This is the sixth blog in my series on fine-tuning. Here are the previous blogs if you missed them:
Intro/Philosophical Background
If You Don’t Want God, You Better Have a Multiverse!
How Does Fine-Tuning Provide Evidence for God?
Objections
Mistaken Objections that Seek to Trivialize Fine-Tuning
Important Objections in the Fine-Tuning Debate
But We Can’t Even Define Life
We’re finally ready to start exploring the fine-tuning data itself. A logical starting point is the initial conditions of our universe – are those which permit life rare among possibilities?
1) Energy-Density is Finely-Tuned
The amount of matter (or more precisely energy density) in our universe at the Big Bang turns out to be finely-tuned to about 1 part in 1055. In other words, to get a life-permitting universe the amount of mass would have to be set to a precision of 55 decimal places. This fine-tuning arises because of the sensitivity to the initial conditions of the universe – the life-permitting density now is certainly much more flexible! If the initial energy density would have been slightly larger, gravity would have quickly slowed the expansion and then caused the universe to collapse too quickly for life to form. Conversely if the density were a tad smaller, the universe would have expanded too quickly for galaxies, stars, or planets to form. I argued in my previous blog that it’s implausible to expect life to originate without a long-lived, stable energy source such as a star. Thus, life would not be possible unless the density were just right – if you added or subtracted even just your own mass[1] to that of the universe this would have been catastrophic!
There is, however, a potential dynamical solution to this problem based on a rapid early expansion of the universe known as cosmic inflation. In this blog, I’ll be relying primarily on the most comprehensive review article on fine-tuning in the peer-reviewed literature – this one by Luke Barnes. I’ve referenced it previously and I’m hoping if I reference it enough I’ll get tech-savvy readers to check it out! It may be too technical for some readers and my blog can be viewed as just an attempt at explaining some highlights to non-physicists and tying it into my metaphysical hypothesis that God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning. So let’s look at what Luke Barnes has to say about inflation as a solution to the energy density problem. He points out 6 aspects of inflation that would have to be properly setup, some of which turn out to require fine-tuning. One significant aspect is that the inflation must last for the proper amount of time – inflation is posited to have been an extremely brief but hyper-fast expansion of the early universe. If inflation had lasted a fraction of a nanosecond longer, the entire universe would have been merely a thin hydrogen soup, unsuitable for life. Barnes cites an article by Max Tegmark of MIT that indicates that in a best case scenario about 1 in 1000 inflationary universes would avoid lasting too long. The biggest issue though seems to be that for inflation to start, it needs a very special/rare state of an extremely smooth energy density. Several articles make this point – consider Sean Carroll’s article:
“It is therefore a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for inflation to occur that perturbations be small at early times. . . . the fraction of realistic cosmologies that are eligible for inflation is therefore … 10-66,000,000.”
Barnes also explains why, even if inflation solves this fine-tuning problem, one should not expect new physics discoveries to do away with other cases of fine-tuning: “Inflation thus represents a very special case… This is not true of the vast majority of fine-tuning cases. There is no known physical scale waiting in the life-permitting range of the quark masses, fundamental force strengths or the dimensionality of spacetime. There can be no inflation-like dynamical solution to these fine-tuning problems because dynamical processes are blind to the requirements of intelligent life. What if, unbeknownst to us, there was such a fundamental parameter? It would need to fall into the life-permitting range. As such, we would be solving a fine-tuning problem by creating at least one more. And we would also need to posit a physical process able to dynamically drive the value of the quantity in our universe toward the new physical parameter.”
2) Initial Conditions in a Very Low Entropy State
Even if inflation somehow could solve the energy density problem and scientists are mistaken that inflation requires its own fine-tuning, inflation doesn’t solve the problem with this next type of fine-tuning which relates to the universe’s initial entropy. What is entropy? Entropy represents the amount of disorder in a system. Thus, a high entropy state is highly disordered – think of a messy teenager’s room. Our universe began in an incredibly low entropy state. A more precision definition of entropy is that it represents the number of microscopic states that are macroscopically indistinguishable. An egg has higher entropy once broken because you’re “opening” up many more ways to arrange the molecules. There are more ways of arranging molecules that would still be deemed an omelet than there are ways to arrange the particles in an unbroken egg in where certain molecules are confined to subsets of the space in the egg – such as a membrane or the yolk. Entropy is thus closely associated with probability. If one is randomly arranging molecules, it’s much more likely to choose a high entropy state than a low entropy state. Randomly arranged molecules in an egg would much more likely look like an omelet that an unbroken egg.
Entropy can also be thought of as the amount of usable energy. Over time the usable energy decreases. This principle is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that in a closed system the entropy on average increases until a state of equilibrium is reached. Thus, the Second Law predicts that our universe will eventually reach such a state of equilibrium or “heat death” in which nothing interesting happens. All life will die off long before such a state is reached. Life relies on usable energy from the environment.
It turns out that nearly all arrangements of particles in the early universe would have resulted in a lifeless universe of black holes. Tiny inconsistences in the particle arrangements would be acted on by gravity to grow in size. A positive feedback results since the clumps of particles have an even greater gravitational force on nearby particles. Penrose’s analysis shows that in the incredibly dense early universe, most arrangements of particles would have resulted basically in nothing but black holes. Life certainly can’t exist in such a universe because there would be no way to have self-replicating information systems. Possibly the brightest objects in the universe are quasars, which release radiation as bright as some galaxies due to matter falling into a supermassive black hole. The rotation rates near black holes and the extremely high-energy photons would disrupt information storage, a prerequisite for life[2].
Artist’s conception of a black hole. Credit: European Space Agency, NASA, and Felix Mirabel (the French Atomic Energy Commission & the Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics/Conicet of Argentina)
Oxford physicist Roger Penrose is the first scientist to quantify the fine-tuning necessary to have a low entropy universe to avoid such catastrophes. “In order to produce a universe resembling the one in which we live, the Creator would have to aim for an absurdly tiny volume of the phase space of possible universes, about 1/1010123 [3].” This number is incomprehensibly small – it represents 1 chance in 10 to the power of (10 to the power of 123). Writing this number in ordinal notational would require more zeroes than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe, 10123 zeroes vs. about 1092 particles. Under the assumption of atheism, the particles in our universe would have been arranged randomly or at least not with respect to future implications for intelligent life. Nearly all such arrangements would not have been life-permitting so this fine-tuning evidence favors theism over atheism. We have a large but finite number of possible original states and rely on well-established statistical mechanics to assess the relevant probability.[4]
In a comment on one of in my earlier blogs, someone suggested that perhaps the universe is fine-tuned for black holes rather than life. The incredibly low entropy state of the initial conditions shows, however, that the exact opposite is true – fine-tuning was required to avoid excessive black holes! This fact about the initial conditions also calls into question Smolin’s proposed scenario that universes with differing physical constants might be birthed out of black holes. Smolin suggests the possibility of an almost Darwinian concept in which universes that produce more black holes therefore more baby universes than those which don’t. But if our universe requires statistically miraculous initial conditions to be life-permitting by avoiding excessive black holes, universes evolving to maximize black hole production would be unlikely to lead to life! (Even if the evolution of universes were possible)
Furthermore, the skeptic who thinks that black holes suggest a purposeless universe should consider that black holes can, in moderation and kept at distance, be helpful for life. While a universe comprised of mostly black holes would be life-prohibiting, having a large black hole at the center of a galaxy is actually quite helpful for life. Here is a Scientific American article that documents the benefits of Black Holes for life – it summarizes: “the matter-eating beast at the center of the Milky Way may actually account for Earth’s existence and habitability.”
Does inflation explain the low entropy of the early universe?
Here is how Sean Carroll answers this question: “Not by itself, no. To get inflation to start requires even lower-entropy initial conditions than those implied by the conventional Big Bang model. Inflation just makes the problem harder[5].” Penrose also has harsh words for inflation as an explanation of the low entropy state of the initial universe[6].
Barnes calls inflation a “cane toad solution” for the entropy fine-tuning. Cane toads were brought into Australia from Hawaii starting in 1935 to eat beetles threatening the sugarcane fields. With no natural predators in Australia this strategy was disastrous as these poisonous toads multiplied greatly and wreaked havoc on native species and the ecosystem in general. Thus, Barnes is saying that inflation makes this fine-tuning problem worse. None of this is to say that some version of inflationary theory isn’t true just that it doesn’t help this fine-tuning issue.
How well could a multiverse explain this evidence?
This is a key question to consider as we explore the fine-tuning evidence. If some features seem overly fine-tuned, this would be unexpected if our universe was simply a life-permitting universe randomly selected from a vast ensemble of other universes with other constants or initial conditions. A multiverse explanation for the fine-tuning of the low entropy fails miserably because this universe does seem to be finely-tuned much more than would be minimally necessary. As Penrose says: “We can get the solar system and all inhabitants for much less odds: 1 in 101060 .. These world ensemble hypotheses are worse than useless in explaining the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe.” In other words, Penrose argues that it would be more likely to just have the particles arranged in initial conditions such that you already have pre-formed intelligent life in a single solar system than to have such a large universe as ours in a low-entropy state that could eventually lead to intelligent life.
Even atheist Sean Carroll admits[7] that a multiverse explanation fails for this fine-tuning. First, he agrees with the widely-accepted principle I referenced above: “anthropically-selected parameters should be of the same order of magnitude as the largest value compatible with the existence of life.” He then explicitly agrees that the multiverse cannot by itself explain this particular fine-tuning and quotes Penrose’s numbers. “An example of fine‐tuning well beyond anthropic constraints is the initial state of the universe, often characterized in terms of its extremely low entropy… The entropy didn’t need to be nearly that low in order for life to come into existence. One way of thinking about this is to note that we certainly don’t need a hundred billion other galaxies in the universe in order for life to arise here on Earth; our single galaxy would have been fine, or for that matter a single solar system.” As an atheist he doesn’t view this as an insuperable problem, holding out hope that new physics could somehow explain this low entropy. Carroll indicates that he can’t think of any reason why God would fine-tune the universe more than is necessary, apparently not giving thought to the possibility that God might want to leave evidence that He setup the physics of the universe – evidence of the type that even an infinite multiverse cannot plausibly explain!
Is this evidence for God?
Even if this evidence points to design, why think that God is necessarily the designer?
If this is your perspective, please help remove the stigma on intelligent design so this type of evidence can be fairly evaluated. Also, note that this perspective affirms the claim of leading Intelligent Design advocates that design by itself does not necessarily prove God.
