A Fine Tuned Universe Points to God (Here's How and Why!)
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- Опубліковано 4 чер 2024
- Cosmic fine-tuning is often considered one of the best arguments for God. In this teaching, from a recent conference, I break down the concept of fine-tuning so it is understandable and interesting. Check it out and consider sharing with a friend.
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It seems to me that humans are not fine tuned.
I remember giggling uncontrollably at the school choir rehearsals.
Many of the boys were quite unable to sing in tune.
Great fun.
If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why would he be limited to working within such tight constraints?
Because he liked it to be that way.
He’s not we are.
Yeah, God can make a universe any way he wants. Or maybe this was the best option.
Adventures in missing the point.
Should God make a universe that operates on "magic" or designed mechanism. When you move your pawns forward in chess, you create a weakness behind. There are effects that certain things make that affect other things when they do things. It all has to be balanced together.
There is an idea abroad that God fine tuned the universe so that life could develop.
And there was me thinking that life was created by God just a few thousand years ago.
But now we know that life isn't a miracle ! Given the right conditions, life will appear.
Uhmm, life is still a miracle, the chance of life appeared purely by chance still as astronomically low probability as fine tuned universe, and we still unable to recreate life in lab
@@laosi4278
You are right.
Take for example the chances of my children being born. Very unlikely indeed.
I only met my wife by accident. She didn't have to be at that particular dance.
She could have been at home, reading the Bible instead of dancing with me.
@@laosi4278
When you say, "life is still a miracle", I suppose you mean it's very rare and unlikely.
That is obviously true. The universe is vast, with billions of galaxies and trillions of planets.
Only one planet is suitable for Christians, Moslims, Hindus, Jews, fetish worshippers etc.
Even the birth of Jesus was pot luck, and Mary could have had a girl (God forbid).
AMAZING.
Something to think about 🤔
There is a general principle in all proofs that a god exists.
First, find a known fact that I can't explain, e.g. lightning.
Then say, Zeus is the explanation.
What’s your take on Jonathan Weisberg’s “Argument from Divine Indifference”?
I think it is compelling. In brief, what it says is that the fact that there is life could be surprising, but that the fact that the universe is fine tuned tells against theism. Given life and fine tuning, the probability space for both theism and atheism is equal. In other words, fine tuning has nothing to do with it. To an extent, it partakes of the exotic life argument and the anthropic argument together.
Think of two prison cells. Cell A contain 9 innocent prisoners and 991 guilty while Cell B contain only 1 innocent prisoner and 999 guilty.
There are two ways that a prisoner can be freed, by lottery or by a judge (and a judge will pick only innocent prisoners). The fact that an innocent prisoner is picked is surprising if it was a random generator that picked. But the fact that the prisoner is innocent AND was from Cell B is surprising if the judge chose it. That’s because there are more innocent prisoners in Cell A. (though less surprising for a random generator to choose an innocent prisoner as a whole)
Now change the scenario to show that Cell A has 999 innocent prisoners and 1 guilty and Cell B has 1 innocent and 999 guilty.
Now, the fact that an innocent prisoner is picked is no longer surprising as the chances of picking an innocent prisoner is 50/50. But the fact that the prisoner is picked from Cell B is incredibly surprising given if it was a judge who picked.
The argument, therefore, forces the theist supporter to show that there are only a few life-permitting universes possible as a whole. I don’t think they can do that by simply showing that THIS universe is fine tuned.
If you had a bucket of 1000 dice and you tip them out onto the floor. The chances that they would fall in that exact way, with those exact numbers in that exact position are incalculably small, yet they did . They did because they had to land somehow and that’s how it happened to be. The only way it would be amazing is if you had planned out ahead of time how you wanted the dice to land. If you have a goal in mind, where every dice has to fall just where you want it to, then achieve that with your. bucket roll, then we can be in awe at the slim chances. It’s the same with the universe. We only know of one universe, we do not know there was a plan or a goal. It’s this way, because it happened to land this way. If the the bucket of dice were rolled again, the result would be different, just like if the universe were different, the universe would be different. Doesn’t tell us anything because we have no evidence that there was any intention for it to be this way. What I find astoundingly egocentric is people that look at the universe and conclude they, as a human, must have been the goal of the universe all along .
