Why Not Make Electrons in Love?

It misses out on various important goods

A brief note for those confused: I’m still agnostic, just thinking through the theistic arguments in some depth.

I recently spoke with Neil Sinhababu about his electrons in love objection to fine-tuning. The fine-tuning argument notes that the laws, constants, and initial conditions of the universe are in a very narrow range required to sustain life. Therefore, it is claimed, we have reason to infer a designer who made these conditions that way, for otherwise the odds of life are extremely low. Thus, as traditionally stated, the idea is that the probability of conscious agents is very low on atheism but high on theism, so the fact that they exist is good evidence for theism.

Talking with Neil is always fun; he’s quite brilliant and creative. Reading Neil’s stuff is a bit like if one came across aliens doing good philosophy: totally outside of anything I’d ever think, but quite brilliant still. His idea is that the theist is hit with a dilemma if they make this argument: either consciousness required the presence of a physical system like a brain—as physicalists suppose—or it does not. If it does, then theism is false because God has no brain but is supposed to have a mind. If it does not then fine-tuning stops being evidence for theism because God wouldn’t need to finely tune a universe to have a valuable universe (he could make a non-finely tuned universe with loving electrons, for example) and naturalism makes conscious life likely, for it no longer needs fine-tuning.

In response, I noted that the evidence is not merely that there is valuable conscious life but that there is finely-tuned valuable conscious life. We are not merely electrons in love but vast assemblages of matter interacting in a complex world governed by causal laws. It may be true, if Neil is right, that theism doesn’t make the existence of conscious life appreciably more likely than naturalism, but it does make the existence of conscious life like us far more likely.

Imagine that we see a rubber duck that says “made in China.” It’s true that the odds of a rubber duck being made in China aren’t much higher than the odds it’s made in some other area. But crucially, the odds of a rubber duck that says “made in China,” are. Conscious life being finely tuned is relevantly analogous to the rubber duck saying “made in China.”

Neil challenged my claim that theism has a remotely plausible story to tell about why we’d be in a world like ours over an electrons-in-love world. Note that for the fine-tuning argument to work, one doesn’t need to think the odds are that great of a finely-tuned theistic world, because the odds are so low conditional on atheism. Here then, I’ll present some reasons God might put us in a world like this one rather than an electrons-in-love world.

1. He might have some unknown reasons. The odds he has unknown reasons to put us in a world like this one, given our epistemic limitations, strike me as pretty good.

2. He might put us in a world for the reason described by the hypothesis of indifference theodicy. God wants to put us in a world that is roughly like the typical atheistic world that has conscious agents that can interact in the world and enter into valuable relationships. Now, Neil can deny that this is a typical atheistic world, but then that will strengthen the case against atheism. Furthermore, it seems like this world, while not the simplest overall world, is one of the simpler ones that has conscious agents that can interact in the world in interesting and valuable ways. Finally, God might put us in the epistemically most likely atheistic worlds, on which a naturalistic explanation of consciousness must be plausible, so he’d therefore put us in a world like ours, where the brain processes information similar to the information being stored in our conscious mind. This explanation isn’t ad hoc in that, as the article linked argues, it’s independently motivated as the only good explanation of evil.

3. Electrons in love worlds don’t have mortality. But there’s something valuable about us existing for only a finite time if there’s an infinitely good afterlife.

4. Perhaps our world is caused by demons or programmers. They might want to see a world with complex, interesting creatures like us, rather than meager electrons being happy.

5. Electrons have a simple range of behaviors. But it seems that valuable relationships require a wide range of behaviors.

These are only a partial sampling of the reasons. But I think they—especially 2—are enough to diffuse much of the force of this objection. If you, like me, think that theism is only plausible if the hypothesis of indifference theodicy is right, then because the HI theodicy also explains the electrons in love result at least as well as atheism, this won’t give a decisive reason to abandon the fine-tuning argument or theism.