As a relatively recent arrival here at TSZ, I am somewhat intrigued to still see the Fine-Tuning Argument in regular rotation. It appears often in comments, but the two most recent OP’s that I have come across dedicated to the topic are Mung’s ‘The Wonder of Water‘ and RobC’s ‘The Big Numbers Game‘.
That I find the Fine-Tuning Argument completely unconvincing will not come as a surprise to anyone who has read any of my comments on TSZ. But I think it is worth taking a moment to explain why that is as my reasoning differs slightly from that of others whose comments I have seen. In a comment on the ‘Wonder of Water’ thread, Joe Felsenstein comes closest while referring to the ability of the Schrodinger Wave Equation to model all of the properties that we see expressed in Chemistry:
“If Michael Denton’s Intelligent Designer wants to fine-tune properties of water she has to do it by tinkering with the SWE. Which would mess up a lot else.”
In a UD post cited on RobC’s OP, vjtorley argues (with his emphasis) that God fine-tuned the universe because He wants us to discover His existence through the fine-tuning of the cosmos.
I will circle back to Joe Felsenstein’s comment momentarily.
For starters, it is important to make certain that everyone is familiar with the idea of Kettle Logic as expressed by Sigmund Freud in “The Interpretation of Dreams”. That is, using multiple arguments which are inconsistent with one another.
The example used by Freud is that of a man who is accused of returning a borrowed kettle to his neighbor in a damaged condition. He responds with the following 3 arguments:
1- The kettle was undamaged when he returned it.
2- The kettle was already damaged when he originally borrowed it.
3- He never borrowed the kettle in the first place.
Individually, any one of these arguments might be true. However, used together they represent an absurdity since they are each mutually exclusive of at least one of the remaining two.
To relate this to the Fine-Tuning Argument, I will put forth 3 statements that reflect the position of proponents of the argument as I understand it. We can hash out semantics in the comments.
1- An infinitely powerful being, God, created the Universe ex nihilo.
2- The same being carefully tuned a number of fundamental physical constants to extremely narrow ranges outside of which life as we know it would not be possible.
3- God’s creative hand is clearly visible in the structure of our Universe and its properties.
As with the Kettle Logic example above, any one of these three arguments might be true by itself. However, also as with the previous example, I don’t see any way that all three can be true simultaneously.
Scenario A: Assume statement 1 is true – If God is infinitely powerful and God created the Universe from nothing, then there can be no limit as to which values God could set physical constants to. If he literally sets the rules, then he would be able to make any combination of values work for his desired outcome (If 1, then not 2). And whatever set of values he chose, it should appear to any observers who might emerge within the Universe to be a brute fact (If 1, then not 3).
Scenario B: Assume statement 2 is true – If there are only very narrow ranges of physical values that will allow life to emerge, then God could not have created the Universe from nothing. In that case there must be a pre-existing substrate upon which reality is built which limits the creative actions of God (If 2, then not 1). And similarly to Scenario A, if the constants were set at the beginning, they would appear to any observers in the Universe to be an unchanging brute fact (If 2, then not 3).
Assuming that statement 3 is true brings me back to Joe Felsenstein’s comment that I quoted above. The chemical properties of water are indeed exceptional. However, as Joe points out, changing anything about the properties of water would necessarily change the nature of all of chemistry since water is made up of components which are common to all elements.
Deducing the creative action of God would require the observation of something that did not follow the established norms of the universe. The divine nature of Jesus is not believed based upon the observation of his normal habits of respiration and digestion for example. It is rather believed based upon the accounts of miraculous events in the Gospels which stand out from everyday commonplace events.
One way to look at it is as the difference between what I have occasionally heard described as tuning (setting of initial conditions) and tinkering (on-the-fly adjustments). Experiencing a miraculous event could lead one to deduce Divine action in the Universe. However, the mere fact that the event is miraculous means that it departs from the expected pattern of natural occurrences (If 3, then not 2).
Since this is my first OP, I apologize in advance for any formatting errors. I also apologize if I have misrepresented the position of proponents of the Fine-Tuning Argument. I would be happy to have my understanding enlightened.
My exposure to the argument has come primarily by way of Christian Apologists such as William Lane Craig and Fr. Robert Spitzer. Therefore, my statements here are primarily informed by that mindset versus more esoteric versions of Christian belief or by ID.
This is a faulty assumption since God chose to make the universe out of the finite materials he created which resulted in physical constants.
You’re claiming God has unlimited power and then you are contradicting yourself by limiting his power.
Hi colewd. Thanks for commenting.
I don’t see how that explains anything. I’m pointing out that, if he created the materials of the Universe from scratch, than any resultant combination of physical constants should work.
