Reason to God: Chapter 8

This chapter argues that the fine-tuning of our universe for complexity, life, intelligent life, intelligent life that can grasp the regularities and basic structure of the universe cries out for, demands explanation. And the best explanation is that the universe is fine-tuned by an intelligent, intentional fine-tuner. That is, the foundation of the BE is necessary, self-sufficient, independent, eternally powerful, personal, a conscious mind, and the intender of everything else that exists.

A kind of popular reply to this is that there is really nothing to explain; nothing cries out or demands explanation here. Why? Well, our existence in some sense explains the fine-tuning because if the universe were not fine-tuned, then we would not be here to wonder why the universe is fine tuned. The basic idea here is that the fine-tuning argument for the existence of an intelligent and intentional fine-tuner is guilty of what is called "observational selection effect" and that in many cases this is fallacious. Here is why:

Selection effects: fishnet example—If I fish in a lake with a net that has 5 inch holes in it, then I should not be surprised that the only fish I catch are bigger than 5 inches. It would be a serious mistake to conclude from my catch that the lake must only have fish that are bigger than 5 inches. 

Similarly, some have thought that the fine-tuning of the universe is unremarkable because it would not be possible to conclude that the universe is fine-tuned for intelligent life unless there was intelligent life to reach that conclusion. In other words, the universe is like that fishing net with 5-inch holes. You can only catch fish that are bigger than 5 inches with such a net and you can only see that the universe is finely tuned life if the universe is finely tuned for life. Just as it would be fallacious to conclude that the lake only has fish that are bigger than 5 inches, it would be fallacious to conclude that there is something special about our universe. It had to be finely tuned for life for us to notice that it is finely tuned for life. If it was not finely tuned for life there would not be anyone to notice that. 

Josh’s reply is basically that this response to fine-tuning gets things backwards. While it is true that living and intelligent beings do in fact exist in the universe, it does not follow from that that the parameters or the conditions necessary for living intelligent beings had to be present. In other words, the fine-tuning of the universe is still crying out for an explanation.

Famous example: you are before a 20 person firing squad that is aiming their guns at you ready to shoot. The head officer yells fire and all 20 guns fire at once. Remarkably you are unscathed. You notice this, of course, and ask what on earth happened. It woud be ridiculous to say that there is nothing to explain since that question could not be asked if you have not survived. Of course, there is something remarkable to explain—your surviving the 20 person shooting squad cries out for, demands explanation. 

Similarly, while it is true that in order to ask the question "how is the universe fine-tuned so precisely for being like us to exist" it must be the case that questioners exist. But given how incredibly precise the parameters must be for questioners to exist, that precision cries out for explanation. How did it come about? 

Don’t confuse the way you find out something from what it is you found out. The thing we have discovered—fine-tuning for life—is to be distinguished from the fact that no one could have discovered such a thing if no one was around to do so. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Arguing For God's Existence

Proving God’s Existence Throughout the modern period of philosophy and theology (beginning around the 18 th century until now) various thinkers have suggested that there is something problematic about giving arguments for God’s existence. They have given a variety of different reasons: faith requires the absence of proof, faith requires not relying on a proof, even if there are some, no argument for God’s existence is a good one, no argument gets us to God, no argument gets us to the God of the Bible (this is the worry that the God of the philosophers is different from the God of the Bible), arguments for God’s existence assume that our intellects have not been affected by the fall, God’s existence is obvious and a proof assumes that it is not, God’s existence is known by all because it is implanted in us so proofs are superfluous at best, denials of God’s existence are a sin problem, not a philosophy problem, etc. Rather than focus on the above reasons for not giving arguments f...
Read more

Possible Worlds and Covid-19

We are in the midst of a pandemic. As nations around the world respond to it, models of varying kinds are being generated to give policy-makers, practitioners, and others some kind of insight into the implications of all sorts of responses to the pandemic. Each model involves a bunch of assumptions—many of which are hidden in the mathematics—ranging from estimates about the number of actual infections, rate of infection, prevalence of co-morbidities, demographics of regions, infection death-rates, confirmed infection death-rates, duration of virus, etc. etc. etc.  Each model is representing a possible world! Did you notice that? Every model—and these are being relied upon by each and every country’s leaders in the world right now—is a prediction of what the world will look if x is true and we do y (to simplify quite a bit). Change x a bit and leave y alone and we get a new future; leave x alone and change y a bit and we get a new future; change both x and y a bit and we get ...
Read more

Concepts of Existence: An Intuitive Introduction

Concepts of Existence Consider the following: some dogs are brown. (In what follows, I use the phrases, property, first-order property, predicate, first-order predicate, as synonyms. They each mean roughly: a feature of some individual object. So a second-order property or second-order predicate is a property or predicate of an individual's first-order property. The considerations below suggest that 'existence' is best understood as a second-order property and not a first-order one. This will all be more understandable after you read below!) Given the truth of the above it seems to follow that some dogs exist. We do not need to add to the above claim: Some dogs are brown and they exist. Once we know that some dogs are brown, we already know that they exist. So, existence is not really a property of anything in the way that, say, being brown is a property of some dogs. So, it looks like thinking existence is a property is either unnecessary or incoherent. If x...
Read more