SeN Continues Its Love Affair With The Discovery Institute

[Marcus]

The proprietor writes:

The late atheist polemicist Christopher Hitchens is said to have called the fine-tuning argument “the most intriguing” among the arguments for the existence of God. The vocally atheistic physicist Sean Carroll has grudgingly termed it “the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology.”

And it’s no wonder that Hitchens and Carroll and others have been at least slightly taken aback by evidence for fine-tuning.

It is worth quoting Carroll at greater length:

So let’s go to the second argument, the teleological argument from fine-tuning. I’m very happy to admit right off the bat – this is the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology. That’s because it plays by the rules. You have phenomena, you have parameters of particle physics and cosmology, and then you have two different models: theism and naturalism. And you want to compare which model is the best fit for the data. I applaud that general approach. Given that, it is still a terrible argument. It is not at all convincing. I will give you five quick reasons why theism does not offer a solution to the purported fine-tuning problem.

The blog post reminds me of Tim Barnett’s article, “Why the Puddle Analogy Fails against Fine-Tuning,” posted here.

Yes, me too. Every quote Peterson uses is exactly the same as Barnett’s, in exactly the same order, and he makes exactly the same points using identical analogies! It’s plagiarism, simple and ugly. Why Peterson thinks this is acceptable is beyond me, but it does explain why he won’t be publishing any books. No publisher will put their integrity on the line for such a dishonest author.

[drumdude]

He’s just “researching.”


It’s not like he’s posting every day because he’s making money from Patheos. Right guys?

[malkie]

The proprietor writes:

The late atheist polemicist Christopher Hitchens is said to have called the fine-tuning argument “the most intriguing” among the arguments for the existence of God. The vocally atheistic physicist Sean Carroll has grudgingly termed it “the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology.”

And it’s no wonder that Hitchens and Carroll and others have been at least slightly taken aback by evidence for fine-tuning.

It is worth quoting Carroll at greater length:

So let’s go to the second argument, the teleological argument from fine-tuning. I’m very happy to admit right off the bat – this is the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology. That’s because it plays by the rules. You have phenomena, you have parameters of particle physics and cosmology, and then you have two different models: theism and naturalism. And you want to compare which model is the best fit for the data. I applaud that general approach. Given that, it is still a terrible argument. It is not at all convincing. I will give you five quick reasons why theism does not offer a solution to the purported fine-tuning problem.

The blog post reminds me of Tim Barnett’s article, “Why the Puddle Analogy Fails against Fine-Tuning,” posted here.

Wasn't it also once said that "NHM = Nahom" was the best argument that the apologists had for the Book of Mormon narrative?

[Physics Guy]

I don't like multiverse hypotheses because they postulate too much without evidence, but Peterson doesn't seem to grasp the simple logic that they do have.

The multiverse hypothesis is, in effect, that there are uncountably many tries at a life-supporting universe. So it's as if an unlimited supply of people were tossed out of airplanes onto all kinds of landscapes, over and over again forever. Out of all those uncountable bazillions of involuntary skydivers, an incredibly tiny fraction do land in deep snow, or on huge haystacks, or whatever: somehow those few survive.

We interview all the survivors. The vast majority who do not survive, we ignore.

Each of our survivors tells of an incredibly rare coincidence by which they survived. How likely was it that a truck carrying that many mattresses happened to be parked right there, right then? That was crazy. And so on.

The landscapes onto which all our victims were thrown were just random, however. There was no fine-tuning preselection for haystacks or mattress trucks before throwing. We just tried the experiment infinitely many times, and looked only at cases where people somehow survived. The only selection was post-selection.

The post-selection was a very effective selection, however. It yielded a set of surviving interviewees who all had incredibly rare flukes to report. Even though all their flukes were incredibly unusual as examples from the set of all possible landscapes, something like them was guaranteed to be found in every one of the incredibly special set of survivor stories.

Fluky survivors, no fine tuning. Post-selection, not pre-selection. That's the multiverse logic.

[dastardly stem]

I don't like multiverse hypotheses because they postulate too much without evidence, but Peterson doesn't seem to grasp the simple logic that they do have.

The multiverse hypothesis is, in effect, that there are uncountably many tries at a life-supporting universe. So it's as if an unlimited supply of people were tossed out of airplanes onto all kinds of landscapes, over and over again forever. Out of all those uncountable bazillions of involuntary skydivers, an incredibly tiny fraction do land in deep snow, or on huge haystacks, or whatever: somehow those few survive.

