The are a lot of problems with the "argument from fine tuning" but here is one I haven't seen before.
If we assume there is/was a creator god, could it only have created potential worshipers in a universe that relies on natural forces with the values we currently observe?
The argument from fine tuning suggests that because life as we know it could not exist if the fundamental forces of nature were slightly different, then the most likely cause that the values came to be what they are, was an intelligent tuner. But this also suggest that a creator god could not have done things differently. Why not? That certainly cramps the meaning of omnipotent. Or if a god could have done things differently then why couldn't an alternative nature also have done things differently?
There are better, more direct refutations out there. But it seems odd to suggest that
(1) neither a creator god nor nature could have produced a different universe that would support life therefore a creator god is more likely ...or
(2) a creator god could have produced a different universe that would support life but an alternative nature could not have produced a different universe that would support life, therefore a creator god is more likely ...or
(3)both a creator god or an alternative nature could have produced a different universe that would support life therefore a creator god is more likely.
None of these arguments is particularly persuasive on their own. And when the alternatives are also considered each seems even weaker.
It couldn't be more obvious. Fine-tuning is an argument against an all-powerful "god". "Fine-tuning" is an argument against an omnipotent and omniscient god.
ReplyDeleteIt's equal to the problem of evil, in that sense. Why not do it perfectly? You're in charge of EVERYTHING, aren't you?
Excellent blog. I hope you do more frequent blogging. Just because people don't respond to every one of them, doesn't mean that they're not listening.
Often, you've put things so well that there's nothing to say in response.
I don't think I could have asked for a better compliment. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteUsually my essays are in response offensive misinformation I've run across somewhere. Quite a few of them are transposed and edited comments I've made elsewhere... usually richarddawkins.net as username: akaei. But more often my tirades don't work well unwound from filaments of nonsense within such threads.
I believe as strongly as ever that revelation, faith, and dogma are the worst possible reasons to accept anything as being true. But I don't look for those fights as often as I have. And too often my response to religious proponents is, "This again!?"
I suppose it is the way of many endeavors. If you like skin you can become a dermatologist... and look at bad skin all day. So too supernatural presuppositions mar the complexion of knowledge and the pursuit thereof.
I accept that it is my, and everyone's, responsibility to question all claims and expose the flaws in disinformation. But due mostly to phases of laziness, complacency or competing interests, I have and will often shirk that responsibility.
But my original motivation for getting into the essay business was to test my own perception. It is a irresponsible for me to make unfounded claims as it is for religious proponents. I WANT to understand reality. I want to know the likelihood of something being true and why it is (or probably is or probably isn't) true. So when someone has a new take on dualism, free will or any existential or religious belief I'm likely to want to examine it. But it's usually just a boring rehash of one of the top dozen or so fallacious theological "proofs" based on one of the theologian's top ten fallacies.
I suppose genuine challenges deserve consideration but dead horses need not be beaten.
Can you think of any religious apologists' claim that hasn't been adequately deflated? I'm sure I'll continue to throw the occasional jab. But I'm open to suggestion in the interim.
I can't think of a single religious apologists' claim that hasn't been adequately deflated. I keep expecting to find a new argument around the next corner that will inspire me. But yes. The same dozen or so. All inadequate. They fail to address the flaws in their arguments that have been pointed out over the centuries.
ReplyDeleteWhat I've found most disappointing is the way the arguments are repeated as though the flaws were never pointed out. There's something inherently dishonest in that and after a couple of years, it's begun to creep me out.
I have no background training in philosophy and so (and I'm grateful for the nudges) chased down their challenges one by one. Their challenges, it turns out, are stale and are effective only because it's not in the nature of most humans to chase down arguments.
I don't say this smugly. I have a lot to learn and would love to come face to face with a legitimate argument for a god. I'm beginning to accept that "arguments for god" aren't made for arguments' sake.
I found your blog because I've thoroughly enjoyed your posts on RD.net and I followed the link a while back. I check in here from time to time because I find your input useful, unique and well-written. You're on my short list. I crave ideas that test themselves. Your ideas do that. I find them stimulating. If you wrote a column, I'd buy the paper.
I've checked a lot of links on RD.net but I check back on only a few of them. Yours, Steve Zara's and Quine's are on my short list. I look for writers who make me think and help me think. I need that. I have a lot to learn.
Keep writing. As I said, replies mean nothing. Writing's everything.
Allusive Atheist,
ReplyDeleteIt's good that you're thinking about the fine-tuning argument, but you seem to have misunderstood what it's all about. Of course God could have made things differently. But nature is more constrained than God. Given the nature that exists, certain things are impossible. For example it is impossible---given the nature that exists---for an object to travel faster than the speed of light, for energy to be created or destroyed, &c. Now, back in those first few fractions of a second after the big bang, nature was not similarly constrained---at least not according to the evidence up to that point. So from that epistemic position we can run the argument. If God exists, then there is a fairly good chance that he is interested in moral agency and will ensure the constants permit such agency. However, if only nature exists, then since nature has no preferences, we must apply the principle of indifference, whereby we find that the probability of the constants permitting moral agency on naturalism is extremely low---extremely! Of course we now know that the physical constants are all quite friendly to moral agency in the universe, and so it is a simple matter of applying the likelihood principle to infer the existence of God.