For this particular design evidence, however, I argue that we have reasons for thinking that only a supernatural being could setup these initial conditions in this way. Is it in principle physically possible for a being limited by the laws of physics to setup the initial conditions of our Big Bang? The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle limits our ability to even have knowledge of both position and momentum of particles beyond a certain scale – and it’s even more challenging to think about how so many particles might have their locations and velocities adjusted. The early universe would have been so small that the limits imposed by this physical principle would seem to prevent any physically-limited agent from making the necessary adjustments to the particles or even having knowledge to determine necessary adjustments. Moreover, even those who advocate a naturalistic cause to the Big Bang often admit that the Big Bang represents a spacetime boundary. Many theorists consider our universe to be a causally disconnected region of spacetime – which would make it impossible for a physically limited being residing in a different physical region from affecting anything in this new region of spacetime.
Thus, a supernatural designer seems more plausible than a natural designer. Also, if fine-tuning is required to bring about intelligent life, how did the first natural designers arise?
Does God Have to be Fine-tuned?
To me this seems like asking: “does an uncreated being depend on rare events or rare settings of physical parameters for His existence?” By definition God doesn’t rely on anything for his existence – this is the concept of a necessary being. If the concept of a necessary being seems implausible, I warn you that you might already believe premises that by the rules of logic would entail the existence of a necessary being. I invite you to explore that possibility in this online quiz.
[1] The universe is estimated to contain at least 10^80 atoms – here is one estimate of 10^53 kg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe Anyone old enough to read this blog must weigh at least say 10 kg so this seems to be a safe estimate even after accounting for other forms of matter energy not included in the above mass.
[2] Refer to my previous blog for further justification: http://crossexamined.org/cant-even-define-life/
[3] Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind, p. 343. He also makes the same argument in Road to Reality on p. 730.
[4] In addition, the entropy equation for a black hole, first developed by Bekenstein and Hawking, is involved in these computations. This equation is widely accepted by the physics community and I’ve read articles by those who believe in string theory and those who believe in loop quantum gravity arguing for their theories by pointing to how they can derive this same equation in their flavor of quantum gravity.
[5] Sean Carroll, http://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/faq.html
[6] Penrose says in Road to Reality, p. 755: “Indeed, it is fundamentally misconceived to explain why the universe is special in any particular respect by appealing to a thermalization process [such as inflation]. For, if the thermalization is actually doing anything (such as making temperatures in different regions more equal than they were before), then it represents a definite increasing of entropy. Thus, the universe would have had to be more special before the thermalization than after. This only serves to increase whatever difficulty we might have had previously in trying to come to terms with the initial extraordinarily special nature of the universe. . . . invoking arguments from thermalization, to address this particular problem [of the specialness of the universe], is worse than useless!” A couple of pages later Penrose also writes that “the point is that whether or not we actually have inflation, the physical possibility of an inflationary period is of no use whatever in attempts to ensure that evolution from a generic singularity will lead to a uniform (or spatially flat) universe.”
[7] Carroll, Does the Universe Need God? The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity. A copy is available online at http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/.
The Wisdom Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon
211. HIRING PROCESS Any executive who starts out believing that he or she is a good judge of people is going to end up making the worst decisions. Medical educators say their greatest problem is the brilliant young physician who has a good eye. He has to learn not to depend on that alone but to go through the patient process of making a diagnosis; otherwise he kills people. An executive, too, has to learn not to depend on insight and knowledge of people but on a mundane, boring, and conscientious step-by-step process. Don’t hire people based on your instincts. Have a process in place to research and to test applicants thoroughly .”
Excerpt From: Peter F. Drucker. “The Daily Drucker.”
212. JESUS AS EDITOR “The worst chapter of your life does not have to be the last chapter if Jesus is your editor.” — Unknown
213. LOVE AND MARRIAGE “Have you ever wondered why when people get married, they promise to love each other until death? Think about it. Feelings change. You can’t promise to have a feeling. So if love is a feeling, the marriage vow makes no sense at all. But the vow does make sense because love is not a feeling. What is it, then? Love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person. Of course, people who love each other usually do have strong feelings too, but you can have those feelings without having love. Love, let me repeat, is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person. Now the outward expression and seal of a commitment of the will is a binding promise. So the adult way to express love is to enter into a binding promise: marriage.”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”
214. LAWS AND MORALS “The Twenty-first Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, and alcohol sale and consumption went back to being local and state concerns. The debacle led millions of Evangelicals to drop out of politics for decades afterward. Prohibition reminds us of the dangers of using the federal government to enforce private morality. Still, our laws will always reflect, to some degree, our moral beliefs, our religious and cultural ideas.
At the same time, laws shape our morality. Scholars refer to this as the teaching function of law”
Excerpt From: James Robison & Jay W. Richards. “Indivisible.”
215. LIFE’S UNCERTAINTIES Four times in Ecclesiastes “11:1–6, Solomon reminds us of what we do not and cannot know:
• You do not know what evil will be on the earth.
• You do not know what is the way of the winds.
• You do not know the works of God.
• You do not know which will prosper.”
Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”
216. MAN’S PURPOSE “For many men, their primary mission in life is to build a successful career, provide for their families, and retire comfortably. That is what drives them, and that is the vision they pass on to their sons. But I think there is a much greater, nobler mission to pass on to boys.
Psalm 127: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them” (verses 4–5).
This is powerful imagery. Think about what an arrow is created to do. Was it designed to stay in the quiver, comfortable and protected? No, it was made to be aimed and shot by a warrior at a target, to deliver a blow in battle.
Can you see the connection? Boys need to understand that they are not here on earth just to achieve worldly success and comfort. They’re here to strike a blow against evil, to make a mark on their world.”
Excerpt From: Rainey, Dennis. “Stepping Up.”
217. PROVIDENCE In 1937, Disney released the first full length animated motion picture, Snow White. The limited technology of the day required over 2 million individual detailed drawings be made with each one appearing a mere 1/24 of a second on screen. A movie goer could come and be impressed, but have no idea of the size and scope of the task which was required to bring the project to the viewing public.
The same can be considered when it comes to our Father in Heaven. We cannot imagine the scope and detail with which He provides for us throughout our lives “behind the scene.”
— Chris Seidman
218. MANHOOD “A man’s willingness to offer up his life for his wife or for anybody else who happens to need him is not the end of everything. It is only the end of himself. He who is fully a man has relinquished his right to himself.
— ELISABETH ELLIOT, “The Mark of a Man”
219. LIBERTY UNCHECKED “John Flavel made a penetrating observation over three hundred years ago, and it applies to our day:
Upon their king’s death, it was the Persians’ custom (I am not saying it was laudable) to grant everyone liberty for five days to do whatever they wanted.
The unbridled lust was so great that it made the people long and pray for the installment of the next king.
When everyone has unchecked liberty, all hell breaks loose. It’s called anarchy, and it is demonic. And there is nothing like unchecked liberty to make people long for a good king and good laws.
When you are the king of your own life, you give yourself permission to do anything you want—and that’s when all hell breaks loose.”
Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “Real Valor.”
220. LIFE “The key to life is not its length but its depth. It’s not how many days we live, but how we live our days.” — Jim Denison
Fine-Tuning of Initial Conditions to Support Life
2. Does God Exist?This is the sixth blog in my series on fine-tuning. Here are the previous blogs if you missed them:
Intro/Philosophical Background
If You Don’t Want God, You Better Have a Multiverse!
How Does Fine-Tuning Provide Evidence for God?
Objections
Mistaken Objections that Seek to Trivialize Fine-Tuning
Important Objections in the Fine-Tuning Debate
But We Can’t Even Define Life
We’re finally ready to start exploring the fine-tuning data itself. A logical starting point is the initial conditions of our universe – are those which permit life rare among possibilities?
1) Energy-Density is Finely-Tuned
The amount of matter (or more precisely energy density) in our universe at the Big Bang turns out to be finely-tuned to about 1 part in 1055. In other words, to get a life-permitting universe the amount of mass would have to be set to a precision of 55 decimal places. This fine-tuning arises because of the sensitivity to the initial conditions of the universe – the life-permitting density now is certainly much more flexible! If the initial energy density would have been slightly larger, gravity would have quickly slowed the expansion and then caused the universe to collapse too quickly for life to form. Conversely if the density were a tad smaller, the universe would have expanded too quickly for galaxies, stars, or planets to form. I argued in my previous blog that it’s implausible to expect life to originate without a long-lived, stable energy source such as a star. Thus, life would not be possible unless the density were just right – if you added or subtracted even just your own mass[1] to that of the universe this would have been catastrophic!
There is, however, a potential dynamical solution to this problem based on a rapid early expansion of the universe known as cosmic inflation. In this blog, I’ll be relying primarily on the most comprehensive review article on fine-tuning in the peer-reviewed literature – this one by Luke Barnes. I’ve referenced it previously and I’m hoping if I reference it enough I’ll get tech-savvy readers to check it out! It may be too technical for some readers and my blog can be viewed as just an attempt at explaining some highlights to non-physicists and tying it into my metaphysical hypothesis that God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning. So let’s look at what Luke Barnes has to say about inflation as a solution to the energy density problem. He points out 6 aspects of inflation that would have to be properly setup, some of which turn out to require fine-tuning. One significant aspect is that the inflation must last for the proper amount of time – inflation is posited to have been an extremely brief but hyper-fast expansion of the early universe. If inflation had lasted a fraction of a nanosecond longer, the entire universe would have been merely a thin hydrogen soup, unsuitable for life. Barnes cites an article by Max Tegmark of MIT that indicates that in a best case scenario about 1 in 1000 inflationary universes would avoid lasting too long. The biggest issue though seems to be that for inflation to start, it needs a very special/rare state of an extremely smooth energy density. Several articles make this point – consider Sean Carroll’s article:
“It is therefore a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for inflation to occur that perturbations be small at early times. . . . the fraction of realistic cosmologies that are eligible for inflation is therefore … 10-66,000,000.”
Barnes also explains why, even if inflation solves this fine-tuning problem, one should not expect new physics discoveries to do away with other cases of fine-tuning: “Inflation thus represents a very special case… This is not true of the vast majority of fine-tuning cases. There is no known physical scale waiting in the life-permitting range of the quark masses, fundamental force strengths or the dimensionality of spacetime. There can be no inflation-like dynamical solution to these fine-tuning problems because dynamical processes are blind to the requirements of intelligent life. What if, unbeknownst to us, there was such a fundamental parameter? It would need to fall into the life-permitting range. As such, we would be solving a fine-tuning problem by creating at least one more. And we would also need to posit a physical process able to dynamically drive the value of the quantity in our universe toward the new physical parameter.”
