Let me also quickly address some of the specific points made here.
So it is a huge deal (maybe not to you for whatever nonsensical reasons), but most if not all physicists and cosmologilists are pondering such questions, such as Stephen Hawkings.
Ignorance is bliss.
It puzzles me that proponents of this argument cite Hawking. The video you posted quotes not only him but also Martin Rees and David Deutsch as Big Names in cosmology and physics who have pointed out the remarkable way in which the universe is set up for life to happen. And yet not one of these three people believes in God. Why are we supposed to kowtow to their Big Brains on the subject of the nature of physical constants but not on the subject of its cause? Doesn't the fact that the very people who know the most about these physical constants reject the supposition that God is the best explanation for them suggest that there's something wrong with this argument?
Let's assume that our universe popped into existence with a perfectly fine-tuned set of cosmic constants to permit life. You have two options here:
1) Either that the universe was designed & fine-tuned knowingly
2) It happened randomly out of a sample of billions if not an infinite number of universes out there.
#2 is problematic. Not only can you not prove the existence of other universes - rendering such a notion as non-scientific - and therefore, as mere fiction - but also this multiverse model will be in vain if it turns out that the mechanism that generates the multiverse in the first place must also be fine-tuned, for then one has only kicked the problem upstairs.
It is worth pointing out that you're confusing two alternatives to God here. One possibility is that our universe is the only actual universe and it just happens to have the right physical constants for life. The other is that our universe is one of an infinite number of actual universes, and it is the one (or one of the many) with the right physical constants for life. Your objections to the second of these don't apply to the first.
Moreover, your objections aren't correct anyway. You don't have to prove the existence of the other universes in order to refute the fine-tuning argument, any more than you have to prove the existence of God in order to refute the multiverse theory. Provided the multiverse theory is
possible, that shows that God is not the
only explanation for the physical constants we have. That alone undermines the argument. Moreover, one might have reason to think that the multiverse theory is more
plausible or
probable than the existence of God. In that case the argument is undermined even further.
And, indeed, that does seem to be the case. The most popular candidate for the multiverse fictitious theory is the inflationary multiverse, as it appears to require fine-tuning. For example, M-theory, the theory which supposedly governs the multiverse, works only if there are exactly eleven dimensions—but it does nothing to explain why precisely that number of dimensions should exist. There will never be an answer.
So when someone brings out the multiverse thing, just ask them: isn’t the multiverse itself describable by specific physical laws? Don’t those laws themselves include constants and boundary conditions which must be fine-tuned in order for the multiverse to exist in the first place? Rinse & repeat forever.
I don't think this argument works either. You're relying on the characterisation of multiverse theory given in the video you posted, which portrays it as positing a sort of silly "machine" which pumps out universes. Now only might indeed say that such a "machine" must be governed by laws of some kind, and these laws require an explanation. But this is a very weak argument, because the laws in question no longer have the feature of being "fine-tuned" to support life. If this machine is pumping out vast numbers of universes, only one of which can support life, it no longer looks quite so biocentric as when we were talking about just one universe. The interesting feature about it is not that it follows laws that specifically permit life, but that it follows laws
at all.
Now Richard Swinburne has argued that the fact that the universe has laws
at all requires explanation, and God is the best such explanation - never mind the fact that the laws it actually has are well suited to life. And he has extended this argument to apply to the supposed multiverse as well. But this is a quite different argument from the one you're putting forward - and in my opinion it's even weaker.
More importantly, the multiverse hypothesis needn't include any such "universe machine" and all the rest of it. At it's simplest it's simply the supposition that every possible universe is actual. There doesn't have to be some set of laws governing all universes. There aren't any "constants and boundary conditions" that need to be "fine-tuned" in order for all possible universes to exist; all you need is the supposition that all possibilities are actual. And you can call that a constant if you like, but it's not one that shows any signs of being fine-tuned to support life.
