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.

Genetically Modified Skeptic vs Arguments for God

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Introduction

Drew McCoy has a YouTube channel called Genetically Modified Skeptic and he posted a video titled The Arguments for God's Existence Tier List responding to various arguments for theism. I’ll go through them in chronological order of the video.

Pascal’s Wager

(1:38 to 3:03)

As Genetically Modified Skeptic (GMS) presents it, Pascal’s Wager is this: if you act as if God exists and God does exist, you have infinite gain in heaven and finite loss, whereas if you act as if God doesn’t exist and God doesn’t exist you have finite gain but infinite loss in hell. Summarized in a handy table:

Belief	Gain if correct	Loss if wrong
God	Infinite	Finite
No God	Finite	Infinite

Given the gain and loss data above, the rational individual would act as if God does exist. If God exists, acting as if he does exist gives you infinite gain and at worst finite loss. Whereas if you lived as if God didn’t exist, your gain was at best finite and your loss was at worst infinite. Therefore, the rational person would act as if God does exist.

GMS claims this commits the black and white fallacy, acting as if there are only two possibilites when there are actually a lot more. After all, there are many different religions with one or more gods. Which religion to pick?

I think GMS is sort of right in his objection, but the version of Pascal’s Wager he attacks isn’t really the strongest. The strongest version of Pascal’s Wager I’ve seen is that if you’re in a situation in which atheism and Christianity are the two viable options (e.g. perhaps you believe the case for the Resurrection of Jesus is strong enough to be likely if God exists) and the probabilities between the two options are roughly equal, then you should act as if God exists. Of course, this is a particularly narrow application of Pascal’s Wager, but it is arguably true that if the conditions were met then you should act as if God exist. A nontheist might not think the aforementioned conditions are met, but if so that would be a different matter than whether it would be rational to act as if God exists if the conditions were met.

The Ontological Argument

(3:06 to 4:55)

As GMS states, there are multiple forms of the Ontological Argument and GMS (tries to) address Anselm’s version of it. In Chapter 2 of Proslogion Anselm introduces the argument like this:

For it is one thing for something to exist in a person's thought and quite another for the person to think that thing exists. For when a painter thinks ahead to what he will paint, he has that picture in his thought, but he does not yet think it exists, because he has not done it yet. Once he has painted it he has it in his thought and thinks it exists because he has done it. Thus even the fool is compelled to grant that something greater than which cannot be thought exists in thought, because he understands what he hears, and whatever is understood exists in thought. And certainly that greater than which cannot be understood cannot exist only in thought, for if it exists only in thought it could also be thought of as existing in reality as well, which is greater. If, therefore, that than which greater cannot be thought exists in thought alone, then that than which greater cannot be thought turns out to be that than which something greater actually can be thought, but that is obviously impossible. Therefore something than which greater cannot be thought undoubtedly exists both in thought and in reality.

That’s a bit of a mouthful, so let’s do a bit of analysis and simplify it a bit. One popular analysis is such that Anselm considers God as that which nothing greater can be conceived, or what is often called the “greatest conceivable being” (GCB).

1. God is the greatest conceivable being (by definition); God exists in the mind and is thus conceivable.
2. Something that exists in reality is greater than that which exists only in the mind.

3. Suppose God, the greatest conceivable being (from 1), exists only in the mind and not in reality (i.e. God does not actually exist; which is the negation of what this argument attempts to prove).
4. Then there is a conceivable being that is greater (than the being in 4), namely God existing in reality (since as 2 says, something existing in reality is greater).
5. So it is conceivable for something to have been greater than God (from 4).
6. Since God is that which nothing greater is conceivable (from 1), then it is conceivable for something to be greater than that which nothing greater is conceivable (from 5).

7. Statement (6) is absurd and cannot be rationally accepted, thus the claim of (3) must be rejected and the greatest conceivable being must exist.

As it stands I think this version of the ontological argument is unsuccessful, but not for the reason GMS claims. GMS bizarrely claims that Anslem’s argument has God’s existence as a premise, but this is not a premise in Anselm’s argument. It is a premise of Anselm’s argument that God exists in the mind but that’s not the same thing as God existing simpliciter.

