curbyIII

The fine-tuning argument can be summarized as follows:

There are various physical constants that determine/constrain the physical laws governing our universe. For example, the relative strengths of the strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitic (I just made that word up as an adjective for gravity) forces. If the values of these constants were changed even slightly, then the universe as we know it would be radically different and could not support life. The universe is suspiciously hospitable to life, so a "creator" who prefers life is more likely than the universe being random.

I'll give an example of the kind of reasoning that I believe the fine-tuning argument depends on, and then explain why I think it is wrong to apply it to the fine-tuning argument itself.


Suppose that you and your friend are gambling with a die: your friend gives you a dollar and rolls the die and then calls out the number he thinks will come up. If he's wrong, you keep the dollar; if he's right you pay him $6.

Your friend rolls the first time and guesses correctly, he rolls a second time and guesses correctly, he then rolls a third time and guesses correctly. You start to suspect that your friend is a cheater and is using a fixed die.

Fair - The hypothesis that the die is fair
Cheating - The hypothesis that your friend is cheating

You thought your friend was a pretty good guy and it is unlikely that he would even own a fixed die, so your prior belief that he is cheating is 0.001 (1 in a 1000). You reasess your belief in whether or not he is cheating after every dice throw.

Baye's Theorem: P(A|B) = (P(B|A) * P(A))/P(B)
P(X) = probability of X
P(X|Y) = probability of X given that Y is true

You have to decide whether or not your friend is cheating. You do this by deciding which hypothesis is more likely given the data (the dice throws and guesses).

P(Cheating | dice throws & guesses) = (P(dice throws & guesses | Cheating) * P(Cheating))/P(dice throws & guesses)

P(Fair | dice throws & guesses) = ((P(dice throws & guesses | Fair) * P(Fair))/P(dice throws & guesses)

Since we just care about which number is higher, not the actual probability, and both terms are divided by P(dice throws & guesses), we can discard this term. So you have to decide what is higher:

P(dice throws & guesses | Fair) * P(Fair) or
P(dice throws & guesses | Cheating) * P(Cheating)

The probability of your friend guessing correctly three times in a row given a fair dice is: (1/6)^3 * 0.999 ~ .0046

The probability of your friend guessing correctly three times in a row given that he is using a fixed die is: 1 * .001 = .001

So you would still give your friend the benefit of the doubt, but you would watch him closely since the odds that he's cheating are now significant. If he guessed again on the fourth throw, then you'd think he was cheating (~.0008 vs .001) and if he did it again on the fifth throw, then you would be sure (~.0001 vs .001).

When examining the physical constants of the universe, I believe we use the exact same reasoning:

Random - the hypothesis that the constants are random
God - the hypothesis that the constants are caused by God

So again, to decide which hypothesis is more plausible, we check which number we think is greater:

P(Random | constants & life) = P(constants & life | Random) * P(Random)
P(God | constants & life) = P(constants & life | God) * P(God)

It seems to us that P(constants & life | Random) is exceedingly small and P(constants & life | God) is quite high (not 1 since it is not unreasonable to believe that God could have selected the constants to be even more favourable to life). After doing the math, the numbers come out in god's favour no matter how low your prior belief in god is (within reason), simply because P(constants & life | Random) is so low as to completely swamp this value.


This kind of reasoning is extremely powerful for dealing with causes and effects. You observe some effects and then, using this kind of probabilistic reasoning, you can decide which cause is most likely. You see a bunch of dice throws (and guesses), were the dice throws caused by a fair die (that equally favours all the numbers), or were they caused by a fixed die (that favours numbers that your friend guesses)?

The problem is in applying this reasoning to the universe itself. You see a bunch of physical constants (necessary for life). Essentially, you are asking: "Were these physical constants CAUSED by some random process (that equally favours all possible values) or CAUSED by god (who favours values hospitable to life)?" The answer is: neither, the physical constants describe the universe as it is, they are uncaused. This is an extremely unsatisfying answer, because we have it deeply ingrained in us to search for the underlying causes of everything (after all, everything within the universe is caused by something), but eventually you're going to have to say that something is uncaused.

