Pevaquark Doesn't Like Fine Tuning Apologetics and Neither Should You

Faith & Science Conversation
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OK. But we don’t know if this is any kind of true boundary so to speak. What you are arguing is that at today’s boundary we need theology and philosophy to help answer these boundary questions. However what I’m trying to argue is that in the past they were different boundaries. And theologians and philosophers Certainly push themselves all the way up to those past boundaries insisting that they had the answers that science couldn’t answer. However science did figure out answers to those types of questions and the theologians and philosophers had to retreat. Theologians and philosophers and apologists certainly push themselves all the way up to boundaries of the past insisting that they had the answers that science couldn’t answer. However science did figure out answers to those types of questions and theologians and philosophers had to retreat.

Theologians and philosophers have been retreating for hundreds of years in regards to this type of thinking And I would argue that the particularly good ones have stopped making such silly arguments anymore I certainly think that theology and philosophy and professionals at those disciplines are amazing and I love to read that work, but I’m arguing that this is a different type of question. and philosophers have been retreating for hundreds of years in regards to this type of thinking. I certainly think that theology and philosophy and professionals at those disciplines are amazing and I love to read that work, but I’m arguing for caution in any of these types of arguments that rest at the boundaries of today. The boundaries of today may be no boundaries at all, we don’t know! Just like this past generations did not know what the boundaries were.

But again in every era who shows up at the boundaries of scientific inquiry to argue that God is the answer? The apologists.

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@pevaquark

First of all it seems to me that you are looking at things from your own perspective, which is not a broad one.

You are hanging on to the apologists issue as if it is universal, rather than a problem for one relative small segment of the Church in one part of the world and one period of time. You need to get aq better perspective by reading more widely and listening more carefully.

Evangelicals see themselves as the Church, but that is far from the truth. Former evangelicals seem to have the same problem. People can discuss without debating.

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Matthew,

I and most people who are port of BioLogos are Christians. That means that we believe in Jesus Christ, not God per se, and not natural theology.

To me that means that I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, because He died for my sins and rose from the dead to provide eternal life. This is a fact, but I do not count it as a brute fact, it is a living and loving relationship that grows and expands.

Our faith is in Jesus Christ Who is the Logos, but He is the Son of the Creator, Who created all things out of nothing.

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Hi Matthew (pevaquark),

I am new to this forum, but a friend invited me to read your post, so I decided to offer a couple of comments, hope that’s OK.

There is much in what you say that I agree with. (1) I think a lot of christian apologetics is very poor, especially that trying to defend 6-day creationism, etc. (2) I observe that some christians believe because of an experience of God, some because of faith, some because they believe what they are told, and some because of evidence and apologetics, and that is all OK. (3) And I agree with you that many christians claim too much certainty. Our knowledge is always incomplete because we are human.

But there are 3 areas where I see things differently, and I thought they might be worth sharing.

“Now I hope that you could see why such a statement is nonsense, because nobody knows what’s range of values these constants can take and with the probabilities of getting each of those values even is.”

I don’t have the background in science that you do, but I have read Luke Barnes’ blog for years and read the Lewis & Barnes book you reference. When they show that graph, they are talking science, cosmology, which is their field of expertise, not apologetics. They say they have selected the ranges of the values allowed by theoretical physics. That is, using the best knowledge we have, those ranges are theoretically possible. If our knowledge changes, then we’ll change our theories and the possible ranges. But until then, if someone wants to limit the ranges, the authors say they need a good hypothesis, some good data and some good arguments. And as they say, it would take absolutely massive changes in these ranges to change the basic fact of the improbability of our universe by chance.

“a God of the gaps argument that all the best apologists use”

“God of the gaps” is a scare argument that I think we need to think a bit more about. Gaps in our understanding are the places where we look to advance our knowledge. That’s what science does - find an apparent anomaly and see why the current understanding cannot explain it, and look to extend our understanding to find why this anomaly occurs.

So when we consider all that we know, there are questions that science doesn’t seem to be able to answer. If we can see that a little more work is likely to give us an answer, then let’s do that work. But if it seems like the question is fundamental and unlikely to be answered by science, then it is quite reasonable to look to answers from philosophy.

In the case of fine-tuning and the beginning or cause of the universe, we can see why science is unlikely to find answers. No matter what question science answers, we can always ask: ”Why is it so?” If the multiverse is the explanation of fine-tuning, we can then ask how the multiverse got to be so fine-tuned that it produces zillions of universes, each with different parameters? And so on.

