. Maybe there are other explanations.
Maybe Matthew was scared to deal with those tough ones.
You say things and make claims with a lot of confidence and certainty for an early 20-something whose views on many subjects are guaranteed to evolve over time, even ones you think you’ve already figured out.
Instead of factoring in that provisionality, you strut into contentious debates with the presumption that you will quickly ascertain the correct position, say “QED” and move on.
Incidentally this is a predictable formula for provoking engagement on social media: making strong claims about controversial issues with a level of confidence that other participants don’t think you’ve earned, but persuasive enough that they’re compelled to respond. Well done.
Your life experience thus far has probably been that you’re usually the biggest brain in a room, and you’re constantly noticing mistakes and deficiencies in the work of people who are supposed to know more than you.
This leads you to rate your own judgement very highly, and assume that when you notice something you think is wrong, if the options are
1. You’re just smarter / a more rigorous thinker than those other people who disagree.
2. Maybe there’s something you don’t fully understand yet.
You default to option 1.
I disagree with every counter-argument you raise here. The one that Im going to mention is your response to the measure problem as I believe this gets the most wrong. The measure problem isn't undermined by claiming that it " has the problem of stupendously misstating the physics behind much of fine-tuning", rather you stupendously misunderstand the problem. First, Collins himself took the issue so seriously that he completely modified the argument to use a different space than the space of all epistemically possible universes. Leslie similarly modified his version of the argument to be about something different. Of the responses available you choose to go with "at small scales, but almost exactly cancel out at large scales" I suppose you're getting your information from Luke Barnes here, but this is about the furthest thing from solid physics you can imagine, particularly when it pertains to what "life" is supposed to mean across all epistemically possible universes.
"It also misstates probability. The value of the constants can only be calculated across scales consistent with the basic standard model, and only a tiny slice of values consistent with the standard model produce complex structures" which makes your FTA worse and not better...
"It doesn’t matter the total percentage of the dartboard that is occupied by red, because the surrounding region is almost all white—hitting the tiny red dot is thus astronomically improbable" this is handwaving and a mistake. It's akin to saying "what are the chances the this bit of the Earths atmosphere contains any elemental hydrogen considering that The Earth contains very little elemental hydrogen!" -- In that case, it is clearly relevant that the vast majority of our solar system and the universe is elemental hydrogen. However, contrary to what you said about the measure problem stupendously misstating the physics, Collins has to make this move just because of how seriously the measure problem undermines his argument!
"One can also get their probabilities to nicely sum to 1 by taking a ~log prior across the values of the constants"
As with all of these things you make pithy statements like that about complicated mathematics and physics where what you should be doing is actually getting into the weeds and the details here. Take a single variable that varies over every value -inf to +inf and apply a uniform distribution, If we start with y = c (constant), taking log gives us log(c), which is still just a constant, the integral ∫_{-∞}^{∞} log(c) dx still diverges, taking the log doesn't help resolve the improper normalisation. Let's try varying it "only" over [0, inf) If our original variable is X with "density" c after transformation Y = log(X) the density of Y is given by the change of variables formula: f_Y(y) = f_X(x) |dx/dy| = c · e^y So, after the log transformation, our new "density" is exponentially increasing! This actually makes the normalisation problem worse, as ∫_{-∞}^∞ ce^y dy diverges even faster than our original integral.
It's not that I might not be wrong with my objections to fine tuning. It's not that you're incapable of understanding the points for and against these positions. It's that you confidently proclaim insanely controversial statements without mentioning any of the risky inferences and the multitude of assumptions involved! Please stop doing this. And if you're going to make statements about complicated aspects of theoretical physics and measure theory, don't just say simple sentences that obscure all of the complexity. Make everything as clear as possible, show your working, use diagrams, reference actual empirical data youre using. And stop talking about the intelligent people who disagree with you on these topics (many of whom are in fact physicists, statisticians and logicians who do understand the mathematics etc better than you) as "stupendously" misunderstanding their own fields. Consider that maybe you havent fully understood what you're arguing against and prove your worth in those domains before you go on to denounce them all in this way.
You must understand that the way you're writing is rage bait? Are you doing it for the engagement?
Ah yes, the famously successful strategy about writing rage bait for engagement about the measure problem. Are you joking?