2) Initial Conditions in a Very Low Entropy State
Even if inflation somehow could solve the energy density problem and scientists are mistaken that inflation requires its own fine-tuning, inflation doesn’t solve the problem with this next type of fine-tuning which relates to the universe’s initial entropy. What is entropy? Entropy represents the amount of disorder in a system. Thus, a high entropy state is highly disordered – think of a messy teenager’s room. Our universe began in an incredibly low entropy state. A more precision definition of entropy is that it represents the number of microscopic states that are macroscopically indistinguishable. An egg has higher entropy once broken because you’re “opening” up many more ways to arrange the molecules. There are more ways of arranging molecules that would still be deemed an omelet than there are ways to arrange the particles in an unbroken egg in where certain molecules are confined to subsets of the space in the egg – such as a membrane or the yolk. Entropy is thus closely associated with probability. If one is randomly arranging molecules, it’s much more likely to choose a high entropy state than a low entropy state. Randomly arranged molecules in an egg would much more likely look like an omelet that an unbroken egg.
Entropy can also be thought of as the amount of usable energy. Over time the usable energy decreases. This principle is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that in a closed system the entropy on average increases until a state of equilibrium is reached. Thus, the Second Law predicts that our universe will eventually reach such a state of equilibrium or “heat death” in which nothing interesting happens. All life will die off long before such a state is reached. Life relies on usable energy from the environment.
It turns out that nearly all arrangements of particles in the early universe would have resulted in a lifeless universe of black holes. Tiny inconsistences in the particle arrangements would be acted on by gravity to grow in size. A positive feedback results since the clumps of particles have an even greater gravitational force on nearby particles. Penrose’s analysis shows that in the incredibly dense early universe, most arrangements of particles would have resulted basically in nothing but black holes. Life certainly can’t exist in such a universe because there would be no way to have self-replicating information systems. Possibly the brightest objects in the universe are quasars, which release radiation as bright as some galaxies due to matter falling into a supermassive black hole. The rotation rates near black holes and the extremely high-energy photons would disrupt information storage, a prerequisite for life[2].
Oxford physicist Roger Penrose is the first scientist to quantify the fine-tuning necessary to have a low entropy universe to avoid such catastrophes. “In order to produce a universe resembling the one in which we live, the Creator would have to aim for an absurdly tiny volume of the phase space of possible universes, about 1/1010123 [3].” This number is incomprehensibly small – it represents 1 chance in 10 to the power of (10 to the power of 123). Writing this number in ordinal notational would require more zeroes than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe, 10123 zeroes vs. about 1092 particles. Under the assumption of atheism, the particles in our universe would have been arranged randomly or at least not with respect to future implications for intelligent life. Nearly all such arrangements would not have been life-permitting so this fine-tuning evidence favors theism over atheism. We have a large but finite number of possible original states and rely on well-established statistical mechanics to assess the relevant probability.[4]
In a comment on one of in my earlier blogs, someone suggested that perhaps the universe is fine-tuned for black holes rather than life. The incredibly low entropy state of the initial conditions shows, however, that the exact opposite is true – fine-tuning was required to avoid excessive black holes! This fact about the initial conditions also calls into question Smolin’s proposed scenario that universes with differing physical constants might be birthed out of black holes. Smolin suggests the possibility of an almost Darwinian concept in which universes that produce more black holes therefore more baby universes than those which don’t. But if our universe requires statistically miraculous initial conditions to be life-permitting by avoiding excessive black holes, universes evolving to maximize black hole production would be unlikely to lead to life! (Even if the evolution of universes were possible)
Furthermore, the skeptic who thinks that black holes suggest a purposeless universe should consider that black holes can, in moderation and kept at distance, be helpful for life. While a universe comprised of mostly black holes would be life-prohibiting, having a large black hole at the center of a galaxy is actually quite helpful for life. Here is a Scientific American article that documents the benefits of Black Holes for life – it summarizes: “the matter-eating beast at the center of the Milky Way may actually account for Earth’s existence and habitability.”
Does inflation explain the low entropy of the early universe?
Here is how Sean Carroll answers this question: “Not by itself, no. To get inflation to start requires even lower-entropy initial conditions than those implied by the conventional Big Bang model. Inflation just makes the problem harder[5].” Penrose also has harsh words for inflation as an explanation of the low entropy state of the initial universe[6].
Barnes calls inflation a “cane toad solution” for the entropy fine-tuning. Cane toads were brought into Australia from Hawaii starting in 1935 to eat beetles threatening the sugarcane fields. With no natural predators in Australia this strategy was disastrous as these poisonous toads multiplied greatly and wreaked havoc on native species and the ecosystem in general. Thus, Barnes is saying that inflation makes this fine-tuning problem worse. None of this is to say that some version of inflationary theory isn’t true just that it doesn’t help this fine-tuning issue.
How well could a multiverse explain this evidence?
This is a key question to consider as we explore the fine-tuning evidence. If some features seem overly fine-tuned, this would be unexpected if our universe was simply a life-permitting universe randomly selected from a vast ensemble of other universes with other constants or initial conditions. A multiverse explanation for the fine-tuning of the low entropy fails miserably because this universe does seem to be finely-tuned much more than would be minimally necessary. As Penrose says: “We can get the solar system and all inhabitants for much less odds: 1 in 101060 .. These world ensemble hypotheses are worse than useless in explaining the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe.” In other words, Penrose argues that it would be more likely to just have the particles arranged in initial conditions such that you already have pre-formed intelligent life in a single solar system than to have such a large universe as ours in a low-entropy state that could eventually lead to intelligent life.
Even atheist Sean Carroll admits[7] that a multiverse explanation fails for this fine-tuning. First, he agrees with the widely-accepted principle I referenced above: “anthropically-selected parameters should be of the same order of magnitude as the largest value compatible with the existence of life.” He then explicitly agrees that the multiverse cannot by itself explain this particular fine-tuning and quotes Penrose’s numbers. “An example of fine‐tuning well beyond anthropic constraints is the initial state of the universe, often characterized in terms of its extremely low entropy… The entropy didn’t need to be nearly that low in order for life to come into existence. One way of thinking about this is to note that we certainly don’t need a hundred billion other galaxies in the universe in order for life to arise here on Earth; our single galaxy would have been fine, or for that matter a single solar system.” As an atheist he doesn’t view this as an insuperable problem, holding out hope that new physics could somehow explain this low entropy. Carroll indicates that he can’t think of any reason why God would fine-tune the universe more than is necessary, apparently not giving thought to the possibility that God might want to leave evidence that He setup the physics of the universe – evidence of the type that even an infinite multiverse cannot plausibly explain!
Is this evidence for God?
Even if this evidence points to design, why think that God is necessarily the designer?
If this is your perspective, please help remove the stigma on intelligent design so this type of evidence can be fairly evaluated. Also, note that this perspective affirms the claim of leading Intelligent Design advocates that design by itself does not necessarily prove God.
For this particular design evidence, however, I argue that we have reasons for thinking that only a supernatural being could setup these initial conditions in this way. Is it in principle physically possible for a being limited by the laws of physics to setup the initial conditions of our Big Bang? The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle limits our ability to even have knowledge of both position and momentum of particles beyond a certain scale – and it’s even more challenging to think about how so many particles might have their locations and velocities adjusted. The early universe would have been so small that the limits imposed by this physical principle would seem to prevent any physically-limited agent from making the necessary adjustments to the particles or even having knowledge to determine necessary adjustments. Moreover, even those who advocate a naturalistic cause to the Big Bang often admit that the Big Bang represents a spacetime boundary. Many theorists consider our universe to be a causally disconnected region of spacetime – which would make it impossible for a physically limited being residing in a different physical region from affecting anything in this new region of spacetime.
Thus, a supernatural designer seems more plausible than a natural designer. Also, if fine-tuning is required to bring about intelligent life, how did the first natural designers arise?
Does God Have to be Fine-tuned?
To me this seems like asking: “does an uncreated being depend on rare events or rare settings of physical parameters for His existence?” By definition God doesn’t rely on anything for his existence – this is the concept of a necessary being. If the concept of a necessary being seems implausible, I warn you that you might already believe premises that by the rules of logic would entail the existence of a necessary being. I invite you to explore that possibility in this online quiz.
[1] The universe is estimated to contain at least 10^80 atoms – here is one estimate of 10^53 kg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe Anyone old enough to read this blog must weigh at least say 10 kg so this seems to be a safe estimate even after accounting for other forms of matter energy not included in the above mass.
[2] Refer to my previous blog for further justification: http://crossexamined.org/cant-even-define-life/
[3] Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind, p. 343. He also makes the same argument in Road to Reality on p. 730.
[4] In addition, the entropy equation for a black hole, first developed by Bekenstein and Hawking, is involved in these computations. This equation is widely accepted by the physics community and I’ve read articles by those who believe in string theory and those who believe in loop quantum gravity arguing for their theories by pointing to how they can derive this same equation in their flavor of quantum gravity.
[5] Sean Carroll, http://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/faq.html
[6] Penrose says in Road to Reality, p. 755: “Indeed, it is fundamentally misconceived to explain why the universe is special in any particular respect by appealing to a thermalization process [such as inflation]. For, if the thermalization is actually doing anything (such as making temperatures in different regions more equal than they were before), then it represents a definite increasing of entropy. Thus, the universe would have had to be more special before the thermalization than after. This only serves to increase whatever difficulty we might have had previously in trying to come to terms with the initial extraordinarily special nature of the universe. . . . invoking arguments from thermalization, to address this particular problem [of the specialness of the universe], is worse than useless!” A couple of pages later Penrose also writes that “the point is that whether or not we actually have inflation, the physical possibility of an inflationary period is of no use whatever in attempts to ensure that evolution from a generic singularity will lead to a uniform (or spatially flat) universe.”
[7] Carroll, Does the Universe Need God? The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity. A copy is available online at http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/.
The Wisdon Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon
201. CONSTANT LEARNING “Know that when you are through learning, you are through.”
Excerpt From: Wooden, John. “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court.”
202. BEN FRANKLIN’S VIRTUES
“Ben Franklin’s 13 Virtues
1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling
conversation.
3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business
have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you
resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: that is,
waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all
unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you
speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your
duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think
they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness,
weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
12. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or
unavoidable.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus.
