Well, that sounds like quote mining. Do you have the actual context of what he said?
The fine-tuning argument for God's existence
- Thread starter Unicorny
- Start date
Well, that sounds like quote mining. Do you have the actual context of what he said?
I’m afraid I’m not convinced by this argument either (in your formulation or Unicorny's). There are a number of reasons for this.
First, you talk about “free will”, but you don’t say what that actually is. But there are lots of different ways of thinking about free will, and they all have different conditions under which a person would or wouldn’t have it. So you can’t just use the term willy-nilly as if we all agree on what it is or whether we’d have it under the conditions you describe.
Second, the conditions under which you say we wouldn’t have it are quite counter-intuitive. You’re suggesting that the more we know about something, the less free will we have about it. But this isn’t how we normally think. If I get up in the middle of the night, I turn the light on so I can see where I’m going. I don’t think that I’d be freer if I were to leave the light turned off so I can blunder around in the dark. The light enables me to see what the situation is and make informed decisions about where to walk. You might call that being less free, but that’s such an eccentric notion of what “free will” is that it’s not one I would actually want. On your argument, God keeps us in the dark deliberately because he wants us to be unsure of the truth, and he wants us to blunder about blindly. This seems not merely to misrepresent freedom but to be a quite unworthy notion of God’s behaviour. And of course the Bible portrays God as enlightening people (John 1:9) and it portrays people as knowing God as a result of this (John 8:32, 10:14; Hebrews 8:11, 2 Peter 1:2-3, 3:18).
Third, if knowledge constrains free will, so does certainty. If a person who knows that God exists has her free will constrained by that fact, so does a person who is absolutely certain that God exists. But there are many people who, while they might not be said to know that God exists, are certain of it. I’ve met many people who are so convinced of God’s existence that they’re psychologically incapable of believing otherwise. And indeed this is probably true of most of the great saints in history. But by your argument, these people’s freedom is reduced by this certainty. Yet that seems implausible: certainly the people I’ve met who believe in this way don’t regard themselves as having reduced free will. On the contrary, they normally talk about being more free as a result of what they believe. Perhaps they’re mistaken about this, but then the question arises: if God deliberately withholds knowledge of his existence from us in order to preserve our free will, why does he allow some people to have certainty of his existence, even though this would be equally deleterious for free will?
Fourth, belief isn’t really a matter of the will at all, free or otherwise. I believe that there is frost out of the window right now, because I can see it. I don’t choose to believe this, and I wouldn’t be able to choose not to believe it if I wanted to. How could I? I think the same applies to belief about God. I don’t believe in God, but that’s not because I choose not to; on the contrary, I’d quite like to. But the world appears to me not to contain God, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Again, I’ve met many people who are convinced of God’s existence, who couldn’t not believe in him if they wanted to. I think that’s typical of religious belief. It’s not a matter of choice at all.
Fifth, you might say that the freedom which we’d lose by knowing that God exists isn’t the freedom to believe in him, it’s the freedom to make choices about how we live our lives. A person who knows that God exists doesn’t have the same kind of choice between good and evil that a person who doesn’t know God exists does. Here again there’s the notion that ignorance frees while knowledge constrains, a quite counter-intuitive view, as I said above. But apart from this, it simply doesn’t seem to be true. A person who knew that God existed could, if they so chose, disobey God. The Bible is full of examples of such behaviour, from Adam onwards: remember that, as I said above, the Bible always assumes that God’s existence is obvious and not open to question. Whether or not these stories are true, they seem to be possible. And indeed this is borne out by history, which is full of people who were absolutely certain of God’s existence and yet did all sorts of terrible things. Certainty of God’s existence does not correlate to moral behaviour – quite the reverse, sometimes.
Sixth, you’re assuming that a person who never sins has no choice about what they do. But clearly this is false. There are many actions which are morally indifferent. A sinless person could choose to scratch her nose or not, and this would be a free choice. More significantly, a sinless person could choose among a number of morally good acts. She could choose to become a missionary and save souls, or she could choose to become a wealthy philanthropist, or she could choose to become a doctor and save lives, and so on. So even a person who never did anything wrong (whether because she was aware of God’s existence or for some other reason) would still have plenty of opportunity to exercise her free will.
Seventh (and I’m not sure about the strength of this objection, but I’ll state it anyway), your argument assumes that whether or not God’s existence is knowable is down to God. That is, if God’s existence can’t be known, this is because God chooses to make it so; and if he wanted to, he could make his existence knowable. But why should this be so? It may be that God’s existence is intrinsically unknowable, or knowable, as the case may be. Classical theism holds that God is constrained by the laws of logic and possibility, and cannot do the impossible. If God’s existence can be proved by rational arguments, or if it cannot be, this would seem to flow necessarily from the nature of God and the nature of rationality, in which case God has no more control over it than he does over the laws of mathematics. God cannot determine his own nature, because his nature is necessarily what it is.
Eighth (and I think most decisively from a religious point of view), your argument contradicts important things that theists believe otherwise. Jesus is supposed to have had a perfect knowledge of God and morality – indeed he was God. Does it follow that Jesus had no free will? That’s not just an unpalatable conclusion, it’s outright heretical, but it’s entailed by the view you give here. Or again, think of the blessed in heaven, or in the resurrection life. They are supposed to enjoy the perfect vision of God (or, in the Orthodox tradition, to be actually united to God). Do they lack free will? If so, free will isn’t the great good that theists claim it to be. If they don’t lack it, then free will is compatible with knowledge of God. Or if Christian orthodoxy doesn’t matter to you, consider God himself. He certainly knows that God exists! Does he lack free will, then? So it would seem by your argument – but classical theists have always insisted that God enjoys perfect freedom, and so they should, if God is a perfect being and if free will is the great intrinsic good that your argument requires it to be.
