Category Archives: Uncategorized

6 Innovative Rebuttals to the Fine-Tuning Argument

Posted on by

balance

I’ve discussed the role of the multiverse in dismissing the fine-tuning argument here, here, and most recently here. This time, I’d like to look at a few less-well-known arguments.

Replacing “Science doesn’t know” with “God did it!” as this and other Christian apologetic arguments do, is simply renaming the problem. It’s only an attempt to stop the conversation; it doesn’t tell us anything new. It doesn’t answer the question but simply raises new ones: why did God create the universe? How? Which rules of physics were used, and which were broken? And so on.

1. What probability?

This argument is from Counter Arguments. If God is responsible for everything, both probable and improbable, then probability doesn’t exist. Said another way, the idea of independent events unchanged by any intelligence goes away if God is behind everything. And if there’s no probability, then the appeal to probability in the fine-tuning argument becomes impossible, and the argument collapses.

2. Would God be behind un-fine-tuned universes, too?

Imagine a different universe (Universe X) where the parameters didn’t look fine tuned for life, and life was guaranteed. How would the Christian apologist critique it?

If (hypothesis 1) they are consistent and use the same fine-tuning logic, that divine intervention would be necessary if life were very improbable, then (oops!) God was unnecessary to create life in Universe X. But if (hypothesis 2) they use the opposite logic—the more probable life, the more probable divine intervention is—then God must’ve created it in Universe X.

Which do you suppose they would go with—hypothesis 1 that God was unlikely to have created Universe X or hypothesis 2 that God was likely? They’re in the business of rationalizing their conclusion, so they would pick the one that pleases them most, and that’s possible because “God” is so poorly defined. He’s a clay sculpture that they can shape into whatever is called for so that they can continue to justify their beliefs. That’s great if they want to maintain their belief at any cost, but part of that cost is consistency (Source: Counter Arguments)

3. Coarse Tuning

This argument is from the article, “Probabilities and the Fine-Tuning Argument” by McGrew, McGrew, and Vestrup (paywall).

First, start with the fine-tuning argument. We have a handful of physical constants so carefully balanced that if any were tweaked by the tiniest amount, life in the universe would be impossible.

Imagine an n-dimensional space, with one axis for each of the different constants we’re considering. Assume that these constants can (in principle) be anything. There’s a tiny volume in this space within which life is possible, but the total space is infinite in size. What’s the probability that you’d hit the sweet spot by chance? Tiny volume ÷ infinite space = 0, so the probability is zero. And that’s the punch line for this argument: if the likelihood of randomly hitting this life-giving sweet spot is infinitesimally small, there must be a designer.

Now, imagine that the volume is actually very large and that the values that define our universe could be changed in any dimension by ten orders of magnitude, and life would still be possible. This is the coarse-tuning situation. If we’re in the middle of a sweet spot that’s this huge—it’s 10 billion on each side—who would be making the fine-tuning argument now? But the problem remains! That vastly bigger volume ÷ infinite space is still zero. The likelihood of randomly hitting this sweet spot remains infinitesimally small, but we’ve agreed that this is not remarkable. Conclusion: deducing a designer with the fine-tuning argument fails.

Said another way, the fine-tuning argument is no stronger than the coarse-tuning argument. Why then would no apologist make a coarse-tuning argument?

4. Monkey God

Physicist Vic Stenger directly confronted the fine-tuning argument with his Monkey God simulation. He took four constants from which can be computed the average lifetime of a star, the size of planets, and other traits that would predict whether a universe might allow life. His simulation randomly varies these constants within a range five orders of magnitude higher and five lower than their actual values to see what kind of universe the combination creates. His conclusion: “A wide variation of constants of physics has been shown to lead to universes that are long-lived enough for complex matter to evolve.”

We know so little about life that there is little to say about whether life would come from this complex matter, but this seems a strong counterexample.

This reminds me of physicist Sean Carroll’s observation, “I will start granting that [life couldn’t exist with different conditions] once someone tells me the conditions under which life can exist.”

To be concluded in part 2.

A universe with a supernatural presence
would be a fundamentally and qualitatively
different kind of universe from one without.
The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference.
Religions make existence claims,
and this means scientific claims.
— Richard Dawkins

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/30/14.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

 

William Lane Craig Replies to My Attack on Faith Statements (3 of 3)

Posted on by

goat

William Lane Craig (WLC) has responded to my attack on faith statements (or “doctrinal statements”) in “A Call for Honesty in Christian Scholarship.” Begin with part 1 here.