I got the point about the Measure problem from talking with Aron Wall--an actual highly-respected physicist--as well as the paper by Hawthorne and Isaacs that I linked, as well as various other places including Barnes. I won't reply in much detail, because I have a lot of commenters and this comment is particularly long. You don't actually give a response to the argument you attribute to Barnes, beyond calling it not solid physicists. I must confess, what actual physicists say about it is more interesting to me than what you say.
I don't understand your response to the dartboard analogy. Conditional on the parameters being within the standard model range, the odds are ridiculously low they'd get the actual value. The point about life arising under different conditions are points I've addressed in other places and is also wildly implausible regarding the cosmological constant--if the world had no particles binding together, other life couldn't arise.
Regarding the log prior, I'm not a mathematician, and haven't performed the fancy math. However, I have read things from physicists making this point.
The statement I make that you ludicrously dub ragebait is made almost exactly by two professional philosophers publishing in a prestigious journal regarding the measure problem https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/royal-institute-of-philosophy-supplements/article/misapprehensions-about-the-finetuning-argument/D3DC770D34D437E59601D1DA221E6C4E:
"This worry is profoundly misguided.43 It is unreasonable for
philosophers to dismiss the reasoning of physicists on the basis of
a misrepresentation of what the physicists say. Physicists do not
claim that the probability of life-permitting parameter values is
0. The reasoning that led to the judgment that the probability
was 0 was flawed and it’s inappropriate to ascribe such flawed reasoning to the professional consensus of a generation of physicists.
But for now we want to emphasize that the physicists simply do
not claim that the probability of life-permitting parameter-values
is 0. For example, physicists say that the cosmological constant
(which specifies the energy density of the vacuum) is strikingly
fine-tuned, that the odds of it having a life-permitting value were
roughly 1 in 10∧120. Physicists do not say that the cosmological
constant is maximally fine-tuned, that the odds of getting lifepermitting values were 0. Physicists did not come up with the number 1 in 10∧120 capriciously; the reasoning behind that number involves seriously fancy physics."
They, of course, elaborate on the charge in more detail.
I am not joking regarding the rage bait comment. The point is not that there's a lot of demand for actual obscure and tricky mathematical problems (which actually require mathematical skill to engage with), but that there is demand for pretending to be doing something deep, profound, scientific and cutting edge that requires none of those skills.
"Conditional on the parameters being within the standard model range, the odds are ridiculously low they'd get the actual value. The point about life arising under different conditions are points I've addressed in other places and is also wildly implausible regarding the cosmological constant--if the world had no particles binding together, other life couldn't arise"
(1) I do not know if "particles sticking together" is necessary for life (and neither do you)
(2) I do not know what happens if you vary the laws (why are they fixed) ( and neither do you)
(3) I do not know what is necessary for life at all scales, times etc. (and neither do you)
(4) I do not know what metaphysical stipulations we are building into our assessment -- in epistemic possibility space I can imagine all kinds of non-natural teleologies apart from whatever the metaphysics is in the actual world ( and neither do you )
(5) I do not know what is outside of the "white" circle such that I cannot tell you anything about how expected something is even if you can establish what's going on in the "white" circle ( and neither do you )
(6) If you don't know what you're saying about mathematics, don't say its obvious and mention it as if it's your own idea, cite people, get an intuition for what they're actually saying and don't actively endorse it if you don't understand it.. try to explain it!
Your point is assume this, and this, and this and this and this and this and this and then I get to go on making my confident proclamations about how I've got the whole universe in a little box with a bow on it all without doing anything except thinking!
WRT your edit inserting the link: yes approximately 3-5 Christian physicists have said a lot of stuff about the fine-tuning argument with varying degrees of responsible caveats through to pure ideological overconfident drivel (vis a vis a typical Benthams substack article!)
//(1) I do not know if "particles sticking together" is necessary for life (and neither do you)//
Ah yes, the very plausible suggestion that life might arise when no two particles ever interact. Perhaps SETI should next look for life in spare atoms found in the random recesses of outer space. Note, even if you have some credence in this being right, this will poorly explain the fact that we have complex life, which theism will still better explain.