Ur argument was contradicting, because we know that the chance this universe happened is astronomically small, that's why it make sense that this universe was intended by some sort of intelligence, other possible way is if this universe is only one possible outcome of many numbers of universe, yet u said urself that we have no way to know if there is other universe, only this one, thus if we want to explain the existence of this universe without the need for the existence of other universes it make more sense that the existence of this universe is intended from the beginning
@@laosi4278 How can we know the chance of this universe happening is astronomically small? We have only one universe to examine and it is this way. The point of my dice analogy is to show that the dice have to fall in one way and the only thing that would make that an amazing and low probability event is if there was a prior intention for them to land exactly that way and then they did. So the presumption of intent in your comment is exactly what you are relying on to say that the chances of the universe being this way are small. Without a presumption of intent then the universe is just as it happened to be, just like the dice fell the way they fell.
@@laosi4278 I thought of another example of why the intention is the issue.
Someone fans out a deck of cards to you and you pick one at random. It’s the 3 of clubs. Everyone in the room claps and is amazed, the chances of that happening by accident have gotta be low. No.
No one cares if the 3 of clubs was picked unless there is some prior prediction or requirement for it to be exactly that card. It’s just a random card absent the intent or prediction part.
We have only one universe and no knowledge of any intent or prediction, so to say the chance of it coming into existence as it is is astronomically small is like clapping for the random card.
You keep saying “We have no knowledge of intent”, but we do. It goes like this “In the beginning God created…”. And that is from the book that declares the end from the beginning. It calls it’s shots in advance hundreds of times with all of them being fulfilled.
@@doubriewotsit4090 I think if you watch the video you would get the idea why the scientists themselves thought how extremely low probability is the emergence of our universe, you see our what fine tuning argue is that in order our universe to exist and life can happen is there is must be a balance in the ingredients, in the natural laws, each law itself have extremely low window for error for it the allow our universe and life can exist.
This low window for error which we call in our daily "precision" And up to this point what we call precision can only be found in anything created by intelligence, thus where the intent comes from
Commenting for algorithm
Ryan Ahler
Sean, Interesting talk. You make a very common math mistake with the fine tuning argument though. A variable changing by a “factor of 1 in million billion...etc” is not the same as the odds of it happening being 1 in million billion etc. Go back and check - you change the verbiage halfway through your speech!
Example: let’s say a spark plug should have a gap of .030 inches, and the plug will not work if it’s .003 inches or more off (this is made up, but illustrates the point). So if it’s off by a factor of 1 in 10, it will not work. Does that mean that every 10th spark plug won’t work? No. It’s not an odds, it’s a factor. To see the odds you might need to research the quality assurance standards at the spark plug factory. Let’s say 1 spark plug in a thousand will accidentally be .003 inches or more off. So the odds of it happening is 1 in 1000.
Factor isn’t odds. You can’t multiply those together and get ridiculous numbers - like one grain of sand in the universe. We have no idea what the odds are. It’s completely possible that there is 0% chance it could be different.
The fine tuning argument is an interesting one. It really hurts your argument when you so drastically overstate your case with such a mistake though - which I know you avoid doing when it comes to the subject of martyrs.
That's actually a fantastic point. I think the underlying assumption you're questioning though is how is that constant or number "chosen", which equates to how is the universe constructed. If it is a random process, then the argument works, because you have to stumble upon these constants by chance for them - and the metaphorically spark plug - to work. And I think for most theists that is the attacking point. They say under atheism, it must be a random process. They can't conceive of any other possibilities.
But that is why it is a fallacy, and a form of God of the gaps reasoning. Back in ancient times we also couldn't understand physical reasons for why there were storms, volcanoes, or what the sun and moon were. If the known naturalistic explanations failed, then they invented Gods to explain them. But the Gods never had evidence proving they were real, and so one by one they failed as it was discovered that there were better explanations over time, and they were eventually all regarded as myths from a superstitious time.