Let’s conclude our response to WLC.

Bias? That’s not a problem. We’re all biased!

WLC has an interesting response to the problem of bias.

Finally, and most importantly, the allegation of bias is ultimately irrelevant. . . . Every historian approaches a topic with his biases and point of view. . . . As the history is supported by the weight of the evidence, the historian’s personal biases become irrelevant.

This is the “So what if I’m biased? Everyone’s biased!” argument. I guess I’m old-fashioned on this subject, because I’d like to think that bias isn’t binary (you’re biased or you’re not) but is measured on a scale, and we can and should strive to be as unbiased as possible.

The point can be generalized. We all have our biases, including atheists. (If Christian scholars need to attach a disclaimer to their work, so do atheists!)

When I subordinate myself to an unchanging statement, I’ll do just that. Until then, I’m free to reach any conclusion the evidence leads me to, and I only have fear of embarrassment keeping me from changing. No job rides on this. The situation for the professional Christian scholar is quite different.

I agree with WLC on a point

WLC does make one important point, so let me take the opportunity to clarify my position. WLC said:

But our work is to be judged by the soundness of our arguments, not by our biases. So you’ll never find me dismissing the work of an atheist philosopher on the grounds that he is biased, even though it may be blatantly obvious. Rather I seek to expose the fallacy in his reasoning or the false or unjustified premiss in his argument.

So the answer to your question, How do we know if the work of a Christian scholar is to be trusted? is easy: you assess it by the arguments and evidence he offers in support of his conclusions. Ultimately, that’s all that matters.

Yes, it would be an ad hominem fallacy to reject the work out of hand solely because it came from a Christian scholar. “That article came from a Christian scholar bound by a doctrinal statement; therefore, it’s crap” would be an example of this error.

Here’s what I’m saying.

1. Christian institutions do themselves no favors with doctrinal statements because they put a cloud of doubt over their scholars’ work. Signing such a statement binds the scholars to never reach a contrary conclusion on any of its points of dogma. They can never agree with one of those points without our dismissing the work as an inevitable conclusion rather than the result of honest research. It’s a disservice to the scholars, and it’s a disservice to their work.

2. WLC is right that I can analyze the arguments in an article and judge for myself, but this is my only option. I can’t accept or reject the conclusion without that analysis because the doctrinal statement means the author has no inherent reputation.

3. Nonexpert readers will often be unable to do the analysis. Let me illustrate with an example. I recently had lunch with three Christians from the local Reasons to Believe chapter (RTB is an old-earth Creationist group). We were talking about whether Daniel accurately prophesied Jesus (it didn’t). I summarized the evidence that Daniel was written in the 160s BCE. One of my antagonists replied that that was impossible since the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) was written around 300 BCE. How could Daniel have been written in the 160s if it was included in the Septuagint? The answer, which I had to research afterwards to find out, is that only the Pentateuch (the first five books) were included in the original Septuagint.

Expert readers might be able to provide the devil’s advocate challenges to test the work, as WLC suggests, but not all readers are experts. WLC’s response becomes, “So you think that their conclusion is flawed? Prove it!” but that’s an unreasonable burden on the reader and a handicap to the author’s reputation.

4. This option isn’t available beyond a single paper. Take this recent headline as an example: “12 Historical Facts About The Resurrection Of Jesus Most Scholars Agree Upon.” Are these “scholars” bound by doctrinal statements? WLC’s solution would be to just read their work and evaluate it, but that’s not available to us when there’s an appeal to the consensus of an entire discipline as in this case. If these scholars are constrained in their work, this statement about consensus is meaningless.

Academic freedom at a Christian college

WLC brings up Ivy League schools as exemplars but never addresses the elephant in the room: that they don’t use doctrinal statements. Indeed, they are world class institutions in part because they don’t use them. Doctrinal statements are incompatible with free inquiry.

WLC is a professor at Biola’s Talbot School of Theology, and Talbot gets its accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). This makes Talbot answerable to the ATS policy guidelines on “Academic Freedom and Tenure.” While this policy accepts doctrinal statements (“specific confessional adherence”), it also demands, “No confessional standard obviates the requirement for responsible liberty of conscience in the Jewish or the Christian community or the practice of the highest ideals of academic freedom.”

It also requires tenure. “The provision for appointment on indefinite tenure is one way in which institutions safeguard their faculties’ freedom to teach, to inquire, and to organize their academic programs.”