None of this requires that God be constrained. The idea is that we go back to those first tiny moments after the big bang, just before the physical constants have settled down to be fixed values, but still after nature has itself taken on key constraints.
--TFA
" If God exists, then there is a fairly good chance that he is interested in moral agency and will ensure the constants permit such agency. "
ReplyDeleteIf a god or a committee of gods exist (sorry... you've given me no reason to capitalize or grant autonomy or gender to your god, among tens of thousands of other human gods), would reality look like this? What do you mean by moral agency? You'd have to of course, define "moral agency".
Your argument can't really proceed until you define those terms.
I understand why Allusive Atheist can barely be bothered with this stuff.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response. First of all, regarding monotheism versus polytheism, that's a different question altogether. The fine-tuning argument is an argument for theism in general, and not some particular variety of theism. But you are an atheist, though, right? So it's hardly going to help your position to concede to the existence of many gods to avoid belief in the one true God! So that strategy won't work to avoid theism.
Second, you ask, "would reality look like this" if God exists? And of course the answer is yes! A world where moral agency springs up and flourishes is exactly what we would expect if God exists.
Finally, you demand a definition for "moral agency." Now, that seems odd to me. Do you really not know what a moral agent is? But as it happens, Robin Collins provides a nice definition in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (2009), and so I quote him:
"An 'embodied moral agent' will be defined as an embodied conscious being that can make morally significant choices, without prejudging the status of moral truths. Our main concern, however, will be with embodied beings that are relevantly similar to humans--that is, who exist in a world with fixed laws and who can significantly affect each other for good or ill" (p203).
There you are.
--TFA
Monotheism vs. polytheism is not a different question altogether. They are equally meaningless until they're established. I was just pointing out that you can't move straight to Yahweh without having established Yahweh. You need to show your work if you're going to make that specific theistic claim.
ReplyDeleteWe could just as easily say, that there is a committee of gods who are worms or who care about worms or how else would you explain all these worms?
Don't say "God". It's cheating. Pick your god and make a case or nothing gets started.
Your theologian's definition of "moral agent" as "an embodied conscious being that makes morally significant choices" makes no progress. What does that mean? We can both succumb to allusions all day. But what does it MEAN?
I'm not sure this is the appropriate forum for a remedial argument about Yahweh. I'd suggest you read Allusive Atheist's original blog and address that specifically.
I'd be happy to ask you questions about Yahweh all day but I'm not sure we're in the right place for that. It's a very good blog and worth making the effort to address its most straightforward points.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThe fine-tuning argument is not about Yahweh in particular. And I'm happy not to make it about monotheism either. If you can't decide which is more likely to exist between the one true God or many gods, then we can discuss that when it comes up. But for now I'm only talking about theism in general. Surely you know how to distinguish between theism and certain varieties of theism (like Christianity). Why then do you insist that an argument for theism fails because it is not an argument for Christianity? That's a serious misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up right away.
You also suggest that the fine-tuning argument fails because, apparently,
We could just as easily say, that there is a committee of gods who are worms or who care about worms or how else would you explain all these worms?
But this has two serious and insurmountable problems. First of all, in an effort to resist the conclusion of theism, you are invoking theism! So as an objection to the fine-tuning argument, it is downright incoherent. Second, the worm-god-committee is an absurd proposition with no independent motivation whatever. Perhaps you are not aware, but the likelihood principle does not apply to such ad-hoc hypotheses. So there is no way to run a parallel argument here.
Also, you continue to complain that you don't understand what a moral agent is, despite the very careful definition I provided. So, what is it now? What latest batch of terms don't you understand?
As an aside, if you find yourself not understanding so many of the expressions used in an argument, then how are you so confident to dismiss that argument? It seems to me that the appropriate thing to do in your situation is to admit that you don't understand the argument, and humbly ask for clarification. But instead, you seem to think that your failure to understand somehow constitutes a flaw in the argument. Perhaps you should re-evaluate that position.
Anyway, I hope you're not suggesting that you don't know what a "morally significant choice" is. If you are ignorant of morality, then we should stop talking about the fine-tuning argument and you should alert the police immediately! But of course that would be pretty silly, because I have no doubt that you understand what morally significant choices are. So hopefully you will not pretend that you don't.
Maybe instead you want me to give a theory of morality, like what Sam Harris has done. But this is quite unnecessary. The fine-tuning argument does not delve any deeper than an ordinary sense of morality. So if you insist on using a particular theory of morality, you are free to use pretty much anything you like--even Sam Harris's theory. For our purposes here, it's all the same.