//(2) I do not know what happens if you vary the laws (why are they fixed) ( and neither do you)//
See my response in the section "What if you change a bunch of constants at once?" https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-fine-tuning-argument-simply-works. Same point applies. The reason the laws are fixed is that the argument is being made from the constants, and you generally are supposed to hold stuff that doesn't favor either side in the background when evaluating an argument. Note that as Collins and others have argued (including me in the linked article) you actually can get a fine-tuning argument going from the laws.
//(3) I do not know what is necessary for life at all scales, times etc. (and neither do you)//
I agree! But you don't need to know what is needed for life to know that there are some conditions under which life can't arise (like all particles fly apart after a period of time orders of magnitude shorter than a millisecond).
//(4) I do not know what metaphysical stipulations we are building into our assessment -- in epistemic possibility space I can imagine all kinds of non-natural teleologies apart from whatever the metaphysics is in the actual world ( and neither do you )//
Yes, I agree that atheism can explain fine-tuning by invoking teleology. Of course, fine-tuning will then still serve to eliminate most kinds of atheism (those that don't involve teleology). If the odds of teleology are low given atheism then the evidence will favor theism.
//(5) I do not know what is outside of the "white" circle such that I cannot tell you anything about how expected something is even if you can establish what's going on in the "white" circle ( and neither do you )//
But in the dartboard case, it's still surprising that the red dot was hit. If there's a non-arbitrary epistemically illuminated formed by minimally varying parameters, then hitting a tiny region in that area is unlikely.
//(6) If you don't know what you're saying about mathematics, don't say its obvious and mention it as if it's your own idea//
I didn't imply it was my own idea! Wtf??? Now, the point that you can take a non-uniform measure over probabilities is, in fact, obvious! How the details work out is something I'm not fit to adjudicate, but fortunately I don't have to, as physicists have performed the calculations! https://philpapers.org/archive/BARARL-3.pdf
It's funny that you accuse me of relying objectionably on armchair speculation, when this argument wasn't figured out from the armchair. It comes from findings in physics. If you have substantive issues with the things said by Isaacs and Hawthorne (not physicists, but good friends with Aron Wall, a very qualified physicist who I'm sure checked their work, and they say similar things in their unpublished manuscript written with Wall) I'd be happy to hear them.
_Ah yes, the very plausible suggestion that life might arise when no two particles ever interact. Perhaps SETI should next look for life in spare atoms found in the random recesses of outer space. Note, even if you have some credence in this being right, this will poorly explain the fact that we have complex life, which theism will still better explain._
Maybe they should, I don't know because I don't have a clear idea of life. Maybe the reason they're not doing that is because they have lots of evidence for carbon based life so thats a good space to start looking...
__See my response in the section "What if you change a bunch of constants at once?"__
Maybe, sceptical it will resolve my issues given how you typically handle these things.
__But you don't need to know what is needed for life to know that there are some conditions under which life can't arise__
I disagree, particularly in this case which is a really weird one (we're not looking for dogs or bears) I do not know. If you hadn't replied the way you did to the first question you might have found out more about some of the kinds of life I was thinking of, but instead of doing that ...
So no, this doesnt help. I can't do that in this case -- you do it, but that's because you're incautious.
__Yes, I agree that atheism can explain fine-tuning by invoking teleology. Of course, fine-tuning will then still serve to eliminate most kinds of atheism (those that don't involve teleology). If the odds of teleology are low given atheism then the evidence will favor theism.__
Maybe, but not a problem for total evidence. But we haven't even got that far because I don't think it's either an update anyone has to do, or an update where we can assign values...
__But in the dartboard case, it's still surprising that the red dot was hit__
Not to me, it's completely unsurprising given it's a gerrmandered story concocted by Collins to make this point... where else would it hit?
_ How the details work out is something I'm not fit to adjudicate, but fortunately I don't have to, as physicists have performed the calculations!_
If you don't understand what they're saying, as you've shown by not telling me what's wrong with the proofs I gave you that you can't do that, then you're in no position to adopt this view as your own.
Definitely rage bait imo. He knows he is writing for a mostly secular audience. I found here by way of ACX for instance. So he knows he could bait people with these “look physicists discovered proof of god in the 80s” type posts.
This is such a wildly implausible kidn of psychoanalysis. I mean, just look at the stats of my philosophy of religion posts vs my other posts. I get way more views from the other posts. The reason I write about POR is that I think there are true and important takeaways.
