Responding to Schmid’s AMA on the Moral Argument Ranking

1. Introduction

One argument for theism, the argument from moral knowledge, uses moral knowledge as evidence for God’s existence. Another argument for theism, what’s sometimes called “the moral argument,” uses the existence of objective morality (roughly, the idea that there are moral truths that hold independently of human opinion) as evidence for God’s existence. Philosopher Joe Schmid ranked the argument from moral knowledge much higher than the moral argument. My opinion is that this ranking was flawed and in an AMA (ask me anything) Schmid responded to my question regarding this at around 5:30 to 22:58.

2. Philosophical Background

2.1 The Arguments

The argument from moral knowledge uses the existence of moral knowledge to argue for theism along the lines of this:

(1)	If God does not exist, then moral knowledge does not exist.
(2)	Moral knowledge does exist.
(3)	Therefore, God exists.

What is sometimes called “the moral argument” goes something like this:

(4)	If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.
(5)	Objective morality does exist.
(6)	Therefore, God exists.

The above moral argument is similar to one that Christian philosopher William Lane Craig (WLC) promoted. Note that (1) and (4) are conditional premises due to their if-then structure.

2.2 Moral Oughts and Moral Non-naturalism

The Humean ought is that type of ought that is distinct from the purely descriptive, in contrast to “oughts” that are identical to something that is purely descriptive. An example of a “descriptive ought” is when “If you want to do well in school, you ought to study” just means “As a matter of practical necessity, you need to study to do well in school,” where the “ought” in this context expresses that some possible action (studying) is practically necessary to achieve some goal (doing well in school). An example of a Humean ought, i.e., that type of ought that does not have only descriptive qualities, might be someone saying “You shouldn’t torture puppies.” The term “Humean ought” comes from David Hume’s famous is/ought problem where he noted the apparent difficulty of deducing an “ought” from an “is,” and where he called the “ought” an entirely different relation from the “is” in the final paragraph of book 3, part 1, section 1 of A Treatise of Human Nature. Notably, Hume specifically had the moral ought in mind for his is/ought distinction, and the type of “ought” used in morality is the Humean ought (at least, for ordinary moral semantics). Deontic morality is morality having to do with obligation; e.g., moral wrongness (since an act is morally wrong for someone only if they morally ought not do it), and deontic morality uses the Humean ought.

A notable implication of moral oughts being Humean oughts is that, as the Folk Moral Semantics Argument explains, this leads to morality being non-natural (i.e., moral properties like moral wrongness do not exist solely as part of the natural, physical world). We can use this fact to help justify the argument from moral knowledge’s first premise and the moral argument’s first premise.

2.3 Justifying the Argument from Moral Knowledge

In justifying the first premises of both arguments, we can use a theorem of mathematics and propositional logic that says “Given A, probably C” entails “Probably, if A then C.” For example, if moral knowledge is unlikely given God’s nonexistence, then premise (1) is probably true; and if objective morality is unlikely given God’s nonexistence, then premise (4) is probably true. In this context, the type of probability I’m using here is epistemic probability, which is the same sort of probability we use when we say, “The evidence suggests that the accused is probably guilty,” i.e., the probability that something is the case given some state of information.

Why think moral knowledge is unlikely on atheism? First note how odd it is that we even know that morality exists. Morality is non-natural and empirically undetectable. To illustrate what I mean by morality being empirically undetectable, imagine a moral nihilist (who disbelieves in moral wrongness) and a moral objectivist both observe some jerk kicking a dog just for fun. Both agree on all the same psychological and physiological facts (e.g., the dog felt pain and suffered minor injury). The moral nihilist says “I don’t think moral wrongness is attached to that action,” whereas the moral objectivist says “I think moral wrongness is attached to that action.” There is no empirical way to determine who is right here; both sides agree on all the same empirical facts. In this sense, moral wrongness is empirically undetetable.

So how do we know that moral wrongness exists? In practice we rely on moral intuition, but since moral wrongness is non-natural, barring supernatural intervention (e.g., God) our brains would deliver the same intuitions of moral wrongness existing regardless of whether morality existed, and this would seem to undercut such intuition from properly justifying our belief in morality. Given naturalism (the view that he supernatural does not exist) moral knowledge is infeasible. The atheist could get around this problem by ditching naturalism and saying we humans have supernatural powers of clairvoyance to detect these invisible, non-natural properties, but that seems far-fetched. Given atheism, it is unlikely that we have moral knowledge, in which case premise (1) is at least probably true.

2.4 Justifying the Moral Argument

The existence of objective morality is to be expected if God exists; e.g., God is objectively morally good. But it seems to me that moral objectivism is unlikely on atheism. Why? Against moral objectivism, the atheist could use what’s called the argument from queerness that atheist philosopher J.L. Mackie promoted. Quoting Mackie in chapter 1 section 9 of his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong where speaks of prescriptive objective values:

If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else.