So I think we should treat “god of the gaps” objections with a little scepticism. If an apologetics argument claims God as the answer, but it turns out to have a scientific answer, then we update our understanding, just happens in science generally as one hypothesis replaces another. I don’t think it’s a big deal.

“I personally think that natural theology can only ever bring someone to perhaps a deist position, and anything beyond that also enters this realm of what I’ve discussed as personal experience and faith in a ‘brute fact.”

I agree that science + apologetics can only take us so far - to deism, and I think to theism. But as a christian, I also have history, and the historical analysis of the New Testament gives me an objective basis for believing in the christian God.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

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Welcome! And certainly your perspectives are very welcome and despite your disagreement, your gracious tone is doubly appreciated!

First the Barnes graph:

Perhaps I missed it and would have to try and grab a copy of the book again, but they have a graph that allows the gravitational constant to vary from 10 billion times smaller to 10 billion times larger and the fine structure constant to vary from 10 billion times smaller to 10 billion times larger. While I will certain grant that the regions under the curve and above the curve (that is the region in which star formation and other processes are possible and the region in which they are not) are actually based upon legitimiate astrophysical processes, the range of the graph is what my problem actually is. Do they have a source that says:

“Oh our universe’s gravitational constant could have been either 10 billion times smaller or larger” AND “we know what the probability of getting the specific value we have is.”

You could double check the book, but I highly doubt they have any such thing available - that is a rigorous mechanism and formulation of what values the fundamental constants are allowed to take and what the probability of getting our specific constant actually is. The 10 orders of magnitude in both directions just makes for a pretty somewhat symmetrical graph but is completely arbitrary!

So… how would you know where this boundary actually is? You don’t and if we were arguing 100 years ago, the boundary of knowledge would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay further back than it presently is. I’d also suggest that not once, in the history of our inquiry into the natural world has philosophy provided significant advances in how we look at the world (though maybe some ancient Greek philosophy like Democritus and his atoms could count- but even then we didn’t know they were real until Einstein’s Brownian motion work in the early 1900s).

Yes indeed, and thus how I just ended with some brute fact if you will. The line of dominoes keeps going (for how much longer nobody knows) and I personally am tentative to stick God at certain spots along that line of dominoes given that such a tactic has resulted in a constantly retreating deity.

So you are saying it’s perfectly reasonable to posit God as an unknown in scientific inquiry and when (if at all) we find a “natural” explanation for something, we update our argument and posit God as the explanation for the next thing? That’s a pretty huge deal to me and part of why I stopped using even any fine tuning arguments that are ultimately based upon ignorance.

Side note: Part of the fine-tuning argument is okay in a sense which is we can theoretically play around with various values that constants of nature can take on and find what combinations lead to conditions for life like us. But given that we are the byproduct of 4 billion years worth of natural selection that is heavily influenced by local conditions- it is not at all impressive or surprising to me to find myself waking up like Goldilocks. As for the general laws of physics themselves, I shared one recent paper that Barnes’ name was on that varied the Cosmological Constant by a lot and the most ‘fine-tuned’ thing ever might not be so fine-tuned anymore; not to mention in my post, I explained that the so called fine tuning of this parameter is definitely based upon our lack of how to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity, i.e. a gap.

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This is very interesting!

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What has always struck me is the futility of arguing from a finding that conditions are exactly as they need to be for life to occur to a conclusion that they have been dialed in that way intentionally by some agent capable of doing such a thing.

Also the fact that we as life forms discover that conditions are exactly right for life to occur is hardly surprising since if they weren’t we wouldn’t be here at all.

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Hi Matthew, thanks for your reply. I think a key thing to clarify here is that there are two distinct things being discussed here. One is the science of fine-tuning and the other is the apologetics of it.

This is definitely a matter of the science of fine-tuning, not apologetics. It is a simple question - is there a scientific basis for the ranges they show in their graph, or a scientific reason to doubt those ranges? I think Lewis & Barnes answer this question and say something close to what you ask. In chapter 7 they discuss all sorts of objections to the science, including the possibilities they consider. Essentially their answer is that every cosmological theory entails certain equations, limits, interpretations of the data, and these can be different. For example they point out that travelling faster than light is permitted in Newtonian physics but not in Einsteinian physics.

