Interesting, but I think a better understanding of particle physics undermines the premises on which your argument is based. I'm just going to state the physics, even though it probably mostly sounds like magical gobbledygook. But feel free to ask questions.
If classical physics were true, all 4 forces would fall off at the same rate (Force = const/r^2), basically because the force lines spread out, and in 3 space dimensions the area of a sphere is proportional to r^2. But in QFT, there are also corrections due to virtual particles, that can make the so-called "constants" change as you vary the distance/energy you measure them at. (The equations involve a logarithm, so the constant only changes a bit, even over many orders of magnitude. These changes, known as the "renormalization group flow", can be calculated explicitly in the Standard Model; i.e. if you know what the constant is at any given scale, you can figure out what it is at another scale.)
The three fundamental forces of the Standard Model, namely:
- the SU(3) strong force between quarks,
- the SU(2) electroweak force, and
- the U(1) hypercharge force
actually DO all have roughly similar sizes! (The elecromagnetic field we know and love, is actually a combination of the SU(2) force and the U(1) force.) If you use units where c = hbar = 1, you can make a dimensionless constant, and then (if we extrapolate them from the LHC scale back to the Planck scale, assuming no new physics happens in between) they are all about the same size (roughly in the range alpha = 1/30 to 1/50). But even if we measure them at the LHC scale, their range lies within a single order of magnitude.
The number strengths that are quoted by people like Collins are very phenomeological low energy measurements, that are affected by the fact that the strong force becomes confining while the weak force becomes spontaneously broken by the Higgs. For purposes of this conversation, those numbers are insufficiently fundamental, and you should be considering the number range in my previous paragraph.
What about gravity? This is sometimes quoted as being about 10^40 times weaker than the other forces. But this is a meaningless nonsense claim, since it compares quantities with different units. The problem is that gravity is unique in that the size of the force depends, not on a charge, but on the MASSES of the two objects (ultimately because it is mediated by a spin-2 boson, not a spin-1 boson). This means you have to specify what mass of objects you are considering, or you can't even compare it to the other forces! This is a somewhat arbitrary choice. If the two objects both have the Planck mass, then the force is about the same strength as the other forces. if they are stars, it would be much bigger. If they are electrons or protons, then you get numbers like 10^(-40).
There are some legitimate fine-tuning questions in the vicinity of this big number, but it ought to be expressed as the question of why the electron and proton are so light compared to the Planck mass. They turn out to be light for completely different reasons, though. The electron is light because it couples very weakly to the Higgs boson (nobody knows why, since this is an arbitrary parameter, but it is "technically natural" in the sense that if you assume it starts off small, then quantum corrections don't mess that up), and also because the Higgs boson is itself fine-tuned to be very light compared to the Planck scale (this is "technically unnatural" and easy to spoil with quantum corrections, and requires fine-tuning to about 1 part in 10^30 in the fundamental constants, unless supersymmetry exists).
For the proton, on the other hand, there is no fine-tuning required to make it light, due to the fact that as you go down in energies, the SU(3) force gradually inches its way up to being strongly interacting, and then as soon as it gets strong enough (when alpha ~ 1) there is a confinement phase transition, and the proton appears at around that energy scale. In other words the Standard Model predicts that the proton mass should be about e^(-50#) where the # is some order unity number that I'd have to do a calculation to know what is, and the 50 comes from the fact that the strong force is about 1/50 at the Planck scale. But it is a notable coincidence (and anthropically important) that the proton mass ends up being so close to the electron mass.
Note that none of the physics in the previous 2 paragraphs had anything to do with gravity per se (other than stopping the fine-tuning analysis once we down get to the Planck length, since smaller distance scales might not exist). So saying that "gravity is 10^40 times weaker than the other forces" is just not a good way of putting things.
If there were a redundant or basically irrelevant force, would we even know of its existence? This is the issue with other kinds of arguments for theism based on laws- we wouldn't know of laws that don't matter.
> You might think that there are these mostly impotent laws. But that’s a less simple hypothesis. It requires positing more fundamental stuff. I guess maybe the way out of this is to posit that the laws result from more fundamental stuff, so positing redundant laws doesn’t require positing anything fundamental. But this requires believing something speculative about physics for which we have no evidence. I’m hesitant to do this.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that because of Occam's razor, any potential explanations for what we don't know are automatically more unlikely than God, because we would be positing an additional thing. However, if we assume there IS an explanation, and we just don't know what it is, then how would we know whether the naturalistic one is more or less likely than God?
I'm uncomfortable with this way of thinking, this feels very God-of-the-gaps to me.
You talk about god repeatedly yet use different definitions. Just based on your arguments alone it seems strange to me that you assign such high probability to Christianity in particular. Also, a bunch of the evidence you provide, for example that laws, require many other types of arguments that are epistemically probable but there are dwindling probabilities, and it seems like you may not be accounting for those—not a critique just making sure you’ve taken these into account. Finally, the very idea that you’ve radically shifted your opinions so fast should also tell you something about your epistemics—presumably your margin of error should be much larger until you’ve sat on these ideas for a while.
This is not a “new” argument for god. This is like the first argument that fourth graders hear about in favor of god. It’s also identical to all the purportedly “new” arguments you’ve mentioned before: there are things with no fundamental explanation, these things must therefore be explained!
