Thanks YakaSteelhead for the comment. I actually want to walk back my comments a little here. Its so easy to be imprecise and overstate things and I should really be more careful about that. But on this point, there are actual cosmologists and physicists who say the fine tuning argument works against naturalism and at least opens the door to theism. Some even go so far as saying it is good evidence for God. Luke Barnes is a prominent cosmologist who argues for that position, for instance. I read what he says and I honestly can't see why anyone takes it all that seriously. And when I say that I wouldn't want anyone to get me wrong and think I'm saying Luke Barnes has nothing at all worth saying on the topic or that he's not a scientist, not smart or anything like that. I very much appreciate that he's putting it out there. I just don't buy his ultimate conclusions and am not sure why anyone else should either.¥akaSteelhead wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 3:45 am
It is more than that, MG is misrepresenting the smart people. There are really smart physicists and cosmologists who state that the universe "appears to be tuned" they then go on to posit the multiverse theory as the explanation. I have yet to see one of these guys argue - thus god. MG is deliberately obfuscating their position. They don't believe the fine tuning argument for god has merit, they believe that their might be a multiverse. What they discuss categorically is not "the fine tuning argument for god".
Here's a logical argument he's offered:
Found here: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/do ... format=pdf• Naturalism is non-informative with respect to the ultimate laws of nature.
• Theism prefers ultimate laws of nature that permit the existence of moral
agents, such as intelligent life forms.
• The laws and constants of nature as we know them are fine-tuned—vanishingly
few will produce intelligent life.
• Thus, the probability of this (kind of) universe is much greater on theism
than naturalism.
The paper is worth reading and digging into. I certainly have more to figure out if ever I'm going to try and get there. But, ultimately I don't think his argument works out well, or I can't see how it does. What he gets into, since his is a "probabilistic argument, not a logical demonstration", is positing the hypothesis of Theism vs naturalism.
After presenting his logic her says:
I don't think he does a good job answering the question and it appears to me at every step he's leaning on the unknown to posit God. He's arguing from ignorance. Just being very subtle and very clever in doing so.a problem with this argument is that we
don’t know the ultimate laws of nature, as referred to by the first two premises.
Why should we care that the laws as we know them (third premise) are fine-tuned?
This paper aims to answer this question.
On Naturalism he concludes:
Then he posits on theism:Combining our estimates, the likelihood of a life-permitting universe on naturalism is less than 10−136. This, I contend, is vanishingly small.
So he's comparing the probability that a life permitting universe exists on naturalism, without possibly knowing whether any constants could have been different, with the probability that an omnipotent God magically did things? If we posit a magical omnipotent God who did things, and we're sitting here reviewing it, trying to figure it out, then there is no other way to escape the conclusion that a magical omnipotent God did things. And any comparison anyone attempts to make can't possibly refute that.Given God’s omnipotence, if God intends to create a life-permitting universe,
then a life-permitting universe will exist: p(U|G1LB) = 1.
I think al the objections apply, although I realize he thinks they've all been answered. He begs the question it seems to me. Did God create the universe? We don't know. He doesn't know. But, on his take, it's more likely that God created it than it just happened because we don't know how it happened. And since we'd have to posit God is all-knowing and powerful then that it happened is better explained by God magically doing things than it having happened on the basis of the natural. Therefore God exists.
He takes an enormous leap, but a common one, to prove God by positing God. And since God is unknown he can simply say God is everything and nothing at the same time therefore its more likely he magically did stuff than it is that things happened as they did all because we can dig to some degree into how things work, on naturalism, and see they possibly might have been different. But with God we can't do that. He's everything and nothing at the same time. He magically did stuff then hid himself so neatly we couldn't possibly find him, but he did it.
Barnes concludes:
And in that space of not probable he injects a magical unknowable something, supernatural, that could possibly have done it and concludes God wins.What physical universe would we expect to exist, if naturalism were true? To
systematically and tractably explore other ways that the universe could have
been, we vary the free parameters of the standard models of particle physics and
cosmology. This exercise could have discovered that our universe is typical and
unexceptional. It did not. This search for other ways that the universe could
have been has overwhelmingly found lifelessness.
In short, the answer to the Little Question is no. And so, plausibly and as best
we can tell, the answer to the Big Question is no. The fine-tuning of the universe
for life shows that, according to the best physical theories we have, naturalism
overwhelmingly expects a dead universe.