So they say they have considered the ranges allowed for in current understandings of cosmology. They add this: “If you believe that there is some stronger principle that dictates what is possible and impossible, that for some reason disqualifies certain mathematically consistent universes, then define it, defend it, and explain why it is fond of stars, planets, chemistry and life. These are exactly the kinds of explanation we are looking for!” But of course mathematical modelling of the cosmos is Barnes’ current research area, so presumably he knows that currently there are no such alternative theories that stand up to peer review. Until then, surely it makes sense to stick with what is consistent with current theoretical physics?

“So you are saying it’s perfectly reasonable to posit God as an unknown in scientific inquiry and when (if at all) we find a “natural” explanation for something, we update our argument and posit God as the explanation for the next thing?”

This is clearly a philosophic question, and I don’t think that, and I think you missed where I thought I made that clear. I said four things:

  1. We need to look at anomalies and unexplained things because that is where new knowledge will be gained.
  2. If we can see a scientific way to attack a question, i.e. it is a scientific question, we should work at it using science. (so I didn’t say God should be used in a scientific enquiry).
  3. But when we have questions that seem to fall outside science, then it is legitimate to look at philosophy. (As well as origins of the universe, consciousness, freewill, ethics, etc, might fit in here).
  4. If we make a new science discovery that changes our hypotheses, we change them. Likewise, if a discovery changes our philosophy, we change it too. Life goes on.

Let’s illustrate. We have to decide many questions every day, and some big ones in our lifetime. Should I marry this person, will I still be happy in 50 years time with him/her? Is it right or wrong to abort a 7 month fetus, kill an enemy soldier, kill a murderer, cheat on my taxes or on my wife, etc? Who should I vote for? What purpose will I have in life? If we avoid answering those questions because one day science may show us our answer was wrong, we would be paralysed. So we make choices, and adjust as we go.

Even in science that can happen. I used to be an environmental manager, and we never (in Australia) had enough data for the management decisions we needed to make. So we did the best we could, monitored and adjusted as time went on.

I suggest it is the same here. There is information and anomalies and questions staring us in the face. It isn’t only gaps in our science understanding, but our understanding of the whole of known science. In the case of cosmology, put all we know in a box and then ask, why is it like that? What caused it? If we gain new scientific knowledge and fill up a gap, we put that knowledge in the box and we can still ask the same questions. Even if we get a theory of everything that explains everything, we can still legitimately ask why was it like that? What made it happen (breathes fire into the equations as Hawking said)?

If we adopted your cautious approach, I doubt we could say anything very much about anything very important at all. Even your own experienced-based faith could be shown to be wrong by some future knowledge. Likewise Dawkins’ scepticism.

So we each have to decide what balance we’ll keep between knowledge, certainty, practical living and deep questions, and that is the balance I have adopted. It seems consistent to me, and it’s worked for 55 years as a believer so far.

Thanks again for the opportunity to discuss and disagree thoughtfully and civilly.

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Hi Mark, nice to run into you again. (I presume you are the same MarkD who visited my blog?)

You have raised two issues here, both of which have been well answered by proponents of the fine-tuning argument, and the second by non-apologetic cosmologists also.

“the futility of arguing from a finding that conditions are exactly as they need to be for life to occur to a conclusion that they have been dialed in that way intentionally by some agent capable of doing such a thing.”

The argument is this:

  1. The fine-tuning could have been different, or it couldn’t have been (necessity, based on some physical laws). If it could have been different, it must either have been by chance or by design. These are the only possibilities (can you think of any others?) and they are mutually exclusive.

  2. So the probabilities must add up to 1.

  3. But the scientists say it definitely didn’t happen by chance, that has been calculated as too small a probability, and so far no-one has been able to find a physical law that makes the fine-tuning necessary, and many cosmologists think the evidence points to this being very unlikely.

  4. So if those two possibilities are improbable, the remaining one (design) must be probable.

The argument can be argued in great detail, but that is the nub of it. The only way I know to argue against it, and the way most often adopted, is to postulate the multiverse, which changes the probability of “chance”.

“Also the fact that we as life forms discover that conditions are exactly right for life to occur is hardly surprising since if they weren’t we wouldn’t be here at all.”