In the modern era, the fine-tuning argument is just another version of the same ancient fallacy. Instead of a volcano its now the universe that we can't explain. And because there are no naturalistic explanations (although even that is not true when we look at the idea of parallel universes, which some theists acknowledge), theists just assert that a conscious mind is either the only explanation or that it is somehow more "parsimonious" than the many worlds interpretation because its less complex.
The problem is that it is not the only explanation, and even if you wanted to argue from parsimony, parsimony only works when you have actual evidence for your theory. You don't argue that something is likely to be true just on the basis of its simplicity alone. There needs to be evidence that actually shows it is true. So its all an example of faulty reasoning.
@@radscorpion8 Agree with you. But random selection of the value still doesnt get the numbers Sean is giving here. If the constant in question is 100, then random chance doesnt mean between 0 and 100 - it could be any number. It could be 105. It could be 20000. It could be 646856877.665. So the chances of selecting a value within any finite range of values is 1/infinity. Not 1/100 in that case.
Religious zealots always use statistics incorrectly. Im convinced religion makes people ignorant.
We just got here is not a better argument
Close-minded atheists: "Nuh uh"
We aren’t close-minded (some of us are), in fact I would say we’re more open-minded. Christians read the Bible and set out to prove it right, instead we examine the universe and come up with a conclusion with no previous bias. The same cannot be said for Christians.
@@dI9ESTIVES123 The same can and is said of Christians who actually know why they believe in Jesus. We're free to follow the evidence where it leads.
Andrew Elliott That’s the problem with Theism. There is no objective evidence to follow. Simply anecdotal testimonies in which people say they ‘felt a presence’ or they prayed and ‘god saved them’. These are not reliable and therefore cannot be considered strong proof for the existence of such a being, especially since the human mind can be tricked so easily. But that’s understandable, some people can’t handle to hard truth of the universe, that there isn’t a father figure up there looking out for them; there isn’t a life after this one; nothing is planned an d the universe doesn’t care about you. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but that’s it, we as humans aren’t special, just apes that devolved large brains and accessed a plethora of technology and birthed philosophy.
@@dI9ESTIVES123 That's the problem with atheists. It's easy for you to strawman and ignore reality that there are Christians who believe because of evidence and not "feeling a presence". It really is hard for atheists to understand they can't just impose a naturalistic presupposition of the universe and dismiss anything they can't see as "make believe". This is not reliable and cannot be trusted as it requires more FAITH than theism. It's understandable though, knowing that we're purposely designed by our Creator thanks to the fine tuning of the Universe can be a hard pill to swallow for someone who simply doesn't want to believe.
Andrew Elliott Pascal’s wager? Telling me it requires more faith to not believe doesn’t remove any problems, I’ve still got to choose which religion to believe in and encounter the problem as to whether that would even be considered real faith rather than an act of self-preservation. And yes, we can impose a naturalistic presumption on the universe because it’s the only way the universe can be reliably analysed without throwing random ideas in and saying that ‘there’s always the possibility’, by that method we would never get to the truth, it would be as misguided as dismissing a murder suspect just because you ‘feel’ that they didn’t do it without providing a rationalised argument that adheres to a naturalistic presumption. Face it, faith is simply believing without evidence and being driven by self-conviction rather than objective and rationalised evidence. Don’t you think it would be nice having someone look over us and protect us; knowing that death isn’t the end? Sounds fun but it doesn’t mean it’s true and so far there has been nothing to support this hypothesis except form dusty, old books from hundreds of years ago where people had no idea what they came across and simply blamed it on a divine being.
If there is this ‘supposed evidence’ you speak of, then present it on the world stage. It’s important, because it seems that you; Andrew Elliot, may have actually ended the debate single-handedly by providing proof of an irrational fairytale. Spread the word of this evidence you speak of! Cos I certainly haven’t come across any of it and am sure that what you’ll label as evidence will simply be ignorance disguising itself as objective proof.
And if this explanation do yours doesn’t follow a naturalistic presumption? Then might I suggest you heed Christopher Hitchens use of the Sagan standard ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’.