Apologies for the double post. It wouldn't all fit in one.
It's an argument, so it's supposed at least to make God's existence more probable than it would otherwise be. If, after considering the argument carefully, we aren't more inclined to believe in God than we were before, it's a failure as an argument. The problem is that, as I see it, this is exactly the situation. I'm not saying that the argument fails to provide a drop-dead certain proof of God's existence. I'm saying that it fails to give any good reason to think God exists at all. This is because it makes so many ungrounded assumptions.
If your aim is merely to suggest the concept of God and invite speculation about that concept, then fine, but you don't need an argument to do that. All you need to do is say what you think God is. And of course people had that concept, and indeed believed in it, long before the fine-tuning argument was ever thought of.
But exactly the same thing is true of God. In fact you state precisely this later in this very same post:
Yes, you can't possibly measure God with scientific instruments, and if he exists outside the universe which he supposedly caused, we can't observe him. So why doesn't your objection to the multiverse theory apply to God as well? Aren't you just being straightforwardly inconsistent here?
Again, as would God! I pointed out before that you can't claim "The multiverse theory isn't a complete explanation because we can still ask where the multiverse came from," whilst also denying "The intelligent designer theory isn't a complete explanation because we can still ask where the intelligent designer came from." What is it about God that makes him a sufficient and final answer which doesn't apply to the multiverse theory? I haven't seen any good answer to this problem, but it's a pressing one because once again it looks like you're being inconsistent.
This doesn't get to grips with the objection I gave at all. Yes, you need an independently given pattern to justify a design hypothesis. But that's precisely what we don't have in the case of life. You're missing the point of the objection rather badly. The objection doesn't state "There are many possible universes in which life is possible, so there's nothing special about this one." I'm happy to agree with you that the nature of life itself means that only a tiny fraction of possible universes could have sustained it. No, the objection states "There's nothing special about the fact that this universe can sustain life at all."
In a poker game, we know that a royal running flush is a a more significant hand than snake eyes, because we know the rules of the game. The significance of a royal running flush is established independent of the fact that our opponent is holding one. Whether this establishment is temporally prior to playing the game is irrelevant (although if you don't know it before you start to play, you're probably in trouble).
But this is precisely what we don't have in the case of the physical constants in our universe. All we have is those constants. There isn't some cosmic rulebook, independent of the observable universe, telling us that there's something special about these constants. Yes, you're right that these constants, and (almost) no others, permit life. In that respect, there is something objectively unusual about them. But you haven't given a reason to think that permitting life is itself a significant or interesting feature. All we have is the fact that these constants are fortunate from our point of view. Your argument is like the poker player declaring that whatever hand he happens to be holding trumps all others, simply because it's the one he's got.
Put it like this: suppose we grant that all other possible universes would have been barren of life. But so what? They might have contained all kinds of things that are impossible in our universe. Maybe some given possible universe U has weird physical constants that make life impossible but make some other phenomenon P possible, which is impossible (or even unthinkable) in our universe. The fine-tuning claim is that our universe is intrinsically better than all others because only it can have life, but why can't we equally say that U is better than all others because it has P? You may say that I'm inventing imaginary universes about which we can know nothing; but you're doing the same thing when you assert that there are no possible universes with any phenomena P that are equally valuable as life is in our universe. To claim that the actual universe is the only possible one with anything valuable in it is to make a very strong claim about all the other possible universes.
So throughout this thread you've insisted that, were the universe's physical constants ever so slightly different, life would be impossible. But no matter how much you make this point, it doesn't show anything, because you also need to show that a universe with life in it has some kind of objective significance that a universe without life (and perhaps with completely different phenomena that our universe lacks) wouldn't have. You need to show, in other words, that a universe of the kind we have is equivalent to a royal running flush, i.e. established as "winning" independent of the fact that we happen to have it. You have to do that not by showing that the actual physical constants are the only ones that enable life, but that only a universe with life in it is worth having. But you haven't even begun to do this. And I don't see how anyone could do it.
Here again you're falling foul of your own principles. Yes, I say that for all we know different possible universes, with different physical laws and constants, might have been just as valuable as the one we're in. (Not from our point of view, but there's nothing special about that.) You say that I'm not allowed to speculate about different possible universes. But that's precisely what this whole argument rests on! If you can't speculate about different possible universes, you can't say that if gravity had been slightly different life would be impossible, or that if the weak nuclear force had been a bit stronger life would be impossible, and all of the other claims that fine-tuning argument proponents make. Because when you do that, you are making claims about different possible universes. Now if you're allowed to do it, why aren't I? Why's it OK for you to make claims about non-observable, non-existent universes, but not other people?
Yes, your main point here is quite correct, but it doesn't help to deal with the issues that others and I have raised here.
It's hard to know where to start with this paragraph! The phenomena you cite only require explanations beyond mere chance because we know the rules under which they occur. We know, for example, that the number plate is explicable in terms of Bob's wife designing it, because we know how number plates are usually formed, and what sorts of patterns result from that formation; we also know that certain patterns of letters and numbers have non-random meaning, and we know the sorts of things that husbands like to receive for their birthdays and the sorts of things wives might want to do for their husbands. In other words, we have a vast amount of background knowledge here which tells us (a) that this number plate is different from others, and (b) that there is a good explanation for this in terms of intelligent design. None of this applies to the universe, or its physical constants, or the existence of life. In order for your argument to get off the ground at all, you have to show that it does.