Now, if you want to ask me questions about God which are not related to the fine-tuning argument, then feel free to do so, and I will answer them on my blog so that we don't derail this blog's topic.
--TFA
"If you can't decide which is more likely to exist between the one true God or many gods, then we can discuss that when it comes up."
ReplyDeleteIt already came up when you used the word "God". I'm just trying to make your statements play by some fair rules. "Moral agency" (a phrase that you have yet to establish) means "God" (a proper noun you have yet to establish.)
You need to define both those terms at the very least, before you proceed with your argument.
"First of all, in an effort to resist the conclusion of theism, you are invoking theism!"
No. I'm not. YOU are invoking theism and I'm suggesting that you can no more point at "moral agency" (a term that you have yet to define) and say that Yahweh exists, than you can point at anything else in the universe and say that Yahweh or any committee of gods exist.
Even if you picked "worms", something instantly definable in our local universe, you'd have all your work ahead of you to connect it to a particular god. Not Yahweh, anyway. That's straight out of the gate. Yahweh didn't even seem to know that worms exist.
"you continue to complain that you don't understand what a moral agent is, despite the very careful definition I provided.
You quoted someone who made no philosphical progress. It defines nothing. Read again what you quoted and tell me what it means. There are two questions here: 1) What do you mean by "moral"? 2) What do you mean by "agent"? Don't pretend that these terms are solidly enough defined that a bad argument can't avail itself of its shape-shifting properties.
No philosophical discussion can make progress without specifically defining these terms. Much of philosophy is committed to unravelling these ideas, "moral" and "agent". So, what are your claims about them? How do you support those claims?
"I have no doubt that you understand what morally significant choices are. So hopefully you will not pretend that you don't."
ReplyDeleteI'm not convinced that we agree on what these are. Surely, you're not claiming that you and I should intuitively understand something that plagues philosophers to this day? If you would only define what "moral" and "agent" means, you would save them (and us) some work. At least, make a specific opening claim that could be evaluated on its own merit.
"Maybe instead you want me to give a theory of morality"
No. Just a definition. That is, if you think you can use the word to establish any sort of argument. What do YOU mean when you say it? Support it. It's fundamental.
"The fine-tuning argument does not delve any deeper than an ordinary sense of morality."
What on earth is an "ordinary sense of morality"? And what could it possibly have to do with "fine-tuning"?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteSo far, your only remaining criticism amounts to complaining that you don't understand the argument, and so therefore it must be wrong. I don't have to tell you that this is an obvious nonsequitur.
I can define terms which you genuinely don't understand. But I think it's pretty incredible that you would not know how to interpret basic expressions like "agent," "God" and "morally significant." I have to wonder if you're not just kicking up dirt because you can't find a decent criticism of the argument.
Nevertheless, I will provide definitions: I've already defined moral agency in a previous post. A morally significant choice is a choice which depends on considerations of what is good and/or what is evil. By God I mean an extremely powerful and knowledgeable conscious being who designed and created the universe as we know it.
So there you are. I wonder, do you have any further objections to the fine-tuning argument? Or would you rather continue to claim that you do not understand the it?
--TFA
"your only remaining criticism amounts to complaining that you don't understand the argument"
ReplyDeleteThere is so far, no argument to understand. An argument requires clearly defined terms and support of a position around those definitions . Over the centuries, words like "good" and "evil" and "moral" and "agent" and consciousness" and "god" have yet to be pinned down.
I meet your astonishment that I don't intuitively accept these as clearly defined terms, with equal astonishment that you don't acknowledge that nobody who's ever thought hard and well about them ever has.
What are "good" and "evil" in the context of Yahweh? As far as I get from my christian friends, "good" is what Yahweh wants.
Is it reasonable of you to expect to bypass the Euthypro dilemma and expect to be taken seriously when you suggest that there is "moral agency" (an as yet undefined term) on this little speck of a planet by our little speck of a species, with evidence of non-human morality preceding and surrounding us and to land softly on "Therefore, Yahweh."?
"therefore it must be wrong."
I didn't say that. I said you haven't begun to make an argument.
Your opening statement was based on nature being more constrained than Yahweh. How does that make sense if Yahweh made nature? I'm afraid you are arguing backwards here. As I suggested before, read what Allusive Atheist posted and give it your best thinking.
As far as what you posted, what is "goodness"? What is "evil"? You start on the same square as the rest of us and proceed from there. Examples aren't helpful. Begin with definitions and then you can give examples, if you'd like. We're all bound by those rules. I didn't make them up.
@Allusive Atheist: Sorry. I don't have the stomach for this stuff any more. I shouldn't be clogging up your blog. Say the word and I'll stop taking the bait. Green light means put my heart into it. I'm just an inquisitive fan.
@Apologist:
Don't get excited. I'm a fan because he invites thinking, not because he's looking for people to agree with him.
Slatimer
My long-winded nature got the better of me. Response here: http://allusiveatheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/followup-theological-fine-tuning.html
ReplyDelete