Excerpt From: Jim Stovall & Tim Maurer. “The Ultimate Financial Plan.”
203. HOLOCAUST “We’ve all heard of the yellow triangles the Jews were forced to wear for identification. Do you know the other colors that were used? Brown triangles identified gypsies and those of Roman descent. Purple triangles were worn by Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests, and Christian leaders who ran afoul of the government. Purple badges. Red and pink and brown. Blue and black. All worn by mothers and fathers and children who were not the first to be selected for the camps. Their badges were worn—their fates altered—well after they got a good look at the yellow ones.”
Excerpt From: Andrews, Andy. “How Do You Kill 11 Million People?.”
204. BLOOD “A speck of blood the size of this letter “o” contains 5,000,000 red cells, 300,000 platelets and 7,000 white cells. The fluid is actually an ocean stocked with living matter. Red cells alone, if removed from a single person and laid side by side, would carpet an area of 3,500 square yards.” “After a person spends a few months in the rarefied atmosphere of Colorado’s mountains, up to ten million red cells will fill each drop of blood, compensating for the thinner air. The pell-mell journey, even to the extremity of the big toe, lasts a mere twenty
seconds. An average red cell endures the cycle of loading, unloading, and jostling through the body for a half million round trips over four months. In one final journey, to the spleen, the battered cell is stripped bare by scavenger cells and recycled into new cells. Three hundred billion such red cells die and are replaced every day, leaving behind various parts to reincarnate in a hair follicle or a taste bud.*”
“The brain, master of the body, can survive intact only five minutes without replenishment.”
Excerpt From: Yancey, Philip. “In His Image.”
205. REPUTATION “There is no lost and found that you can visit to get your reputation back. Don’t let go of it.”
Excerpt From: David Avrin & Joe Calloway. “It’s Not Who You Know — It’s Who Knows You!.”
206. LIFE CHANGES “At times I’m struck by how strange it is that the same person [me] who has gone through so many life changes over the years can believe in this God who is still the same because He never changes.”
Excerpt From: Goff, Bob. “Love Does.”
207. FUNERALS “More lies are told at funerals than at any other occasion. They are forced out as the silent deceptions of a man’s character are finally dealt with at his memorial service. People spend lifetimes covering or ignoring the truth of who they are. Friends and family, who spent their lives playing along with the deception while they were alive, stick to the beloved’s script in the end.
In the moment of a funeral, the description bears almost no similarity to the actual people memorialized. Mourners flip the funeral program over to make sure they’re in the right service. If we were half the people in life others will say we were at our funerals we might have lives that don’t require such edits. It’s bizarre type of courtesy paid to the bereaved. [But] there’s nothing so powerful as a life that speaks for itself. A life that is its own benediction. A life that is a translation of integrity. More than once I’ve thanked the deceased publicly for not forcing me to make things up at the end of their lives. You can’t rewrite the endings anyway. You might ignore them out of civility, but you can’t fix them. The more consistent the life, the easier the funeral is to preach. The best funeral preaches itself.
Excerpt From: Byron Forrest Yawn. “What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.”
208. GOD’S POLITICAL PARTY? “We exist to serve God. He doesn’t exist to serve us. No country, no political party, and no political ideology can own Him. He’s the boss.”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”
209. INFLUENCE “In order to learn about influence we must leave the comfort of models, linear sequences, and step-by-step recipes. The magic of influence is less in what we say and more in how we say it and who we are.”
Excerpt From: Simmons, Annette. “The Story Factor.”
210. HUMILITY Benjamin Franklin once said, “To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, and to inferiors nobleness.”
Is Atheism a lack of belief in God?
Atheism, Theology and Christian ApologeticsIt’s been fashionable lately for atheists to claim that atheism is “a lack a belief in God.” So when a theist comes along and says that atheists can’t support their worldview, some atheists will say something like, “Oh, we really don’t have a worldview. We just lack a belief in God. Since we’re not making any positive claims about the world, we don’t have any burden of proof to support atheism. We just find the arguments for God to be lacking.”
What’s lacking are good reasons to believe this new definition.
First, if atheism is merely a lack of belief in God, then atheism is just a claim about the atheist’s state of mind, not a claim about God’s existence. The “atheist” is simply saying, “I’m not psychologically convinced that God exists.” So what? That offers no evidence for or against God. Most people lack a belief in unguided evolution, yet no atheist would say that shows evolution is false.
Second, if atheism is merely a lack of belief in God, then rocks, trees, and outhouses are all “atheists” because they too lack a belief in God. It doesn’t take any brains to “lack a belief” in something. A true atheist believes that there is no God.
Third, most atheists don’t merely “lack a belief in God because they are constantly trying to explain the world by offering supposed alternatives to God. Atheists write book after book insisting that God is out of a job because of quantum theory, multiple universes, and evolution. While none of those atheistic arguments succeed in proving there is no God, they do prove that atheists don’t merely lack a belief in God — they believe in certain theories to explain reality without God.
They believe in those theories because atheism is a worldview with beliefs just as much as theism is a worldview with beliefs. (A “worldview” is a set of beliefs about the big questions in life such as: What is an ultimate reality? Who are we? What’s the meaning of life? How should we live? What’s our destiny? etc.) To claim that atheism is not a worldview is like saying anarchy is not really a political position. As Bo Jinn observes, “An anarchist might say that he simply ‘rejects politics,’ but he is still confronted with the inescapable problem of how human society is to organize itself, whether he likes the idea of someone being in charge or not.”
Likewise, atheists can say they just “reject God” but they are still confronted with the inescapable problem of how to explain ultimate reality. Just as anarchists affirm the positive belief that anarchy is the best way to organize society, atheists affirm the positive belief that atheistic materialism is the best way to explain ultimate reality.
In other words, atheists don’t “lack a belief” in materialism. They are not skeptical of materialism — they think it’s true! As Phillip Johnson said, “He who is a skeptic in one set of beliefs is a true believer in another set of beliefs.” Lacking a belief in God doesn’t automatically establish materialism any more than lacking a belief in atheism automatically establishes Christianity. No atheist would say that a Christian has made a good case because he “lacks a belief” in materialism!
Everyone has the burden of proof to support his or her position. Atheists must make a positive case that only material things exist. That’s why instead of debating “Does God exist?” I prefer to debate the question “What better explains reality: atheism or theism?” Then it’s obvious that both debaters have the burden of proof to support their position. Atheists can’t just identify what they think are deficiencies in theism. They must make a compelling case that everything has been caused by materials and consists only of materials, including:
• The beginning of the universe
• The fine-tuning of the universe
• The laws of nature
• The laws of logic
• The laws of mathematics
• Information (genetic code)
• Life
• Mind and consciousness
• Free will
• Objective morality
• Evil
It’s rare to find an atheist attempting to explain more than one or two of these things materially. How could they? How can laws be materials? The new atheists must provide reasons to support their belief that materialism is true. Simply lacking a belief in God doesn’t prove their worldview.
Finally, the “I merely lack a belief in God” definition leads to a contradictory result. As Dr. Richard Howe points out, “This definition of atheism entails the quirky conclusion that atheism is logically compatible with theism.” Here’s why: If lacking a belief in God is the definition of “atheism” — and not “there is no God” — then “atheism” is true even if God really exists. How is that reasonable?
We shouldn’t allow atheists to hide behind that lacking definition. A true atheist is someone who believes there is no God. And atheists have the burden of proof to show how materialism is true and reality can be explained without God.
Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation. His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case.
But We Can’t Even Define Life
2. Does God Exist?, Philosophy of ScienceIn my previous blog I addressed some important issues in making the case that fine-tuning supports theism over atheism. Today I want to look at the objection against fine-tuning that says we can’t assess fine-tuning claims because we can’t even define ‘life’ – or put another way: “fine-tuning claims don’t properly account for other possible life forms.” It has proven surprisingly hard for scientists to agree upon a definition for life. This uncertainty, however, hasn’t prevented biologists from making inferences about life nor has it kept physicists from writing numerous articles claiming that certain changes to physical constants would have resulted in a lifeless universe. In most cases, the inference to a lifeless universe is based upon severe catastrophes such as:
It seems plausible that in these situations no life could arise of the kind that could evolve into intelligent, rational creatures. Many fine-tuning constraints involve multiple life-permitting criteria so that even if one of them was incorrect, there would still be other constraints on the life-permitting range of values based on different life-permitting criteria. John Leslie affirms that “many of the fundamental constants have to take the values they do for several independent reasons.” Moreover, even if half of the fine-tuning claims were mistaken there would still be a sufficient number of finely-tuned parameters to conclude that life-permitting universes are rare among possibilities. My fine-tuning claim is therefore robust since it doesn’t rely on all physicists’ claims being true – here it is again:
In the set of possible physical laws, parameters and initial conditions, the subset that permits rational conscious life is very small.
If some peer-reviewed articles are in error, there might be other articles defining other constraints or at least there would be enough remaining evidence to conclude that the life-permitting universes are rare among possibilities. But let’s look in detail at what is necessary for life according to scientists.
What are some essential attributes of any plausible life form?
Self-replicating
Any life form that could evolve to possess intelligence would have to include a self-replicating system. John von Neumann showed that any self-replicator requires certain features such as information storage and processing. Any information storage system would need to be comprised of reasonably stable entities. A star, for example, is a hot plasma of charged particles in rapidly changing configurations and thus is deemed implausible to store information needed to originate and sustain life. Also, in the near vacuum of space there are so few particles interacting that there is no plausible way to replicate enough information for complex life.
Non-trivial information content
As origin of life researcher Stuart Kauffman has noted: “all living things seem to have a minimal complexity below which it is impossible to go.” One theoretical estimate for the amount of information for the simplest possible life form is 113,000 base pairs.[1] Any life form is likely to require polymers of some type to serve as building blocks that can be replicated. There are multiple ways in which a lack of finely-tuned parameters could have prevented the formation of any atoms beyond hydrogen. In this scenario, there would be no polymers and indeed no chemical compounds except for H2. It is implausible to think that if only hydrogen ever existed in the universe that we would have intelligent life or so many physicists have argued.
Preservation of information content during replication
We also have some indications from our own planet of the importance of high fidelity information replication. The canonical genetic code that provides the mapping from RNA codons to amino acids used on our planet is highly optimized and arose early in life’s history[2] (else it wouldn’t be as universal.) Biologists interpret this as evidence of the importance of minimizing errors during translation and replication. The ability to preserve information is therefore recognized as being highly important for life.