A more popular objection against Anselm’s argument is attacking premise (2), the notion that existence is a great-making property. One could even argue that “existence” isn’t really a property at all (the fancy philosophy way of putting it is “existence is not a predicate”). A statement like “God is omniscient” basically claims that if God exists this entity has the property of “omniscience” (I add “if God exists” because if there is no God, then there isn’t any God to have any properties). However, even trying to phrase it like “God has the property of existence” is basically saying that if God exists, he has the property of existence, in which case “has the property of existence” isn’t adding very much to saying what God is like if he exists, and so it isn’t a real property in the sense that omniscience, redness, and having a mass of eighteen kilograms are properties. Here’s a key portion of the Anselm text I quoted earlier:

And certainly that greater than which cannot be understood cannot exist only in thought, for if it exists only in thought it could also be thought of as existing in reality as well, which is greater.

Yes we can think of God existing in reality, but that wouldn’t make him exist in reality. Similarly, we can grant that God would exist if God existed, but that doesn’t mean he exists. (I think God does exist, but I don’t think this particular argument is successful; just because a view is correct doesn’t mean that every argument for that view is a good one.)

Lots more can be said about the “existence is not a predicate” objection to premise (2), and the objection isn’t universally agreed upon, but it at least attacks a real rather than an imaginary premise.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

(4:56 to 6:55)

The kalam cosmological argument (KCA) basically goes like this:

1. Anything that begins to exist has cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

After that, philosophers have given further arguments to try to show that the cause has some characteristics conducive for theism, e.g. the cause of the universe being nonphysical and unimaginably powerful. You can read more about that and the argument in general at this William Lane Craig article (Craig is the philosopher famous for reigniting the KCA’s popularity in the late twentieth century).

GMS’s objection is quite bizarre; he points out that the conclusion of the KCA (the universe has a cause) doesn’t by itself get you to God. That’s true, but irrelevant. The KCA syllogism doesn’t aspire to do that. The nature of the universe’s cause is left to other arguments.

The Moral Argument

(6:59 to 9:01)

The moral argument for God’s existence that GMS critiques is this:

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has popularized this variety (Craig gets around, philosophically speaking, in apologetics circles). At 7:18 to 7:27 GMS essentially attacks a straw man as follows:

This argument’s first premise is unsubstantiated. It doesn’t demonstrate that the only way objective moral values can exist is if God exists.

But that is not what the first premise claims. The first premise doesn’t claim that objective moral values cannot exist if God does not exist, it claims that objective moral values do not exist if God does not exist. This is important because all one has to do to justify the first premise as probably true is to argue that it is unlikely that objective moral values exist if God does not exist. I did just that in my debate on the moral argument with Jeffery Jay Lowder of internet infidels fame, and I didn’t need to argue at all that God is necessary for objective morality to exist (though the first premise is slightly different in the debate, the general reasoning would apply). At 7:47 to 7:58 GMS attacks another straw man:

Some other moral arguments such as C.S. Lewis’s argument in Mere Christianity state that moral law has not been shown to have a natural origin so it must have come from a supernatural moral lawgiver. First of all, this is an argument from ignorance; not knowing does not excuse asserting an unsubstantiated answer. Second, evolution by natural selection is actually a pretty good explanation for why social species would behave according to practices which promote fairness, peace, and well-being among groups.

As Lewis makes clear in chapter 3 of Mere Christianity by “moral law” Lewis is not talking about descriptive patterns of behavior as GMS seems to think here, so even if evolution by natural selection did explain why our species came up with the practices it did, this is irrelevant. Lewis is talking about the “oughtness” type of morality; e.g. men ought to be unselfish. As I’ve written before, moral oughts are non-natural.

Lewis never says that the moral law must have come from a supernatural moral lawgiver simply because it has not shown to have a natural origin. After observing that we do have this inner sense of the moral law (among other things), in chapter 4 Lewis says:

All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know—because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions.

Among known stuff, Lewis believes a mind is the best explanation. Maybe you disagree with Lewis’s inference to the best explanation, but it is not the same thing as an argument from ignorance; Lewis doesn’t say “It hasn’t been shown to be a natural cause, therefore a supernatural moral lawgiver is behind it.” For one, it isn’t just that it hasn’t been shown to be a natural cause; Lewis believes we have good reason to think it’s just not the nature of inanimate matter to give instructions, whereas the same doesn’t apply so well to a mind. Whether you like or dislike this reasoning, it’s not of the form “It has not been shown that p is true, therefore p is false.”

In 8:28 to 8:55 GMS asserts that this argument has the special ability he calls “denigrate” in which the user asserts or implies that their opponent lacks morals. The problem with this alleged “special ability” is that it’s not an ability of the argument at all. Nowhere does the argument say or imply that nontheist can’t be moral. William Lane Craig, incidentally, has made it clear on repeated occasions that the moral argument doesn’t claim that atheists can’t live a good and decent life.