On the concept of the "tidy explanation" itself, I rather like this idea. I take it that the point is that these are phenomena where we wouldn't have realised that an explanation was required until one was given. But I don't really see its relevance. First, the mere fact that a "tidy explanation" is given does not, in itself, entail that such an explanation is required in the first place, or that the "tidy explanation" that's offered is actually correct. It might, after all, be the case that the silk merchant's thumb really was just covering the hole by coincidence. Another example: Wookey Hole has a rock in it which, when it's pointed out to you, looks a lot like a witch. The "explanation" is then offered that this is a real witch who was turned to stone many years ago. That fulfils the criterion of a "tidy explanation": you don't realise that the rock is an unusual shape (requiring explanation) until the explanation is actually given to you. However, it doesn't follow that this is a correct explanation, and it doesn't follow that the shape of the rock really requires one at all. In fact it's just an ordinary rock that some people think looks like a witch. So the fact that a "tidy explanation" of something is possible doesn't tell us anything at all about whether it's a correct explanation or even whether one is needed in the first place.
And second, you've not shown that an intelligent designer is a "tidy explanation" anyway. I would say it isn't - at least, not one that successfully shows that an explanation is required. It's a putative explanation for a phenomenon that supposedly requires explaining. But I've heard your explanation, and I understand it perfectly, but I'm not at all convinced that it shows that any explanation is required in the first place, let alone that this is the correct one.
El-Mac's answer to this is exactly correct, and you haven't addressed it at all.
Let me give you an example. I recently finished marking a vast number of exam scripts in philosophy of religion. (And believe me, when you've had to mark 50 near-identical essays on the teleological argument, the possibility that there's a benign intelligence behind the universe looks pretty remote.) These exams are marked on a scale of 1-100. So for any given script, the probability of its getting (say) 65 looks like it's 1%.
But in fact this isn't the case. In fact, many students got 65; indeed, at least three-quarters of them got marks in the 60s, when you'd expect only one in ten to do so.
This is because although each mark is apparently as probable as any other, students in fact cluster around the middle. 65 is the most common mark and they become less probable as you increase or decrease away from that number. No-one is stupid enough to get a mark under 5 or brilliant enough to get one over 95. In fact, although we theoretically mark out of 100, in practice we're marking out of 40-80, and even then there will be very few in the 40s and not many in the 70s. This is one of the eccentricities of marking in the humanities in British universities.
If you didn't know this, you might think that a mark of 65% and a mark of 4% were equally probable. It's the background knowledge of how the exams are marked and what the grading system is that tells you that this isn't the case.
Now in the case of universes, you may say that there are a mind-bogglingly vast range of possible physical laws and constants that the universe might have had. You may even be correct, although there's no way we could possibly know it. But even if this is correct, you certainly don't know that these different possibilities all have the same intrinsic probability, because you don't know how universes are made. You're like the student looking at her grade without the faintest idea of what the marking system is. Perhaps the actual values of all these physical constants are far more probable than all of the alternative ones that they might have had. How can you possibly know one way or the other?
In addition to this, your reference to "a dealer dealing a royal flush billions and billions of times in succession" again fails to address the fundamental issue that you're assuming that a universe containing life is significantly similar to a royal flush. You're assuming that a universe of this kind is intrinsically preferable to a universe of a different kind, just as a royal flush is intrinsically preferable to snake eyes. But what entitles you to make this assumption? I know that one poker hand is better than another because I know the rules of poker. I don't know that one universe is better than another, and neither do you, because we don't know the rules of universe-evaluation. All we know is which universe we'd prefer.
You can assert, as much as you like, that the ability of the universe to support life is like getting a royal running flush out of a vast deck with impossibly low odds, or like throwing dice repeatedly for a hundred lifetimes and getting sixes every time, or whatever analogy you want to make, where one of the infinitesimally unlikely outcomes is special and all the others aren't. I can simply assert back at you that in fact it's like the raffle with a gazillion gazillion tickets, none of which is any more special than any of the others, and the fact that this (life-supporting but non-P-supporting) ticket wins and not that (non-life-supporting but P-supporting) one requires no explanation. Until you can show why the actual outcome is more significant than all the alternatives, citing the odds against it is irrelevant - even if you could know them, which you can't.
At least you're citing theists now - although Polkinghorne is hardly in the same leagues as Hawking, Rees, and Deutsch! And I'm afraid he's wrong on this (he is a scientist and theologian, but no philosopher, and this is a philosophical question).
Here is (yet) another reason why. Suppose I grant your unfounded assumption that there's something special about the actual universe that sets it apart from all other possible ones, that it's like a royal running flush. And suppose that we (arbitrarily) rule out the possibility of the multiverse. I can still give you an explanation why we have this wonderful universe and not any of the inferior alternatives. I draw this explanation from Leibniz, though he probably wouldn't approve of my argument here.
Many things are possible, but some things are individually possible that aren't jointly possible. E.g. it was possible that I might be seven feet tall, and possible that I might be five feet tall, but not possible that I be both seven and five feet tall at the same time. Things that are jointly possible are called "compossible".