The fine tuned argument is poor. I’ll explain why: the universe isn’t perfect for us, rather we are perfect for the universe. We as organisms have adapted to the universe, not the other way around. Another way to think of this is the puddle analogy:
Imagine one day that it rains and a puddle forms on the pavement (sidewalk)
Now, imagine this puddle suddenly gains consciousness and observes its surroundings. It looks at its body and realises that it perfectly aligns with the crack in the pavement (which we know happened as a result of other actions and not specifically for the puddle)
Then it says “This is amazing! Think about how many coincidences must have happened for this crack to perfectly fit my body, if it was an inch to the right or to the left it wouldn’t contain me perfectly, there must be a creator that designed this crack just perfectly for me”
Clearly we know this is wrong, but you can apply it to the FT argument. If any other things were different in the beginning of the universe, then life as we know it wouldn’t develop, but there would be other things or other beings that also question how everything is so perfect for them. We don’t know how the universe would have turned out if other things happened at the beginning, but that doesn’t mean the chances of this universe being the way it is is suddenly impossibly small.
"suddenly gains consciousness" is a huge derailer to this analogy. Atheists truly do have to sit in God's lap to slap him in the face.
Andrew Elliott the point of ‘suddenly gains consciousness’ is to skip the explanation of how life came about. Otherwise I would have to outline the evolution of all organism which would take forever. Instead the analogy gets right to the crux of the issue by addressing the problem of fine-tuning. Some people seem to think that every thing is perfect for humans and that it must have been made especially for us, which is incredibly stupid when you realise that we are simply the puddle and are assuming that the crack we find ourselves in (the universe) was made in consideration for us.
We came about after the Earth (I realise now that universe is too broad a term because on most places in the universe we would die), so it would make sense that we have adapted, but there are also problems that need to be addressed making this so called FT universe a dud:
1. Most planet orbits are unstable
2. Less than 3% of a gas cloud actually makes a star
3. Most places kill life instantly
4. Galaxy orbits bring you near a supernova
5. We’re gonna collide with andromeda
6. Earthquakes and volcanoes level cities
7. Can’t live on 2/3 of earths surface
8. Mass extinctions
9. 90% of all life that ever lived is now extinct
10. Tsunamis/tornadoes/hurricanes/lightning strikes
11. Took 3.5 billions years for multicellular life to come about
12. Aggressive childhood lukemia/ haemophilia/sickle cell/multiple sclerosis/epilepsy/Parkinsons/ALS
13. Narrow view of electromagnetic spectrum
14. Vision loss/teeth deterioration/prostate cancer with age
15. Warm-blooded animals must eat constantly compared to cold-blooded animals
16. Eyes aren’t amazing (we can’t detect magnetic fields, ionising radiation fields or Radon)
17. Practically in a coma for 1/3 of our lives (sleep)
18. Most birth defects are unknown and unnecessary
19. Eat, breath and drink through the same hole (choking hazard)
Robert Vann There’s absolutely nothing suggesting that. And if it were true, what can we do about it? All we can is use what we have to the best of our ability. Sadly, as humans, that’s all we can hope to do. If you manage to break through that, well done, but our best guess is science and from what we’ve observed about it, it’s a pretty excellent guess. It’s easy to say that a person didn’t really commit a crime because it’s always possible that an alien ship came through the window and stole everything and then wiped everyone’s minds and then placed evidence everywhere to incriminate the person. But we can’t go around throwing theories like that around because we’d never actually get to the truth.
Robert Vann Holy crap. That was paragraph of pure garbage disguised to look intelligent. I’m sorry, I can’t dignify a response to someone who clearly ignores science because evidence is simply an assumption but will readily believe any crackpot theory thrown out there. I’m going to stop replying to your comments because it’s exhausting to explain why our universe isn’t perfect and why complexity doesn’t require a creator once so doing it twice is quite a task. What really killed it for me was when you said a being must have revealed it to me, which is something smart people call a loaded question.