Argument from Personal Experience

(9:08 to 12:59)

GMS puts the argument like this:

1. My personal experiences are reliable sources of information.
2. I personally experienced [insert God claim here].
3. Therefore [the God claim] is true.

William Lane Craig has been known to often assert that God can be immediately known and experienced, but even he claims this really isn’t an argument, e.g. in the Craig-Curley debate he says this:

God can be immediately known and experienced. This isn't really an argument for God's existence; rather it's the claim that you can know God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by immediately experiencing Him…. If you're sincerely seeking God, then God will make His existence evident to you. The Bible promises, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you" (James 4. 8). We mustn't so concentrate on the proofs that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our own heart. For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality in their lives.

This is more of an invitation than an argument. As an argument, I agree that it sucks—at least if you’re trying to use it to convince other people. There are instances in which subjective personal experiences can trump even objective evidence for the person who has had the experiences.

Think that can’t happen? Imagine you’re on trial for a crime you know you didn’t commit because of your own personal experience of you not committing the crime, but all the objective evidence available to the court stands against you. You have no objective evidence you can give to the court to prove you are being framed, but you are still rational to believe in your own innocence. Subjective personal experience can be a powerful source of rational justification. If people really do have personal experiences of God, this can potentially be a source of rational justification for belief in God.

But as an argument to convince other people, I don’t see it being much more useful than reporting your own personal experience of being innocent before a jury who sees the objective evidence heavily stacked against you.

GMS notes that personal experiences can sometimes be delusory, which is true, but insufficient to reject our personal experiences (e.g. I’ll still trust my experience that I was alive in the twentieth century). He notes people can have conflicting personal experiences, which is again true, but still insufficient. People can look at the same set of data and disagree where the evidence points, thus having different intuitive experiences of where the evidence points, but I doubt that would make GMS reject anthropogenic climate change. That said, arguments from personal experiences like this are still not that useful to convince other people.

Teleological (Fine-Tuning) Argument

(13:03 to 16:13)

For those who don’t know, fine-tuning refers to the observation that certain parameters of our universe (certain physical constants and quantities) are “fine-tuned” in the sense that if any of these parameters were altered even slightly, the universe would be life-prohibiting rather than life-permitting, and physical life would not have evolved. So why is the universe life-permitting rather than life-prohibiting? The cosmic fine-tuning being the result of design seems to be a good and straightforward explanation. Cosmic fine-tuning is taken as evidence for the universe having been designed.

GMS makes the claim that this argument makes a false dichotomy fallacy at around 13:43 to 13:58:

First it makes use of a false dichotomy presenting pure chance and an intelligent creator as the only two possibilities when it hasn’t successfully ruled out other options. There could perhaps be some purely physical rule to the universe which demands that these constants be the way they are.

William Lane Craig however has often introduced the fine-tuning argument this way:

1. The fine-tuning is due either to physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.

Now perhaps GMS doesn’t believe that physical necessity has been successfully ruled out, but if the third possibility of physical necessity had been considered as a possibility and the argumentation against physical necessity for fine-tuning is just unsuccessful, this isn’t a case of a false dichotomy, since three possibilities were indeed considered.

Perhaps the physical constants are physically necessary in the sense that their values (represented numerically in physics) are the way they are in the universe and there’s nothing within the physical universe that can change it (it would require something supernatural to affect them). Note that physical necessity is distinct from metaphysical necessity which is the necessity of the way things could have been in a more absolute sense. If we define a possible world as a complete description of the way reality is or could have been like, some believe there are possible worlds with different physical laws, and that is at least partly why we need empirical study to see what the physical laws of our universe are actually like. In contrast, there are no possible worlds with a married bachelor.

But even if physical constants are physically necessary, we would end up with fine-tuned physical necessities and would not solve the problem or even really provide an alternative to chance.

To illustrate why, consider the following Meter Shower Scenario. Suppose a meteor shower clearly spelled out on the moon, “There is a cosmic designer; I supernaturally fine-tuned certain parameters of this universe so that this message would appear.” Now suppose we do find such fine-tuned parameters that can be expressed as numerical values, like a series of multiple dials that are set extremely precisely for the meteor shower text to appear. Suppose also that the parameters are physically necessary (the values are part of the rules of the universe, and no force purely within the universe can alter them) but the physical necessities are nonetheless fine-tuned so that if the values were altered even slightly, no meteor shower text would appear. Clearly there’s still sense in which it is incredibly unlikely that the fine-tuned physical necessities happen to be the way they are in the absence of a cosmic designer, because this fine-tuning just doesn’t seem to be metaphysically necessary. True, one could in this scenario claim that it is metaphysically necessary that we’d see such a meteor shower text, but that would seem highly implausible under the circumstances. A cosmic designer would seem to be the best explanation of the meteor shower text.

