Regarding the second, the relevant kind of probability is epistemic probability. If the initial conditions were arranged to spell out "made by God," even though that would be the only thing consistent with those physical laws, it would be strong evidence for theism.
Regarding the Hawthorne paper the short version is that there are various sophisticated ways physicists check for priors across the constants that don't just involve a uniform prior across the constants. There's a limited range of epistemically illuminated possible constants--the others aren't consistent with the equations of physics--and only a small range of those are life-permitting.
What's the disanalogy with the made by God case? Specifically, it seems you could make the same point: "you can't say it's improbable if it's the only possibility consistent with the laws of physics."
Well, the idea is you're supposed to appeal to the epistemic probability you'd give to the constants being finely-tuned before you know they are. It's analogous to assigning a low prior to the constants spelling out made by God before you learn that they do spell that out.
The universe is infinitely large. There's a set of stars somewhere which, from some angle or another, in some language or another, says "Made by God." Would be kind of weird if there wasn't. Monkeys on typewriters thing.
I thought you just meant that that resulted from the initial conditions (rather than something about the laws). Having more trouble understanding the thought experiment now. Like a little label on the big bang singularity?
"If the initial conditions were arranged to spell out "made by God," even though that would be the only thing consistent with those physical laws, it would be strong evidence for theism." I agree that if the stars spelled out "god exists," that would be strong evidence that god exists. But they don't spell that out, nor is there any other clear sign that the laws of the universe were set by a creator. So what does that tell you?
Certainly that the stars don't spell out God exists is evidence against God's existence. However, it's very weak evidence. A can be strong evidence for B even if ~A isn't strong evidence against B. E.g. if a man burst into your room and declared "I am Jon Henry Willingsworth," that would be strong evidence for the existence of Jon Henry Willingsworth, but the fact that is not happening is not strong evidence against the existence of Jon Henry Willingsworth.
Now, I obviously doubt that there are no clear signs that the laws of the universe were set by a creator. One such clear sign is that they're finely tuned!
The point of the made by God case was to illustrate that something can be physically necessary and yet still surprising.
You act as though the burden of proof were on me to prove that god doesn't exist. But no, the burden is on you to prove the existence of an entity who defies everything that we know about physics. Extraordinary proof is required for such an implausible hypothesis. Debates about the existence of god are entirely different from debates about the existence of a person, as there is no good reason to doubt that people exist.
Anyway, the universe doesn't seem finely tuned for intelligent life. Why do trillions of galaxies exist when one solar system is perfectly sufficient for intelligent life? It seems a huge waste. And then all the usual arguments against design. If god designed the universe for humans, why are so many of us so miserable? Did god design intelligent life just so it would suffer? See also here: https://substack.com/@ianjobling/note/c-84390172
An unfortunately common error is in response to some argument, rather than addressing it, simply bringing up other opposite arguments that rhyme with it. In this case, bringing up the problem of evil and argument from scale does not, in fact, rebut the argument from fine-tuning. They're different considerations that ought to be considered separately. That the world is able to sustain life is quite a different matter from how much life it contains or why bad things happen.
Now, I've addressed the problem of evil in various places, see, e.g. https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-new-preexistence-theodicy. However, I haven't yet written about the theodicy that I regard as most promising, so I'll need to write about that at some point.
Regarding the argument from scale: well, it's not clear that we are the only creatures in the world. In fact, our best physics seems to point in the direction of an infinite universe. The world is not merely for us, but the infinite aliens.
Now, why is the world so big and desolate? Well, it makes sense that God would design a vast and beautiful natural world. The creatures there are would be expected to be far from each other--were they too near to each other, conflict may have broken out and lead to their annihilation.
Additionally, if the universe is infinite, it doesn't matter how aliens are distributed. A universe with one alien per galaxy has the same number of aliens as one with two aliens per galaxy, provided there are infinite galaxies--the relative density of aliens can be changed simply by having them move around.