To get a general idea of what “queerness” means in this context, imagine someone telling you that space aliens landed in a flying saucer somewhere in New Jersey. Such an incident is “queer” in the sense that it wildly differs from the types of things we know exist such that we give it a low prima facie probability (i.e., a low probability in the absence of any evidence to the contrary). Its queerness is such that if your next-door neighbor told you this happened, you would probably still disbelieve it, whereas you might believe your next-door neighbor if they made a mundane claim like having coffee this morning. Similarly, we would give a low prima facie probability to someone’s claim that an invisible, incorporeal dragon is floating in their garage because such an incident is queer in the relevant sense.

Mackie’s argument from queerness has two components: epistemological (roughly, having to do with knowledge) and metaphysical (roughly, having to do with what exists). Moral qualities like moral wrongness are epistemologically queer on atheism; we’d need something like supernatural clairvoyance to know they exist, which of course is utterly different from how we know anything else. Moral qualities are also metaphysically queer on atheism; they’re invisible, nonphysical, empirically undetectable, and (as mentioned earlier) we’d need something like supernatural clairvoyance to know they exist. On atheism at least, this is wildly different from the types of things we know exist, akin to an invisible, nonphysical, empirically undetectable dragon.

How I would argue for premise (4) is this: combine the argument from moral knowledge (given atheism, we don’t have moral knowledge) with Mackie’s argument from queerness (given atheism, morality is “queer” in a way to make it prima facie unlikely) to argue that given God’s nonexistence, objective morality probably doesn’t exist, which would make premise (4) at least probably true.

3. Question And Response

3.1 The Question

My question to Schmid was this:

You rated the argument from moral knowledge highly but a Craig-style deductive moral argument remarkably low despite WLC’s report on its dialectical effectiveness, and you implied the moral argument’s conditional premise was weak. By my lights the argument from moral knowledge isn’t that far above the moral argument, because what about combining the argument from moral knowledge with Mackie’s queerness objection (moral objectivism would be queer on atheism) to argue that objective morality is epistemically unlikely given atheism? This would justify the conditional premise [being] probable, and I can’t think of a great atheist response to this justification [for the] conditional premise that wouldn’t involve attacking the argument from moral knowledge in some way. After all, if it’s true that moral properties are non-natural (if we use the Humean ought for our moral semantics), without God it seems we’d need something like supernatural clairvoyance to detect these invisible, non-natural moral properties, and that seems queer enough on atheism to be far-fetched and unlikely.

As mentioned earlier, Schmid responded to my question regarding this at around 5:30 to 22:58.

3.2 Four Possible Atheist Responses to Metaphysical Queerness

Going through four possible atheist responses he brought up and adding my rebuttals:

1. The atheist can go for metaethical naturalism.
   • Moral naturalism is the idea that moral facts and properties are natural facts and properties. Yet moral naturalism isn’t really an option if we use the Humean ought for our moral semantics, which leads to moral naturalism being false. Apparently, I didn’t make this sufficiently clear in my question.
2. Why think that objective non-natural facts are queer under atheism?
   • This was kind of already answered in my question when I said “without God it seems we’d need something like supernatural clairvoyance to detect these invisible, non-natural moral properties, and that seems queer enough on atheism to be far-fetched and unlikely.” This doesn’t generally hold true for epistemic facts (facts having to do with knowledge, justification, rationality, etc.), mathematical facts, and so forth (i.e., we don’t need something like supernatural clairvoyance to know that stuff).
3. Moral facts are equally queer on theism.
   • Objective morality is not at all queer given certain standard conceptions of God; e.g., God being objectively morally good. Moreover, moral intuition delivering moral knowledge is not at all queer on Christian theism (see Romans 2:14-15).
4. Why think morality being queer on atheism makes it unlikely on atheism?
   • This was already answered in section 2.4 of this article, but to recap: something is queer in the relevant sense if it is wildly different from the types of things we know exist such that it is prima facie unlikely. This is just how we normally operate (e.g., for space aliens landing in New Jersey and invisible incorporeal dragons floating in people’s garages), and we seem to be rational in doing so.

I thus think the responses are woefully inadequate.

3.3 A Priori Moral Knowledge?

Schmid also says this (at least in a paper onscreen) at around 14:55 to 15:49, and where a priori means “knowable not on the basis of experience” (e.g., the fact that two plus two equals four is knowable by seeing the relations of ideas, as opposed to needing to believe it on the evidential basis of empirical experience):

In fact, if objective moral facts are a priori knowable (as non-naturalists would surely accept), then they are not improbable under atheism, since any epistemic probability function should assign probability 1 to all a priori truths.

As I said, a priori refers to “independent of experience,” which is in contrast to a posteriori knowledge which is knowledge that is believed on the basis of experience (e.g., the way one might believe that it is now raining outside). However, not everyone agrees on what should and should not count as “experience” in this context, though it’s uncontroversial that sense experience would be included. For example, the fact that Sam knows a computer monitor is in front of him is not knowable a priori since Sam relies on his sense experience to know this. Whereas “experience” would not include the way we mentally “see” that certain things are true by definition, such as the way we mentally “see” that all bachelors are unmarried after knowing the definitions of words like “bachelor” and “unmarried.” However, memory and introspection (e.g., Sally’s mental perception that she is thinking of the number seven) would seem to count as experience.