We interview all the survivors. The vast majority who do not survive, we ignore.

Each of our survivors tells of an incredibly rare coincidence by which they survived. How likely was it that a truck carrying that many mattresses happened to be parked right there, right then? That was crazy. And so on.

The landscapes onto which all our victims were thrown were just random, however. There was no fine-tuning preselection for haystacks or mattress trucks before throwing. We just tried the experiment infinitely many times, and looked only at cases where people somehow survived. The only selection was post-selection.

The post-selection was a very effective selection, however. It yielded a set of surviving interviewees who all had incredibly rare flukes to report. Even though all their flukes were incredibly unusual as examples from the set of all possible landscapes, something like them was guaranteed to be found in every one of the incredibly special set of survivor stories.

Fluky survivors, no fine tuning. Post-selection, not pre-selection. That's the multiverse logic.

Yes. The reason to invoke the multiverse hypothesis is to counter-act the assumption, which is needed for the theistic argument, that the constants could have been different. If they could have, then plausible explanation is a multiverse rather than a nothingness mind. Fine tuning doesn't result in concluding a God, therefore.

The problem seems to be who knows what it'd mean to be different? how could we know they could have been different? And if so, how does assuming fine-tuning argue for fine-tuning? Or another way to see it is if we assume the appearance of fine-tuning why must we assume there is a mind behind it? And...what the Fs a mind without a brain anyway? But that's steering off course for fun.

Another problem with fine-tuning that I think doesn't really directly relate to it is going with the explanation that God existed and nothing else. If God was and decided to create. why would He spread it out over billions of years and trillions of light years? Whatever it'd mean for God to be outside of spacetime (which is not very Mormon, but ya know...Mormons co-opt traditional Christian arguments). One must wonder, what's with all the excess? And why would God intent on creating for humans to worship Him and to condemn others, decide to create expanding space in order to drop a speck of life randomly in that space at some point? maybe God is far less interested in humans than we like to pretend? Or maybe his creation was much like a child building a legos city for funsies only to destroy it to make something else with the material?

[malkie]

This is the only multiverse instance in which religious apologists happen upon the fine-tuning argument.

Prove me wrong!

[drumdude]

The infinite universes argument seems to me to move the atheist from arguing by analogy to arguing religiously. It takes a form of unsubstantiated faith (there is no way to prove, let alone test, the concept of infinite universes), to rely on it as a refutation of the strong anthropic principle. And when it comes to faith, atheists are playing at a disadvantage: they do not have the Holy Spirit to confirm truths. We do.

Everyone please join me in prayer. Lord of the Multiverse, save us from the slam dunk arguments of the Discovery Institute. Give us the strength to stay skeptical. It is harder and harder every day to avoid worshiping the anthropomorphic Mormon sky daddy. Our fragile non-belief must not falter.

In the name of cheese and rice, ramen.

[Physics Guy]

I do think the multiverse is about as big an ask, belief-wise, as God. It’s like a tax shelter that costs as much as paying taxes. If the multiverse is someone’s alternative faith, fine, but they shouldn’t try to claim at the same time that they’re so much more scientific and rational than us credulous theists.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I do think the multiverse is about as big an ask, belief-wise, as God. It’s like a tax shelter that costs as much as paying taxes. If the multiverse is someone’s alternative faith, fine, but they shouldn’t try to claim at the same time that they’re so much more scientific and rational than us credulous theists.

You make a salient point. Is the multiverse theory sound from your physicist perspective; like is it mathematically sound on, say, the same level as gravitational waves or some other theory that could be demonstrate as a scientific proof? Despite the dozen or so youtube videos I watched while eating Doritos (so I’m basically a scientist now), it strikes me as woo. Also, I have enough existential dread for one universe, I can’t imagine the existence of infinite universes, my mind melts at the thought.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

I do think the multiverse is about as big an ask, belief-wise, as God. It’s like a tax shelter that costs as much as paying taxes. If the multiverse is someone’s alternative faith, fine, but they shouldn’t try to claim at the same time that they’re so much more scientific and rational than us credulous theists.

I may be remembering wrong, but isn’t it the case that that the existence of the multiverse is implied by inflation theory or a version thereof. It’s not like multi-verse theory was created out of whole cloth as a response to the fine tuning argument.

ETA: This is what I was recalling. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang ... se-exists/ Of course, if we can’t detect other universes, it’s not testable. But the fact that it’s an implication of a theory that has been tested and confirmed is an important distinction between multi-verse theory and theism.