Universal fine-tuning, explanation and God

[unkleE]

We have discussed the apparent fine-tuning of universal constants many times here, and most of us seem to conclude that it constitutes evidence for God. Now I seem to be coming across increasing numbers of respected scientists who are at least willing to discuss the connection between God and science at this point.

First (for me) it was Paul Davies, a brave voice going boldly where no respected scientists had gone before and suggesting that scientific explanation was insufficient. Then both Martin Rees and Leonard Susskind mentioned God in their books, albeit to say that this explanation was not interesting to them as scientists (though Rees expressed interest in philosophy and theology outside of his science).

I found whenever I mentioned fine-tuning (and many other matters!) on an atheist internet forum, one of the standard responses, especially from less thoughtful members was to mock the idea by simply say "Ah! Goddidit!" (It seems that the one word incantation is standard and more effective to ward off the possible theistic implications!)

More recently, I heard Marcus Chown on the radio, and checked out some of his writing on the web. He too was willing to discuss the two options to explain the fine-tuning - God or multiverse (but his interviewer only chose to take up the multiverse!). He writes:

'What are we to make of this fine-tuning" of the laws of physics? There would appear to be only two possible explanations. One is that the Universe was designed specifically for us by God, a Supreme Being. The other is that the Universe is the way it is because if it wasn't we would not be here to remark on the fact! ...... The possibility that our Universe was designed specifically for life by a Creator is something accepted by many people, including some scientists. "The drawback of this explanation, unfortunately, is that it terminates all further scientific enquiry" [quoting Edward Harrison]'

Even the New Humanist ("the magazine for free thinkers"), mentioned God in its review of Chown's book on quantum physics, sounding very relieved to be able to say: "He looks to probability theory, not sentience, to determine why a table stays put but an electron must be uncertain, leaving no space for the mystics to smuggle consciousness, intention or God into the quantum world laid out before us."

Then today, browsing in a newsagent, I came across an article in a magazine (I think it may have been Discover) which discussed fine-tuning and again made the point that design by God remains an option but, even if true, "it leads nowhere"

So it seems that there is increasing recognition that God as designer is suggested by fine-tuning, but with the fairly common claim that this doesn't provide an explanation, and therefore doesn't lead anywhere. I wanted to raise this with you all, and make the following comments:

• How can it possibly be, by what amazing logic, can anybody say that evidence for God doesn't lead anywhere? True, it may not in itself add to scientific knowledge, but by definition God, if he exists, must be more important than scientific knowledge.
  
  
• I don't see why believing God designed the universe "terminates all further scientific enquiry". Believing God created the world didn't stop Newton and many other christians from investigating how the world functioned. In fact, James & Humphrey and other historians suggest their faith appears to have stimulated their scientific endeavours, because they expected to find mathematical order.
  
  
• We need to ask what constitutes useful knowledge and satisfactory explanation. I recall Alvin Plantinga offering an example of a spaceship landing on an apparently uninhabited planet and finding a tractor. Proposing that intelligent beings made the tractor may not resolve the mystery, but surely it still adds to understanding.
  
  
• In his book "Why there almost certainly is a God", Keith Ward points out that scientific explanation is not the only type of explanation we use and need. Scientific explanation may explain why the sun rose at 6:30 am this morning, but it may require a personal explanation to explain why I rose at 7:30 am. (Of course a thorough-going materialist and determinist may say that a scientific explanation can explain my actions too, but most people don't believe that.) So while God may be lacking as a scientific explanation, his existence may provide personal, and teleological, explanation.
  

So I find myself having to re-think my response to the apparent fine-tuning. There are two separate but connected questions, not just one.

1. Yes, it seems at present that either the multiverse is the correct scientific explanation (i.e. of the process by which our universe appeared), or else there isn't one.

2. But it also appears that either God is the explanation of the origin and purpose of the universe, or else there isn't one. It is possible to believe that God's direct creation is the only explanation we have, and science will never be able to analyse that, but it is also possible to believe that God's creation can be understood via the multiverse.

