Inviting Al Moritz to discuss the "fine tune" argument

[Eleve]

Linus, talk about possible worlds is just a standard philosophical device for dealing with counterfactuals (claims about what would follow if something were the case) and modality (claims about what is possible and what is necessary). Not everyone agrees that it’s a good device, but it’s most certainly philosophy. Nor are these topics at odds with Christianity. In fact, some way of talking about possibility and necessity is indispensable for Christianity, since Christianity traditionally includes claims like “God is a necessary being” and “When humans make decisions, they decide between different possible courses of action.”

 

[atheistgirl]

But if it happens the first time, and the outcome is remarkable in some fundamental way, then one is justified in thinking design was at play.

If I throw a dozen paints onto a canvas one time, and the outcome is not a blotched canvas but a perfect portrait of my wife, I have to think that this was not a chance event.

I guess we have a different mindset.

Were I to throw paints at a canvas and the result was a perfect portrait of my husband, I’d think wow what a coincidence.

Because of all the possible combinations and permeations of the paint falling, one includes the paints falling in an exact likeness of my husband.

So there’s nothing extraordinary going on there.

Sarah x

 

[snarflemike]

To speak of " possible " worlds is nothing but intellectual evasion by those who cannot explain this actually existing world. Such efforts are neither scienc nor philosophy, they are nothing but mathematical pipe dreams. Moving the " goal posts " will not have a better result. It serves only as a rationalization for postponing a personal decision to accept reality. Linus2nd

I agree, it is simply moving the goal posts.

 

[snarflemike]

I guess we have a different mindset.

Were I to throw paints at a canvas and the result was a perfect portrait of my husband, I’d think wow what a coincidence.

Because of all the possible combinations and permeations of the paint falling, one includes the paints falling in an exact likeness of my husband.

So there’s nothing extraordinary going on there.

Sarah x

I simply and firmly don’t believe that is what you, or any human being on the planet, would think of such an event. I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I guess we have a different mindset.

Were I to throw paints at a canvas and the result was a perfect portrait of my husband, I’d think wow what a coincidence.

Because of all the possible combinations and permeations of the paint falling, one includes the paints falling in an exact likeness of my husband.

So there’s nothing extraordinary going on there.

Sarah x

In other words, you seem to be saying, that even if there were something extraordinary going on, you would simply not be aware of it as such because you have excluded that possibility by an a priori act of will on your part.

 

[JamesATyler]

I think it’s pretty important to note that no one has ever said anything in all the worlds history that completely closed the book on whether God exists or not, for the world. It might be possible that the universe has always been. Perhaps the laws of physics have always existed and the idea of a beginning to the universe, as something that must have occurred, is simply a human thing. Maybe there is no beginning. Lot’s of things are possible I suppose.

St. Thomas’s motion argument seems to hinge on the idea that there must have been some point in history where nothing was moving. Maybe that’s just not true. Who can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reality is that the existence of matter and energy has always been in existence and in motion. Maybe that’s just the way it is. Isn’t that the atheist’s argument?

No matter how brightly the light of reason burns in a person, and it has burned very brightly in many people of the past and present, I just think that the light of even perfect reason might just be too dim to provide irrefutable evidence for God or even the nature of the beginning (or lack of beginning) of the universe. At least with the information currently available.

I think that the questions that interests me more is, “Do you want there to be a righteous God?” And, “Why or why not?” I think I could learn more about a person from hearing the answers to those questions than, “Do you think God exists?”

 

[Tyrion]

I guess we have a different mindset.

Right on! Many people tend to confuse “order” and “design”. We are all “trained” to recognize patterns, since it has a huge survival value.

The name of the fallacy those people commit is called the “odometer syndrome”. When one sees an easily recognizable pattern, like “11111111111111” on an (very long) odometer, they might think what a strange number. (Of course in this case they do not think that God designed it. - hopefully! ) However if they would see something like: “23711481259128” they would see nothing “special”. Of course, if a mathematician looks at this number, for him there is a beautiful pattern there… the digits of “e” (2.7182818…) and “pi” (3.141592…) mixed into a number.