This is known as the Anthropic Principle, and it explains why we observe a universe, but not why we and it are here at all. The famous analogy is a man before a firing squad composed of 20 expert riflemen, and they all fire and none of them hit him. He wonders why he is still alive. It is true that it is only because he is still alive that he can ask the question, but that offers no explanation as to why, against all the odds, he is still alive.

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Here sure. But Fine-Tuning is one of the hottest things in apologetics- i.e. its scientific proof of God creating the universe and such. I would agree though that fine-tuning questions are scientific questions and thus our best chance of understanding such is through scientific inquiry - not philosophy/theology/etc.

This doesn’t sound like much of an answer to me. Their answer to me sounds like: well you don’t know what values these constants can take and unless you have a really good idea, you can’t tell us we’re wrong.

You didn’t demonstrate at all why they chose such values for the graph - since nobody knows what values any constants can take - it is entirely misleading to even make the graph in the first place!

Did you frequently posit God as an explanation for what you didn’t know or have adequate information on adjusting as you found that he didn’t seem to be micromanaging as much as you originally thought?

Righto, which is why I end with a brute fact and a choice by faith.

I said:

Are you saying that if we don’t posit God as the reason for unknowns in scientific inquiry we aren’t going to be able to say anything important about anything at all? I think I’m a bit lost in where you are trying to take me when all I am doing is being very cautious to posit God as the explanation for unknown phenomenon in Cosmology and pointing out that it’s actually what many Christians (especially apologists) do in a very confident manner.

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This isn’t a scientific argument or is it? Because I probably would disagree with this first one.

  1. We don’t know whether or not such constants of nature could have been different or what the probability of getting such constants is. So the whole argument I think just fails based upon this alone.
  2. But why do these two get to be the two options ‘if it could have been different?’ How does one even begin to look at anything in the natural world and suggest that ‘this came about by design?’ As you are likely aware, the ID community has failed spectacularly in regards to bringing this into science. Furthermore, what does a ‘designed’ universe look like vs. a ‘non-designed’ universe?
  3. I don’t agree either that ‘chance’ vs. ‘design’ are mutually exclusive because what if you have a Creator that actually creates certain boundaries where the system can take a wide array of possibilities but yet ends up ultimately achieving the will of the Creator (as in the case with common descent/evolution).
  4. Scientists say what now? What didn’t happen by chance? What are the actual probabilities - as in ‘these are all the possible values the constants can take’ and ‘these are the odds of getting each possibility’ and ‘these are the odds we got’ - nobody has any actual probability calculations period.
  5. No multiverse necessary but still a cool idea that I hope we can learn more about sometime in the next several decades.

How is that remotely similar to the fine tuning of the universe? I suppose it is a little bit similar in that we don’t have any actual way to calculate what the odds of all 20 expert riflemen missing but we have many possible explanations and factors to consider unlike with our universe. It very well may be that the probability of the riflemen event was actually just 1 as all twenty of them were paid a substantial sum just the night before to miss the poor fellow with a chance to double it if they all miss. But again, we have no idea how such constants are even determined for our universe!

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Hello Eric. Yes I am the same one. Your friend who goes by the name Totti here recommended that blog that I responded to there.

The issues may have been extensively addressed by fine-tuning argument specialists without actually giving a satisfactory answer. I’m never impressed by arguments based on something so seemingly beyond our human reach. Until you demonstrate that there is a method by which universe-wide tuning can actually be done and produce a being capable of this, it really seems like some pretty wild speculation.

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G’day Matthew,

It’s not my business to try to convince you, but I can clarify why I don’t share your view. I will just focus on the science here, and get back to the “God of the Gaps” discussion later.

The definition of scientific fine-tuning is something like this: Of all the universes allowed by theoretical physics, an astonishing small number are life-permitting. That is the conclusion of the consensus of cosmologists, as I’ll try to demonstrate in a moment. So let’s start there.

We are talking about possibilities here, not certainties. If we knew some of these universes are not possible, we’d have some extra knowledge, a new hypothesis or theory. Lacking that knowledge, these universes are possibilities. (Lewis & Barnes discuss three different types of possibilities, but conclude that these universes are possibilities on all three types.)

So your comments about not knowing what values these constants could take seems to me to miss the point. If we knew what values they could take we would have a different cosmological theory and different ranges. These are “possibilities”, no more, but possibilities that fit with current theoretical physics.