The universe, if one defines it to be everything that exists, seems like the logical thing that should be uncaused. It is, by definition, everything that exists, so how could it itself be caused? Saying that god exists outside of the universe, breaks the definition of the universe as EVERYTHING that exists. If theism is true, then god is part of the universe (or perhaps the universe itself), but this does not address the Fine-tuning problem at all.

My objection stems from the very fact of assigning a probability to the universe. It seems to me that this inherently assumes that the universe has a cause.

Atheos

It's obvious that you've been doing a lot of thinking about this. I believe you're right inasmuch as proponents of the fine tuning argument(s) are often appealing to probabilities that are every bit as unfalsifiable as the god they posit.

We don't know of any universes or circumstances in which the four primal forces have been shown to have different values than the ones we observe. Therefore it's meaningless to pull these "probabilities" out of one's ass. It's begging the question to assume they could have been different and were purposefully created as they exist.

However, the real death blow to the fine tuning argument is that the universe is obviously fine tuned to create black holes, not life. Statistically 0.000% of the universe is inhabitable to the best of our knowledge. But supermassive black holes are forming everywhere.

Not to mention the fact that incredibly unlikely events happen all the time. Every time a poker hand is dealt to a table full of players the odds against all those players ending up with exactly those cards are astronomical. Big whoop.

And I believe the word you were looking for was "gravitational" .

DarthDidious

If the universe was really fine-tuned for life, it would be overflowing with it.

We are an accident. Plain and simple.

curbyIII

Right, right, gravitational. What was I thinking?

Even asking the question of whether or not the physical constants "could have been different" assumes that they were caused by something. Talking about probabilities and different physical constants is completely meaningless if they weren't caused by anything.

I've heard of this idea and I quite like it. If I remember correctly, a new universe (or new universes?) forms whenever a black hole forms. These new universes share some of the characteristics of the "parent" universe. As a result, universes will tend to become more and more likely to form black holes - this is essentially a form of cosmic natural selection. So the "population" of universes in the hyperverse will tend to be filled with black-hole forming universes which also happen to be hospitable to life.

But I wouldn't call this the "death blow" to the fine-tuning argument. Just because the constants are fine-tuned to create black holes does not detract from the fact that they are fine-tuned to create life as well, it just gives an alternate hypothesis to godidit.

Yes, but in this case you have no viable alternative hypothesis. The cards don't really favour any player, you have no reason to be suspicious. On the other hand, if a player correctly calls out which cards will be dealt to whom, then you can be almost sure that he is cheating, because the probability of him cheating is much higher than him guessing all of the cards by chance.

The point of the fine-tuning argument is not that any particular set of physical constants is unlikely, but that this particular set just happens to be "perfect" for life. In the poker example it's not the fact that the dealt cards are unlikely, but the fact that they just happened to exactly correspond to what one player predicted, that is suspicious.

AstigAngPinoy

Aside from the physical constants, there is also the DNA...

In a recording of the 2004 symposium ‘Has Science Discovered God’, organised by The Institute for Metascientific Research, Professor Flew says: ‘What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together. . . The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence.’[23]

- Philosopher Anthoney Flew

Atheos

No, the point of the fine tuning argument is directing people's attention to something and making an arbitrary and unsupportable claim that it is "special". It is an example of egocentric thinking, something homo-sapiens is particularly adept at. We already think we're special, so you start with that premise and then try to make it look like it's really extrordinary that the universe was "designed" in such a way as to make it possible for us to exist. In reality the universe gives us no reason to think we're special in any way. Looking at it pragmatically we're just one of trillions of incidental by-products of a universe that seems specially hell-bent on creating bigger and bigger black holes.

The poker analogy reflects exactly what we're talking about. Nobody "predicted" the emergence of human life on this planet any more than anyone "predicted" the exact outcome of the poker deal. Both outcomes were extremely unlikely in the grand scheme of things, but each outcome was eventually a reality. Extremely unlikely events happen all the time.