Any possible universe (i.e. way the universe might have gone) can be thought of as a set of compossibles. Now some of these sets of compossibles are pretty dull. E.g. a possible universe where gravity is a teeny bit stronger is one where stars and planets aren't possible; everything would (we are told) collapse into a singularity. And so on for all the others. The actual universe is the only one (we are told) where there is a huge variety of compossibles.
Now we might reasonably suppose that any possible object has an intrinsic tendency towards existence. If nothing prevents it from existing, it does. Why shouldn't it? The only thing that could prevent it from existing is if there's some other thing that exists with which it is incompossible.
What this means is that only one set of compossibles, or (if you prefer), only one possible universe, can actually exist. If all possibles are (in themselves) equally possible, and equally worthy of existence, it would follow that the universe that actually exists is the one that contains the most compossibles. It will have the greatest "weight", so to speak. Its superior quantity of compossibles will shoulder aside all the rival possible universes in the race for existence, just as a stronger, faster-growing tree will grow into a space in a rainforest canopy more quickly than its rivals, and starve them of light.
If all this is so then we would expect to see an actual universe containing far more variety and far more "stuff" than any possible alternative that we can imagine. It will have, for example, precisely the physical laws and constants that will allow for this variety and quantity of stuff. And this is just what we do see.
Now I don't propose this as a true explanation. For the reasons given above, I don't see any reason to think that the features of our universe that you've pointed out require explanation at all. I'm simply saying that, even if we accept your assumptions about what requires explanation, alternative explanations to intelligent design are available. And the explanation I've given is arguably quite superior to that of intelligent design. It explains perfectly why we would have this universe and not any other. The only general principle it requires is that we accept that possible things have a tendency to be actual, and that the biggest clump of possible things will therefore crowd out all rivals and actually be actual, leaving the rivals as mere non-actual possibles. It doesn't require us to posit the existence of anything other than the actual universe we see around us: no other universes, and no God or anything of that nature. In particular, it doesn't require us to posit the existence of anything utterly unlike anything within our experience - as God would be, with his incorporeal nature and necessary existence. This being so, the fine-tuning argument is weakened still further, because even if we accept its very dubious assumptions, there are still alternatives to its conclusions which are arguably superior.
It's an argument, so it's supposed at least to make God's existence more probable than it would otherwise be. If, after considering the argument carefully, we aren't more inclined to believe in God than we were before, it's a failure as an argument. The problem is that, as I see it, this is exactly the situation. I'm not saying that the argument fails to provide a drop-dead certain proof of God's existence. I'm saying that it fails to give any good reason to think God exists at all. This is because it makes so many ungrounded assumptions.
If your aim is merely to suggest the concept of God and invite speculation about that concept, then fine, but you don't need an argument to do that. All you need to do is say what you think God is. And of course people had that concept, and indeed believed in it, long before the fine-tuning argument was ever thought of.
But exactly the same thing is true of God. In fact you state precisely this later in this very same post:
Yes, you can't possibly measure God with scientific instruments, and if he exists outside the universe which he supposedly caused, we can't observe him. So why doesn't your objection to the multiverse theory apply to God as well? Aren't you just being straightforwardly inconsistent here?
Again, as would God! I pointed out before that you can't claim "The multiverse theory isn't a complete explanation because we can still ask where the multiverse came from," whilst also denying "The intelligent designer theory isn't a complete explanation because we can still ask where the intelligent designer came from." What is it about God that makes him a sufficient and final answer which doesn't apply to the multiverse theory? I haven't seen any good answer to this problem, but it's a pressing one because once again it looks like you're being inconsistent.
This doesn't get to grips with the objection I gave at all. Yes, you need an independently given pattern to justify a design hypothesis. But that's precisely what we don't have in the case of life. You're missing the point of the objection rather badly. The objection doesn't state "There are many possible universes in which life is possible, so there's nothing special about this one." I'm happy to agree with you that the nature of life itself means that only a tiny fraction of possible universes could have sustained it. No, the objection states "There's nothing special about the fact that this universe can sustain life at all."
In a poker game, we know that a royal running flush is a a more significant hand than snake eyes, because we know the rules of the game. The significance of a royal running flush is established independent of the fact that our opponent is holding one. Whether this establishment is temporally prior to playing the game is irrelevant (although if you don't know it before you start to play, you're probably in trouble).
But this is precisely what we don't have in the case of the physical constants in our universe. All we have is those constants. There isn't some cosmic rulebook, independent of the observable universe, telling us that there's something special about these constants. Yes, you're right that these constants, and (almost) no others, permit life. In that respect, there is something objectively unusual about them. But you haven't given a reason to think that permitting life is itself a significant or interesting feature. All we have is the fact that these constants are fortunate from our point of view. Your argument is like the poker player declaring that whatever hand he happens to be holding trumps all others, simply because it's the one he's got.
Put it like this: suppose we grant that all other possible universes would have been barren of life. But so what? They might have contained all kinds of things that are impossible in our universe. Maybe some given possible universe U has weird physical constants that make life impossible but make some other phenomenon P possible, which is impossible (or even unthinkable) in our universe. The fine-tuning claim is that our universe is intrinsically better than all others because only it can have life, but why can't we equally say that U is better than all others because it has P? You may say that I'm inventing imaginary universes about which we can know nothing; but you're doing the same thing when you assert that there are no possible universes with any phenomena P that are equally valuable as life is in our universe. To claim that the actual universe is the only possible one with anything valuable in it is to make a very strong claim about all the other possible universes.