In fact, I think the pattern of life in the universe gives evidence for theism. Theism predicts an infinite universe, for that is of maximal value. It makes no special predictions about the density of creatures in the cosmos. Insofar as physics seems to point in the direction of an infinite universe, that's evidence for theism.
God has no reason not to make a big world given that he's omnipotent--it's not extra work to make the world bigger. He is thus, in this respect, quite different from other observers.
The distinction between law and initial conditions (or more generally law and parameters) is shaped by the fact that the main use of our physical understanding has been, throughout history, the building of technological artifacts. Machines are built to be steerable, so they have knobs a human can turn. It is no surprise that the application of this framework to something that is not a steerable open system, as is the case of the whole universe, misleads us into thinking that cosmology must have knobs for someone to turn. That someone is then easily identified with God.
Edit 1 month later: is it just arrogance on my part to think that this comment is the only substantive criticism that has been raised against the general idea of fine tuning, as opposed to nitpicking details such as the meaning of “fine” (i.e. how unlikely something is based on this or that prior)?
My problem with fine tuning argument is that it relies on "epistemic probability" which is a fancy way of saying it relies on our ignorance of why the physical constants are what they are. In this sense, its so called "proof" of god definitely sounds a lot like god of the gaps.
Overall, I haven't yet seen a satisfying argument about why any aspect of our epistemology should be accepted as something TRUE about the reality rather than a model of reality limited and shaped by our evolved biology
I generally agree that the fine-tuning argument is less strong than presented, especially with reservations about probability. However, I do think it’s a little stronger than you’ve argued.
It’s true that we don’t know what the constant could be and what is their potential range and probability distribution. However, I would argue it’s at least plausible to consider what happens if we change constants a little.
Imagine you’re creating a universe with some laws and some constants to define. Wouldn’t you try to tinker a little with the values to see what would unfold? If you found that almost everything else you tried failed (to create interesting universes), wouldn’t you consider yourself lucky?
Of course, this isn’t a formal argument, and it definitely doesn’t mean that constants are chosen in a random way from all real numbers (if no God) but it still a relevant fact to consider in my opinion.
Here is an argument from the exact opposite direction: If in fact the multiverse theory is accurate and every possible universe that can exist does exist, then in at least one universe God must exist because God's existence is not a logical impossibility, and so it is possible and so. Now since the definition of God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived then if God exists in any universe then God would spill over to every possible universe since that is entirely conceivable. So God exists. Sort of a mix of Anselm and Leibniz. Take that Voltaire. I presume Hume could make short work of that, but I have not yet figured out how. One God marble and then all marbles are God-ified.
Godel made an argument similar to that -- it's called the Modal Argument for the Existence of God. Godel's version doesn't rely on the "greatest conceivable thing" idea, but on the idea that, if God exists, he exists necessarily (which the Medievals no doubt thought was one aspect of "greatness", but has the virtue of being more specific). Therefore if God possibly exists, he exists in at least one possible world, but since he necessarily exists, he therefore exists in all worlds, QED atheists!
One response is to challenge whether God (at least as conceived by the theology of whichever particular apologist is pushing the argument on this occasion) is, in fact, logically possible. IMHO, popular religious versions are an incoherent mess, and therefore don't exist in any possible world.
Somewhat tangentially: I don't think conceivability does as much work as some philosophers think it does. In particular, I don't accept that being conceivable equates to being logically (or metaphysically) possible -- we may simply have not detected the flaws in our concept. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, David Chalmers).
Gödel's full argument is rather more complicated than this, requiring several axioms to get to "if God exists, he exists necessarily", depending on the notion of there being a higher-order predicate of properties signifying that a property is "positive." He then goes on to define godliness as the possession of all positive properties, which is, of course, a few steps short of being the creator of the universe, benevolent overlord, cosmic lawgiver, granter of immortality etc. This formulation looks like an invitation to beg the question, given that next to nothing has been said about what is meant by positivity.
This, then, is already looking like St. Anselm's argument, just stated more formally and with a different adjective. For more details, take a look at Koons' 'Sobel on Gödel's Ontological Proof' [1].