Remember, the whole point of the fine-tuning argument was that the
particular physical laws we have are such that
even the slightest change would have resulted in life's being impossible. Thus, they look like they're designed with life in mind. But once we start talking about laws that govern
all possible universes, on the hypothesis that they're all actual, we're no longer talking about laws that look designed for life. They're far more general. The claim that "the laws of the multiverse machine are fine-tuned for life" is far, far less convincing than "the laws of our universe are fine-tuned for life".
If you're going to insist that said constants existed for "some reason - randomly or otherwise" then you must either prove that a near infinite set of universes exists, out of which, our universe happens to be the lucky one OR just blindly believe that it just happened randomly which is no better than believing that a perfect entity designed it as such.
Proponents of these kinds of arguments love to use the word "blind" and its cognates. I'm not sure why! To believe that something happened randomly is not necessarily to believe "blindly". One might examine the evidence carefully and conclude that random chance is the best explanation. That's not a "blind" belief.
Still, it's interesting that you claim that such a belief is "no better" than belief in God. That's quite a weak assertion. Maybe it's no worse. Maybe belief in God is "no better" than belief in chance. Do you have a reason to show otherwise?
Aside from being pure speculative conjecture, the multiverse theory raises more questions than it cares to answer. For example, how did the mechanism behind the multiverse come to be? Who designed it to pump out an endless number of universes? It requires laws and fine-tuning in itself.
As I've said, you don't need a "mechanism" to posit a multiverse. But even if you did, obviously the questions you ask could be applied to God too. How did he come to be, and who designed him to design universes? Now you did recognise this problem earlier:
The problem of course is that one is then immediately forced to ask, "From where did God come from?" - to which the answer is He is both uncreated and eternal.
And that's a pretty weak answer. Why can't we say that the universe is "both uncreated and eternal"?
God has to be uncreated otherwise there would be no creation in the first place, i.e. there would be no universe, nothing.
That just assumes the conclusion. If the only way the universe could exist is by being created by God, then certainly God has to exist if the universe does. But the whole point at issue is whether that's the only way the universe could exist. If the universe is uncaused then we don't need to posit God at all.
Because if something had created God, then that something would have to be created by something else, invoking an infinite endless cycle (infinite regression) of past-creation and therefore, depriving the universe and everything else from existence as the opportunity wouldn't be there in the first place.
Even if we accept this argument (which I think is invalid anyway), all it tells us is that there must be a first cause. But that doesn't have to be God. Certainly if you think that God exists, then by definition nothing can have caused him, but again, whether or not God exists is the question.
10^60 is a huge number. To paint an analogy: grab 20 six-sided dice. Roll them every day, day & night nonstop for the rest of your life. You're highly likely to never roll all 6's.
And yet, the odds of getting a constant like G to within a life permitting range is 45 magnitudes lower, i.e 10^45. And we're supposed to think it's random? That's insane.
It's not insane, because your analogy is flawed. Suppose, as the fine-tuning argument proponents assume, that all of the conceivable physical constants the universe
could have had are indeed equally probable. So there are 10^45 possible values that G could have had, of which the actual value is no more probable than the rest. (And this is a pretty big assumption in itself, as I've said.) Well, if there's going to be a universe at all, one of these values would have to be actual (even if it were 0). So
any universe would have had a value of G that had a probability of only 10^45, no matter what that value actually was. So the fact that its actual value has this probability is exactly what you'd expect. This isn't a dice roll, and it isn't a lottery, it's a raffle. Someone
has to win a raffle. Even if there are 10^45 tickets, one of them
will win. The fact that
my ticket is the winning one is absolutely amazing news
for me but it is not objectively remarkable because it's no more unlikely than any of the others winning.
To put it another way, you say that it's "insane" to suppose that the actual value of G came about through pure chance. Well then, what would
you have expected it to be if it had been pure chance? Which value do you think would be more probable? There's no answer to that, because for all we know, any given value will be just as improbable as any other. That means that your assertion that it's insane to believe it's pure chance boils down to a refusal to believe that it could possibly be pure chance at all, no matter what value had been actual. And that's just a refusal to accept pure chance as an explanation at all, which isn't rational.
[EDIT] I have split the thread now.[/EDIT]