The point is that “regularity” or “pattern” is not an inherent property, it is imposed by the observer. The more sophisticated the observer is, the more likely to see a pattern - even if it is not obvious for the uninitiated.

As for the picture analogy, I have my space alien friend (called Xithoporin) sitting next to me. He sure is a strange looking fellow - looks like a bunch of “blobs”. When he looked at the picture of your husband, it was just a bunch of unrecognizable blocthes to him. However, when he looked at those “seemingly” random blobs, he exclaimed: “wow, a spittin’ image of my wife!”. Where did you see her to make such a perfect picture?

I am sure you see my point. One can only hope that the other posters will understand it, too.

 

[atheistgirl]

In other words, you seem to be saying, that even if there were something extraordinary going on, you would simply not be aware of it as such because you have excluded that possibility by an a priori act of will on your part.

Not so much excluded it, as felt no need to include such a possibility, because the paints, behaving in the way paints do, in normal atmospheric conditions, while randomly thrown, could as one of the possible outcomes, come to rest in a pattern that would be a portrait of my husband.

I would only be interested in including the possibility of something extraordinary going on, if it was impossible for such a portrait to emerge from the random throwing of the paints.

Clearly, it isn’t, so there’s no need to evoke the extraordinary, or some unseen designer.

I can’t explain how I see it any better than that.

My apologies to the OP - this isn’t what you want to hear - it’s supposed to be a discussion on the paper by A.M.

I’ll bow out now and continue reading with interest.

Sarah x

 

[JamesATyler]

Not so much excluded it, as felt no need to include such a possibility, because the paints, behaving in the way paints do, in normal atmospheric conditions, while randomly thrown, could as one of the possible outcomes, come to rest in a pattern that would be a portrait of my husband.

I would only be interested in including the possibility of something extraordinary going on, if it was impossible for such a portrait to emerge from the random throwing of the paints.

Clearly, it isn’t, so there’s no need to evoke the extraordinary, or some unseen designer.

I can’t explain how I see it any better than that.

My apologies to the OP - this isn’t what you want to hear - it’s supposed to be a discussion on the paper by A.M.

I’ll bow out now and continue reading with interest.

Sarah x

I read this as just an intellectual way of saying that, in your heart and mind, you have no need of God. I think that is your religious testimony. At least that’s the way it sounds.

 

[Linux]

I guess we have a different mindset.

Were I to throw paints at a canvas and the result was a perfect portrait of my husband, I’d think wow what a coincidence.

Because of all the possible combinations and permeations of the paint falling, one includes the paints falling in an exact likeness of my husband.

So there’s nothing extraordinary going on there.

Sarah x

I agree with you; but I don’t think that the fine tune argument is making that claim. In principle if an extraordinary event can logically be explained naturally then I don’t think that it is reasonable to say that God did it. I don’t believe that God does anything that the universe can do itself. However the fine tuning argument appears to be making a stronger claim. The basic point (without going into details) is that these fined tuned aspects of the universe (which are required in-order for certain physical elements to exist) cannot be meaningfully reduced to preceding chance “events”, but rather they are fine tuned from the get go. And scientists like Al Moritz ask the philosophical question of why, out of the many possibilities, the universe has these specific finely tuned aspects from its beginning. It appears to have been set up to produce a certain outcome. If it cannot be explained physically, then one requires a non-physical intelligence as an explanation since it cannot be determined by chance events and only an intelligence can determine a specific finely tuned arrangement when chance is deducted from the equation. And neither can an atheist say that the fined tuned aspects of the universe can be reduced to physical necessity since its logically possible that they could have been different, and are thus not physically necessary.

I will get back to you, I need to do some work.

 

[Eleve]

Not so much excluded it, as felt no need to include such a possibility, because the paints, behaving in the way paints do, in normal atmospheric conditions, while randomly thrown, could as one of the possible outcomes, come to rest in a pattern that would be a portrait of my husband.

I would only be interested in including the possibility of something extraordinary going on, if it was impossible for such a portrait to emerge from the random throwing of the paints.

Suppose you roll a die 100 times and find that it comes up 3 every time. What should you expect the next roll of the die to be? I would argue that you should expect it to be a three again. This is because, even though the first 100 rolls should not change the outcome of the next roll, they provide very good evidence that the die is in fact loaded.