Alvin Plantinga has also given us a modal-ontological argument (summarized in [2]), in which his adjectives are excellence and greatness. Apparently (though I cannot now find the reference where I believe I saw this) he does not regard it as a proof - an interesting perspective, if I am right in characterizing him as both a prominent Christian apologist and accomplished logician.
If I am following you correctly, you have doubts about the general validity of arguments of this form, and I certainly do (not that they are formally invalid, but that they commit an informal fallacy such as equivocation and/or question-begging.) The crux of the matter, it seems, is the fifth axiom of S5 modal logic, which states that if X is possibly necessary, then it is simply necessary. My thoughts on this have been vaguely circling around the notion that this is not justified in various cases, such as when 'possibly' is expressing epistemic doubt over the necessity of X, and only today (while composing this reply, in fact) I came across this:
"However, these applications require that each operator is in a serial arrangement of a single modality. Under multimodal logic, e.g., 'X is possibly (in epistemic modality, per one's data) necessary (in alethic modality),' it no longer follows that X being necessary in at least one epistemically possible world means it is necessary in all epistemically possible worlds. This aligns with the intuition that proposing a certain necessary entity does not mean it is real' [3].
It is a logical impossibility that something defined as “that than which nothing is greater” should come into existence in something that is, in fact, greater (the multiverse).
Also, the multiverse can hold conflicting realities as true, and non-intersecting, in a way that a universe can’t without there being a logical conflict. That’s sort of what multiverses do. Schrödinger God: God is simultaneously great and not great (and non-existent).
Finally: A God that didn’t create the universe? What does your God do? Just hang out and give people arbitrary rules about diet and head coverings? 😉
Regarding the first criticism, see here https://philpapers.org/rec/HAWMAT
Regarding the second, the relevant kind of probability is epistemic probability. If the initial conditions were arranged to spell out "made by God," even though that would be the only thing consistent with those physical laws, it would be strong evidence for theism.
Appealing to epistemic probability makes the argument blatantly circular.
I can think of many relevant disanalogies between the fine tuning of the physical constants and "made by God."
Don't have access to the Hawthorne paper at the moment. Can you summarize the relevant point?
Regarding the Hawthorne paper the short version is that there are various sophisticated ways physicists check for priors across the constants that don't just involve a uniform prior across the constants. There's a limited range of epistemically illuminated possible constants--the others aren't consistent with the equations of physics--and only a small range of those are life-permitting.
What's the disanalogy with the made by God case? Specifically, it seems you could make the same point: "you can't say it's improbable if it's the only possibility consistent with the laws of physics."
Well, the idea is you're supposed to appeal to the epistemic probability you'd give to the constants being finely-tuned before you know they are. It's analogous to assigning a low prior to the constants spelling out made by God before you learn that they do spell that out.
The universe is infinitely large. There's a set of stars somewhere which, from some angle or another, in some language or another, says "Made by God." Would be kind of weird if there wasn't. Monkeys on typewriters thing.
That's why I referenced the initial conditions, not some random star system somewhere.
I thought you just meant that that resulted from the initial conditions (rather than something about the laws). Having more trouble understanding the thought experiment now. Like a little label on the big bang singularity?
> and only a small range of those are life-permitting.
But life only verifiably exists on one planet out of just how many that we know of?
"If the initial conditions were arranged to spell out "made by God," even though that would be the only thing consistent with those physical laws, it would be strong evidence for theism." I agree that if the stars spelled out "god exists," that would be strong evidence that god exists. But they don't spell that out, nor is there any other clear sign that the laws of the universe were set by a creator. So what does that tell you?
Certainly that the stars don't spell out God exists is evidence against God's existence. However, it's very weak evidence. A can be strong evidence for B even if ~A isn't strong evidence against B. E.g. if a man burst into your room and declared "I am Jon Henry Willingsworth," that would be strong evidence for the existence of Jon Henry Willingsworth, but the fact that is not happening is not strong evidence against the existence of Jon Henry Willingsworth.