And that is enough to provoke the question: Why, of all the apparent possibilities, did we get our set of parameters? Of course it is a scientific question, but one which cosmology hasn’t been able to answer except for the multiverse hypothesis.

But in the end, we could argue till we were blue in the face, and I am not expert enough to be able to do any more than quote the experts. And unless you reveal yourself as a research cosmologist, I suggest you have to trust the experts too.

And all the experts I have read, except Sean Carroll, agree that the universe is fine-tuned in the sense we are discussing. Typical are these conclusions:

Roger Penrose (former Maths Professor at Oxford who worked with Stephen Hawing on Black Holes concluded that the odds of a low entropy universe like ours, necessary to be long lived, were 1 in 10^10^123. This is an astonishing number, and you could play around with the ranges of values as much as you liked and it would be hard to cut this number down to a reasonable probability.

Less Smolin: the probability of a randomly chosen universe producing stars is 1 in 10^229.

Leonard Susskind: “To make the first 119 decimal places of the vacuum energy zero is most certainly no accident.”

These are not outliers. This paper by Barnes (https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4647v1.pdf) lists over 20 of the world’s top cosmologists who agree with scientific fine-tuning even if they don’t offer numerical probabilities - names like Rees, Hawking, Guth, Tegmark, Vilenkin, Davies, etc. I’ve only read a few of these authors, but in my limited reading, Sean Carroll is the only one I have come across who doesn’t accept scientific fine-tuning.

So it is simple for me. I have Lewis & Barnes and 20+ top cosmologists saying one thing and Carroll saying the opposite. It is no contest. The universe is improbably fine-tuned and we need an explanation. Whether that explanation is scientific or God or (as I believe) both is the question that requires answering.

I can’t see any other way to look at it. Thanks.

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How reliable is theoretical physics at this time?

What I’m getting at is the speculative nature of wondering how conditions might have been otherwise since we have no way of observing a universe in which things are different. For all we know, this is the only way things can be. I’m not asserting that is so but just suggesting it could be. If things truly could be different, is there a way they could be changed and is that something it is possible for any being to do? Not sure how you’d find something like that out.

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To be sure, but that still raises the question as to why are humans human.

Christians believe that humans are formed in the Image of God. Evolutionary creationists maintain that God created humans in God’s own Trinitarian Image using evolution.

If that we be true then God’s Trinitarian Image of Power, Rationality, and Love must be the force behind ecology giving humans the evolutionary advantage to be formed in God’s Image.

Since there is no need for humans to exist, this fact does mean something and the conditions which allow for our existence are important. I have been reading two amazing books, A World from Dust by Ben McFarland and A New History of Life by Peter Ward and Joe Kirscvink, which demonstrate that There was much more to the creation of life as we know it than fine tuning.

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I don’t have an argument for why humans are the way they are instead of some other way. I find it fascinating to trace the steps which lead to us, kind of like tracing my family’s genealogical roots. But I can’t imagine how one would determine that it can only come about by divine steerage. That is one possibility. Outrageous good luck is another.

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Making a new thread for all of this since it is a separate topic from what Hawking and Dawkins think about the Big Bang Theory that centers loosely around the fine tuning argument and its use in apologetics.

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These new threads get confusing to us old guys. I start reading and think, “How did all these posts get here since my last visit?”-- then I note the dates and go Wow, a new post created mature with the illusion of age!

Seriously, it does stir up my concern when false information is presented as supporting Christianity. It can only go badly. I realize that many who do so truly believe that what they saying is true, having faith in whoever told them, but truth should be the standard in all our dealings with the gospel, and somehow we need to support that standard in a loving way. Tough to do without offense and without being vilified ourselves.
For various reasons, have a low opinion of humanity today. Guess that total depravity thing is valid, even though not that Calvinistic.

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Almost as though the answers were created before the questions to which they apply.

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That is why I think the FT argument is redundant. The fact that we live in a universe in which life is a possibility is already something that a theist would consider as proof of God’s purposeful action, so we have two options here:

A) God created a universe in which life is possible and then fine tuned it:

The second part don’t really add anything, since simply accepting “God created a universe in which life is possible” already mean that you are accepting God as an explanation.

B) The universe and the possibility of life don’t require God, but the fine tuning does:

In that case, the argument goes full God of the gaps, not to mention theologically troublesome, since it puts God as simply a clock tuner in a pre existing universe.

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