So throughout this thread you've insisted that, were the universe's physical constants ever so slightly different, life would be impossible. But no matter how much you make this point, it doesn't show anything, because you also need to show that a universe with life in it has some kind of objective significance that a universe without life (and perhaps with completely different phenomena that our universe lacks) wouldn't have. You need to show, in other words, that a universe of the kind we have is equivalent to a royal running flush, i.e. established as "winning" independent of the fact that we happen to have it. You have to do that not by showing that the actual physical constants are the only ones that enable life, but that only a universe with life in it is worth having. But you haven't even begun to do this. And I don't see how anyone could do it.
Here again you're falling foul of your own principles. Yes, I say that for all we know different possible universes, with different physical laws and constants, might have been just as valuable as the one we're in. (Not from our point of view, but there's nothing special about that.) You say that I'm not allowed to speculate about different possible universes. But that's precisely what this whole argument rests on! If you can't speculate about different possible universes, you can't say that if gravity had been slightly different life would be impossible, or that if the weak nuclear force had been a bit stronger life would be impossible, and all of the other claims that fine-tuning argument proponents make. Because when you do that, you are making claims about different possible universes. Now if you're allowed to do it, why aren't I? Why's it OK for you to make claims about non-observable, non-existent universes, but not other people?
Yes, your main point here is quite correct, but it doesn't help to deal with the issues that others and I have raised here.
It's hard to know where to start with this paragraph! The phenomena you cite only require explanations beyond mere chance because we know the rules under which they occur. We know, for example, that the number plate is explicable in terms of Bob's wife designing it, because we know how number plates are usually formed, and what sorts of patterns result from that formation; we also know that certain patterns of letters and numbers have non-random meaning, and we know the sorts of things that husbands like to receive for their birthdays and the sorts of things wives might want to do for their husbands. In other words, we have a vast amount of background knowledge here which tells us (a) that this number plate is different from others, and (b) that there is a good explanation for this in terms of intelligent design. None of this applies to the universe, or its physical constants, or the existence of life. In order for your argument to get off the ground at all, you have to show that it does.
On the concept of the "tidy explanation" itself, I rather like this idea. I take it that the point is that these are phenomena where we wouldn't have realised that an explanation was required until one was given. But I don't really see its relevance. First, the mere fact that a "tidy explanation" is given does not, in itself, entail that such an explanation is required in the first place, or that the "tidy explanation" that's offered is actually correct. It might, after all, be the case that the silk merchant's thumb really was just covering the hole by coincidence. Another example: Wookey Hole has a rock in it which, when it's pointed out to you, looks a lot like a witch. The "explanation" is then offered that this is a real witch who was turned to stone many years ago. That fulfils the criterion of a "tidy explanation": you don't realise that the rock is an unusual shape (requiring explanation) until the explanation is actually given to you. However, it doesn't follow that this is a correct explanation, and it doesn't follow that the shape of the rock really requires one at all. In fact it's just an ordinary rock that some people think looks like a witch. So the fact that a "tidy explanation" of something is possible doesn't tell us anything at all about whether it's a correct explanation or even whether one is needed in the first place.
And second, you've not shown that an intelligent designer is a "tidy explanation" anyway. I would say it isn't - at least, not one that successfully shows that an explanation is required. It's a putative explanation for a phenomenon that supposedly requires explaining. But I've heard your explanation, and I understand it perfectly, but I'm not at all convinced that it shows that any explanation is required in the first place, let alone that this is the correct one.
And yet again, are some posters denying the evidence of fine-tuning itself now? That's remarkable. I'll cite a few examples:
N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, is approximately 10^36. If it were smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist.
Epsilon (ε, the strength of the force binding nucleons into nuclei, is 0.007. If it were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. If it were 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang.
Omega (Ω
Lambda (λ
That is akin to a dealer dealing a royal flush billions and billions of times in succession - just getting lucky or is it by design (i.e. knowingly cheating in this case). As the video that I had posted earlier attests to, the element of random chance is nonexistent, as the probability of the fine-tuned constants laying in their very small range of the order of 10^60 and 10^120 is beyond rational reason to attribute to luck, especially, in a single universe.
El-Mac's answer to this is exactly correct, and you haven't addressed it at all.
Let me give you an example. I recently finished marking a vast number of exam scripts in philosophy of religion. (And believe me, when you've had to mark 50 near-identical essays on the teleological argument, the possibility that there's a benign intelligence behind the universe looks pretty remote.) These exams are marked on a scale of 1-100. So for any given script, the probability of its getting (say) 65 looks like it's 1%.
But in fact this isn't the case. In fact, many students got 65; indeed, at least three-quarters of them got marks in the 60s, when you'd expect only one in ten to do so.
This is because although each mark is apparently as probable as any other, students in fact cluster around the middle. 65 is the most common mark and they become less probable as you increase or decrease away from that number. No-one is stupid enough to get a mark under 5 or brilliant enough to get one over 95. In fact, although we theoretically mark out of 100, in practice we're marking out of 40-80, and even then there will be very few in the 40s and not many in the 70s. This is one of the eccentricities of marking in the humanities in British universities.
If you didn't know this, you might think that a mark of 65% and a mark of 4% were equally probable. It's the background knowledge of how the exams are marked and what the grading system is that tells you that this isn't the case.
Now in the case of universes, you may say that there are a mind-bogglingly vast range of possible physical laws and constants that the universe might have had. You may even be correct, although there's no way we could possibly know it. But even if this is correct, you certainly don't know that these different possibilities all have the same intrinsic probability, because you don't know how universes are made. You're like the student looking at her grade without the faintest idea of what the marking system is. Perhaps the actual values of all these physical constants are far more probable than all of the alternative ones that they might have had. How can you possibly know one way or the other?