And if you were to describe your mother using only single adjectives, what would you say?
Wtf?
A joke! I should've put '/s'
I think there's a major issue with your section about electrons in love and the four ways God could create. If God is all-powerful, and therefore could create suitable agents under any conditions, then we should think he's equally likely to bring about any possible combination of physical laws; no particular arrangement "counts in favor" of creation more than any other if he's capable of sustaining life to whatever degree he'd like in any conditions. But if that's the case, then we should assume the laws of our world would be basically randomly distributed across that entire probability space. And that means we should be just as surprised that we landed in the "capable of sustaining life without direct divine intervention" sliver as we would be if we were naturalists, right?
In other words, the fundamental oddity here - that the universe could have been all sorts of different ways, but it just happened to end up with the very specific set of laws that allow for life to develop naturally - seems equally surprising to the atheist and the theist, right? There's no reason we can see why the laws would have to be life-permitting if atheism is true, but there's also no reason we can see why the laws would have to be life-permitting (in the naturalistic sense we're considering) if theism was true either, since God has just as much reason to create us in the 99.99...999% of worlds where they aren't. I think this is an important asymmetry with the "Made by God, with love" case, because there, there *would* be some constraints on how exactly God could get that message across; the plausible candidates for communication are limited by our features as already-created human beings. The actually analogous case would be if we could learn things literally any possible way, but I'm not even sure what that would really mean or how to evaluate any sort of probabilities in response.
I agree with this. If observing fine-tuning is evidence for theism, then counterfactually observing that the universe isn't fine-tuned must be evidence against theism in that hypothetical world. So... would that be true? What would it look like to observe non-fine-tuning?
One way would for it to be the case that the fundamental laws of the universe seem non-mathematical, hence immune to any sort of principle-of-indifference-type arguments over "natural" parameter ranges à la Collins. But this sort of (practically magical) universe seems like it would be distinctly evidence *for* theism. Alternatively, it could have turned out to be the case that the fundamental laws were still mathematical, but vastly different so that most values of the constants were life-permitting. However, why think there are any such laws that are a) simple (and thus remotely low-prior), and b) not merely "cheating" in simplicity by e.g. simulating every possible computable universe in parallel? *Those* would clearly be evidence against theism. But if there aren't any - that is, if atheism-supporting, coarse-tuned universes are incredibly complex and low-prior - then learning that we aren't in such a universe can't be much evidence for theism.
I think a lot of fine-tuning people would want to say that we should consider all of the universes where life is simply impossible under the "not-fine-tuned" bucket, but I personally don't think you should assign significant prior to your own non-existence.
If we discovered the laws of physics weren't finely-tuned, but were simple and natural without parameters that fall in a narrow range, that would be evidence for theism. If it turns out that there are no laws like that, then fine-tuning wouldn't be additional evidence for theism but would serve to establish that a life-permitting universe is very significant evidence for theism (After all, a life permitting universe would then require fine-tuning!)
I think you should have a high prior in your non-existence. Most ways for the world to be wouldn't have anyone exist.
>If we discovered the laws of physics weren't finely-tuned, but were simple and natural without parameters that fall in a narrow range, that would be evidence for theism.
Sorry, I'm confused. Do you mean "that would be evidence for atheism" here?
>then fine-tuning wouldn't be additional evidence for theism but would serve to establish that a life-permitting universe is very significant evidence for theism (After all, a life permitting universe would then require fine-tuning!)
(Here I'd invoke the sort of anthropic consideration I mentioned in my previous comment and in the next paragraph here, that it would be completely neutral, since we should've begun with zero prior in non-life-permitting laws.)
>I think you should have a high prior in your non-existence. Most ways for the world to be wouldn't have anyone exist.
The traditional metaphor or thought experiment to convey the informal idea of priors is something like "what would you believe, and with what credence, if you woke up in a black box with no memories, but your full philosophical reasoning abilities." But it doesn't seem in such a scenario that I'd doubt my own existence, given that it's me who's the one figuring out all the appropriate credences. Now, I don't think this thought experiment should be taken too literally as the meaning of priors, but it still does seem like some other motivation for a contention like yours is needed. It feels really bizarre to imagine that I'm allowed to have a high prior in something like the Axiom of Choice or the consistency of Peano Arithmetic but not my own existence due to the difference in the former's metaphysical necessity - as if my a priori level of credence in modal claims about mathematics is significantly higher than my a priori level of credence that I exist!