Some beliefs are not believed on the basis of experience but whose probability is not 1. For example, consider our intuition that the future will relevantly resemble the past, something that we can call the principle of induction. Justifying induction is a famous problem in philosophy. You might think we can justify it on the basis of experience, saying like “The principle of induction (roughly, that something will probably hold in the future if it held in the past) will probably hold for the future because this principle held in the past,” but this argument uses the principle of induction to justify the principle of induction, which is circular reasoning. In practice at least, we accept the principle of induction on the basis of intuition; the principle just seems true to us.

Where does moral experience (that is, moral intuition) fall into this? Well, that’s tricky. David Hume seemed to think that the moral sense counts as some kind of experience. While the existence of objective moral truths is surely rational to believe despite not being empirically undetectable, it’s not exactly true by definition the way All bachelors are unmarried is. Moral intuition is more akin to the intuition that our memory is at least sometimes reliable or the intuition that the future will probably relevantly resemble the past.

Like many of us, philosopher G.E. Moore held that we accepted moral truths on the basis of intuition in the sense of an intuitive seeming-to-be-true experience. To quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Moore held that what justifies one in believing a fundamental moral principle is that the principle is self-evident [in the sense that it seems evident to the self without being inferred on the basis of other beliefs] and that it appears to be true, i.e., that one has an intuition of it. But this intuition, as an appearance of truth, is clearly a kind of experience, so it seems that one’s justification for an intuitive belief in a fundamental moral principle will not be independent of experience. Hence, to regard this justification as a priori, one must make an exception for this specific kind of experience. While Moore famously denied hedonism, this was because he denied that pleasure is the only good. He accepted that pleasure is good, and this proposition nicely illustrates the tension inherent in the modified standard view of a priori justification, and indeed the standard view, as well as Moore’s a priori moral epistemology. Presumably one must experience pleasure to acquire the concept of pleasure. But then how exactly is it that one is justified in believing that pleasure is good? Is it that once one has the concepts of pleasure and goodness, one believes that pleasure is good simply on the basis of understanding this proposition? Or is it that once one understands this proposition, one has a rational intuition of its truth? Or is it instead that when one experiences pleasure one also experiences its goodness? If something like the latter, the justification for our belief that pleasure is good seems more empirical than a priori.

My first instinct is to categorize moral experience as the sort of experience in the a posteriori category (though I suspect this is not a popular view among philosophers). Regardless, even if we categorize moral experience as not counting as the right sort of experience to be a posteriori, I don’t think we should assign the probability to our moral beliefs to be 1 for the same reason we shouldn’t for the principle of induction and the belief that our memory is at least sometimes reliable; it just doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that is absolutely certain in the way that All bachelors are unmarried or One plus one equals two is. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is very likely that my intuition of there being some kind of supremely authoritative non-natural reality that imposes the moral prohibition to not torture infants just for fun is very likely true—just as I think it is very likely that my intuition of my memory being at least somewhat reliable is very likely true. It’s just that the high probability isn’t quite equal to 1 in the same way that All bachelors are unmarried is.

3.4 Possible Atheist Responses to Epistemic Queerness

Some philosophical background before going forward. A possible world is a complete description of the way the world is or could have been like. For some proposition p that is possibly true (and thus is true in some possible world), one could think of “belief safety” as “In all possible worlds appropriate similar to the actual world, if I believe p, then p is true” (very roughly, belief safety means if I believe it’s true then I couldn’t have easily been wrong). For some p that is possibly true, one could think of “belief sensitivity” as “In all possible worlds appropriate similar to the actual one, if p is false then I would not believe that p” (very roughly, belief sensitivity means if the belief were false I couldn’t have easily believed that the belief is true). Some people belief that various moral truths are metaphysically necessary in the sense that they hold in all possible worlds. For moral truths that are metaphysically necessary, all such truths would be “safe” beliefs (since in all possible worlds in which they are believed, they are true, due to them being true in all possible worlds).

Schmid notes that when it comes to the epitemological component to the argument from queerness, the atheist can give these responses.

1. Not accept that moral properties are non-natural.
   • As already explained, the question has in mind Humean ought moral semantics, in which case moral naturalism is false.
2. A queer mental faculty (like supernatural clairvoyance) is not needed for moral knowledge. One might think that belief sensitivity and/or belief safety is all we really need.
   • To illustrate why this doesn’t work, suppose there exists a metaphysically necessary, incorporeal, causally inert dragon named Carl. By chance, a species that we can refer to as “Believers” has evolved the intuition that Carl exists, though because Carl is causally disconnected from the universe, the Believers would have the intuition that Carl exists regardless of whether Carl had in fact existed (Carl is metaphysically necessary and could not have failed to exist, but if he had not existed, his absence would have zero effect on whether the Believers had their dragon intuitions). Even if the Believers’ belief in Carl is sensitive and safe, their dragon belief still wouldn’t count as knowledge. The same, I think is true for moral beliefs if naturalism is true. We need the supernatural to have moral knowledge. Moreover, there does not appear to be a relevant difference between the “Dragon Scenario” and what we could call the “Naturalism Scenario” (where naturalism and moral objectivism are both true) in which the Believers do not have dragon knowledge but moral objectivists have moral knowledge.