Ability to harness energy from environment
Life must be able to harness energy from the environment or else the Second Law of Thermodynamics would pose an insurmountable hurdle. A long-lived stable energy source such as a star would therefore be required.
These same constraints and additional ones are described as prerequisites for life in an important article[3] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that explains the attributes of alternate life forms that might eventually be found elsewhere in the universe. This article serves to confirm that the physics literature is making generous assumptions about what could be life-permitting. Here are some key points of the article with my comments provided after the quotations:
But Does Life Have to be Carbon-Based Life?
My fine-tuning claim and that by prominent advocates such as Luke Barnes don’t presuppose that any life form would have to be carbon-based – it’s much more general than that. However, this PNAS article is one of many to claim that silicon is the best alternative to carbon as a basis for life. Silicon bears some similarities to carbon as expected from its position just below carbon on the periodic table. If we can understand why silicon-based life doesn’t appreciably increase the possibilities for life, then we can gain confidence in the generality of the fine-tuning claim.
As the PNAS article indicates, carbon is much more suitable for life than is silicon. Consider the specialness of carbon with regard to the number of types of molecules that can be formed with H (hydrogen) and the following elements[4]:
H – 1
He – 0
Li – 1
Be -1
B – 7
N- 7
O -2
Ne-0
C (carbon) – over 2300 known types of molecules just involving C and H
Revisiting our dartboard analogy, consider how a life-permitting region is tiny among possibilities. As a reminder, just one finely-tuned parameter, the cosmological constant, has to be set in a narrow life-permitting region among possibilities that is comparable to hitting a bull’s-eye on a huge wall that is 376 million light-years per side. If the life-permitting region for carbon-based life is small, the region for silicon-based life should be smaller since silicon is less suitable for life than is carbon. Although there is one fine-tuning constraint that specifically references carbon, it turns out to also be applicable to silicon. Unless there was a nuclear resonance at just the right energy level, fusion in stars might have never produced carbon. However, without this resonance level there would be a bottleneck that would also inhibit silicon or elements heavier than carbon from being synthesized. Stars make carbon on the way to making silicon. (Most elements past beryllium were synthesized in stellar fusion from smaller atoms.) Thus, universes that produce silicon are no more likely than those that produce carbon – so the bull’s-eye for silicon-based life is smaller and basically just overlaps the carbon bull’s-eye.
Lessons Learned from Origin of Life Research
Consider how some origin of life researchers admit that the origin of the first life form from non-life is exceedingly improbable even with carbon and a diversity of other elements, long-lived stars, and other helpful attributes in our finely-tuned universe. For example, Christian Schwabe writes: “the formation of the first life is viewed as a chance process that occurred in spite of minuscule odds such as 1:10300 and which is accepted only because we are here.[5]“ Eugene Koonin appeals to the multiverse to overcome a horrendous improbability that he estimates at 10-1018 for a plausible first evolvable cell. Not all researchers are this pessimistic but the slow progress in the field should caution those who think that non-carbon life forms a large region in the space of possible parameters. If carbon is so clearly the best choice for life as most biologists believe and if the origin of life is somewhat of an unlikely event even utilizing organic (carbon-based) molecules such as RNA, how much more unlikely is a naturalistic origin of life without carbon.[6]
Fine-Tuning for Intelligent Life
Recall that my fine-tuning claim refers not to just any life form but to intelligent life. Since theism predicts that God would want some advanced life forms, this raises the bar for constraints on life-permitting universes. If merely primitive replicating cells could originate in somewhat less finely-tuned universe, this still would not count against my fine-tuning claim unless this life could also evolve to achieve intelligence and self-awareness. Clearly more fine-tuning is required for the universe to support rational conscious life than would be required for very primitive life forms.
Closing Thoughts
Most physicists writing about fine-tuning think that there are some very clear-cut cases of fine-tuning such as that for the cosmological constant. Consider, for example, how Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg has argued for a multiverse explanation to the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant. He posits vast numbers of universes each with different values for the cosmological constant, the energy density of empty space. Weinberg’s argument for the value being consistent with multiverse predictions relies on a hard limit[7] for the life-permitting range so that our universe can be considered typical among life-permitting universes[8]. Smolin and others have critiqued his prediction as not being that close to what a multiverse would predict but that is irrelevant to my current point which is simply that Weinberg clearly believes that varying this constant by a tiny amount among the possibilities would result in no life of any kind living anywhere in that universe. Refer to my multiverse blog for why our universe would need to be typical among life-permitting universes for a plausible multiverse explanation.
Few physicists specializing in fine-tuning point to other possible forms of life as a supposed refutation to the fine-tuning argument but those who do should write rebuttals to the many peer-reviewed articles claiming life would not exist in certain scenarios involving different physical constants or initial conditions. Skeptics need to show why these authors were mistaken. Perhaps this is a good point of emphasis in urging physicists to be careful in their claims. If some of these fine-tuning claims are over-stated though this would actually provide evidence against a multiverse explanation to the fine-tuning because it would represent ways in which our universe is overly fine-tuned for life. A naturalistic multiverse predicts that our universe should not be more fine-tuned than is minimally necessary to support life.
[1] Forster A. C., et al. Nature Mol. Syst. Biol., 2 . doi:10.1038/msb4100090 (2006).
[2] Early Fixation of an Optimal Genetic Code. Molecular Biology and Evolution. Oxford Journals. Stephen J. Freeland2, et al.
[3] Pace, Norman. “The universal nature of biochemistry”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (3) (2001): p. 805–8.
[4] This was presented by Luke Barnes at the Philosophy of Cosmology conference in 2013 in Santa Cruz, CA.
[5] Schwabe. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part B: February 1994: (Volume 107, Issue 2) p. 167.
[6] In this blog, I have no intention of getting into discussions about whether or not we have evidence for divine intervention in the origin of life – that is a separate topic. Note that the origin of life and fine-tuning are separate issues. Fine-tuning deals with setting up an environment conducive to life – sort of like that biosphere they setup in Arizona. Conversely, origin of life relates to whether or not life forms were put into that biosphere or originated from non-living matter within it.
[7] By ‘hard limit’ I mean that no other life forms could exist anywhere in universes with cosmological constants whose absolute value exceeded a threshold that is about 120 orders of magnitude less than the natural values predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. BTW, Weinberg first coined the term “Standard Model.”
The Wisdom Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon
191. MUSIC, LOVE & SEX “Plato taught us to “mark the music” to understand an individual or his society. After all, people who hum Berlin or Arlen or Gershwin think they want to fall in love; people who hum (hum?) Mötley Crüe or the Ying Yang Twins think they want to have sex. People who listen to Mel Tormé (Nat Cole, Bing Crosby, or Ella Fitzgerald) don’t want to pierce their tongues; people who listen to Eminem (Alanis Morissette, Kurt Cobain, or Public Enemy) don’t want to pin on an orchid corsage. If the American popular song could idealize romantic love to a fault, rock ’n’ roll degrades physical couplings to new lows—destroying not just the language of love and romance, but also the meaning of love and romance. And, I would sadly add, our capacity to experience both. The fact is, between a world in which romantic love is the ideal and a world where nonmarital sex is the goal lies a vast cultural chasm. What we know as romantic love, which aspires to monogamous marriage, builds civilization up; what we know as free love, which aspires to a polymorphous sex life, keeps it down.”
Excerpt From: West, Diana. “The Death of the Grown-Up.”
192. PROPERTY RIGHTS IN BIBLE “According to the teachings of the Bible, government should both document and protect the ownership of private property in a nation. The Bible regularly assumes and reinforces a system in which property belongs to individuals, not to the government or to society as a whole. We see this implied in the Ten Commandments, for example, because the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15), assumes that human beings will own property that belongs to them individually and not to other people. “This assumption of private ownership of property, found in this fundamental moral code of the Bible, puts the Bible in direct opposition to the communist system advocated by Karl Marx. Marx said: “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property” [Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1948).
One reason why communism is so incredibly dehumanizing is that when private property is abolished, government controls all economic activity. And when government controls all economic activity, it controls what you can buy, where you will live, and what job you will have (and therefore what job you are allowed to train for, and where you go to school), and how much you will earn. It essentially controls all of life, and human liberty is destroyed. Communism enslaves people and destroys human freedom of choice. The entire nation becomes one huge prison.”
Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “True Courage.”
193. LOVE “Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
― George Eliot
194. FORGIVENESS “Toward the end of the Civil War, reparations were being discussed in the White House. Abraham Lincoln was told by one of his advisors who favored punishing the South, “Mr. President, you’re supposed to destroy your enemies, not make friends of them!” Mr. Lincoln replied, “Am I not destroying an enemy when I make a friend of him?”
Excerpt From: Wooden, John. “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court.”
195. HUMILITY “Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness.” — CJ Mahaney
196. MAKE STRAIGHT A’s(?) “School is a place where A students [Professors] teach B students how to work for C students.”
Elite Daily, “The 10 Thing They Don’t Tell You At Graduation” May 7, 2013
197. LAWYERS “Mancur Olson used to argue that, over time, all political systems are likely to succumb to sclerosis, mainly because of rent-seeking activities by organized interest groups. Perhaps that is what we see at work in the United States today. Americans could once boast proudly that their system set the benchmark for the world; the United States was the rule of law. But now what we see is the rule of lawyers, which is something different. It is surely no coincidence that lawyers are so over-represented in the US Congress.”
From: Ferguson, Niall. “The Great Degeneration.”
198. FOOLS “A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.”
—BEN JONSON
199. SPIRITUAL GROWTH “A Christian is not of hasty growth, like a mushroom, but rather like the oak, the progress of which is hardly perceptible, but in time becomes a great deep-rooted tree. — John Newton
200. FOOLS “Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.”
Excerpt From: Heinrichs, Jay. “Thank You For Arguing, Revised and Updated
Important Objections in the Fine-Tuning Debate
2. Does God Exist?In my previous blog I dealt with objections to fine-tuning based on misunderstandings of the nature of the argument or of probability theory. In this blog, however, I attempt to deal with important issues in the debate. If either objection succeeds it would undermine the design inference based upon the fine-tuning evidence.
Could the Laws of Physics Have Been Different?
If there is only one possible set of physics, then there is no sense in which the set of life-permitting physics could be said to be improbable. There are two aspects to considering with regard to whether or not the laws of physics might have been different.
1) Are there other metaphysically possible alternatives?