Here are some reasons why he universe isn’t perfect (as I listed already):
1. Most planet orbits are unstable
2. Less than 3% of a gas cloud actually makes a star
3. Most places kill life instantly
4. Galaxy orbits bring you near a supernova
5. We’re gonna collide with andromeda
6. Earthquakes and volcanoes level cities
7. Can’t live on 2/3 of earths surface
8. Mass extinctions
9. 90% of all life that ever lived is now extinct
10. Tsunamis/tornadoes/hurricanes/lightning strikes
11. Took 3.5 billions years for multicellular life to come about
12. Aggressive childhood lukemia/ haemophilia/sickle cell/multiple sclerosis/epilepsy/Parkinsons/ALS
13. Narrow view of electromagnetic spectrum
14. Vision loss/teeth deterioration/prostate cancer with age
15. Warm-blooded animals must eat constantly compared to cold-blooded animals
16. Eyes aren’t amazing (we can’t detect magnetic fields, ionising radiation fields or Radon)
17. Practically in a coma for 1/3 of our lives (sleep)
18. Most birth defects are unknown and unnecessary
19. Eat, breath and drink through the same hole (choking hazard)
And here is the reason why the complexity of our universe doesn’t require a creator:
*MUST READ AS IT DEBUNKS YOUR CRAP ARGUMENT*
What you’ve said is a variation of Paley’s watchmaker analogy. Observing complex things within the universe being created (like a painting) doesn’t mean that rule applies to the universe as a whole. Doing so is a false cause fallacy. I’ve made my point, read it properly before spewing more crap.
Watch this if you want to understand better: ua-cam.com/video/PHmjHMbkOUM/v-deo.html
Also, don’t refer to yourself as scientist. That’s a whole other level of disrespect to people who think rationally.
Robert Vann Damn, I may disagree with you on the nature of the universe (as I believe you attribute too much meaning to it) and definitely disagree on what is considered proof of something rather than proof against something. however, this was thoroughly refreshing. It’s nice to know that theists actually research the claims made by science and understand the evidence provided. I will also say that I don’t think researching and pondering upon metaphysics will help to understand the universe because of the concepts that are beyond the realm of testing and falsifying. I would recommend reading up on logical fallacies to really grasp when someone makes a logical error, it should benefit you in the future. Thanks for the advice, good luck to you too.
images.app.goo.gl/qEekxKpkRBAmnYxX7
The main problem with the fine-tuning argument is that it assumes that the "constants" could take different values, and that we can actually calculate a probability that they are suitable for life. But we don't know that the constants could take other values, they're "constants" simply because we don't yet have a fundamental theory from which we can derive their values. All in all, fine-tuning is no better than God of the Gaps. I explain more here: ua-cam.com/video/dGsYR0ubq_k/v-deo.html
So even just the absurd and incomprehensible statistics of even having the existence of atoms from the necessary perfectly compatible strong and weak nuclear forces doesn't make you question your view of natural processes? Now multiply that absurdity with so many other incomprehensible exponentials of improbability necessary of physical constants to make this thing work. If I only had your faith. Plank went from an ardent atheist to a Christian in part because even (his) Plank's Constant made the existence of the universe so absurdly impossible. Please be a scientist and consider the facts, evidence, and proof that this universe is light years beyond chance...as so many physicists have already concluded.
@@brianmcmahon6293 Even quantum physics points to God.
I think cognitive dissonance is atheists problem.
also that its tuned for humans who can only exist in an extremely small part of said universe ( or even of the solar system ) without dying immediately . its much better tuned for black holes
constants = unchanging, consistent
You're completely right. Fine tuning arguments just make me think theists are just really bad at math or more specifically understanding probability. Maybe if we had a few extra universes and 14 billion more years of time we could make these assessments, but we don't so we actually have no idea how probable these constants are.
The FT argument is very hard to refute.
Unless they deny the fact that it is incredibly intricate and sophisticated and complicated that human understanding cannot bear to comprehend
Its actually quite easy to refute because its essentially a God of the gaps fallacy in logic. I wrote a comment above to ryana about it
@@radscorpion8Nope, it is possible for God to exist and to be the cause of things that we cannot currently explain scientifically.
This fine-tuning argument is dumb. It's like saying: "Isn't it wonderful how this 0,0000000000000000000000000000000001% of matter has evolved for 0,00000000000000000000001% of time. Isn't it great that this 0,0000000000000000000000001% of the Universe is so perfect, that we can exist here, while on 99,9999999999999999999999% of this Universe we can't"