In addition to this, your reference to "a dealer dealing a royal flush billions and billions of times in succession" again fails to address the fundamental issue that you're assuming that a universe containing life is significantly similar to a royal flush. You're assuming that a universe of this kind is intrinsically preferable to a universe of a different kind, just as a royal flush is intrinsically preferable to snake eyes. But what entitles you to make this assumption? I know that one poker hand is better than another because I know the rules of poker. I don't know that one universe is better than another, and neither do you, because we don't know the rules of universe-evaluation. All we know is which universe we'd prefer.
You can assert, as much as you like, that the ability of the universe to support life is like getting a royal running flush out of a vast deck with impossibly low odds, or like throwing dice repeatedly for a hundred lifetimes and getting sixes every time, or whatever analogy you want to make, where one of the infinitesimally unlikely outcomes is special and all the others aren't. I can simply assert back at you that in fact it's like the raffle with a gazillion gazillion tickets, none of which is any more special than any of the others, and the fact that this (life-supporting but non-P-supporting) ticket wins and not that (non-life-supporting but P-supporting) one requires no explanation. Until you can show why the actual outcome is more significant than all the alternatives, citing the odds against it is irrelevant - even if you could know them, which you can't.
At least you're citing theists now - although Polkinghorne is hardly in the same leagues as Hawking, Rees, and Deutsch! And I'm afraid he's wrong on this (he is a scientist and theologian, but no philosopher, and this is a philosophical question).
Here is (yet) another reason why. Suppose I grant your unfounded assumption that there's something special about the actual universe that sets it apart from all other possible ones, that it's like a royal running flush. And suppose that we (arbitrarily) rule out the possibility of the multiverse. I can still give you an explanation why we have this wonderful universe and not any of the inferior alternatives. I draw this explanation from Leibniz, though he probably wouldn't approve of my argument here.
Many things are possible, but some things are individually possible that aren't jointly possible. E.g. it was possible that I might be seven feet tall, and possible that I might be five feet tall, but not possible that I be both seven and five feet tall at the same time. Things that are jointly possible are called "compossible".
Any possible universe (i.e. way the universe might have gone) can be thought of as a set of compossibles. Now some of these sets of compossibles are pretty dull. E.g. a possible universe where gravity is a teeny bit stronger is one where stars and planets aren't possible; everything would (we are told) collapse into a singularity. And so on for all the others. The actual universe is the only one (we are told) where there is a huge variety of compossibles.
Now we might reasonably suppose that any possible object has an intrinsic tendency towards existence. If nothing prevents it from existing, it does. Why shouldn't it? The only thing that could prevent it from existing is if there's some other thing that exists with which it is incompossible.
What this means is that only one set of compossibles, or (if you prefer), only one possible universe, can actually exist. If all possibles are (in themselves) equally possible, and equally worthy of existence, it would follow that the universe that actually exists is the one that contains the most compossibles. It will have the greatest "weight", so to speak. Its superior quantity of compossibles will shoulder aside all the rival possible universes in the race for existence, just as a stronger, faster-growing tree will grow into a space in a rainforest canopy more quickly than its rivals, and starve them of light.
If all this is so then we would expect to see an actual universe containing far more variety and far more "stuff" than any possible alternative that we can imagine. It will have, for example, precisely the physical laws and constants that will allow for this variety and quantity of stuff. And this is just what we do see.
Now I don't propose this as a true explanation. For the reasons given above, I don't see any reason to think that the features of our universe that you've pointed out require explanation at all. I'm simply saying that, even if we accept your assumptions about what requires explanation, alternative explanations to intelligent design are available. And the explanation I've given is arguably quite superior to that of intelligent design. It explains perfectly why we would have this universe and not any other. The only general principle it requires is that we accept that possible things have a tendency to be actual, and that the biggest clump of possible things will therefore crowd out all rivals and actually be actual, leaving the rivals as mere non-actual possibles. It doesn't require us to posit the existence of anything other than the actual universe we see around us: no other universes, and no God or anything of that nature. In particular, it doesn't require us to posit the existence of anything utterly unlike anything within our experience - as God would be, with his incorporeal nature and necessary existence. This being so, the fine-tuning argument is weakened still further, because even if we accept its very dubious assumptions, there are still alternatives to its conclusions which are arguably superior.
Tigranes
Armenian
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2008
- Messages
- 10,411
It's quite alright! Einstein did not agree with Quantum Physics to his death, but that did not prevent people from developing quantum relativity
Let's see where we can agree.
1. If atheists persecute my grandfather (like they did), for staying God exists -- would you agree that he was persecuted for his religious beliefs?
2. Or if you were to state on your blog while living in today's Saudi Arabia -- "Shada says -- there is no god but God. I say there is no God. Period" -- and be ordered by the judge to receive 1000 lashes -- would you agree that you were persecuted for his religious beliefs?
3. When I say -- "I believe that God exist", I am making a personal statement. It self-describes me as a theist. The reality of that description can be proven to be true or false, based on if I meant what I said (torture/joke). When I say -- "God exists", I am making a religious statement, which cannot be proven to be true or false, and therefore constitutes a religious belief. Yes?
4. When you say -- you do not believe that God exist, you are making a personal statement. It describes you as an atheist. The reality of that description can be proven to be true or false, based on if you meant what you said (torture, joke). When you say -- "God exists", you are making a general statement on religious matter, which cannot be proven to be true or false, and therefore constitutes a religious belief. No?