There are some ways of trying to motivate the principle through firing squad-type thought experiments, but I don't think they go through.
> Creating a finely-tuned universe that naturally produces agents
How do we know that our universe "naturally" produces agents? We have no clear explanation for why we're conscious. Indeed, you describe elsewhere how consciousness is super weird. Given that we're working off of a sample size of 1, we have no idea how our world fits on the scale of weird/will "naturally" produced agents. If God really can just make things be conscious, we might be the equivalent of electrons falling in love compared to another universe of much more complex beings.
> If God really can just make things be conscious,
This is an angle I hadn’t considered. God presumably can bring about conscious beings however She wants. She could make electrons debate the nature of Her Mind for all we care.
But just to be cute, She chooses to secretly fine tune this universe’s physical constants, “guide the evolutionary process” and get conscious beings that way.
It’s all a bit too much for me to take in. I need to consider my place in the universe.
The only good counterargument to the fine-tuning argument that I know is “if Universes with all kinds of different laws naturally arise, and only a tiny fraction are suitable for life, then living beings will necessarily be in that tiny fraction so they should not be surprised that they are”.
I address that here, though I agree that's the best atheist response https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-fine-tuning-argument-simply-works
The big problem with that argument is the notion that a multiverse makes Boltzmann brains more likely than universes capable of life.
There are many more reasons to reject the Boltzmann brain hypothesis.
You should read Wolfram on the topic. It doesn’t take much to create complexity in the form of computational universality, which is what you need to get a multiverse: within that multiverse the conditions suitable for life will be rare, but a multiverse itself does not need to be very fine-tuned as a whole.
Conway’s game of Life has the opposite lesson than you think. He found the best set of rules of a given small level of complexity and they are already enough to build long-lives self-replicating computation-universal structures. It’s not known how much more complicated a cellular automaton would need to be for such structures to be likely to evolve from random initial conditions, but he did it in 2-D, there is plenty more complexity available in 3-D and that’s just for cellular automata and not the more complicated kinds of physics that we have.
By the way, why can I comment on this post but not on other posts of yours?
I don't know why you can't comment on others.
Arguments for God based on real-world measurements feel the most compelling to me. A line of thinking I've been pondering goes as follows:
1. Apologetics arguments that do not reference anything specific about the present universe can be said about any possible universe
2. Such arguments thus suggest that any universe that could exist must have been produced by a creator
3. However, this is not true as it is possible to conceive of a universe without divine creation
4. Thus, apologetics arguments that do not reference anything specific about the present universe prove too much and are invalid
(I'm not a philosophy boy, and I may be making a mistake here)
So, I agree with your conclusion but not with the argument for it. The reason I think arguments based on abduction--explaining stuff about the world--are better is just that I've looked at many of them and find them more persuasive.
Well, I most arguments for God rely on facts about the world, though these facts are often very broad and general. E.g. they'll often mention that the world changes. A changeless world or timeless static state could perhaps exist sans God.
Now, regarding more general arguments like the contingency argument or ontological argument, if they're right, God is necessary, and thus a world oculdn't exist without him.
I think the empirical arguments for God are typically the worst because it brings together an audience of people who are not only unfamiliar with philosophy, but with the scientific field in question as well.
For example - the cosmological constant is in part meaningful because it is part of Einstein's field equations for the evolution of the universe. It is counterbalanced by the stress energy tensor, of which G, the gravitational constant, is a part of. This means that the lifetime of the universe is determined primarily by the mass energy content, the strength of G, and the cosmological constant - for which we don't know whether or not it is fundamental or composed of smaller measurable constants - like the stress energy tensor.
Now, when it comes to evaluating fine tuning, with this background evidence held constant, we are met with a variety of questions. Why did God choose to fine tune the cosmological constant and G? Why not make the equation simpler, or more complex? God made the cosmological constant stronger than G and the stress energy tensor - this means the universe will end in a big rip. Why didn't he make G stronger or add more matter to the universe so it will end in gravitational collapse? Why not set up the values to counterbalance each other so we have a steady state universe that will never end? And which one of these options is more or less fine tuned than the other? What would a fact of the matter look like here?