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy so this aspect is really a question that goes beyond science. However even among scientists, few think that there is only one logically possible set of laws of Nature. For example, in one of the classic fine-tuning papers Bernard Carr and Martin Rees note that “even if all apparently anthropic coincidences could be explained [in terms of some deeper theory], it would still be remarkable that the relationships dictated by physical theory happened also to be those propitious for life.[1]” Even if there was only one physically possible set of physics there is still something surprising about the fine-tuning evidence because there is no reason to think that their couldn’t have been different laws, constants, or initial conditions. If there really were no alternatives that were even metaphysically possible, one should be able to derive the laws and parameters of physics without even having to do observations and experiments but as physicist John Barrow notes in regard to the fundamental constants discussed in fine-tuning, “we have never successfully predicted the value of any dimensionless constant in advance of its measurement.”
If one looks at mathematical proofs, the premises are never based on empirical results whereas in science we’ve learned that we need to do experiments to choose among candidate theories. Metaphysicians, therefore, generally recognize that mathematical truths are true in all possible worlds (in the modal logic sense of the word) but that scientific truths are not.
Physicist Paul Davies responds to those few who have tried to argue that “the nature of the physical world would be entirely a consequence of logical and mathematical necessity. There would be no choice about it. I think this is demonstrably wrong. There is not a shred of evidence that the universe is logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders for reality.[2]”
2) Are there other physically possible alternatives?
Many leading physicists think that physics itself provides various potential means for varying the fundamental constants. Virtually every physics department is involved in research in theories such as String Theory that entail that the constants of physics actually could be different. As Lee Smolin explains, “string theory makes all the properties of the elementary particles contingent – determined not by fundamental law but by … solutions to the fundamental theory.[3]” String theory was once thought to be the best hope for a Theory of Everything which might explain why the constants of physics take on the values they do. Indeed it might greatly reduce the number of fundamental parameters. However, there seem to be a vast number of solutions to the equations of String Theory although they’re still not well-defined. Some scientists have complained that what was hoped to be a “Theory of Everything” has turned out to look more like a “Theory of Anything.”
In this article, physicist John Barrow lists 5 reasons to expect that the constants of physics can vary.
1) “We know that the best candidates for unification of the forces of nature in a quantum gravitational environment only seem to exist in finite form if there are many more dimensions of space than the three that we are familiar with. This means that the true constants of nature are defined in higher dimensions and the three-dimensional shadows we observe are no longer fundamental and do not need to be constant. Any slow change in the scale of the extra dimensions would be revealed by measurable changes in our three-dimensional ‘constants’.”
2) “Some apparent constant might be determined partially or completely by spontaneous symmetry-breaking processes in the very early universe. This introduces an irreducibly random element into the values of those constants.”
3) “Any outcome of a theory of quantum gravity will be intrinsically probabilistic… [thus some constants are] predicted to be spatial random variables”
4) “A non-uniqueness of the vacuum state for the universe would allow other numerical combinations of the constants to have occurred in different places.”
5) There are some observations that the fine-structure constant may have varied very slightly over time and/or space. [Newer studies are still not conclusive on this point – the data is somewhat ambiguous.]
Even if the constants and laws of physics couldn’t vary, there is even more reason to think that there were many physically possible sets of initial conditions. Paul Davies states this emphatically:
“Even if the laws of physics were unique, it doesn’t follow that the physical universe itself is unique…the laws of physics must be augmented by cosmic initial conditions…there is nothing in present ideas about ‘laws of initial conditions’ remotely to suggest that their consistency with the laws of physics would imply uniqueness. Far from it…it seems, then, that the physical universe does not have to be the way it is: it could have been otherwise.[4]”
John A. Wheeler agrees: “Never has physics come up with a way to tell with what initial conditions the universe was started off. On nothing is physics clearer than what is not physics.”
What about the laws themselves varying?
Fine-tuning proponents don’t generally seek to quantify the rarity of life-permitting physics among all possible laws but rather at the level of initial conditions and constants as not enough is known to evaluate that case in any detail. As Robin Collins puts it, fine-tuning only considers the epistemically illumined region. As we evaluate the space of possibilities that we have sufficient “light” to evaluate, we discover the remarkable fact that life is only possible in a very small subset. Going back to our dartboard analogy from a previous blog, we have some uncertainty about the size of the wall – maybe it’s not 300+ million light years per dimension or maybe it’s actually larger. The argument is still quite powerful even if we’re over estimating the range of available parameters by a factor of a million million million – and remember this analogy dealt with only one of the many finely-tuned parameters.
In a future blog, I will examine how life depends upon certain laws and principles but will not attempt to make a numerical probabilistic case in that arena. In many candidate physical theories, the laws themselves wouldn’t change in different universes, merely the constants in the equations for those laws.
But We Can’t Assess Exact Probabilities
Another objection is that we can’t assess an exact improbability for life. We can tell something is highly improbable even if we cannot compute an exact value or conduct a series of trial experiments. What are the odds that I would beat Lebron James in a one-on-one basketball game? My only chance would be if he got hurt or something and it would be hard to estimate that very precisely.
I agree that it is premature to put an exact number to the rarity of life-permitting universes among possibilities but I believe that we have a dozen or more independent reasons for thinking it highly improbable. I did toss out the improbability of 1 in 10^100 in a previous blog – as a counterfactual saying in effect that if it could be shown that intelligent life was this rare among possibilities, wouldn’t you count it as some evidence for cosmic design? I indicated that when I present the evidence in detail that I would attempt to justify this number and that many non-theistic physicists accept this magnitude of a number for just a single parameter in some cases.
If we accept the plausible assumptions found in the peer-reviewed physics literature, we do end up with an incredible improbability for a life-permitting universe if physics is set randomly. These articles often cite a natural range for constants based on magnitudes derived from Quantum Field Theory or particle masses as predicted by the standard model of particle physics. For my fine-tuning claim to be defeated virtually all of these physics articles would need to be mistaken.
Computing an exact value involves knowing the exact range of possibilities and the distribution function neither of which is generally known precisely. Many scientists take the principle of indifference to imply a uniform (and thus linear) distribution of possible values for constants, Citing Aguirre’s work, Luke Barnes indicates that it’s unreasonable to expect that new information about underlying physics will invalidate fine-tuning: “In short, to significantly change the probability of a life-permitting universe, we would need a prior that centres close to the observed value, and has a narrow peak. But this simply exchanges one fine-tuning for two – the centre and peak of the distribution.” Barnes/Aguirre discussed this at last summer’s philosophy of cosmology conference amidst many prominent physicists and philosophers who have written about the fine-tuning and no one challenged it. Barnes lists some other key attendees as: Craig Callender (UCSD), Sean Carroll (Cal Tech), Shelly Goldstein (Rutgers), Anna Ijjas (Harvard/Rutgers), Tim Maudlin (NYU), Priya Natarajan (Yale), Ward Struyve (Rutgers), Tiziana Vistarini, (Rutgers), David Wallace (Oxford), Alex Pruss, Chris Smeenk, Fred Adams, Leonard Susskind, Matt Johnson.
In summary, I think it would be a mistake to ignore fine-tuning simply because we don’t know exact ranges that values can take on – if anything we may be underestimating them. As I’m presenting the evidence I’ll try to highlight what physicists are saying with regard to expectations for the range of parameter space and the reader can evaluate whether or not these physicists are mistaken in claiming that life-permitting universes are rare among possibilities.
[1] Bernard Carr and Martin Rees, “The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World,” Nature 278, (1979): 612.
[2] Paul Davies in Templeton address in August 1995. http://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24
[3] Smolin. The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), p. 127.
[4] Paul Davies, The Mind of God (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p 169.
Mistaken Objections that Seek to Trivialize Fine-Tuning
2. Does God Exist?This is my third blog in a series on fine-tuning as evidence for God. Here are the first and second blogs, which deal with the philosophical background. Before I share the evidence I want to refute or at least rebut a few objections seen at the popular level but rarely in scholarly circles – otherwise, readers might just ignore the argument no matter what fine-tuning evidence is presented. Generally one should be wary of dismissive claims that attempt to trivialize what many intelligent physicists and philosophers think is worthy of discussion and evaluation. Even hardened skeptics admit that the fine-tuning evidence is worth evaluating. The late Christopher Hitchens answered a question concerning what is the best argument from the other side: “I think everyone of us picks the fine-tuning one as the most intriguing… you have to spend time thinking about it, working on it. It’s not a trivial [argument].” But let’s consider some popular level responses that seek to trivialize fine-tuning.
The Universe is not Adapted to Us, We’re Adapted to the Universe
This was the primary response given by atheist philosopher Peter Boghossian when I discussed fine-tuning in his recent Q&A session at UT Dallas. This response is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the articles in the physics literature as addressed in my previous blog. The fine-tuning deals with how the physics has to be setup before life gets started so without fine-tuning there is no evolutionary way for adapting life to the universe.
Aren’t Any Set of Physical Constants Just As Likely As Any Other?
About 5 years ago I had the opportunity to engage in sort of a friendly debate with the head of the science department at the high school where my daughter and son attended. She was taking a “Theory of Knowledge” class as part of the International Baccalaureate curriculum and the instructor needed to provide an example to students of presentations of opposing viewpoints. He had heard that I was an advocate of Intelligent Design and wanted each of us to make presentations supporting our viewpoints. He is an excellent teacher and heads the science department and I was somewhat nervous to be engaging in my first public debate of this type – this was before I had read a dozen or so books on fine-tuning and taken a graduate course on Cosmology. However, the instructor gave a surprisingly weak response to the fine-tuning evidence that I had presented. He set up an analogy for the students of dealing out a set of 5 cards from a set of 10 packs of cards with different backings. The odds of dealing out any particular hand were extraordinarily low but he argued that since any set of cards was just as likely as any other set, no inference could be made that the cards were not dealt at random. This was supposed to refute a design inference because any set of constants of physics is just as likely as any other.
However, the assumption that any set of constants is just as likely as any other is the very thing that we want to know. Starting off with that as an assumption begs the question against design. As Luke Barnes articulates in this excellent podcast dealing with responses to the fine-tuning claim, suppose we’re playing poker and every time I deal I get a royal flush. If this continues to happen, you become increasingly convinced that I’m likely to be cheating. If I responded to an accusation of cheating by just saying “well any set of 5 cards is just as likely as any other so you can’t accuse me of cheating” you would be rational to reject this explanation. The question is not “how likely is any set of 5 cards?” but rather “how likely is it I’m cheating if I just dealt myself 10 straight royal flushes?” This question accounts for the possibility that I’m cheating which would almost certainly be true in this scenario. So the right question is “given the fine-tuning evidence, how likely is it that the constants were set at random?” The values for physical constants conform to a very particular pattern – that which supports life. The fact that we have so many finely-tuned constants makes it unlikely that they were all set at random (at least in the single universe scenario and I’ve already shown some of the problems/challenges in multiverse explanations.)