Atheos

Which, of course, means nothing. Anthony Flew has an opinion about these issues and he's certainly entitled to his opinion. But he's a philosopher, not an expert in genetics or even a biologist. Few biology experts would agree with Flew's opinion. Evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines proves to the reasonable satisfaction of anyone without an agenda that the mechanics of the formation and ever increasing complexity of DNA are understood and predictable. God doesn't fit in this gap anymore.

curbyIII

Sorry, I think I'm missing something. I don't really see how this is relevant to the fine-tuning argument.

I don't think that you can dismiss the fine-tuning argument out of hand this way. Let's look at the card analogy again, this time I'm going to use bridge instead of poker since it is a far superior game . There are 4 players and each player is dealt 13 cards. Suppose that each player is dealt every card from a particular suit, North gets every club, East gets every diamond, South gets every heart and West gets every spade. What is the probability of this unusual deal? Well the probability of this deal is exactly the same as any other deal. But while we don't consider "normal" deals to be unusual, we would definitely consider this deal to be extraordinary and we would immediately suspect that something fishy is going on.

Another example: suppose John wins the lottery. His odds are 1 in a million, but we don't find anything suspicious about the fact that he won. Now suppose that there is a different lottery with only 10 people. The odds of winning are 1 in 10. Now suppose Adam wins this lottery 6 times in a row. His odds of doing this are 1 in 10^6: 1 in a million. Yet this time around we definitely think that there is something suspicious going on even though the odds are exactly the same.

The fact that two events have the same probability does not mean that we should treat them/react to them in the same way.

There may be something to your argument that there is nothing special about a universe that has life compared with one that doesn't, but you haven't convinced me.

Atheos

The fact is that there is nothing any more unusual about each player getting exactly all cards from one suit than any other scrambled hand. Just because we think it's unusual doesn't make it unusual. The "impossible" hand could occur completely randomly and the chances of that hand occurring are every bit as good as any other hand. Period.

Someone might think chocolate is special because it's the only brown food that doesn't taste like meat. That doesn't make it any more special than vanilla, it's just a matter of perception.

Perceived oddities do not prove anything.

That's my whole point. The fine tuning argument is about perceived specialness. It means and proves nothing.

On the other hand if we were to discover that every square inch of the universe was flooded with deadly radiation except for a region that inexplicably stopped just short of the earth's orbital boundary we might have cause to wonder about just how special that was.

See the difference?

Alf

I agree with what Atheos says here and will add the following.

The whole point of the fine tuning "argument" is essentially: Look here, this looks designed, and over there, that looks designed too, the unvierse must be designed.

This is fallacious. If you were to prove that the universe is NOT designed, you can pick one example and show that this particular instance is not designed. To prove that the universe IS designed they would have to show that EVERYWHERE and the whole universe shows signs of design or at least nothing that prevent it in all cases and at least a substantial number of them clearly showing signs of "design".

The point is - something can appear "designed" by pure chance. Thus, showing one or two examples of something that might be designed is completely unconvincing.

Further, we have lots and lots of examples of either no design or very bad design. Now, poor design is not in accordance with the design argument since they presume a perfect god made the design and we would therefore expect the design to be perfect as well - yet it is not. For example the human eye - as well as the eye of many other animals is poorly "designed". Evolution has no problem to explain why this is so but it is an unanswerable conundrum for ID folks. There are loads of examples such as this. Also, if designed by a single designer we would expect that the same solution would be employed in all places where it is applicable. Instead we see a huge diversification where the same problem has been solved by many different ways - what is this? God didn't know which design was best so he tried out a couple to see which worked and which didn't? Is that anywhere close to a omniscient and perfect god?

The point is that the ID "argument" is no argument at all - it is flawed from the start. There is no point in making an argument against them because they haven't been able to set up an argument in their favor in the first place. Their whole project rest on ignorance and it only goes home with people who do not understand that their pretend argument is just a bunch of crap.

Alf