Otherwise, you would appear to be committing the Lottery Fallacy.
If the ranges at which the fundamental constants of the Universe could support life were much broader, would that be less convincing as proof of God’s hand in Creation?
RoyLT,
This is a faulty assumption because God can chose to make what God wants including a universe with constraints. The constraints start with the decision to build a universe made up of matter which is a limited finite resource. That is what we are observing. This decision works its way down to free will and our ability to make decisions due to limited resources.
It is the observation of matter that is the result of finely tuned laws that makes the random accident theory illogical.
I think this is spot on.
The whole argument is silly: here’s this God who can design nature the way he wants, but will choose to do it so that it just looks like it couldn’t have been made any other way with the only purpose that we will notice. Too bad he also made us intelligent enough to notice how self defeating that nonsense is
The issue of fine-tuning has nothing to do with evolution, but it does seem to have come up at Evolution News and Views recently, in a particularly silly way. They were touting the recent book by Michael Denton, The Wonder of Water. Published, of course, by Discovery Institute Press.
Water, it seems, has many wonderful properties perfect for life. This led me to wonder how the properties of water could be different. Is there a table of properties of elements out there somewhere, in which you can change the properties of water by changing a few entries. A sort of genetic code of the elements and molecules?
Well, actually, the properties of chemical compounds are implied by the properties of the different chemical elements. And the orbitals of atoms of different elements are described by the Schrödinger Wave Equation. If you, as The Designer, want to change the properties of water, you would have to alter reality so that the Schrödinger Wave Equation no longer applied. Some other equation would then describe the elements, and that would change the properties of all of them, not just hydrogen and oxygen. It’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature.
Joe, that’s a horrible argument. Seriously.
Another recent treatment:
A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos
And on another note, fine tuning is not taken seriously by only Christian apologists.
The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?
I do have to say “oops”. I hadn’t noticed that most of my argument (horrible or not) was in the OP already.
No worries Joe.
I’ll be impressed with fine-tuning if I see some failed universes–but not too many or chance alone would get one right.
Kind of hard to get general knowledge about how universes might turn out when we have only one. It might be possible to know, but we don’t now.
Glen Davidson
So you’re argument is that the amount of matter in the Universe is the key Fine-Tuned Quantity?
RoyLT,
No. The argument is about the capability of matter as in Joe F’s discussion. Matter itself is finely tuned and has finite capability. Life as we know it requires finely tuned predictable matter. The hydrogen bond is one example. Computers also require finely tuned predictable matter. The solid state transistor is one example.
The argument for fine tuning has always been that if any one of these “constants/laws” were even slightly different, the universe as we know it, and life, would not be possible. But this can only be a valid argument if these constants are adjustable
Using a mechanic or watch as an example, we can clearly say that it is designed, finely tuned, because if you even remove one cog, it will not tell the right time. But we can say that because we can built gears with fewer cogs, different gear ratios, etc.
The argument for fine tuning has always been that if any one of these “constants/laws” were even slightly different, the universe as we know it, and life, would not be possible. But this can only be a valid argument if these constants are adjustable
Using a mechanic or watch as an example, we can clearly say that it is designed, finely tuned, because if you even remove one cog, it will not tell the right time. But we can say that because we can built gears with fewer cogs, different gear ratios, etc. N
You’re in a failed universe.
True. 99.999999999999999999% of the universe, or more, is completely hostile to life as we know it. The designer (AKA the hydro/Christian god) obviously is a very poor designer.
Why are the values that we see the only ones that are predictable? Why couldn’t an infinitely powerful creator set any arrangement of values to be equally predictable?
RoyLT,
Parts that work together require precision to be predictable. Once you design a jar the screw top lid has very few degrees of freedom. As we are working with the reality of atoms and molecules so is the designer of these parts.
Not if The Designer is changing the chemical and physical properties of water.
Not sure this is true, even when taken literally!
Nice OP, thanks.
The curious variety of the periodic table has always struck me. Why carbon alone in its group has the property of forming long chains; why carbon dioxide is so different from silicon dioxide, and so on and so on. It was remarkable to discover that all this variety arose out of the complex interplay of 4 particles, 4 quantum properties, and a couple of constraints.
It doesn’t seem, to me, variable in detail. Could one, if all-powerful, make water solid at room temperature without changing anything about any other atom or molecule? I don’t see how. One might just as well think it possible to make electrons the size of a basketball without impact.
Why does God need to fine-tune the physical constants so that life can exist? It seems to me God can miraculously sustain life despite what the constants and laws of the universe are. In fact we could have discovered that some sort of vitalism is true, that life has almost nothing in common with the rest of the universe. That living organisms aren’t made of atoms at all, but some intrinsically living substance wholly unlike the physical and material world. In a way, there’s something ironically materialistic about the fine-tuning argument.
