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.
| 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):
- The Puddle Analogy. This doesn’t work, at least not without some further elucidation about why the FTA fails.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
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.