Schmid makes a great point though that I hadn’t considered. It seemed to me that moral knowledge on atheism is epistemically unlikely because it would require a queer way of knowing (basically, supernatural clairvoyance), but there’s another approach: one could deny that the relevant modal conditions (belief sensitivity or belief safety) would likely obtain if naturalism is true. Belief sensitivity and belief safety aren’t “queer” relations for beliefs. So one wouldn’t necessarily have to argue from queer epistemology to support moral knowledge being unlikely on atheism. I concede Schmid’s point, but only to a certain extent, because it really does seem to me that some kind of queer epistemology is needed as illustrated in the Dragon Scenario. Though Schmid does agree with me that the atheist would need some kind of “sui generis faculty by which we can grasp moral facts directly” and that this is very “spooky” under naturalistic atheism. So Schmid’s views and mine are at least somewhat similar.

4. Conclusion

I’m grateful that Schmid took the time to answer my question in his AMA. However, I think the four responses the atheist could make for metaphysical queerness are woefully inadequate, and in some cases seem to rely on not quite accurately understanding the question in the first place. Even if moral knowledge via experience can be correctly categorized as a priori, it is not the kind of a priori knowledge that is absolutely certain in the way that All bachelors are unmarried is. The described possible atheist responses for morality being epistemically queer seem to fail. Still, it’s worth noting that Schmid seems to agree with me that there is a kind of epistemic queerness for moral knowledge on naturalistic atheism.

Proving the Modal Ontological Argument for God

1. Introduction

The purpose of this webpage is to provide a proof of the modal ontological argument’s logical validity in S5 modal logic (which is a variety of symbolic logic). The modal ontological argument for God’s existence goes something like this:

1. Necessarily: If God exists, he exists necessarily.
2. Possibly, God exists.

3. Therefore, God exists.

In logic, an argument is valid if the conclusion follows the premises necessarily by the rules of logic. Thus, if I prove the above ontological argument’s validity, I’ll be proving that the conclusion follows from the premises.

I’ll recap some logic stuff in this webpage, but it won’t be a full introduction to propositional logic. For that, see my introductory logic series. I will however briefly describe some relevant concepts of S5 modal logic.

2. Some Symbolic Logic

Some of the logic I will use (including the various names for the rules of logic) can be found in this introductory logic page. I won’t go into the various rules of logic here but I will explain what some symbols mean. First there are symbols of basic propositional logic:

Type of connective	English	Symbolic Logic	When it’s true/false
Conjunction	p and q	p ∧ q	True if both are true; otherwise false
Disjunction	p or q	p ∨ q	False if both are false; otherwise true
Conditional	If p, then q	p → q	False if p is true and q is false; otherwise true
Biconditional	p, if and only if q	p ↔ q	True if both have the same truth-value (i.e. both are true or both are false); otherwise false
Negation	Not-p	¬p	True if p is false; false if p is true

In philosophy, a possible world is a complete description of the way reality is or could have been like. On possible world semantics, a proposition is possibly true if and only if it is true in at least one possible world, and a proposition is necessarily true if and only if it is true in all possible worlds (at least in S5 modal logic).

English	Symbolic Logic	When it’s true/false
p is possible	◊p	True if p is true in at least on possible world; otherwise false
p is necessary	□p	True if p is true in all possible worlds; otherwise false
p is not possible	¬◊p	True if p is false in all on possible worlds; otherwise true

Note that ¬◊p is equivalent to □¬p. Indeed, the ◊ and □ operators can even be defined in terms of each other; e.g. one could define ◊ as “true in at least one possible world” and then define □ as this:

□p ≝ ¬◊¬p

As suggested earlier, I won’t recap the rules of propositional logic here (for that, see my introductory logic series) but I’ll explain relevant rules of S5 modal logic which go as follows:

necessity elimination
□p ∴ p

T-reiteration, necessity introduction
a)  □p b) c) □  pT-reiteration  ...  q d)  □q b-c, necessity introduction

S5-reiteration, necessity introduction
a)  ◊p b)   c) □  ◊pS5-reiteration  ...  q d)  □q b-c, necessity introduction

3. The Proof

With that out of the way, here’s a proof of the modal ontological argument:

(1)	□(G → □G)
(2)	◊G
(3)	◊¬G			indirect proof assumption
(4)		□	◊¬G	3, S5-reiteration
(5)			¬□¬¬G	4, equivalence
(6)			¬□G	5, double negation
(7)			G → □G	1, T-reiteration
(8)			¬G	6, 7, modus tollens
(9)		□¬G		4-8, necessity introduction
(10)		¬◊¬¬G		9, equivalence
(11)		¬◊G		10, double negation
(12)		¬◊G ∧ ◊G		2, 11, conjunction introduction
(13)	¬◊¬G			3-12, indirect proof
(14)	□G			13, equivalence
(15)	G			14, necessity elimination

Bad Objections to the Fine-Tuning Argument

Intro

This article is about refuting bad objections to the fine-tuning argument (FTA), but what is the FTA? Roughly, the fine-tuning argument goes like this. It starts with the scientific observation that the universe is fine-tuned in the sense that given our physical laws, if certain constants and quantities were altered even slightly, the universe would be life-prohibiting: it would not contain life. And by “life” I don’t just mean life as we know it; I mean no physical life at all. The fine-tuning is such that if the parameters were chosen at random, it is far more likely that the universe would be life-prohibiting rather than life-permitting. So why is the universe with its physical laws life-permitting? Design is a very straightforward explanation, and this cosmic fine-tuning is taken as evidence for design. Even if this fine-tuning argument is successful it merely concludes the universe was designed so it wouldn’t strictly prove God, but the fact, if it is so, that the universe is designed does make atheism considerably less plausible. So it has obvious theological implications. (Caveat: some versions of the FTA argue for God more directly.)

There are many sorts of bad objections. One is to strawman the phrase “fine-tuning” to mean “designed” (when it merely refers to the aforementioned scientific observation), deny that science says that fine-tuning is real, and then avoid discussing the matter further.

Another objection is to avoid that straw man but deny fine-tuning anyway, yet I find it highly unlikely that atheist physicists like Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinov would have embraced fine-tuning if there wasn’t good evidence for it (they talk about this in their book The Grand Design). There’s also PBS Space Time which mentions the reality of fine-tuning, where the astrophysicist there says this (14:21 to 15:26).

Many people had the following objection: they say that the universe isn’t really fine-tuned for life or for observers because there could be many types of observer very different to ourselves, that could potentially exist if the fundamental constants were different. Well, actually, fine tuning arguments for the fundamental constants for the most part take that into account. We can probably assume that for an intelligent observer to emerge in any universe, that universe must be capable of forming complex structures—whether or not it looks like life as we know it. So the universe needs to last a reasonable amount of time, have stable regions and energy sources for those structures to form, and have some building blocks—whether or not they look like atoms as we know them. Much of the parameter space that the constants of nature could have taken eliminate one or more of these factors. So while there may be many small parts of that parameter space where observers can arise, most of it—and hence most universes—should be devoid of observers.

In my opinion the objection to the FTA with the most potential is a multiverse hypothesis in which there are a nearly infinite number of universes with varying parameters such that it’s likely that at least one of them is life-permitting. I think there are some problems with that alternative, but I won’t focus on them here. Mostly I want to focus on the terrible objections that are more popular than they should be. Some of these (but not all of these) I’ve taken from Counter Arguments and Unsolicited Advice.

Bad Objection #1: The Puddle Analogy

Objection: I’ve discussed the Puddle Analogy on Capturing Christianity, and some forms of it are worse than others, but one of them goes something like this: imagine a sentient puddle finds it perfectly fitting the hole it’s in and thus concludes it must have been designed for it, when that’s not the case at all; it’s by virtue of undirected natural processes that water filled the space of the hole. The fine-tuning argument similarly fails; the universe wasn’t made for us to exist, just as the hole wasn’t made for the puddle.

Response: Again, the “puddle analogy” response comes in different forms, but in some cases people give the analogy and don’t provide sufficient detail into how exactly the FTA fails (like in the above paragraph). Simply asserting, for example, the universe wasn’t made for us to exist and talking about a story where that same principle applies to a puddle doesn’t at all address the evidence at hand. To put it in an oversimplified way, one can’t just describe the puddle story and drop the mic, reasonably concluding that the FTA has been refuted.

Still, some do go a step further with the Puddle Analogy and say that just as the water flowed to fit the space it was in, so too life would have conformed to the parameters of the universe even if they were different. The problem, of course, is that the life-permitting parameters are extremely narrow as the PBS Space Time video describes, so this wouldn’t work.

Even if the Puddle Analogy worked as a kind of “entrance” to an objection that does have more intellectual substance, the Puddle Analogy won’t by itself be sufficient to constitute a good objection to the FTA.

Bad Objection #2: If the Universe Weren’t Fine-Tuned, We Wouldn’t be Here

Objection: the universe must be compatible with our existence. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here. There exists a sort of observer selection effect such that observers exist and if observers exist the relevant parameters must be life-permitting. The probability of fine-tuning given both observer selection (we exist and the universe’s parameters permit our existence) and the universe not being designed is not less than the probability of both the observer selection effect and the universe being designed. Or to put it mathematically, given the following symbols:

• R: fine-tuning observation.
• D: the universe was designed.
• ¬D : the universe was not designed.
• OSE: the observer selection effect (we exist and the universe’s parameters permit our existence).
• P(R∣D & OSE): the probability of R given D and OSE.
• P(R∣¬D & OSE): the probability of R given ¬D and OSE.