And how many other combinations of laws and constants are possible, in which life can exist anyway?
You will hear apologists argue that the laws and constants we have all have to be adjusted to infinitesimal ranges in order to give water, carbon atoms and the rest of it, the values that they have and also prevent the universe from tearing itself apart.
In the context of the constants we have, they have to “fit” each other in order to allow the properties of water, the particulars of carbon-chemistry, the expansion and continued existence of the universe, and so on and so forth.
Yet what if make up a completely different set of laws? What if instead of four fundamental forces, there were three fundamental forces, or twenty fundamental forces? Can such alternatives yield viable universes, and can life exist in them?
Supposedly there is some grand unified theory of physics (like string theory) from which the four forces and many of the associated universal constants we know about, are emergent from some deeper mathematical framework. But isn’t it concievable there could be another mathematical framework that predicts a completely different set of emergent fundamental constants and forces?
Rumraket,
It appears obvious that you don’t understand the fine tuning argument at all.
It has nothing to do with what a God could or couldn’t do, it has to do with what nature could do. You have it completely backwards (what a surprise).
If it appears that in order for all of the planets and all of the stars, and all of life require such amazing precision and so little margin of variance, then THIS is a reason to question that nature could easily make life. Yea, God can do anything, but can nature? If we looked at a universe in which life is so easy to arise, in which we see life arising spontaneously all the time, a universe where nothing needs to be precise, you just throw some trash out the window, and viola, nature can turn a plastic bag into the sun, and a whole new solar system full of intelligence, because life is so easy for this universe, then your argument for nature because so much more powerful (even if still inexplicable).
As it is, you don’t have that universe in which to rest your faith in. Instead you have a universe which makes it so unbelievably, so unimaginably hard to create life, that ANY thinking person should at least be suspicious about natures ease at creating what we see.
So we are not questioning God’s power, we are questioning natures.
Of course your own brand of religion makes it so hard for you to think objectively.
I re-read this part of your initial comment and I’m still confused as to what you are getting at. Are you suggesting that our free-will is somehow contingent upon the amount of matter that exists in the Universe?
Does God not have the power to do any of that? Because Rumraket’s point, if I’m interpreting it correctly, is that plastic bags spontaneously turning into Solar systems would indeed be evidence of divine intervention.
It appears to me that you are limiting the power of God arbitrarily.
Beginner’s luck;-)
Agreed. Not sure how Christians who support the Fine-Tuning argument rationalize Joshua 10:12-
“Our Lord, make the sun stop
in the sky over Gibeon,
and the moon stand still
over Aijalon Valley.”[e]
So the sun and the moon
stopped and stood still
until Israel defeated its enemies.
The sun stood still and didn’t go down for about a whole day.”
It’s you who doesn’t understand. Who decides what nature can or can’t do?
If God created nature. I would expect nature can do anything that is logically possible.
Given what follows in your comment, it is rather obvious that it is you who do not understand the fine tuning argument, nor my response to it.
It has everything to do with what a God could and would do. The argument implicitly assumes God would use physical laws and constants through which life will emerge, evolve and persist.
The strength of the fine tuning argument is that it purports to be an example of an observationally tested prediction of the hypothesis that there is a divine being that wishes for complex life to exist.
This hypothesis, it is argued, predicts such a God would make a world like ours, because it has the sort of properties we should expect that such a God would make (and does not have the sort of properties we should expect from a “blind” or “random” natural process).
My question undermines this line of reasoning by pointing out we don’t actually have any expectation that God would create any physical laws at all, in order to create and sustain life.
Because God, according to various definitions, is capable of working his limitless powers irrespective of any physical or material substance. God doesn’t need the universe to sustain life with a set of physical laws and constants, He can supposedly just will life to exist even in a universe consisting entirely of dilute gases, ionizing radiation, and black holes.
God doesn’t need the valence electrons in oxygen, to give water certain properties, in order for life to exist. Or for carbon to have a valence of four, so that protein chemistry is possible. God doesn’t need electrons, or oxygen, or carbon at all, for life to exist. All this crap about gravity, quantum mechanics, the fine structure constant, carbon chemistry, water, inflationary cosmology and so on, is entirely superfluous to God. It’s all utterly irrelevant to an unlimited divine being that can literally WISH things into existence.
Even worse, for most of you theists, you believe God is a miracle-worker who some times intervenes in the physical world by literally suspending the physical laws and performing miraculous events. Resurrections, walking on water, magically curing the sick, turning water into wine, making a single bread feed hundreds of people, curing the blind, deaf and so on. So you have absolutely no reason to think your God is more likely to create and sustain life through the physics of the world and it’s atoms and molecules, over and above doing it through direct divine intervention of his supernatural and infinite will.