Given that this is an accreditation association for theology schools, there are presumably interpretations or loopholes that allow binding doctrinal statements. Nevertheless, this is a lot more respect for academic freedom than WLC seemed interested in defending or even acknowledging.

Conclusion

Freedom to change one’s mind is an essential right in any institution. It’s a foundational concept in the academic freedom that reigns in the Ivy League colleges that WLC himself admires.

WLC’s unhelpful response is to say that it doesn’t bother him that there are constraints. They don’t get in his way. He doesn’t need to change his mind. But if they hobble your life . . . well then it sucks to be you.

I can perhaps see WLC’s position. He is part of a church in which a perfect God made a clear statement of his unchanging rules that unaccountably is so ambiguous that new Christian denominations are splintering off at a rate of two per day. The doctrinal statement could be his finger in the dike, though that’s a futile gesture when he wants to simultaneously carve out a safe space for Christian thought while polishing Christianity’s image as a field able to hold its own in the marketplace of ideas.

He can’t have both.

The Bible:
The Goatherder’s Guide to the Universe
— Seth Andrews

 Image credit: Greger Ravik, flickr, CC

 

William Lane Craig Replies to My Attack on Faith Statements (2 of 3)

Posted on by

silly person

William Lane Craig (WLC) has responded to my attack on faith statements (or “doctrinal statements”) in “A Call for Honesty in Christian Scholarship.” See part 1 for WLC’s claim that they help create community.

Let’s continue with more of WLC’s concerns.

Cause and effect

WLC moves on to misunderstand the problem. He says that a doctrinal statement doesn’t determine a scholar’s views; rather, scholars will have formed their views beforehand and only then seek an institution that fits with their views.

That’s correct, as far as it goes. When you join, the doctrinal statement fits you like a just-right sweater since you picked an institution that shared your views. The problem comes when you change, and the sweater then becomes a straightjacket.

WLC is confident that this won’t be a problem—for him, at least:

Thus, it is naïve on your part to imagine that [Houston Baptist University’s] doctrinal statement, for example, imposes some sort of restraint upon me with respect to belief in the virgin birth or the deity of Christ or the resurrection of Jesus. I held these beliefs long before affiliating with HBU, and I would believe them no matter where I taught.

Craig tells us that if he hasn’t felt constrained by a doctrinal statement, then it’s all good.

But he isn’t completely clueless, and he can imagine the problem—though his solution is rather harsh.

It can happen that one’s doctrinal views can change in the course of one’s career, with the result that one can no longer sign the doctrinal statement in good faith. In that case, the professor should seek employment elsewhere.

Oh, so it’s as easy as that? If you’ve grown so that you can’t accept the outmoded doctrinal statement, just quit.

This gets back to the original problem. Sure, you can quit your job. Maybe you’ll lose your tenure or even your career, depending on how far your views have changed. But you might have other obligations than that to the university. Can you quit if there’s a family to feed? Or do you convince yourself to muddle through by not thinking about the problem much?

We can humanize this issue by moving from an abstract hypothetical to the concrete problems of hundreds of actual Christian clergy with failing faith by looking at the Clergy Project. Some of these clergy members have walked away from their careers in the church as atheists, while others keep their head down as long as they can, preferring an uncomfortable present to an unknown future.

WLC seems to appreciate the problem, but Christian compassion isn’t where he goes for an answer:

The danger is that because such a move can be so gut-wrenching, the professor may be tempted to continue in his present position, even though he no longer believes the doctrinal statement. In that case, he compromises his own integrity and the integrity of the institution. If the institution does not take the difficult step of dismissing him, the seed of corruption is planted which may derail the institution in coming generations.

In other words, it’s the scholar’s fault that the straightjacket is too tight. I’m sure that’s comforting.

And “the seed of corruption”? Really? Christian scholars’ views are so uncompromising that they can’t tolerate any challenges?

People change. Doctrinal statements are too brittle to accept this, but this is the fault of the institutions that demand them, not that of the people.

Consequences of a doctrinal statement

It is false, then, as you allege, that by signing a doctrinal statement [that includes the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin], “a professor has publicly stated, ‘I promise to never conclude that the virgin birth was just a myth’.” He has made no such promise.

He has. Your point is simply that he can break his promise. Yes, he can, but the original point stands: we can’t treat his conclusions at his Christian college as useful new information when he was bound to reach them. (I clarify this statement in part 3 below.)

