tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241190890986355616.post7343393497308571738..comments2023-04-03T04:48:25.329-07:00Comments on Allusive Atheist: (followup) Theological "Fine Tuning" FallacyT_Ray_TVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15745553636382249864noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241190890986355616.post-40833168293866669722012-03-28T22:02:29.504-07:002012-03-28T22:02:29.504-07:00Your Yahweh hypothesis (please be up front and pic...Your Yahweh hypothesis (please be up front and pick your god, as there are tens of thousands from which to choose) as a god who is concerned with moral agency is interesting. <br /><br />You claim that the evidence for this hypothesis is overwhelming. First of all, what is a god? How would we recognize a god? Secondly, how does Yahweh fit those criteria? Thirdly, how is the evidence for Yahweh being god AND caring about moral agency overwhelming? <br /><br />There must be some standards against which these claims are measured. <br /><br />I've tried to stay out of it but Akaei seems to be a busy guy. I'd much rather read his exchanges with you.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241190890986355616.post-39435845360338106992012-03-26T04:23:25.345-07:002012-03-26T04:23:25.345-07:00PART 2:
Next you suggest a counter-argument again...PART 2:<br /><br />Next you suggest a counter-argument against the God hypothesis: Most of the universe, you observe, does not actually support life at all. Only a tiny bit of it is habitable by moral agents. From this observation, you say, it "seems" to you that moral agency is just a "happy accident."<br /><br />In response, I must point out that your conclusion does not follow from your premise. It may well be true that only a tiny percentage of the universe is habitable by moral agents. But whence do you conclude that therefore moral agency is an accident? Maybe you're assuming that on the God hypothesis, we should expect the universe to have a single purpose---housing moral agents---and so there should be little or nothing extra existing in the universe to that which is required to make moral agency physically possible. But this is completely unwarranted. God might have lots of unknown purposes for the rest of the universe. One such purpose could be to demonstrate to us that he is not bound by economy of resources!<br /><br />You also object to my use of the principle of indifference, but I think you misunderstood the role it plays in the fine-tuning argument. I'm not applying it to <i>theism versus naturalism</i>, as you seem to think I am doing. Rather, I'm applying it to what is called the epistemically-illuminated (EI) range of possible values for the physical constants. Since the life-permitting* range of each constant is tiny relative to the whole EI range of possible values, then by the principle of indifference we can infer that it is extremely---<i>extremely!</i>---unlikely that the actual value of every constant will fall in the life-permitting range. This is the reason why physicists are so surprised by the fine-tuning evidence, and why it cries out for an explanation.<br /><br />Do you have any further objections to the argument? If not, then the appropriate response would be to embrace its conclusion---that a personal God exists and is interested in moral agency.<br /><br />--TFA<br /><br /><br />*- By "life" I mean specifically the kind of life which has moral agency.The Forgetful Apologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16991040857248725326noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241190890986355616.post-36549113090945095522012-03-26T04:21:39.460-07:002012-03-26T04:21:39.460-07:00PART 1:
Allusive Atheist,
Thanks for the detaile...PART 1:<br /><br />Allusive Atheist,<br /><br />Thanks for the detailed response.<br /><br />A few of your objections seem symptomatic of an apparent misunderstanding of the structure of the argument. You suggest that we need to know something about what God <i>does</i> care about. But actually all we need to do is have an independently-motivated (i.e. not ad-hoc) hypothesis about what God <i>would</i> care about, if he exists. In other words, we cannot put up a generic deistic god as a hypothesis. Rather, our hypothesis must involve a robust sort of theism where God is interested in moral agency. We don't have to assume that this God exists, though. Rather, we <i>hypothesize</i> that this God exists, and test our hypothesis against the evidence. Well, it turns out that the evidence overwhelmingly confirms it!<br /><br />That said, let's look at your objections in a little more detail. You first complain that my statement about how "God could have made things differently" is a mere assumption. As I have explained, though, it is not a mere assumption but rather a hypothesis---part of the larger theistic <i>God hypothesis</i>, as Dawkins likes to call it. The argument shows that, given the fine-tuning evidence, the God hypothesis is more likely than a naturalistic single-universe hypothesis.<br /><br />Next you start talking about multiverses and "alternate natures." I agree that these things are possible. In fact just about <i>anything</i> is possible! But we need to discover where the evidence points, and that won't happen by throwing up ad-hoc ideas which are not independently-motivated.<br /><br />Of course you are free to speculate that there are other naturalistic forces at work which might cause the universe to suddenly behave differently. However as you point out, that's all pure speculation. In other words, such hypotheses are <i>ad-hoc</i>. However, the likelihood principle only applies to independently-motivated hypotheses, and not ad-hoc ones. That's the key fact distinguishing the God hypothesis from invoking arbitrary naturalistic anomalies.<br /><br />You also object to the notion that God would be interested in moral agency. But again, this is part of the theistic hypothesis. Remember, a personal God interested in morality is an <i>independently motivated</i> idea.The Forgetful Apologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16991040857248725326noreply@blogger.com