But why should they provide this evidence? After all, it is certainly possible that the numbers should come out all 3s, even if the die is fair. Further, it is in fact exactly as likely that a fair die would come out 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, … as that it should come out 6, 1, 5, 6, 4, … and so on in some unpredictable fashion. So it is not as if we want to conclude that the die is loaded just because something unlikely happened. Something unlikely was bound to happen no matter what.

Nevertheless, it seems like it is very likely that the die is loaded, because this is the sort of outcome that would be significant to someone loading a die. We can readily imagine that someone would want to make a die come up three every time (perhaps it is useful for craps), while we can’t really explain why someone would want to rig a die to follow a pattern like 6, 1, 5, 6, 4, …. And because someone would be more likely to want to rig a die in the first way rather than the second, the first outcome is evidence that the die was rigged in the way that the second outcome is not.

The fine-tuning argument is like this. It does not try to argue (in the way that other cosmological arguments do) that the universe could not possibly have come out this way without God. Instead, the argument is that certain universal constants, if they were set by chance, would be possible but very unlikely to come out in the way that they did; and that this provides good evidence that they were not set by chance, but by a conscious designer. And, in support of the second claim, there is an appeal to the significance of life, the thought being that if there were a designer, this would be the sort of universe that a designer would be interested in creating.

 

[Linux]

The fine-tuning argument is like this. It does not try to argue (in the way that other cosmological arguments do) that the universe could not possibly have come out this way without God. Instead, the argument is that certain universal constants, if they were set by chance, would be possible but very unlikely to come out in the way that they did; and that this provides good evidence that they were not set by chance, but by a conscious designer. And, in support of the second claim, there is an appeal to the significance of life, the thought being that if there were a designer, this would be the sort of universe that a designer would be interested in creating.

If that’s the case, then I find it difficult to accept the argument as evidence of God, because in general I don’t like probability arguments, and I shy away from arguments claiming that God tinkers with physical reality in an unnecessary way. It could be that its more likely that a certain thing will happen in a particular way, but likelihood is not in itself a clear reason to accept something as true because it does not determine that a thing will not happen by chance however unlikely it will be. Something can be ridiculously unlikely to happen and yet happen anyway. Turning the fine tune argument into a probabilistic argument greatly weakens its explanatory power.

 

[Eleve]

I don’t see why probabilistic arguments are a problem. I believe as firmly as I believe almost anything that the building I’m in isn’t going to collapse within the next 30 years - I believe this so firmly that I trust my life to it. But all my reasons for believing this are ultimately probabilistic. Observations of the properties of wood make it very likely that they have the kind of resilience to support the furniture; observations of brick make it very likely that it can support the roof; and what I know about the rigorous training and historical success of building and engineering as ways of keeping buildings from collapsing makes it very likely that the building will stay up all right. And so on.

But it is in fact possible that the building will collapse anyway. After all, they’ve done it before. Wood rots, and engineers make mistakes. And, as we saw in Florida recently, nothing has to be wrong with the building itself for something to go very wrong under the foundations. So I can trust that there’s a very high probability that the building will stay up, but I can’t really do any better than that.

So if I can trust my life to a probabilistic argument, what would be wrong with an argument that shows it’s very likely that God exists?

 

[snarflemike]

As for the picture analogy, I have my space alien friend (called Xithoporin) sitting next to me. He sure is a strange looking fellow - looks like a bunch of “blobs”. When he looked at the picture of your husband, it was just a bunch of unrecognizable blocthes to him. However, when he looked at those “seemingly” random blobs, he exclaimed: “wow, a spittin’ image of my wife!”. Where did you see her to make such a perfect picture?

I am sure you see my point. One can only hope that the other posters will understand it, too.

You haven’t dealt with the issue at all. Presumably Xithoporin has done the same science that you have, and also understands how fine-tuned this universe is. So your counter-analogy fails, since the correct analogy would be a perfect and detailed reproduction of something that both of you know.

 

[zro_x]

I guess we have a different mindset.

Were I to throw paints at a canvas and the result was a perfect portrait of my husband, I’d think wow what a coincidence.