The objection I’m critiquing here that since the below is false…

P(R∣D & OSE) > P(R∣¬D & OSE)

…the FTA doesn’t work. The reason why it doesn’t work is basically because we shouldn’t be surprised, given the observer selection effect, to find such fine-tuning even if the universe were not designed.

Response: John Leslie gives a helpful analogy: imagine you are before a firing squad with a bunch of marksmen trained to shoot and you, and they all miss. It is true that, given the observation selection effect (modified mutatis mutandis for this situation) the survivor shouldn’t be surprised to observe they aren’t dead (given that they are alive), but this obviously doesn’t refute the design hypothesis (in this case, that you survived by design rather than all the marksmen accidentally missing). Similarly, while it may be true that if the universe weren’t fine-tuned, we wouldn’t be here to observe it, this doesn’t do anything to refute the design hypothesis. The objection fails.

Bad Objection #3: Unknown Physical Necessity

Objection: One could say that perhaps the parameters of the life-permitting range couldn’t have been different, and that they are what they are by some kind of physical necessity.

Response: At 15:27 to 16:25 of the PBS Space Time video, astrophysicist Matthew O’Dowd says this.

A few of you also pointed out that I missed one possibility—perhaps the dials defining the fundamental constants were neither randomly set nor deliberately tuned. Perhaps there’s some unknown physical principle that demands they have exactly the values that they do. Well right, that’s possible, but the point is that unless that principle is somehow connected to the universe’s later developing life and structure, why should it have landed on one of the rare combinations amenable to life and structure? It’s just as easy to imagine a physical principle that gives you only one universe with an unavoidable combination of fundamental constants that was completely devoid of life. So I still count this option as either “getting lucky” or that the later emergence of life was somehow retrocausal of the universe’s knob-setting. Between these options and the multiverse, I think I prefer the multiverse.

I’m inclined to agree; the multiverse is a far better alternative, and it’s the one I would choose if I were an atheist who rejected the cosmic design hypothesis.

There’s also a “proves too much” problem. Basically, the philosophical idea behind an objection “proving too much” is that the type of reasoning leads to absurdities. Consider the following scenario: imagine an asteroid shower clearly spelled out on the moon, “Yes, there is a cosmic designer; I fine-tuned certain parameters of the universe so that this text would appear.” Suppose scientists confirm that there are certain parameters such that if they were altered even slightly, no asteroid shower text would appear.

Here’s a tip: apply objections to the FTA to this asteroid shower scenario and see what happens. If someone says, “Maybe the fine-tuned parameters for the asteroid shower text were physically necessary,” clearly that doesn’t work here for the same reason Matthew O’Dowd says it doesn’t work for the cosmic fine-tuning for life: it’s just as easy to imagine the physical necessity pointing in the broader range where the effect doesn’t occur. Moreover, this tactic does little more than push the fine-tuning problem back a step: the physical necessity would itself have to be fine-tuned to point to the narrow life-permitting range, just as the physical necessity would have to be fine-tuned for the asteroid shower text in the asteroid shower scenario.

Bad Objection #4: Unknown Different Probability Distribution

Objection: this objection is similar to bad objection #3 except that the unknown physical principle makes the life-permitting parameters highly probable instead of merely physically necessary.

Response: This objection fails for the same sort of reason; e.g., this pushes the fine-tuning back a step (we can imagine the spike of high probability going over a broader, life-prohibiting region, so fine-tuning is necessary for the spike to appear in the right place) and just imagine someone applying the same objection to the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario.

Bad Objection #5: Unknown Metaphysical Necessity

Objection: this objection is similar to objection #3 except that the parameters are metaphysically necessary. Where a possible world is a complete description of the way the world is or could have been like, the objection says that perhaps the only possible worlds are those with just the right parameters.

Response: My first thought is that this seems implausible without some kind of argument, and again, think of someone launching that objection against the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario. It seems enormously implausible that it is metaphysically necessary that the relevant parameters would obtain in the absence of a designer.

Bad Objection #6: We’ve Only Observed This Universe

Objection: we haven’t observed multiple universes to observe which percentage of fine-tuned universes are designed and which are not. If we observed that nearly all fine-tuned universes were the product of design, then we could infer design from our fine-tuned universe, but that doesn’t apply here. We’d need to observe numerously different universes to see how many fine-tuned universes were designed and how many were life-permitting merely by chance. But since we only have this universe to observe, we aren’t justified in thinking that the universe probably wouldn’t be life-permitting if it weren’t designed.

Response: Recall the tip I described earlier: apply the objection to the FTA to the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario and see what happens. One could say that since we’ve only observed this universe, we can’t reasonably say that the universe probably wouldn’t have this fine-tuned asteroid shower if it weren’t designed, but clearly that doesn’t make any sense.