It assumes that? For heavens sake it doesn’t assume that, it says, LOOK, IT IS THERE!
I don’t have to think anything about what a God is more or less likely to do, that is your entire false premise. Instead, I can just look at the evidence. It is very very very very hard for life to exist. Which means the likelihood of just chaos and random chance creating anything is very very low.
So again, why is the burden on what God can do, rather than seeing, gee, nature sure got lucky! Unbelievably lucky!
But if God didn’t create nature, would you still expect that?
Why?
Is God constrained by the laws of nature when it comes to miracles too? Man, you’re such an obnoxious materialist
Because such an event would completely depart from the observed systematic regularity of physics in the Universe.
Yes it does, it very much does assume that. In order for the argument to have any strength at all, the evidence we see must be more probable on the hypothesis that a God (that wants life to exist) exists, than on the hypothesis that “nature did it”.
Which means we have two competing hypotheses.
A) God did it.
B) Nature did it.
In order to choose between these two, we must evaluate how likely they are, given the evidence before us. The fine tuning argument purports to show that the “nature did it” option is unbelievably unlikely.
Fair enough, let’s just assume that’s true.
But how likely is the data set we have (life exists and is made of atoms and molecules, governed by physical laws, in a larger universe also governed by those laws) on the hypothesis that God did it?
The problem here is the likelihood of the hypothesis that God did it can’t be calculated, because we don’t have any way of calculating the probability that God wants to create life through physics, rather than through his divine magic.
In order to choose between two competing hypotheses( by comparing their likelihoods), we need two numbers to compare to each other. The probability of [God doing this sort of universe, rather than another], versus [the probability of nature doing this sort of universe, rather than another].
Supposedly the “nature did this universe rather than another” is very low. We established this for the sake of argument.
But what is then the God-number? That depends on if God would want to create life through physics, rather than through divine intervention?
Do you know which option God is generally in the business of going for?
Does God create universes with life in them, through physical laws, 99 out of 100 times? Or every time? Or 1 in 10^10^30^56^900^88888888!!!! (quadruple factorial) times?
Do you actually know, or are you just assuming the answer is “He always does it through physics and would never do it any other way”?
Ha. If it happened regularly, then it would be the observed systematic regularity of physics in the universe!
Good, then don’t calculate it! Calculate how likely it is that nature could do it!
And we have. And the answer is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY…times 10 to the 40th unlikely.
That’s the fine tuning argument!
Good, then you concede the fine-tuning argument does not establish the existence of God at all. It completely fails as an argument, because it only puts a number on one hypothesis, and completely fails to estimate a number for the other one.
When considering matters of probability in order to decide between options, you need to compare likelihoods. If you only have one number, then you can’t make a judgement as to which one is most likely. The other one could be even lower still. Until you have some way to put a number on it, you literally can’t rationally choose between them.
The frequency is irrelevant. It’s whether such an event (or events) could be explained by the physical constants that your God had to tune so carefully that matters.
Rumraket,
Wrong. If we use your logic, we have a 50/50 chance of it being God. If we use mine, its 100% God.
Why you want to ignore that the universe makes it almost impossible for life to happen is beside me.
Either way the odds never look as good for nature as they do for God.
First, you agree that nature is capable of anything logically possible?
newton,
What? Logically possible means exactly that, that its impossible.
I don’t know if its logically possible for nature to create life, but if its logically possible, than it could; however exceedingly unlikely that may be.
Why? Why can’t I compare highly highly highly unlikely to itself?
So, we may not know how likely a God is, but nature is virtually impossible.
You have no idea, just your hackneyed question begging.
But why do you keep avoiding the obvious implications of the FT argument? If the laws of nature require fine tuning, the fine tuner couldn’t be the designer of the laws. No one could be!
What the fuck kind of logic is that?
RoyLT
This sounds like an argument I made to a friend after watching a Wiliam Lane Craig debate on the topic:
The theist imagines God walking up to a big panel with multiple dials and setting each one at the right value. But the theist also claims God made the dials in the first place and even the very concept of ‘dialness’ I think yours is a much clearer presentation of the idea
Could God create nature that He couldn’t change or transcend to fit his will?
Seems to me that miracles would indicate that the answer is “no,” and generally the ID/creationist position is that universe itself is supposed to be miraculous.
Glen Davidson
At least someone gets it.
If God created the Universe from scratch, then it is absurd to say that he ‘tuned’ the characteristics of the Universe to the values which he himself designed them to work at.
The only way that ‘tuning’ makes any sense is if the required combination of values exists a priori apart from God.