Because of all the possible combinations and permeations of the paint falling, one includes the paints falling in an exact likeness of my husband.

So there’s nothing extraordinary going on there.

Sarah x

I’d look at this with the principle that atheists seem to be fond of citing–ocham’s razor. The principle that the most probable and simple explanation is likely the right one. In the example you describe, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that some god made the event happen, but I would start to look for other explanations. Does the canvas have a chemical that makes the paint change color when it hits it? Is someone playing some practical joke? Am I dreaming? Have I gone insane? Any one of these explanations is far more probable than the explanation that I’ve thrown random paints at a canvas which make a perfect portrait of someone I know.

So, when we consider fine tuning, we have to ask the question: Which is more likely? That an intelligent being, or several, created this universe, or that a universe which is prone to intelligent life was brought into existence without any deliberate intervention?

and actually, I think the answer is still the latter.

 

[snarflemike]

If that’s the case, then I find it difficult to accept the argument as evidence of God, because in general I don’t like probability arguments

Really? If you dial a sequence of numbers and your brother answers the phone, and that happens thousands of times, will you believe (a) the phone exchange just selects random subscribers, and all the times your brother answered were just the results of random chance, or (b) the phone exchange is designed in such a way that those numbers deliberately connect you to your brother’s phone?

and I shy away from arguments claiming that God tinkers with physical reality in an unnecessary way.

Who’s to say what is an “unnecessary way”?

 

[Linux]

I don’t see why probabilistic arguments are a problem. I believe as firmly as I believe almost anything that the building I’m in isn’t going to collapse within the next 30 years

That’s different; a different context. We have an understanding of buildings. We know buildings exist, and we have tested them. We don’t know God exists from a purely probabilistic position and much less do we know how involved he is in the processes of the universe on probability alone. If we knew with certainty that God existed, then we would be in a more reasonable position for considering whether or not some aspect of the universe is natural or not on probabilistic grounds. If buildings had not been tested or if we were not the creators of them (we don’t know who created them or how they got there) then we would have good reason to be reluctant and doubtful of the claim that those buildings are safe over a period of time. If we choose to stay in those buildings regardless, then that is an act of faith rather than reason.

 

[Linux]

Really? If you dial a sequence of numbers and your brother answers the phone, and that happens thousands of times, will you believe (a) the phone exchange just selects random subscribers, and all the times your brother answered were just the results of random chance, or (b) the phone exchange is designed in such a way that those numbers deliberately connect you to your brother’s phone?

This can be tested or accepted on faith that my dialling a number has been determined by an intelligence to connect me to a recipient. I know people exist and I know they invented the phone. I have very little reason to doubt that.

Who’s to say what is an “unnecessary way”?

Why would God create a universe that he has to tinker with over millions of years in-order to get a desired physical affect? I believe in the natural order. I don’t believe in pagan Gods that tinker.

 

[snarflemike]

This can be tested

Only if you accept a probabalistic argument that the results of your test point to design and intent, rather than just a set of particular random outcomes that only appears to have design and intent. But you say you don’t like such an argument.

Why would God create a universe that he has to tinker with over millions of years in-order to get a desired physical affect? I believe in the natural order. I don’t believe in pagan Gods that tinker.

Maybe it’s more beautiful or profound or interesting for us.

 

[Linux]

Only if you accept a probabalistic argument that the results of your test point to design and intent

I mean that it can be tested empirically. In that context probability makes more sense since we have circumstantial evidence to back it up such as the existence of people. Like I said I know that builders of buildings exist. The rest is just faith in humanity; and I know that humanity exists.

I believe that the fine tune argument can work as a metaphysical argument; just not as a probabilistic one.

Maybe it’s more beautiful or profound or interesting for us.

This does not tell me that I should believe that God is a tinkerer, it only tells me that this is how you choose to look at Gods relationship with his creation because you find it more profound. I just don’t see a good reason to create natural laws unless you intend for the universe to develop according to those laws. I conclude that God exists because that is the only logical explanation for why physical reality exists. However if the universe can exist in and of itself then there is no reason for me to conclude Gods existence no-matter how improbable the universe existence is. Certainly the Catholic conception of God is disproved as soon as you admit that its logically possible that the universe can exist by its own nature.