Your ideas are incredibly creative and are simply begging for more math and science exposure on your part.
Interesting, but I think a better understanding of particle physics undermines the premises on which your argument is based. I'm just going to state the physics, even though it probably mostly sounds like magical gobbledygook. But feel free to ask questions.
If classical physics were true, all 4 forces would fall off at the same rate (Force = const/r^2), basically because the force lines spread out, and in 3 space dimensions the area of a sphere is proportional to r^2. But in QFT, there are also corrections due to virtual particles, that can make the so-called "constants" change as you vary the distance/energy you measure them at. (The equations involve a logarithm, so the constant only changes a bit, even over many orders of magnitude. These changes, known as the "renormalization group flow", can be calculated explicitly in the Standard Model; i.e. if you know what the constant is at any given scale, you can figure out what it is at another scale.)
The three fundamental forces of the Standard Model, namely:
- the SU(3) strong force between quarks,
- the SU(2) electroweak force, and
- the U(1) hypercharge force
actually DO all have roughly similar sizes! (The elecromagnetic field we know and love, is actually a combination of the SU(2) force and the U(1) force.) If you use units where c = hbar = 1, you can make a dimensionless constant, and then (if we extrapolate them from the LHC scale back to the Planck scale, assuming no new physics happens in between) they are all about the same size (roughly in the range alpha = 1/30 to 1/50). But even if we measure them at the LHC scale, their range lies within a single order of magnitude.
The number strengths that are quoted by people like Collins are very phenomeological low energy measurements, that are affected by the fact that the strong force becomes confining while the weak force becomes spontaneously broken by the Higgs. For purposes of this conversation, those numbers are insufficiently fundamental, and you should be considering the number range in my previous paragraph.
What about gravity? This is sometimes quoted as being about 10^40 times weaker than the other forces. But this is a meaningless nonsense claim, since it compares quantities with different units. The problem is that gravity is unique in that the size of the force depends, not on a charge, but on the MASSES of the two objects (ultimately because it is mediated by a spin-2 boson, not a spin-1 boson). This means you have to specify what mass of objects you are considering, or you can't even compare it to the other forces! This is a somewhat arbitrary choice. If the two objects both have the Planck mass, then the force is about the same strength as the other forces. if they are stars, it would be much bigger. If they are electrons or protons, then you get numbers like 10^(-40).
There are some legitimate fine-tuning questions in the vicinity of this big number, but it ought to be expressed as the question of why the electron and proton are so light compared to the Planck mass. They turn out to be light for completely different reasons, though. The electron is light because it couples very weakly to the Higgs boson (nobody knows why, since this is an arbitrary parameter, but it is "technically natural" in the sense that if you assume it starts off small, then quantum corrections don't mess that up), and also because the Higgs boson is itself fine-tuned to be very light compared to the Planck scale (this is "technically unnatural" and easy to spoil with quantum corrections, and requires fine-tuning to about 1 part in 10^30 in the fundamental constants, unless supersymmetry exists).
For the proton, on the other hand, there is no fine-tuning required to make it light, due to the fact that as you go down in energies, the SU(3) force gradually inches its way up to being strongly interacting, and then as soon as it gets strong enough (when alpha ~ 1) there is a confinement phase transition, and the proton appears at around that energy scale. In other words the Standard Model predicts that the proton mass should be about e^(-50#) where the # is some order unity number that I'd have to do a calculation to know what is, and the 50 comes from the fact that the strong force is about 1/50 at the Planck scale. But it is a notable coincidence (and anthropically important) that the proton mass ends up being so close to the electron mass.
Note that none of the physics in the previous 2 paragraphs had anything to do with gravity per se (other than stopping the fine-tuning analysis once we down get to the Planck length, since smaller distance scales might not exist). So saying that "gravity is 10^40 times weaker than the other forces" is just not a good way of putting things.
If there were a redundant or basically irrelevant force, would we even know of its existence? This is the issue with other kinds of arguments for theism based on laws- we wouldn't know of laws that don't matter.
> You might think that there are these mostly impotent laws. But that’s a less simple hypothesis. It requires positing more fundamental stuff. I guess maybe the way out of this is to posit that the laws result from more fundamental stuff, so positing redundant laws doesn’t require positing anything fundamental. But this requires believing something speculative about physics for which we have no evidence. I’m hesitant to do this.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that because of Occam's razor, any potential explanations for what we don't know are automatically more unlikely than God, because we would be positing an additional thing. However, if we assume there IS an explanation, and we just don't know what it is, then how would we know whether the naturalistic one is more or less likely than God?
I'm uncomfortable with this way of thinking, this feels very God-of-the-gaps to me.
You talk about god repeatedly yet use different definitions. Just based on your arguments alone it seems strange to me that you assign such high probability to Christianity in particular. Also, a bunch of the evidence you provide, for example that laws, require many other types of arguments that are epistemically probable but there are dwindling probabilities, and it seems like you may not be accounting for those—not a critique just making sure you’ve taken these into account. Finally, the very idea that you’ve radically shifted your opinions so fast should also tell you something about your epistemics—presumably your margin of error should be much larger until you’ve sat on these ideas for a while.
This is not a “new” argument for god. This is like the first argument that fourth graders hear about in favor of god. It’s also identical to all the purportedly “new” arguments you’ve mentioned before: there are things with no fundamental explanation, these things must therefore be explained!