Ok, let's get going!It's quite alright! Einstein did not agree with Quantum Physics to his death, but that did not prevent people from developing quantum relativity
Let's see where we can agree.
I am sorry to hear that your grandfather was persecuted. I doubt however that his persecuters did what they did because they were atheists. Perhaps they happened to be atheists, but they were most likely driven by another set of dogmatic beliefs. There is no logical pathway from atheism to violence. In fact, there is no logical pathway from a lack of any sort of belief to any sort of action.
To answer your question though, yes, there have been many cases in history where people were persecuted and killed because they held certain religious beliefs.
No. I would be persecuted for my lack of a specific religious belief.
First part, yes. Second part, yes, it constitues a religious belief, but no, it's not necessarily true that it can't be proven true or false. First you would have to define what you mean by "God". Then you would have to show me your evidence. The burden of proof lies on you, since it is you who is making the claim that a god exists. If the evidence is convincing, I'd accept your claim, or would at least look into it deeper. If it isn't convincing, I would not believe you. It is not my job to prove that your god doesn't exist. Similarly I can discard all kinds of claims about fairies, Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster without having to prove they don't exist.
First part, yes, as above. Second part, likewise as above. Depending on the specific definition of "God" the claim could potentially be proven to be false. In fact, it has been argued that the god of the bible is a logical impossibility due to the contradictory nature of his ascribed traits. Likewise, provided a sufficient amount of evidence, a certain god could potentially be proven to exist.
But that doesn't really matter, because we don't go about determining what is real by attempting to prove it true or false. Instead, we evaluate the available evidence for or against the claim. As I said in my previous post, it is only rationally justified to accept a claim as true when there has been sufficient verified evidence in its favor.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 26,698
^^^ Gawd! Walls of Text!
But anyway... fine tuning the cosmological constant isn't all that God's up to.
What about the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference? Now there's some fine tuning for you! If it wasn't for the exact value of this number we wouldn't have circles and diameters, and the whole fabric of reality would have to unravel.
And this is, of course, why we see neither hair nor fingernail of God: she's too busy working out the value of pi. An infinite and consequently a full-time job.
Then there's e, another number that requires all God's time. It would seem there must therefore be at least two Gods about the place.
But anyway... fine tuning the cosmological constant isn't all that God's up to.
What about the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference? Now there's some fine tuning for you! If it wasn't for the exact value of this number we wouldn't have circles and diameters, and the whole fabric of reality would have to unravel.
And this is, of course, why we see neither hair nor fingernail of God: she's too busy working out the value of pi. An infinite and consequently a full-time job.
Then there's e, another number that requires all God's time. It would seem there must therefore be at least two Gods about the place.
There's a huge middle-ground when it comes to whether atheism is a faith or not, but I really recommend the theists listen to what the atheists are saying. Atheism needn't be a pro-active disbelief. It can be merely a non-belief.
For example, I've never seriously considered the idea of Zeus or Odin. I don't believe in these gods, but there's no faith required in these beliefs. Conversely, I'm a Christian apostate. I used to believe in their god, but then (over time) lost those reasons to believe. Well, not really. What really happened is I gained reasons to disbelieve.
I'd have to say that my atheism regarding Christ is a variant of religious belief. My atheism regarding Thor, though, is total just a non-belief. The quip "calling atheism a religious belief is like calling bald a hair colour" really fits with regards to my relationship with Thor.
For example, I've never seriously considered the idea of Zeus or Odin. I don't believe in these gods, but there's no faith required in these beliefs. Conversely, I'm a Christian apostate. I used to believe in their god, but then (over time) lost those reasons to believe. Well, not really. What really happened is I gained reasons to disbelieve.
I'd have to say that my atheism regarding Christ is a variant of religious belief. My atheism regarding Thor, though, is total just a non-belief. The quip "calling atheism a religious belief is like calling bald a hair colour" really fits with regards to my relationship with Thor.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
You're describing a paranoid skeptic - reasonable skeptics accept the work of others.
False.
Physicist Paul Davies calculated that in order for planets to exist, the relevant initial conditions had to be fine tuned to a precision of one part in 10 followed by a thousand billion billion zeroes at least. For electromagnetism, he estimated a change of only one part in 10 to the power of 40 would have spelled disaster for stars, like our sun, thereby precluding the existence of planets.
Gravitational force must be what it is, for planets to have stable orbits around the sun. Otherwise if they had a greater force they would fall into the sun and burn up or if weaker, they would escape from their orbit into a very cold, outer darkness. It is estimated that a change in gravity by only one part in 10 to the power of 100 would have prevented a life permitting universe.
If the electric charge on an electron were only slightly different, stars would be unable to burn hydrogen and helium. and produce the chemical elements such as carbon and oxygen that make up our bodies. Similarly, the orbit of electrons in atoms would not be stable, so matter as we know it would not exist.
Stephen Hawking wrote, If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached its present size. (aBHoT p.122)
Stephen Hawking goes further and comments that it is like a hoard of monkeys hammering away on typewriters and by pure chance eventually producing one of Shakespeare's sonnets. Lets face it, it just not going to happen - and believing that it would happen by itself - due to an element of luck - is nothing short of gigantic leap of blind faith.
It is estimated that there are some 50 fundamental numbers or physical constants present at the moment of the Big Bang that must be precisely fine-tuned in the way they were for human life to become possible.
Now that I've established that evidence for the fine-tuning in the universe, one may ask so what?