I must say I still find the multiverse explanation a little unbelievable, even granted the possibility that God did it that way, but that may just be a failure of imagination on my part. But I do think I need to express my views differently when discussing with others, especially non-believers.

What do you all think?

[humphreyclarke]

How about the idea of a theistic multiverse?. Clearly a massive ensemble of fine tuned universes is better than one single one and more fitting the idea of an omnipotent creator. Remember that the Bishop of Paris said in the Middle Ages that God could create as many universes as he wanted. How would this work?. Well I suppose you wouldn't expect lots of dead universes with nothing in them. Instead you could have a great multitude of universes that have their parameters set by one complete mathematical theory. Actually I think there is a book called Starmaker which has God learning how to create universes, if that was the case you would have a series of botch jobs. I'm being a bit facetious, but the conclusion arrived at in the Middle Ages still remains, that since God could have created pretty much anything he wanted to we can't try and argue from first principles what he's been up to. You have to theorise and observe and find out by making falsifiable predictions.

I think, for the purposes of apologetics it would be better to concentrate on the reasons why even the infinite multiverse would not solve the fine tuning argument. It merely creates a new one. The reason for that is that from now on, pretty much anything is going to be taken as 'evidence for a multiverse'. We've already seen that with things like Dark Flow.

[syzygy]

The idea that scientific evidence for God is a kind of end of the road has a quite acceptable meaning, which should not be exaggerated. It doesn't mean the end of all scientific investigation, but it does mean that in one particular region science has to give over to another type of reasoning. In fact, the only possible scientific evidence for God is evidence that scientific methods necessarily fail on some question or other.

The search for the cause of the fine tuning of the universe might come to a pass in which one is forced to conclude, "God did it." Where do you go after than except to turn to some other issue. I imagine you could continue to doubt the conclusion and search for more evidence to confirm or refute it. But that's going back, not forward. I can think of another possibility. You could carefully draw some conclusions about God, for example, that God must be orderly and intelligent because the universe exemplifies both of these properties. (But what scientific reason could one give for not concluding that God contains matter and anti-matter.) Even with orderliness and intelligence you've come to an area where the meaning of words is problematic. Are you saying that the universe and God are both instances of the class of things that are orderly and intelligent? Plato would be happy with that, but in the aftermath of Christian reflections on God it seems unacceptable to place, in that way, something higher than God. Medieval theologians' investigations of God language led them to propose "via negativa" and, at most, analogy as appropriate for discourse about God.

Any other thoughts about God as an end, in this restricted sense, of scientific discourse? Can science ever really admit that there's a scientific question it can't answer, or is methodological atheism (not anti-theism) a part of what we call science?

[knowingthomas]

From what I understand, didn't Dawkins say that if a Designer finely tuned the universe, that it is merely extending the problem, as the entity would have to be finely tuned as well?

One objection I've once heard was that the constants could be changing over time, eventually leading to the anthropic coincidences.

[wraggy]

Jun 11, 2009 0:31:34 GMT knowingthomas said:

From what I understand, didn't Dawkins say that if a Designer finely tuned the universe, that it is merely extending the problem, as the entity would have to be finely tuned as well?

Can someone please explain to me how that argument (attributed to Dawkins) follows from the the idea that a designer/God/god or whatever fine tuned the universe?

[jamierobertson]

It's just the "what designed the designer?" question again; Dawkins is treating God as another link in the evolutionary chain, rather than (as theists do) the entity that stops the infinite regress. Part of the reason for this is that he says any designer must be more "complex" that its creations, though this assumes that God is material and made of component parts (rather than a very 'simple' spiritual entity, as Aquinas and others have articulated for hundreds of years).

[humphreyclarke]

I have no idea why anyone could delude themselves into thinking that an infinite multiverse isn't complex or 'the simplest explanation according to Occam's razor'; especially when it will create simulated universes, Gods and multiple copies of us. I think the problem is that Dawkins has bought into Dennett's narrow materialist framework which states that evolution shows that design comes from the bottom up through cranes and every other entity which is invoked to explain design is just a skyhook. Of course the problem with this is that a universe with laws of nature that are capable of creating bottom up design has to be unbelievably 'special' and we need to invoke something pretty spectacular to explain it. Even a cosmological natural selection model which might qualify as a 'crane' requires some pretty extraordinary elements to be able to work.