Bad Objection #7: The Life-Permitting Range is finite, but the Life-Prohibiting Range is Infinite

Objection: the range of possible life-permitting parameters is finite, but the possible range of life-prohibiting parameters is infinitely large. In conventional probability theory at least, the probabilities of different possible outcomes must sum to one, but in this case this is impossible. Suppose for example we carved up the infinite parameter range into finite regions and assigned each with a fixed-probability: the summation would add up to infinity rather than one. If we assigned them each a probability of zero, it would sum to zero rather than one. So we can’t actually make any probability judgments here about e.g., the probability of the universe being designed given the fine-tuning evidence.

Response: Once again we have a “proves too much” problem. Imagine a finite range of parameters for the asteroid shower text and an infinite range where the asteroid shower text would not appear. If anything, the fact that the range of parameters in which the asteroid shower text doesn’t appear is infinite makes the design hypothesis more probable than it would be if the possible non-text-producing range were merely some large finite magnitude.

Bad Objection #8: If God exists, why is it that fine-tuning exists?

Objection: Couldn’t God create life in a way so that it would exist even if the parameters were different? Moreover, there seem to be contradictory motives: on the one hand, life is made nearly impossible due to the narrow life-permitting range, and yet God made the universe to have life come about anyway. Thus, we cannot reasonably infer that God is the correct explanation of the fine-tuning.

Response: Perhaps God could have created life (of a sort) with different parameters (something like supernatural spirits floating about), it’s just that life would not have naturally arisen in a life-prohibiting universe. What about the contradictory motives objection? Contradictory motives is hardly the only possibility for why God might create a fine-tuned universe: another possibility is that God wanted to create a universe with life in such a way that he left behind some evidence that the universe was a product of design. The notion that God would have had contradictory motives in creating a fine-tuned universe thus doesn’t follow.

Bad Objection #9: Who created God?

Objection: The claim is that a designer (call it God) created the fine-tuned universe. But then was God created via some fine-tuning? One might say no, God always was. But then why couldn’t we say the same for the universe? Perhaps the universe always was, and so we don’t need to invoke a creator.

Response: Imagine someone using the same objection in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario; clearly it doesn’t work. Why? A big reason is that a certain aspect of the universe seems unlikely to exist if the universe wasn’t designed, the aspect in question providing evidence for the design hypothesis. The same thing applies to cosmic fine-tuning for life.

Bad Objection #10: We don’t know how likely it is that if such a creator exists, it would want to create a life-permitting universe

Objection: Even if we assume an intelligent creator exists (e.g., God) we don’t know how likely it is that the creator would create a life-permitting universe over a life-prohibiting one. In fact, we really don’t know what sort of universe such a being would want at all. Perhaps such a powerful being capable of creating universes wouldn’t create anything. So the existence of fine-tuning doesn’t really give us any reason to believe in a creator. After all, if the probability of cosmic fine-tuning given such a being is no greater than the probability of cosmic fine-tuning given no such being, then the fine-tuning wouldn’t be evidence for such a being. And since we don’t know the former (we don’t know how likely it is that if such a powerful being existed, it would create a universe like ours) fine-tuning isn’t good evidence for a creator.

Response: I think there is some merit in this, in the sense that we can’t determine the probability that if such a being (e.g., God) existed, how likely it is that this being would create a fine-tuned universe, at least not in any precise and definite way. Even so, we once again have a “proves too much” problem. Imagine someone applying the same objection in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario. Even if we don’t know how likely it is that a powerful being would create the fine-tuned asteroid shower text given merely the existence of a powerful being capable of bringing this about, the fine-tuned asteroid shower still seems more likely to have occurred given the existence of such a being.

I suspect one of the reasons for why we would think a designer might create the asteroid shower text is that there is some non-negligible objective value for the existence of the text. The same, one could argue, applies to life; it’s the sort of thing a designer might want to bring about. Consider the following illustration: intelligent design (ID) theorists have argued that in the absence of a designer, it is very unlikely that life would have evolved from non-life on the primordial earth. Most scientists believe that such ID theorists are incorrect, but suppose we found overwhelming evidence that they were correct: scientists run calculations on supercomputers and find that the probability that life would evolve from non-life on the primordial earth in the absence of any artificial intervention is vanishingly small, akin to a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a fully functional airplane. Wouldn’t it be reasonable for scientists to conclude that some kind of artificial intervention was involved, such as directed panspermia? Of course it would. The same principle applies to cosmic fine-tuning for life.

Bad Objection #11: Improbable things happen all the time without a designer

Objection: Improbable things happen all the time without a designer being responsible. For example, the odds that a certain sequence of people winning the lottery is improbable, but it still happened. If I shuffle a deck of fifty-two cards, the odds that this particular order of cards would obtain in the way it does is one in fifty-two factorial, or about 1 in 8.1 × 10⁶⁷. Even if it were true that the probability of a life-permitting universe is low in the absence of the designer, so what? Maybe we just got lucky, like someone winning the lottery.