There are only four possibilities put forward for explaining the fine-tuning of the universe: 1) Multiple Universes 2) Natural Law 3) Chance or 4) Design.
The theory of Multiple Universes supposes there are a vast number of quite different universes, allowing the statistical chance that one of them would produce human life. Without a jot of evidence to support it, it is a desperate attempt to deny the existence of God. Ockams Razor states that the simpler assumption is always to be preferred.
Natural law implies a physical inevitability that the universe is the way it is; that it would not be possible for the universe not to produce human life. Yet if the universe had expanded just a little more slowly, if entropy were slightly greater or any of these constants been just slightly different, life would not have occurred. As Paul Davies put it, The physical universe does not have to be the way it is; it could have been otherwise.
And the chances of the world being as it is, are incomprehensibly small, nonexistent, zero, which abolishes the argument of chance. Also, which is why Anthony Flew concludes there must be a Designer. Anthony Flew was an international doyen of philosophical atheism, now aged over 80, publicly announced that he has abandoned his atheism, and had done so on the basis of scientific arguments, which now persuade him that there is a God.
Which leaves us with Design and therefore, provides evidence to a higher intelligence who has set everything as is. Furthermore, this evidence itself suggests a special relationship between the Creator and human beings. There is not only a Mind behind the creation, but the rational creator has created rational beings, who can reflect upon and understand the mind of the creator. We are told in Genesis that we are made in his Image. As Kepler put it, we are capable of thinking Gods thoughts after him. No other living thing is capable of doing that. Let alone your aspidistra, try telling your cat about this. It is completely beyond his grasp.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Atheism (in general) has religious beliefs in the sense of having beliefs regarding religion or topics religions talk about but not in the sense of being produced and propagated by the means that characterize religion.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Regarding big probabilities, the chance of me posting "B3ZtRWrLI7 6dIU4cPgSS 77yuj4kfhW kf4jpZcDCb 6zt3PFAzG8 Msrrg7C8DF UsfMqtoKpK etisMhNPvS 67aUbu8coW AmVNQUvmhR" was 1 in 1.734479e+179 but it just happened.
Unicorny, you're really missing something very, very basic if you're calling Phorx's statement false. His statement is true. Even your later paragraphs don't counter his point.
No one's doubting that there are universal constants that, if different, would change our entire universe. But his statement was about the probability of the universe coming into being this way. We have no way to say whether it's probable or improbable.
It's interesting that you view the God Hypothesis as 'more simple' than the multiverse hypothesis. It's actually the other way around.
No one's doubting that there are universal constants that, if different, would change our entire universe. But his statement was about the probability of the universe coming into being this way. We have no way to say whether it's probable or improbable.
It's interesting that you view the God Hypothesis as 'more simple' than the multiverse hypothesis. It's actually the other way around.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 26,698
Ah, yes. But you're an intelligent designer!
If you can get your cat to do exactly the same thing, then... I don't know what I'll do. But it will be something, I can tell you that.
It should be noted that 'more simple' doesn't mean 'easier to understand' or necessarily 'more intuitively obvious'.
Though I agree with much of what you said, I'd point out that there is no middle-ground in this matter, even if many people think there is. "A-theism" means "without theism". In other words, the atheist hasn't been convinced by theistic claims. There is no faith involved at all.
Atheism addresses a single issue, namely whether or not a god exists. It does not address any other beliefs regarding religion or topics religions talk about. If you don't believe a god exists, you are an atheist, regardless of any other positions you may hold about religion or other matters. Granted, it's possible that this is what you meant.Perfection said:
You might have to be apostate to understand, but there came a point in my life where I had to actively decide to act as if God wasn't real (instead of using Pascal's Wager to justify continuing to act according to the Christian faith).
Wolfbeckett
Jerkin' and nonsense.
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,682
That's the common parlance, although I personally think the term agnostic is thrown around too much, most of the people I've met that claim they are agnostic are really atheists who don't want to claim that title for some reason. I don't think agnostic is that useful of a term because, if pushed, I reckon most atheists would agree that it's impossible to know for sure whether any gods exist or not because if we posit a literally omnipotent god then literally anything could be true. But there's a point where the likelihood of that seems so small that calling yourself agnostic is really splitting hairs, and I've almost never met anybody who I'd truly describe as agnostic.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 26,698
I just got very tired of going to Church and thinking "Do I believe this stuff. No. I don't think I do."
That's fine. And it's what a lot of people who are atheists say.
But I'd say that, if you push them, most people who claim to believe in God would also admit they do not know.
I claim to be agnostic because not only do I not know, I recognize that I do not know.
And I think my lack of knowledge is the most important part of my world view.
I also frequently review my lack of knowledge, in recognition of my undoubted fallibility*. Unlike people, self-confessed atheists and believers alike, who seem to have pretty much made up their minds. On the basis of what I really don't have a clue.
*It's possible, for instance, that I really do know, but I don't know that I know it.
That's fine. And it's what a lot of people who are atheists say.
But I'd say that, if you push them, most people who claim to believe in God would also admit they do not know.
I claim to be agnostic because not only do I not know, I recognize that I do not know.
And I think my lack of knowledge is the most important part of my world view.
I also frequently review my lack of knowledge, in recognition of my undoubted fallibility*. Unlike people, self-confessed atheists and believers alike, who seem to have pretty much made up their minds. On the basis of what I really don't have a clue.
*It's possible, for instance, that I really do know, but I don't know that I know it.
Similar threads
- Locked