Puddle Thinking
Another failed objection to Fine-Tuning is based on something written by Douglas Adams, the well known author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (although this quote is not from that book):
“Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’”
Richard Dawkins applied this to the fine-tuning at Adams’ eulogy. There is a meaningful lesson perhaps in this analogy but it’s not applicable to the fine-tuning. In the analogy, “gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller” but the water still conforms the hole perfectly up to a certain height. If we discovered that any set of constants and initial conditions would permit life, then the puddle analogy would be applicable but since the universe has to be fine-tuned to support life, it’s quite disanalogous! Any configuration of dirt supports water whereas very, very few configurations of physics can support life. Some skeptical scientists who have studied the fine-tuning explicitly state this analogy “doesn’t hold water” – such as David Deutsch.
Improbable Events Happen All the Time
Yeah, but when a series of unlikely events have something in common that is predicted by a hypothesis one generally treats that as evidence for the hypothesis. There are many cases in science where inferences are made based on probabilities. Certain organisms, for example, are considered to be evolutionary descendants because it would be extremely unlikely for unrelated organisms to randomly arrive at the same DNA sequences (from a naturalistic perspective anyway). Unlikely events or states conform to a pattern predicted by the hypothesis of common descent.
In the fine-tuning case, a series of fundamental constant of physics such as various particle masses and force strengths all happen to take on values in a narrow range that permits life. These facts conform to a long-standing hypothesis that God would want to create a life-permitting universe and leave evidence that He created it and thus fine-tuning should be treated as evidence for design.
Just one Universe so Probability of Life Must be 1 out of 1
This response implies a frequentist view of probability whereas my fine-tuning argument deals with a Bayesian approach to probability which deals with epistemic probability (as a degree in belief). Refer to this article in the Stanford Encyclopedia for some issues in the finite frequentism version of probability theory – it might be useful in some contexts but there are many cases in science where we would be unable to make reasonable inferences without a more generalized approach to probability theory. For example, if scientists are reasoning about what caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs, finite frequentism is not a useful tool for analyzing this one-time event. There are also many cases in theoretical physics in which we can compute probabilities for certain events and don’t need to rely solely on past statistics. Suppose we have just created the first ever 20-sided die (an icosahedron with numbered sides). Under the finite frequentist approach, suppose we roll the die one time and obtain a 7, should we assume the probability of rolling 7’s is 1 out of 1? We can do better using theoretical physics and recognize that we have a 1/20th chance of rolling each number if the die is perfectly constructed. In engineering, we frequently assess theoretical probabilities before deciding what to build.
Consider an example from theoretical physics – we can know that universes in which the electromagnetic force is stronger than the strong nuclear force will likely be lifeless without having to find such a universe and test it for the presence of life. In such a universe there would be no stable atoms and thus no way of plausibly storing enough information to support a self-replicating system. As Luke Barnes says, analyzing fine-tuning is “not just like theoretical physics, it is theoretical physics.” He also has an excellent blog dealing with the limitations of finite frequentism.
Irrelevant Objections
A common objection is that the universe is not jam packed with life, therefore the universe is not-fine-tuned for life” or that “we can’t live in most parts of the universe so it’s not fine-tuned for life.” Note that these objections are very human-centric whereas in Christian theology God not humans is the most important thing in the universe. In my introductory blog, these kinds of overly narrow expectations of what God would or wouldn’t do are what I caution against. The logical approach for a skeptic would be to assess whether or not God exists in an open-minded way and then seek out more information about His attributes. A God that is not merely a human creation should differ at least slightly from human expectations. In terms of these particular objections, God may simply want to humble humans and show us how small and powerless we are compared to Him. More importantly though, these objections are irrelevant to the fine-tuning claim that I made:
“In the set of possible physical laws, parameters and initial conditions, the subset that permits rational conscious life is very small.”
Moreover, as Barnes points out – if you can understand why humans can’t live in these other parts of the universe such as the vacuum of space or near a black hole you can understand why the universe needs to be finely-tuned because without such fine-tuning the entire universe would be a near vacuum or too full of black holes for life. So in some sense these objections implicitly affirm the fine-tuning claim.
How Does Fine-tuning Provide Evidence for God?
2. Does God Exist?In my previous blog, I defined the following fine-tuning claim:
“In the set of possible physical laws, parameters and initial conditions, the subset that permits rational conscious life is very small.”
I pointed out how this fine-tuning claim is widely accepted within the physics community and that some skeptics even admit that it’s not unreasonable to view this as evidence for cosmic design if there are not a multitude of other universes with different randomly-set constants. In this blog I’ll make a philosophical case that the fine-tuning of the universe for life constitutes evidence for God.
Let’s apply a methodology commonly used in science for making an inference to the best explanation.1 Scientists frequently evaluate candidate models based on how well predictions of those models match observations. In an atheistic origins model, the constants governing the laws of physics and the initial conditions were either set randomly or at least without respect to their consequences for bringing about intelligent life. In a theistic model, however, it’s not surprising to think that God would prefer a universe which supports rational conscious creatures. The skeptic who raises the problem of evil as an objection to God’s existence is implicitly affirming this expectation that God should favor conscious life. 2
Another expectation of skeptics also supports the inference from fine-tuning to divine design – the claim that God should leave some evidence for his existence. It is unsurprising that God would want to create a universe in which it appears that initial conditions and laws were set up providentially to reveal a purpose for the universe. If nearly any set of constants would have resulted in intelligent life, then it would appear as though no intervention was required to setup life-supporting physics. Conversely under atheism, there is no reason to expect that a life-supporting universe would be unlikely among possibilities. Indeed many skeptical scientists who have studied this fine-tuning data admit its surprising nature under their worldview. David Deutsch, for example, writes: “If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he is hiding his head in the sand. These special features are surprising and unlikely.”
Fine-tuning, if true, therefore, favors the hypothesis of theism over atheism because this data is much more likely on theism than atheism. This falls out from the likelihood principle from Bayesian probability theory. We can examine fine-tuning in isolation to see how one should adjust the credence for inferring God’s existence. My claim is simply that whatever was one’s prior epistemic probability for God’s existence, this fine-tuning evidence should make the hypothesis that God exists epistemically more likely than previously thought. So I’m not claiming proof of God’s existence but rather that fine-tuning is evidence for God’s existence.
Even many agnostics or atheists seem to agree that at least prima facie the fine-tuning looks like divine design. The fine-tuning is one of the key lines of evidence that led philosopher Antony Flew to renounce his long-held atheism. Here are a few quotes capturing the reaction among prominent skeptics that have studied this evidence:
“The impression of design is overwhelming. 3” Physicist Paul Davies
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics … and that there are no blind forces in nature.4” Physicist Fred Hoyle
“As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency – or, rather, Agency – must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?5” Astronomer George Greenstein
“Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It cannot be so easily explained, and has far deeper physical and philosophical implications. Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.6” Stephen Hawking. He also says that the fine-tuning may reveal “a divine purpose in Creation and the choice of the laws of science.” To be clear, Hawking ultimately rejects this interpretation but admits the facts seem to support this viewpoint if there were no multiverse.
“If there is an inexplicable coincidence in the fundamental constants of nature whose values have to be precisely-tuned within a wide range of otherwise available possibilities that would make a complex universe possible then this constitutes a phenomenon that very naturally invites explanation in terms of a cosmic scale designer.” Oxford Philosopher Peter Millican in his debate with William Lane Craig. Millican rejects the conclusion of design but seems to agree with my argument thus far that if the universe is fine-tuned it should serve as evidence for God.
The Philosophical Basis of a Fine-Tuning Argument for God
My philosophical argument is based on philosopher of science John T. Roberts’ formulation. The existence of life is treated as “background knowledge while the fact that fine-tuning is required for life serves as the evidence.” Roberts has an excellent illustration to elucidate the argument. Suppose that you witness a dart coming from behind you and landing on an enormously large wall that is homogeneously white. You wonder whether the dart was skillfully aimed or just flung in a random direction. You might be tempted to think that the dart was aimed since it’s incredibly improbable to have landed at that particular point on this enormous wall but that would be mistaken. There is nothing to distinguish the dart’s landing spot from any other location. Suppose that you then put on a pair of infrared goggles and see that there is actually a single, tiny bull’s-eye surrounding the dart on the wall. Now an inference that the dart was aimed seems plausible.
Picture (courtesy of Richard Matthews)
One can easily see how this analogy applies to the fine-tuning. Whether or not the dart was aimed is analogous to the question of whether or not there was intent in the setup of physics. No one argued for design based on the particular constants of physics until knowledge was gained that there was something special about those constants – life-permitting values were enormously rare. There was no significance at all in recognizing that constants permitted life – the perception of specialness arose when the set of life-permitting values were discovered to be a miniscule subset among possibilities. A universe containing life would be an aim-worthy target for a Creator. Most fine-tuning advocates run an argument for theism based on God favoring a life-permitting Universe but Roberts’ way of framing the argument side-steps certain objections as will be seen in future blogs.
Some readers may not be seeing the full force of the argument because I haven’t yet presented the extensive evidence that the universe is finely-tuned. Consider that many different parameters must each be finely-tuned – so it’s really like having many darts each hit a bull’s-eye. The inference to design will be more easily recognized if we shed some light as to the specialness of the required values. Consider the size of the bull’s eye and wall based on just 1 parameter – the cosmological constant. There is a natural range for possible values for this constant because there are known contributions that are 10120 times larger than the overall net value. (There is a near perfect but inexact cancellation of contributions accurate to 120 decimal places). Let’s use the most conservative numbers in the physics literature that indicate a fine-tuning to 1 part in 1053. If the cosmological constant, which governs the expansion rate of the universe, had been larger than its current value by this tiny fraction, then the universe would have expanded so fast that no stars or planets would have formed and therefore no life. If the value were smaller by this amount then the universe would have rapidly collapsed before the universe cooled sufficiently to allow for stable information storage which is required by any self-replicating system such as life. (And could intelligent life really emerge if the universe lasted only a few days even under ideal conditions?) Using this ratio, the size of the wall containing a single inner bull’s-eye of the size on a standard dart board, would be over 376 million light years on each side. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year – at 186,282 miles per second this is pretty far. The inference that the dart was aimed to the special area where life is possible seems reasonable – and that is just considering one of the finely-tuned parameters!