You say that he can just quit? Sure, but why have this cumbersome and punitive policy? Harvard isn’t bothered by what its scholars conclude. What does it say that Harvard’s view of academic freedom wouldn’t tolerate doctrinal statements?

Mike Licona’s crime

In my original post, I discussed one cautionary tale: “Might the scholar simply have come to an unbiased conclusion? That’s possible, but how would we know? Mike Licona is a Christian scholar who found out the hard way that faith statements have teeth. In 2011, he lost two jobs because, in a 700-page book, he questioned the inerrancy of a single Bible verse.” WLC responded:

The case of Mike Licona is a good example. Licona has never denied biblical inerrancy, nor was he fired because of it.

The point about Licona is that he’s an example of someone who ran afoul of a doctrinal statement and lost his job. I don’t want to split hairs over the theological validity of the charges against him, but let me respond to the two points WLC made.

In one of his public attacks on Licona at the time, Norm Geisler wrote an article titled, “Mike Licona on Inerrancy: It’s Worse than We Originally Thought.” You’re free to disagree with Geisler’s conclusion, but, yeah, it’s about inerrancy.

And I didn’t say that Licona was fired from his jobs, just that he lost them.

WLC’s point was to vaguely defend Licona against the charges and note that he’s still “a member in good standing of the Evangelical Theological Society.” That’s nice, but it still turned the guy’s life upside down. Can he still want to ignore the collateral damage of faith statements?

I agree with WLC on one important point in the conclusion in part 3. 

All those who persistently reject Jesus Christ in the present life
shall be raised from the dead and throughout eternity
exist in the state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment of anguish.
— Biola doctrinal statement that WLC has signed

Image credit: Kimberly Vardeman, flickr, CC

Physicist Sean Carroll Dismisses Fine Tuning Argument

Posted on by

This is the conclusion of a summary of the 2014 debate between philosopher William Lane Craig and cosmologist Sean Carroll. In part 1, I summarized Carroll’s response to the Kalam cosmological argument. Here, it’s a response to the other half of Craig’s argument, the fine tuning argument.

Carroll began with a compliment of sorts.

This is the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology. That’s because it plays by the rules. You have phenomena, you have parameters of particle physics and cosmology, and then you have two different models, theism and naturalism, and you want to compare which model is the best fit for the data. I applaud that general approach. Given that, it is still a terrible argument. It is not at all convincing.

 1. What fine-tuning problem?

Carroll raises five points. First, he’s not convinced that there is a fine-tuning problem. Yes, changes in the parameters that define our reality would change conditions, but it does not follow that life could not exist. “I will start granting that [life couldn’t exist with different conditions] once someone tells me the conditions under which life can exist.” We don’t even fully understand life on this planet, nor do we understand it on the other planets in the universe that hold life (if any), nor do we understand it within the other possible universes (if any).

For example, is life just information processing? That raises lots of possibilities for life. “They sound very science fiction-y,” Carroll admits, “but then again, you’re the one who’s changing the parameters of the universe.”

Biologists are continually playing catch-up when studying the diversity of life. They rarely predict a novel place for life to exist and then go find it there; instead it’s “Wow! We just found complex, multicellular life in undersea thermal vents!” (or glaciers, or deep mines, or ponds full of saline or superhot or radioactive water).

2. Don’t limit God

God can do anything, and he isn’t limited by the parameters of the universe. If life were impossible naturally, God could make it happen anyway. Carroll says about theism, “No matter what the atoms were doing, God could still create life.” That means that apparent fine tuning points to naturalism, since it must do everything naturally and can’t fallback on magic. If you insist that the parameters must be just so, then you’re arguing for naturalism.

Physicist Vic Stenger made the point this way in The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning:

Certainly an all-powerful creator could have made a universe delicately balanced to produce life. But he also could have made life exist in any kind of universe whatsoever, with no delicate balancing act necessary. So if the universe is, in fact, fine-tuned to support life, it is more—not less—likely to have had a natural origin. (p. 115)

3. Illusory fine tuning

Some apparent fine tuning vanishes on closer inspection. The expansion rate of the early universe is often cited as one example of fine tuning. In fact, Stephen Hawking in his A Brief History of Time says that it was tuned to 10–17, to the delight of apologists. What they avoid quoting is Hawking just a few pages later:

The rate of expansion of the universe [in the inflationary model] would automatically become very close to the critical rate determined by the energy density of the universe. This could then explain why the rate of expansion is still so close to the critical rate, without having to assume that the initial rate of expansion of the universe was very carefully chosen.