Similarly, even if the physical constants for a life-permitting universe are physically necessary, they don’t seem to be the sort of thing that is metaphysically necessary. The notion that there couldn’t have been a life-prohibiting universe to the point of a life-prohibiting universe being metaphysically impossible does not seem plausible.

GMS continues at around 13:59 to 14:12:

Second, this is an argument from ignorance because the arguer doesn’t know how such an unlikely thing could have possibly happened, they posit unsubstantiated explanation: a God, instead of saying, “I don’t know.”

First, the conclusion is “design” not “God” (though to be fair, the fact—if it is so—that the universe was designed would make atheism considerably less plausible). Second, we can see how such an unlikely thing could have happened, it’s just…unlikely (in the absence of a cosmic designer). Third, is this really an argument from ignorance? Arguments from ignorance take the form of something like “It has not been shown that p is false, therefore p is true.” Maybe somewhere somebody has argued this way in presenting the fine-tuning argument, but it’s just not an inherent part of the reasoning.

One could more charitably see the fine-tuning argument as an inference to the best explanation. To illustrate why, consider the Meteor Shower Scenario in which someone claims the fine-tuning for the meteor shower is clear evidence of design. Suppose a skeptic responded with this:

You’re saying you don’t know how such an unlikely thing could have happened, we must posit an unsubstantiated explanation: a designer, instead of saying “I don’t know.”

This rebuttal is less than convincing, in part because (1) simply saying that A is evidence for B here doesn’t by itself imply an argument from ignorance like the skeptic described above; (2) the fine-tuning being explained is the evidence for the posited “unsubstantiated” explanation of design; and (3) this response seems like a really desperate maneuver to avoid an intelligent designer of the cosmos.

Lots more could be said about the fine-tuning argument, but the objection GMS gave here is highly unsuccessful, as were many of the objections presented in the video with respect to other arguments for theism.

Fine-Tuning: Barnes vs Malpass

Fine-Tuning: Barnes vs Malpass

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Introduction

Capturing Christianity hosted a fine-tuning debate between Luke Barnes and Alex Malpass in 2018-04-21.

For those who don’t already know, cosmic fine-tuning is the observation that given the physical laws of our universe, certain constants (such as the mass of the electron) and quantities (such as the entropy of the early universe) in our universe are “fine-tuned” in the sense that the life-permitting parameters of the universe are extremely narrow, such that if they were altered even slightly physical life would not have existed. The fine-tuning argument (FTA) argues that the fine-tuning of the universe, i.e. that the universe is life-permitting instead of life-prohibiting in these circumstances, is evidence for theism (sometimes using a relatively modest conclusion; e.g. claiming that design is the best explanation for the universe being life-permitting).

In my opinion the debate was excellent, and the debate was mostly over philosophy rather than the scientific claims. Perhaps that was to be expected, since the theist arguing on behalf of FTA (Luke Barnes) is a cosmologist and the person arguing against it is a philosopher. I’ll do an overview of the debate, but since the debate is nearly two hours long I’ll obviously have to skip over some details.

Debate Overview

Opening Statements

Luke Barnes gives his opening statement starting at around 2:58 explaining fine-tuning and describing some of the science involved, giving examples of fine-tuning such as the masses of electrons and quarks (3:15 to 4:55, where if the parameters fall outside the narrow boundary not only do you not get life you don’t even get chemistry) and the Higgs field (6:23 to 7:12). Barnes says there are good reasons for God to make a morally significant universe (and thus a universe with life), whereas on naturalism the sort of universe we’d expect is a dead one (23:09 to 23:24).

Alex Malpass’s opening statement starts at around 25:15 and he more or less concedes the physics Barnes presents, at least arguendo (24:48 to 26:13) while noting that some disagree with the fine-tuning claim. Best I can tell though, while the scientific opinion isn’t unanimous, the consensus does seem to be that cosmic fine-tuning is real. I find it unlikely that atheist physicists like Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow would have affirmed fine-tuning if it weren’t real.[1]

To his credit as a philosopher, Malpass presents the overall structure of the fine-tuning argument better than Barnes does at around 30:36 to 32:00.