Now, I obviously doubt that there are no clear signs that the laws of the universe were set by a creator. One such clear sign is that they're finely tuned!
The point of the made by God case was to illustrate that something can be physically necessary and yet still surprising.
You act as though the burden of proof were on me to prove that god doesn't exist. But no, the burden is on you to prove the existence of an entity who defies everything that we know about physics. Extraordinary proof is required for such an implausible hypothesis. Debates about the existence of god are entirely different from debates about the existence of a person, as there is no good reason to doubt that people exist.
Anyway, the universe doesn't seem finely tuned for intelligent life. Why do trillions of galaxies exist when one solar system is perfectly sufficient for intelligent life? It seems a huge waste. And then all the usual arguments against design. If god designed the universe for humans, why are so many of us so miserable? Did god design intelligent life just so it would suffer? See also here: https://substack.com/@ianjobling/note/c-84390172
Happy to have you reappear on the podcast.
An unfortunately common error is in response to some argument, rather than addressing it, simply bringing up other opposite arguments that rhyme with it. In this case, bringing up the problem of evil and argument from scale does not, in fact, rebut the argument from fine-tuning. They're different considerations that ought to be considered separately. That the world is able to sustain life is quite a different matter from how much life it contains or why bad things happen.
Now, I've addressed the problem of evil in various places, see, e.g. https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-new-preexistence-theodicy. However, I haven't yet written about the theodicy that I regard as most promising, so I'll need to write about that at some point.
Regarding the argument from scale: well, it's not clear that we are the only creatures in the world. In fact, our best physics seems to point in the direction of an infinite universe. The world is not merely for us, but the infinite aliens.
Now, why is the world so big and desolate? Well, it makes sense that God would design a vast and beautiful natural world. The creatures there are would be expected to be far from each other--were they too near to each other, conflict may have broken out and lead to their annihilation.
Additionally, if the universe is infinite, it doesn't matter how aliens are distributed. A universe with one alien per galaxy has the same number of aliens as one with two aliens per galaxy, provided there are infinite galaxies--the relative density of aliens can be changed simply by having them move around.
In fact, I think the pattern of life in the universe gives evidence for theism. Theism predicts an infinite universe, for that is of maximal value. It makes no special predictions about the density of creatures in the cosmos. Insofar as physics seems to point in the direction of an infinite universe, that's evidence for theism.
God has no reason not to make a big world given that he's omnipotent--it's not extra work to make the world bigger. He is thus, in this respect, quite different from other observers.
The distinction between law and initial conditions (or more generally law and parameters) is shaped by the fact that the main use of our physical understanding has been, throughout history, the building of technological artifacts. Machines are built to be steerable, so they have knobs a human can turn. It is no surprise that the application of this framework to something that is not a steerable open system, as is the case of the whole universe, misleads us into thinking that cosmology must have knobs for someone to turn. That someone is then easily identified with God.
Edit 1 month later: is it just arrogance on my part to think that this comment is the only substantive criticism that has been raised against the general idea of fine tuning, as opposed to nitpicking details such as the meaning of “fine” (i.e. how unlikely something is based on this or that prior)?
My problem with fine tuning argument is that it relies on "epistemic probability" which is a fancy way of saying it relies on our ignorance of why the physical constants are what they are. In this sense, its so called "proof" of god definitely sounds a lot like god of the gaps.
Overall, I haven't yet seen a satisfying argument about why any aspect of our epistemology should be accepted as something TRUE about the reality rather than a model of reality limited and shaped by our evolved biology
I generally agree that the fine-tuning argument is less strong than presented, especially with reservations about probability. However, I do think it’s a little stronger than you’ve argued.
It’s true that we don’t know what the constant could be and what is their potential range and probability distribution. However, I would argue it’s at least plausible to consider what happens if we change constants a little.
Imagine you’re creating a universe with some laws and some constants to define. Wouldn’t you try to tinker a little with the values to see what would unfold? If you found that almost everything else you tried failed (to create interesting universes), wouldn’t you consider yourself lucky?