I don't think there is any evidence the constants have changed substantially over time.

[knowingthomas]

It would seem that the longer I work at this, I hear less and less objections that I myself haven't heard before:

If the universe contains everything we know...how are we supposed to know if a life supporting universe implys design ? We have nothing to compare to. Veritas denies the many worlds hypothesis !

Veritas48's second premise only works if we can rule out necessity and chance. We can rule out necessity and chance if the pattern of the universe implys intelligent design. Otherwise we can not rule out necessity and chance (Galena stones do also result from a complex process...change some constants and it is entirely different).
But if nature is the standard by which we determine if something implys design rather than being natural how are we supposed to know if nature itself was designed ? This is not possible...we can only assume that the pattern of the universe implys design. This means Veritas48's second premise does only work if we suppose that the proposition he is trying to prove (the universe was designed) is true. However, this is question begging: We need to suppose that the proposition is true in order to claim that premise 2 is true and this is where the argument get's circular.

Nothing to compare to!? Huh? We actually know that if the constants were another way, the universe wouldn't be like this at all, right?

[unkleE]

I've probably said this before, but I think:

(1) we can never absolutely prove anything either way, and have to make a choice based on other criteria, or never make a choice at all,

(2) the main difference between most atheists and most theists is that atheists are unwilling to believe in God on the basis of any reasons other than science (though quite willing to disbelieve on the basis of other reasons) whereas theists are willing to accept other types of reasons, and

(3) that's the way God planned it, so our response to him is a matter of the emotions, will and willingness as well as reason.

The fine-tuning arguments you mention seem to me to illustrate this. This difference in epistemology is the main reason why so many atheist-theist arguments are frustrating, futile and sometimes farcical.

[jamierobertson]

From a fairly thoughtful atheist blog at reflectionsofthedamned.blogspot.com/2008/11/has-design-argument-been-seriously.html :

The anthropic principle is a new variation of the Argument from Design, and is derived from observing the incredibly specific conditions necessary for the development and sustenance of intelligent life within the universe. The argument draws our attention to the high improbability of such "finely tuned" conditions originating through chance alone. This "finely-tuned universe" argument is based on corroborated empirical observation, and is therefore put forward by religious scientists (such as the Rev. Dr John Polkinghorne) as scientific evidence for the existence of God. In their eyes, the Argument from Design has indeed been strengthened by science; contrary to the perhaps popular belief that most proofs offered by science directly challenge pre-held religious beliefs and superstitions.


Critics of the anthropic principle have pointed out that many highly improbable events occur daily, through entirely random chance. In his 1989 work Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences John Allen Paulos observed that the odds of being dealt any particular hand of thirteen cards in a game of bridge is approximately one in 600 billion. If you were to look at your hand, would you examine the odds of being dealt the exact combination of cards in your grasp, realize the sheer improbability of being dealt such a hand in the first place and conclude that the hand must have been rigged? This analogy lends credence to the suggestion that we just happen to live on a planet suitable for the development of intelligent life. It is suggested that if any of the constants in the universe were different then intelligent life could not exist. However, I would argue that it would be more correct to say that if any of the constants in the universe were different then intelligent life as we understand it could not exist. Or to put it another way, we exist because our planet is suitable to the development of carbon-based life forms. It is obviously entirely unsuitable for the development of any other life forms than this, or we would see and observe these life forms (I'll call them x-based life forms) ambling around; and proponents of the anthropic principle would claim that the universe was finely-tuned for these x-based life forms to exist as well as our good carbon-based selves. The odds of my x-based life forms existing are of course astronomically high, but not impossible. Therefore there now exists a highly improbable hypothetical species of intelligent x-based life forms. In order for them to exist they require a highly improbable hypothetic "finely-tuned" universe. Should one of the constants in our universe be slightly different, we would be left with a universe that would be entirely incomprehensible to ourselves, except for the infuriating fact that we wouldn't exist in the first place to see it. However, within it our hypothetical x-based life forms might flourish, living long and prosperous lives, wondering at the cosmic improbability that allowed them to live their long and prosperous lives, and perhaps writing speculative blog entries about it.