For one who assumes that nature is all there is, it is very surprising that the universe began in such an improbable state that it could support life and that a number of fundamental parameters whose values are not dictated by any known underlying theory all happen to lie in a narrow life-permitting region. This should cause one to question the assumptions of the naturalistic worldview.
1To clarify, I’m not making a scientific argument but rather a philosophical argument which relies on scientific data to affirm the truth of the premise that life-permitting universes are rare among possibilities.
2Refer to writings by Alvin Plantiga and William Lane Craig and others on the problem of evil as it’s tangential to my fine-tuning argument.
3Davies, The Cosmic Code, p. 203.
4Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections.” Engineering and Science, Nov 1981. pp. 8–12
5Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic Universe, p.27.
6Hawking, Stephen. Grand Design, p. 162.
If You Don’t Want God, You Better Have a Multiverse!
2. Does God Exist?Such is the advice from Bernard Carr in grappling with the fascinating discovery that the physics of the universe had to be fine-tuned if it were to support life. Carr views the only viable options as being either God or a multiverse (the theory that there are a vast number of other universes). Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind also calls our attention to these relatively recent discoveries: “Science may be undergoing a huge course correction, a paradigm shift. A titanic controversy has erupted over the strange anthropic pattern that nature seems to exhibit – the pattern of extraordinary unexplained coincidences that are necessary for our own existence.[1]” I will discuss these fine-tuning discoveries and their implications in a series of blogs as part of my ongoing series on scientific evidence for God.
Here are my previous blogs in this series prior to the recent hiatus:
Philosophy
Can Science Disprove God?
What Counts as Evidence for God from Science?
Evidence for God from the Origin of the Universe:
Origin of the Universe
Doesn’t Quantum Mechanics Violate the Causal Principle?
Much Ado About Nothing
Philosophical Arguments that the Universe had a Beginning
Before presenting the actual fine-tuning scientific data, I want to explore the philosophical basis of the argument. We can then examine the scientific data relative to some reasonable evaluation criteria.
What is Fine-Tuning?
Fine-tuning is not a synonym for design but is rather a technical term in physics that refers to a narrow range for suitable values among possibilities. All else being equal, if theory A requires fine-tuning and theory B doesn’t, then theory B is deemed to be more likely to be true because it doesn’t rely on assumptions for narrow constraints for the values of one or more parameters. There are other contexts where fine-tuning is discussed with respect to various hypotheses having nothing to do with life, but I defend this fine-tuning claim:
“In the set of possible physical laws, parameters and initial conditions, the subset that permits rational conscious life is very small.”
The universe is said to be finely-tuned for life if most possible ways for setting up physics would have resulted in no intelligent life anywhere in the universe. My claim is close to that defined by Luke Barnes[2] in his important review article. I use the term “rational conscious life” rather than “the evolution of intelligent life” because the fine-tuning claim can be evaluated independently of biological evolution. My wording also reflects Christian expectations that God wanted creatures in His image – rational, conscious creatures with whom He could have a relationship.
It’s important to note that my fine-tuning claim deals with the fundamental physics of the universe required before any biological evolution could get started. I personally happen to be skeptical of the all-encompassing claims about naturalistic macroevolution but even if it explains the full diversity of life that is irrelevant to my fine-tuning claim. For example, a universe without one type of fine-tuning would have lasted only a few hours and never cooled below 9000K. Thus, it is unreasonable to expect such a universe to have contained life – much less intelligent life. Physicists writing fine-tuning articles routinely make claims about life being impossible without certain finely-tuned parameters or initial conditions. Craig Hogan, for example, is very explicit, stating that “changing the quark masses even a small amount has drastic consequences [for] which no amount of Darwinian selection can compensate.” Alan Lightman of MIT clarifies the nature of the fine-tuning: “if these fundamental parameters were much different from what they are, it is not only human beings that would not exist but no life of any kind would exist.” No biological evolution can start until you have the first living cell and the vast majority of ways to setup the physics never allow life to get started.
My future blogs will detail some of the evidence supporting my fine-tuning claim but here is a foretaste from atheist physicist Stephen Hawking’s best-selling book, A Brief History of Time (on p. 125):
“The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers [i.e. the constants of physics] seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. For example, if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, stars would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would not have exploded. It seems clear that there are relatively few ranges of values for the numbers [i.e. the constants of nature] that would allow for development of any form of intelligent life.”
How widespread is the acceptance of fine-tuning among physicists?
In a word – very! In my years of researching this topic, I’m amazed at how few scientists who have studied the fine-tuning details disagree with this core claim that the subset of life-permitting physics is a tiny fraction among possibilities. Since Luke Barnes is a top researcher on this topic, consider his input on the level of acceptance of the fine-tuning claim: “I’ve published a review of the scientific literature, 200+ papers, and I can only think of a handful that oppose this conclusion, and piles and piles that support it.[3]”
Of course, any topic with potentially significant philosophical or even spiritual implications is likely to encounter some opposition. Many physicists who accept the fine-tuning data do not, of course, embrace the design implications. Some readers might be wondering how the skeptics interpret this evidence. The most common response among skeptical physicists is an appeal to the multiverse as alluded to in the introduction.
Image: Courtesy Kevin Hainline
Is the multiverse a satisfying explanation of the fine-tuning?
If we have an enormous number of other universes and if they have widely varying laws, then perhaps sufficient probabilistic resources exist for life to emerge in some universe. We need to carefully evaluate how well the multiverse serves as a potential explanation for fine-tuning. Here are some potential challenges to a multiverse explanation of the fine-tuning:
– No empirical evidence exists for any universe other than our own
– We need vast numbers of other universes to overcome horrendous odds against a life-permitting universe – probably more than 10100 (which is more than the number of subatomic particles in our observable universe)
– A universe generating mechanism might itself require fine-tuning to generate so many universes o This is certainly true for the most popular multiverse theory – eternal inflation.
o Also, other assumptions are required for eternal inflation – as Vilenkin admits: “The most likely thing to pop out of the [quantum vacuum] is a tiny Planck-sized universe, which would not tunnel, but would instantly recollapse and disappear. Tunneling to a larger size has a small probability and therefore requires a large number of trials. It appears to be consistent only with the Everett interpretation.” This Everett or many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is one of a dozen or so interpretations and many physicists are skeptical of this interpretation because it entails that parallel universes are spawned at every quantum event.
– The new universes would need to have different physical constants
o There are many theoretical reasons for thinking constants might vary but we have no clear evidence that fundamental constants have ever been more than trivially different in different parts of our observable universe. Without new physics in each universe, our odds for life wouldn’t be helped – it’d be like buying a million lottery tickets with the same set of numbers for each ticket!
– The constants would need to vary extremely widely
o The degree of variety in possible values for the constants may not be sufficient unless a particular version of string theory is true. Some string theorists think that perhaps there are as many as 10500 different possible values for the constants. This variance would be more than sufficient. Polchinski, however, is one of many string theorists who disagree with this proposal – “there is no reason to expect … a large number of variations in the constants of physics.[5]”
– It is fallacious to view the fine-tuning itself as evidence for a multiverse since the existence of other universes doesn’t make it any more likely that our universe supports life. We need independent evidence for the multiverse hypothesis before it becomes a viable candidate explanation of the fine-tuning. MIT philosopher of science Roger White shows this using Bayesian logic and summarizes: “the fact that our universe is fine-tuned gives us no further reason to suppose that there are universes other than ours.”
– Is the multiverse theory even scientific?
o Personally I’m not too concerned about this question – we just want to follow the evidence wherever it leads even if that is beyond the realm of direct empirical confirmation. It should be pointed out though that the most popular multiverse theories, such as eternal inflation, postulate other universes that could not have interacted with our universe, even in principle. About the only way to affirm such multiverse theories is to examine how well our universe conforms to multiverse predictions after applying a selection effect due to the constraint that observers can only observe a life-permitting universe. This selection effect is known as the anthropic principle although it really deals with any type of observer whereas ‘anthropic’ is derived from the Greek word ‘anthropos,’ which means human.
o Thus, our universe should be typical among life-permitting universes. If our universe appears “overly” fine-tuned it would still look more like the product of design than a random member of an ensemble of life-permitting universes. For further information about this widely accepted principle among multiverse advocates, see this excellent book of essays by prominent physicists entitled Universe or Multiverse?
As we’re examining the fine-tuning evidence in future blogs, I’ll point out cases where parameters are significantly more fine-tuned than is necessary since this counts against the multiverse as a solution to the fine-tuning problem. As a preview consider that many physicists such as Lee Smolin have pointed out problems in this arena such as proton decay rates being many orders of magnitude smaller than the life permitting region. Also, Oxford physicist Roger Penrose says that the multiverse is “worse than useless” as explanation of the finely-tuned initial conditions because the multiverse predicts hyper-exponentially more tiny universes than large ones like ours.
Some physicists have rightly pointed out that a multiverse by itself is not necessarily a violation of Occam’s razor since it could arise from a simple law-like mechanism for generating universes. The key issue though is that for the multiverse to be an adequate explanation for the fine-tuning it requires the conjunction of several hypotheses for which we lack any empirical evidence:
Occam’s razor therefore does seem to favor design over the multiverse. When one accounts for the extensive problems in affirming premise 2 and how these multiverse theories make predictions incompatible with our universe, the hypothesis that God designed the physics of the universe to bring about life is more plausible. That so many physicists appeal to the multiverse to explain away the design implications of fine-tuning testifies to the power of this argument!
Notes
[1] Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. The Chattahoochee Review Podcast. (near about the 6th minute)
[2] I highly recommend Barnes’ excellent blogs correcting various people on both sides of the debate when they make mistakes in their analysis of the math, physics, or philosophy. I hope I can get more people to read his blogs. I recommend his blogs more than my own – I’m just trying to be a popularizer of the excellent scholarly work that is out there!
[3] To support the claim that Barnes is a top researcher/thinker on fine-tuning consider that he was invited to speak at last summer’s Philosophy of Cosmology conference. Here is his blog article from which I obtained his quote: http://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/christmas-tripe-a-fine-tuned-critique-of-richard-carrier-part-3/
[4] Carroll, Tam. Unitary Evolution and Cosmological Fine-Tuning. http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.1417v1
[5] Polchinski, String Theory. (1998, Vol. 2, pp. 372-73).
[6] Lee Smolin. The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), 169.
[7] Ibid., 197.
[8] M-Theory is simply a more generalized version of String Theory