BB's engagement with physics impoverishes him in his ability to grapple with (or even consider) these questions because the infornation necessary to prompt them is not part of BB's background knowledge. It also isn't part of the background of many members of his audience, so I'm left with the psychological question of what those people get out of this sort of content. A cosmology textbook would set many people curious about fine tuning straighter than most of these surface level takes on it, but I guess I'm the turbo autist for wanting to understand physics and not just unqualified people's interpretations of it.
Any argument either
(1) Must depend on knowledge about our universe in some way
or (2) It doesn't.
If 1, then that's what you want. If 2, then we're arguing that God is logically or metaphysically necessary, or something like that. Not sure whether that conflicts with your 3—that depends on what it means for God to create things, which is pretty much asking what existence is, which is above my pay grade. (I'm also not sure whether your 2 is true—theoretically, someone could argue that God exists, but not require that the world be created by him.)
What about anthropic arguments? Those technically use (my) 1, since the fact that you exist is knowledge about the universe.
If the universe were finally tuned for life then we would likely see a universe in which life thrives in environment optimized for life's survival.
That is the opposite of the universe we see in which the vast majority of time and space is inhospitable to living things. Even in Earth's atmosphere, the only place in the known universe with life, living things constantly struggle for survival up against countless threats so dangerous that the majority of living things do not even mature to adulthood.
Yes it is unlikely for abiogenesis and then biological evolution to result in us, but unlikely does not mean impossible. The complete lack of optimization of the universe for living things makes the chance hypothesis significantly more likely than the fine-tuning argument in my view. I wrote this to fully explain my view;
https://open.substack.com/pub/philosophicalrebellion/p/the-universe-is-not-fine-tuned-for?r=211fuw&selection=f61c1371-6b86-4f8c-943e-fff00f3034c1&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web
"Suppose that physicists uncovered the initial state of the universe, and discovered that it was arranged to spell out the words “made by God, through love,” in every language."
This hypothetical points to evidence for God not because it is improbable, per se, but because it points to a contradiction. The natural laws we observe suggest that chaotic motion of stuff, be it waves in a pond or galaxies spinning around, doesn't form into neat, angular patterns like human language.
The universe existing as it does with life isn't a question of measurable probability. "If the values were set in a different way..." implies that there are values somewhere being set. We don't know this.
Wouldn’t an even greater level of fine-tuning be required for the conditions to be right to create a perfect being who created the incredibly fine-tuned universe we live in? I still don’t get how any of this shrugs off infinite regress.
No, because God doesn't have parameters set to a precise range. He has one core property--being perfect or being a limitless consciousness or something like that--set to infinity. No tuned parameters needed!
Contrary to Benthams answer, yes. Gods desires and actions are what has to be finely tuned though, rather than physical parameters.
No, because as I explained, God has just one core property set to infinity.
“Set to infinity” doesn’t even make sense given infinity is a procedure rather than a value and you can’t “set” values in God. Though I know you like to imagine yourself doing so! Naming a single attribute with a word “perfect” does not mean you count “one complexity unit” in your explanation… Gods causal powers and the infinite degrees of freedom within His psychology make Him an infinitely complicated explanation. Why does he do this rather than that? You don’t get out of it by saying “God does everything” either because he can (epistemically) be imagined to not…
>for the conditions to be right
I don't think this is the right way to pose things, as the theist would say that God is necessary, not created based on conditions.
>who created the incredibly fine-tuned universe we live in
If your argument is that fine-tuned results require fine-tuned causes, that isn't true. What we mean by fine-tuned constants is that they seem quite improbable if we attempt to explain them by simple probabilistic models. We do not mean to say that they remain extremely improbable after consideration of our suggested explanations. This can be seen easily in the case of someone who is cheating at poker or something—the results look fine-tuned, but actually have a simple explanation.
As I read you, you are saying:
Fine tuned things are unlikely (definitionally).
Fine tuned things require explanations that are at least as unlikely.
Therefore, our proposed explanation, God, must be at least that unlikely.
Porting that over to cards:
50 royal flushes in a row is fine tuned.
Let's propose the explanation: he cheated.
Well, the explanation must be at least as unlikely as the probability motiving us calling it fine-tuned. (this is the erroneous step)
So the chance that his royal flushes were due to cheating is less than or equal to the probability that he got those by chance.