Response: Imagine someone making this objection in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario; clearly this objection doesn’t work here. Why not? One relevant factor in inferring design here is that the low probability fits some sort of non-ad-hoc pattern (something that’s been called the “specification” criterion) that makes a design inference reasonable if it is unlikely to emerge in the absence of design. Would the existence of life be such a thing? It would seem so; consider again the scenario of scientists finding that it is extremely improbable that life would emerge from non-life on the primordial earth in the absence of artificial intervention. In that scenario, it seems something like directed panspermia would be reasonable. And as mentioned before, there’s the non-negligible objective value consideration.

Bad Objection #12: If life is objectively valuable, why didn’t God create more life?

Objection: Suppose God exists and views life as valuable. Why is there so little of it? The fact that life is so scarce is thus good evidence that God isn’t responsible.

Response: There are a number of problems here, one being that it doesn’t refute the design hypothesis but rather generic theism. But let’s ignore that: the question assumes that life is scarce, but on what grounds are we to believe that? Perhaps there is a great deal of life elsewhere in the universe; our ability to detect life on other worlds is extremely limited. Moreover, for all we know the quantity of life could be almost infinite: there could be almost infinitely many observable universes in the same space-time as ours, each one containing life. Perhaps there are even other—almost infinitely many—universes outside our own space-time region (something akin to parallel universes) each one containing life, in which case there would once again be almost infinitely many life forms.

Even if we ignore that, just because life is one of the things God values does not mean it is the only thing he values. Perhaps God is something like an artist; he wanted a universe with life but also wanted other things as well, such as a vast panoply of stars and planets. The fact that an artist creates a statue forty times larger than his son does not mean that the artist values the statue more than his human son; it might just be the artist doesn’t only value human beings and wants other things to exist as well. All things considered, this isn’t a good objection against the fine-tuning argument.

As an addendum though, imagine someone using the same sort of objection in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario: if the designer values showing fine-tuned asteroid shower texts to life forms so much, why did it only occur once? Even if we confirmed it did occur only once, that’s hardly a good reason to reject a design inference!

Conclusion

Here are some bad objections to the fine-tuning argument (FTA):

1. The Puddle Analogy. This doesn’t work, at least not without some further elucidation about why the FTA fails.
2. If the Universe Weren’t Fine-Tuned, We Wouldn’t be Here. Even if true, that doesn’t really address the evidence for design being responsible for the same reason it doesn’t in John Leslie’s firing squad scenario.
3. Unknown Physical Necessity. This doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, one factor being that it pushes the fine-tuning problem back a step.
4. Unknown Different Probability Distribution. This doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, one factor being that it pushes the fine-tuning problem back a step.
5. Unknown Metaphysical Necessity. This doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, one factor being that it seems highly implausible at least in the absence of further argumentation.
6. We’ve Only Observed This Universe. This doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, one factor being that, while true, it doesn’t seem to meaningfully undercut the design inference.
7. The Life-Permitting Range is finite, but the Life-Prohibiting Range is Infinite. This doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, one factor being that, if anything, it would seem to make the design inference stronger.
8. If God exists, why is it that fine-tuning exists? A possible explanation is that the designing intelligence wanted to leave behind some evidence that the universe was a product of design.
9. Who created God? The objection that maybe the universe always was and doesn’t need a creator doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, a relevant factor being that there’s an aspect of the universe that is unlikely to obtain in the absence of a designing intelligence behind the universe.
10. We don’t know how likely it is that if such a creator exists, it would want to create a life-permitting universe. This doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, one factor being that the relevant effect seems like something a designing intelligence might want to create; consider the scenario in which we find overwhelming evidence that life would almost certainly not have evolved on earth in the absence of artificial intervention.
11. Improbable things happen all the time without a designer. This doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t in the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario, one factor being that the relevant effect seems to fit the “specification” criterion and that it seems like something a designing intelligence might want to create; consider the scenario in which we find overwhelming evidence that life would almost certainly not have evolved from non-life on earth in the absence of artificial intervention.
12. If life is objectively valuable, why didn’t God create more life? First, how do we know God didn’t create an almost infinite amount of life? The question assumes something that has not been proven. Second, just because God values life doesn’t mean it’s the only thing God values; he might value other things as well that result in what we see (confer the example of an artist creating a statue that is larger than his son).

As you may have noticed, the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario is a powerful tool in countering bad objections to the FTA. As mentioned before, one tip is this: When faced with an objection to the FTA, apply it to the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario and see what happens. By my lights, some objections to the fine-tuned argument are astoundingly irrational. To see my point of view, suppose the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario really did happen and some atheists used these sorts of objections (e.g., “Improbable things happen all the time without a designer being responsible”) to deny the existence of a designer. I think most of us would agree that these particular atheists would be irrational.

What about the multiverse objection? As I said before, it has potential, but there are problems, at least when we don’t have independent evidence for it (it doesn’t seem to be the simplest explanation; imagine applying it to the fine-tuned asteroid shower scenario!) but I’ll deal with that more in another blog post.