Of course, this isn’t a formal argument, and it definitely doesn’t mean that constants are chosen in a random way from all real numbers (if no God) but it still a relevant fact to consider in my opinion.
Here is an argument from the exact opposite direction: If in fact the multiverse theory is accurate and every possible universe that can exist does exist, then in at least one universe God must exist because God's existence is not a logical impossibility, and so it is possible and so. Now since the definition of God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived then if God exists in any universe then God would spill over to every possible universe since that is entirely conceivable. So God exists. Sort of a mix of Anselm and Leibniz. Take that Voltaire. I presume Hume could make short work of that, but I have not yet figured out how. One God marble and then all marbles are God-ified.
Godel made an argument similar to that -- it's called the Modal Argument for the Existence of God. Godel's version doesn't rely on the "greatest conceivable thing" idea, but on the idea that, if God exists, he exists necessarily (which the Medievals no doubt thought was one aspect of "greatness", but has the virtue of being more specific). Therefore if God possibly exists, he exists in at least one possible world, but since he necessarily exists, he therefore exists in all worlds, QED atheists!
One response is to challenge whether God (at least as conceived by the theology of whichever particular apologist is pushing the argument on this occasion) is, in fact, logically possible. IMHO, popular religious versions are an incoherent mess, and therefore don't exist in any possible world.
Somewhat tangentially: I don't think conceivability does as much work as some philosophers think it does. In particular, I don't accept that being conceivable equates to being logically (or metaphysically) possible -- we may simply have not detected the flaws in our concept. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, David Chalmers).
Gödel's full argument is rather more complicated than this, requiring several axioms to get to "if God exists, he exists necessarily", depending on the notion of there being a higher-order predicate of properties signifying that a property is "positive." He then goes on to define godliness as the possession of all positive properties, which is, of course, a few steps short of being the creator of the universe, benevolent overlord, cosmic lawgiver, granter of immortality etc. This formulation looks like an invitation to beg the question, given that next to nothing has been said about what is meant by positivity.
This, then, is already looking like St. Anselm's argument, just stated more formally and with a different adjective. For more details, take a look at Koons' 'Sobel on Gödel's Ontological Proof' [1].
Alvin Plantinga has also given us a modal-ontological argument (summarized in [2]), in which his adjectives are excellence and greatness. Apparently (though I cannot now find the reference where I believe I saw this) he does not regard it as a proof - an interesting perspective, if I am right in characterizing him as both a prominent Christian apologist and accomplished logician.
If I am following you correctly, you have doubts about the general validity of arguments of this form, and I certainly do (not that they are formally invalid, but that they commit an informal fallacy such as equivocation and/or question-begging.) The crux of the matter, it seems, is the fifth axiom of S5 modal logic, which states that if X is possibly necessary, then it is simply necessary. My thoughts on this have been vaguely circling around the notion that this is not justified in various cases, such as when 'possibly' is expressing epistemic doubt over the necessity of X, and only today (while composing this reply, in fact) I came across this:
"However, these applications require that each operator is in a serial arrangement of a single modality. Under multimodal logic, e.g., 'X is possibly (in epistemic modality, per one's data) necessary (in alethic modality),' it no longer follows that X being necessary in at least one epistemically possible world means it is necessary in all epistemically possible worlds. This aligns with the intuition that proposing a certain necessary entity does not mean it is real' [3].
[1] https://www.academia.edu/114599086/Sobel_on_G%C3%B6del_s_Ontological_Proof
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Alvin_Plantinga
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S5_(modal_logic)#Axiom_S5
I have three objections to this:
It is a logical impossibility that something defined as “that than which nothing is greater” should come into existence in something that is, in fact, greater (the multiverse).
Also, the multiverse can hold conflicting realities as true, and non-intersecting, in a way that a universe can’t without there being a logical conflict. That’s sort of what multiverses do. Schrödinger God: God is simultaneously great and not great (and non-existent).
Finally: A God that didn’t create the universe? What does your God do? Just hang out and give people arbitrary rules about diet and head coverings? 😉