1. P(L | N) << 1 (the probability that the universe is Life-permitting given Naturalism is much less than 1)
2. ~P(L | T) << 1 (it is not the case that the probability that the universe is Life-permitting given Theism is much less than 1)
3. If E is more probable on H1 than H2, then E supports H1 over H2.
4. Therefore, L is evidence for T over N.

Something called the odds form of Bayes theorem will be helpful here, the general structure of which is this where e.g. P(T|L) represents the probability of T (theism) given L (the universe is life permitting).

posterior odds		prior odds		likelihood ratio
P(T|L) P(N|L)	=	P(T) P(N)	×	P(L|T) P(L|N)

The theist wants the posterior odds to be greater than the prior odds. Of particular note in this debate will be the values of P(T) and P(N), i.e. the prior probabilities of T and N, respectively. The lower P(T) is, the worse the posterior odds will be. This brings us to what Malpass calls the “Goldilocks hypothesis problem.”

Goldilocks Hypothesis Problem

One thing that affects the prior probability of a hypothesis (i.e. its probability prior to examining some particular data) is its content, i.e. how much it “claims.” For example, the claim “An animal exists” has less content than “A flatworm with two heads exists,” and so “An animal exists” has greater prior probability; it’s broader and has less content than the claim of a specific type of animal existing. Malpass correctly notes that there’s a trade off between the content of T, it’s prior probability P(T), and P(L|T).

If T were “An omnipotent God desires L” then P(L|T) will be high but at the cost of P(T) being low. To see why, let R represent “It rained this morning” and let TR be “An omnipotent God made it rain this morning” in which case P(R|TR) is high, but P(TR) will have to be low since we can’t reasonably infer that an omnipotent deity caused it to rain every time it rains. The narrower and more specific T is (thus packing more content in it), the lower the prior probability of T. Conversely, making T broader (having less content), e.g. T meaning nothing more than “an omnipotent being exists” will make P(T) greater; but making T broader in this way will make P(L|T) lower.

The Goldilocks hypothesis problem is how precisely to define the hypothesis T in such a way to not make it ad hoc (e.g. “An omnipotent God desires L”) which would give it a lower prior probability, but also not make it so broad that P(L|T) isn’t terribly large. Put another way, T can’t have too much content, but it also can’t have too little content. If T is defined too broadly with too little content, Malpass seems to think that there’s a risk that P(L|T) is equal to P(L|N) (32:32 to 33:58). So how to define T in a good way so that P(T) and P(L|T) are both not so small?

Barnes gives a decent response to this (40:38 to 43:56). God is a free and morally good being who would choose the best actions, and a morally significant universe with free agents would be good. So if T is more or less “standard” theism where God is not only supremely powerful but also good, then T isn’t ad hoc and P(L|T) is not unreasonably low.

The Stalking-Horse Naturalism Hypothesis

Malpass explains what he calls the stalking horse naturalism hypothesis at around 49:33 to 57:14). If the theist can give God some sort of disposition to make P(L|T) relatively high, couldn’t the naturalist do the same thing? The naturaliast could give naturalism a “mysterious disposition” (56:24 to 1:00:48) to result in a life-permitting universe, call this form of naturalism ND, such that P(L|ND) is high.

The disposition for God to make P(L|T) not that low seems reasonable on theism (God being good), but physical reality having a disposition to result in a life-permitting universe seems rather ad hoc and potentially does little more than push the problem back a step. To illustrate, suppose naturalism’s disposition is some factor x that results in the universe falling into the extremely narrow parameters as specified in a certain mathematical equation. Then it seems that factor x would itself be fine-tuned so that it points to one set of narrow parameters rather than another set of parameters. In other words, naturalism’s disposition would itself have to be finely-tuned to be disposed to have one narrow set of parameters instead of some other set of parameters.

Barnes gives a somewhat similar objection (1:01:10 to 1:03:01). Barnes points out that we’d have to consider P(ND|N), i.e. the probability of naturalism having that particular disposition given N simpliciter. Naturalism could have had a disposition for a dead universe instead of a life-permitting universe, and when a set of parameters is chosen at random, there are far more dead universes than living universes. The impression I’m given is that Barnes is thinking that P(ND|N) is pretty comparable to P(L|N).

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[1] Hawking, Stephen; Mlodinow, Loendard. The Grand Design (New York: Random House, Inc., 2010), pp. 143-144, 157-162.