Once we've ported it over, it seems quite clear that this is absurd. Does that make sense? Or do you dispute the comparison? I hope I'm reading you correctly.
I know nothing about philosophy. I’m what you folks call a midwit and no doubt misrepresented myself. I’ll try again:
I don’t deny that cheating is the likeliest explanation for 50 straight royal flushes, and I firmly believe that complex, unlikely results can arise from simple, common processes (though that seems to suggest to me that god isn’t really necessary as an explanation for anything). I just don’t see how proposing god as the wellspring of all things doesn’t end up leaving you holding the bag of then proposing the wellspring of god.
Does that help at all?
Yes, so two thoughts:
First, I think the usual position is that nothing is the wellspring of God, but exists necessarily, from himself. I'm sure people do a lot of technical philosophy about this, but I don't know it.
Second, if we supposed that weren't the case, then our problem wouldn't necessarily be about fine-tuning any more. It was this latter thing that I was trying to address, mostly, in that previous comment.
>though that seems to suggest to me that god isn’t really necessary as an explanation for anything
The suggestion there, I think, would just be that God is the simple explanation. But sure, if you can find some other reason to explain the fine-tuning, then there's no longer a fine-tuning argument to be made any more.
I appreciate the explanations. Thanks for your patience.
>First, I think the usual position is that nothing is the wellspring of God, but exists necessarily, from himself.
I was under the impression that science typically resists claims like this. Doesn’t this seem more like a dead end than a starting point? How is this more sensible than saying everything exists necessarily, from itself? How doesn’t adding god just complicate a simpler explanation?
> The suggestion there, I think, would just be that God is the simple explanation.
I guess I agree it’s simple in the same sense that Zeus hurling thunder bolts from the heavens is a simple explanation for lightning.
God is a hidden conscious being (how we figured this much out I’m not sure) whom we can’t fathom or hope to explain, who is without cause, who is perfect in his every action (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and has no limit in his ability to create, control and perfectly judge all things. In what sense is this simple?
I think you kind of just logically need to have something that's uncaused, unless you want a causeless infinite regress, I suppose. Why is this simpler than saying everything exists necessarily? I'm not actually sure. Maybe because you end up postulating fewer such beings, but I don't trust that answer all that much.
I think, in respect of it being an explanation of fine-tuning, it's considerably simpler than your Zeus example—postulating that someone wants life, for whatever reason, seems far simpler than needing separate explanations for every thunderbolt. That said, I get your point (though I think some of the things that you specify are unnecessary at least in regards to fine-tuning—perfection, continued control, and judgment don't seem strictly necessary here for this purpose).
I think when people are saying that God is a conscious being, that's somewhat equivocal—classical theists, at least, think that God is atemporal, without passions, and omniscient, which is quite different from what consciousness looks like for us.
>I get your point (though I think some of the things that you specify are unnecessary at least in regards to fine-tuning—perfection, continued control, and judgment don't seem strictly necessary here for this purpose).
You’re right. I agree they’re unnecessary for explaining fine-tuning, or much of anything, though they commonly accompany theism. I was smuggling in objections to related claims I’ve read in other essays posted here that you may or may not defend. Thanks for pointing that out.
Lots of atheists think that certain phenomena have no explanation—for example, that there's no explanation for why the world exists. To me, it seems that atheists should make the same move and hold that whatever laws govern the actual world need no explanation.
By contrast, such a view is less plausible when it comes to categories of phenomena that we think should have explanations, like historical events, which is why atheists are obliged to provide a naturalistic account of claimed miracles. In the same way, initial conditions spelling out "made by God" would need an explanation, since we have independent empirical reasons to believe that linguistic phenomena need explanation. Is my reasoning fallacious?
"Yes, maybe the odds of God making a finely-tuned universe aren’t that high, but they’re obviously not improbable on the order of 1/googol."
This is not at all obvious to me.
I am curious about the name of this argument: what exactly is the universe supposed to be fine tuned for?
Comprehensive and persuasive
https://youtu.be/jJ-fj3lqJ6M?si=n-OGrHG1V5Pv42bD
"But then how can we say that the cosmological constant is rare—we only have one example of it taking on a value? "
There are a lot of parameters which appear to be fine-tuned, not just one, so you do have replication and this objection is invalid.