For the anthropic principle to be applicable proof of a designed universe we have to assume that we alone are the only type of intelligent life that could conceivably ever exist, whilst simultaneously equating the improbability of random chance with the impossibility of random chance, which in turn would elevate the role of a "designer" into a necessity.

Thoughts?

[Mike D]

From a fairly thoughtful atheist blog...

It's certainly more mild-mannered than many that I've come across, though there is a distinct irony about the quoting of a work called "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences" when its own mathematical literacy is distinctly open to question. The analogy with bridge hands fails because it does not take account of the structure of the information in the hand: any hand might have a probability of 1 in 600 billion, but if you end up with a hand with the 2s, 3s and 4s of each suit, you might suspect that you are the victim of a scam, not because the hand is any more unlikely than any other, but because of the meaning of the hand within the context of the game. Just as with the mythical chimpanzee, given a week of typing (with appropriate meal breaks and rests, of course) would produce an output that was so improbable as to be practically impossible, even allowing for a mere 20 characters per minute. But if it had produced the first 4 acts of Macbeth, including stage directions, you would suspect something out of the ordinary. Though if we followed the blog author's example, on finding a chimpanzee producing intelligent text, we would need to conclude that there was nothing exceptional in this as "KNJGjj sj348dnhks jskdmk dnkdm s" is as unlikely as "Hello I would like a banana please".

In both cases, although random outcomes have an appearance of being unlikely, they occur within a defined process whereby an improbable event (a hand of 13 cards or approx 50,000 - 100,000 typed characters) is bound to happen. The remarkability lies not in the fact that a seemingly improbable event occurred (which was bound to happen) but in the structure and meaning of the event.

Mike

[humphreyclarke]

It's the same old 'carbon chauvinism' argument which has been done to death (see Al's posts on it). The prognosis for life arising in this universe from any element other than Carbon is close to zero. You would need a similar complex element to arise in one of these hypothetical universes.

This guy's problem is that he has lumped the anthropic principle in with the ID rubbish about irreducible complexity. I'm afraid this shows that he hasn't looked into the issue in any real detail.

[himself]

"For the anthropic principle to be applicable proof of a designed universe we have to assume that we alone are the only type of intelligent life that could conceivably ever exist."

I don't see why. Given that "in our image" can only refer to beings of intellect and volition, any beings of intellect and volition "count." It doesn't matter if we are well-formed apes or avians, carbon-based or silicone. Earth-based or living in the Andomeda galaxy. It's the rational soul that matters (although the poster mentions only intelligence and forgot to include the volitional part).

I also find it peculiar that he appealed to imaginary beings (x-based life-forms, whatever they are). Surely, empirical evidence should be required for such flights of fancy!

[unkleE]

The analogy with bridge hands fails because it does not take account of the structure of the information in the hand: any hand might have a probability of 1 in 600 billion

But it also fails as a numerical comparison. 1 in 600 billion is, in scientific notation and rounding up, 1 in 10^12 (if I have done my maths correctly, and assuming 1 billion = 10^9).

Compare this to Penrose's estimate of the probability of our current universe of 1 in 10^10^123, or Smolin's estimate of the probability that the universe will contain stars of 1 in 10^229, or the current estimate of the number of universes in the multiverse of 10^500.

1 in 10^9 is unimaginably more likely!

A simple test would be this. The odds of getting a royal flush in Poker are (rounded up) 1 in 10^6. If I played Poker at Las Vegas and got 10 royal flushes in a row, I imagine that the security would be checking me out, yet the odds are "only" 1 in 10^60, still far short of Smolin's odds of there being stars in the universe. If I was an unbeliever, I think I'd have to be thinking about calling in security to re-check my logic also!

[codewordconduit]

Hey, just noticed the comment on my blog (I wrote this stuff in December last year) and tracked it back here. Don't be too snarky, it was one of my first attempts at this philosophy/religion malarkey!

Cheers


Sarah