Carroll makes the same point when he says that the apparent fine tuning vanishes when you look to general relativity. The probability of the universe expanding as it did wasn’t 10–17; it was 1.

4. Multiverse

Apologist Richard Swinburne isn’t on board with the multiverse. He says, “To postulate a trillion trillion other universes, rather than one God in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality.”

He doesn’t acknowledge that we have no supernatural precedents by which to evaluate the probability of his god proposal. He doesn’t seem to know that the number of other universes isn’t the point—there are an infinite number of integers, for example, but bringing integers into a discussion isn’t infinitely complicating. He doesn’t admit that the multiverse is a prediction of well-established science (cosmic inflation). He ignores that there isn’t just one proton, one star, or one black hole—there are enormous numbers of each—so why insist that there must be only one universe?

Carroll disagrees that the multiverse is extravagant: “It’s a prediction of a simple physical model.” The multiverse hypothesis can make testable predictions. He showed a graph of the density of dark matter in the universe as an example. “You do not see graphs like this in the theological papers trying to give God credit for explaining the fine tuning because theism is not well defined.”

5. Theism isn’t the default

Even if you reject naturalism as an explanation, you can’t fall back on theism. To be taken seriously, apologists must come up with a model of a universe that one would expect with theism and then compare it to the data to see if it fits. So, what would you expect a theistic universe to look like, specifically?

Theism would predict a just-right tuning of parameters, while we find that the entropy of the early universe (to take one example) was far, far lower than it needed to be for life. Theism would predict far less matter than the 100 billion galaxies (each with 100 billion stars) in our universe. Theism would predict that life would be important to the universe; naturalism says that it’s insignificant. Theism demands that we look at the Hubble Deep Field image of thousands of ancient and incredibly distant galaxies and conclude, “This is all here because of us!”

Over and over, the data shows a universe that matches the predictions of naturalism and not theism.

Which worldview predicts best?

He went on to contrast the predictive success of theism vs. naturalism.

  • Theism predicts that God’s existence would be obvious (in fact, the evidence is poor, and faith is not only required but celebrated)
  • Theism predicts that religious belief should be universal; there should be just a single, correct religion (in fact, we have thousands of denominations within just Christianity, plus many thousand more other religions)
  • Theism predicts that religious doctrines would be permanent (in fact, they evolve and adapt to social conditions)
  • Theism predicts that moral teachings would be transcendent and progressive (in fact, Western society rejected slavery and embraced civil rights in spite of Christianity, not because of it)
  • Theism predicts that sacred texts would provide practical advice like how to stay healthy
  • Theism predicts that life is designed (in fact, evolution explains life’s Rube Goldberg features)
  • Theism predicts a mind independent of the body (in fact, “mind” changes as the brain grows or is damaged, or even if one is tired or hungry)
  • Theism predicts a fundamentally just world without gratuitous evil (in fact, the Problem of Evil is often cited as Christianity’s toughest challenge)

Carroll is quick to agree that, yes, the theist can whip up reasons to explain away any of these problems. It’s not hard because theism is not well defined and can be reshaped as necessary, like clay. Ad hoc justifications are easy to come up with, but no, that’s not a good thing.

Contrast that with science—when new data causes problems for a theory, science looks for a new theory. And that is a good thing.

The reason why science and religion
are actually incompatible is that, in the real world,
they reach incompatible conclusions.
— Sean Carroll

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/28/14.)

Image credit: Terry Robinson, flickr, CC

 

When Christianity Hits Reality: the William Lane Craig vs. Sean Carroll Debate

Posted on by

During the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, talk show host Dick Cavett mused about bumping into Simpson at a cocktail party. In such a situation, he anticipated that he would say, “Well, there are so many people here who haven’t murdered anyone, I think I’ll go talk to them.”

And that’s my reaction to hearing philosopher William Lane Craig blather on about his opinions on cosmology (read: how he’s picked facts to support his conclusion). When I’m curious about the origin of the universe, I think I’ll go talk to the cosmologists.

William Lane Craig, cosmologist. Or not.

In the first place, Craig isn’t an expert on the topic. For this 2/21/14 debate, the topic was, “The existence of God in light of contemporary cosmology.” In the second place, experts are readily at hand—for example, his opponent, Sean Carroll, who earned a doctorate in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard and is currently a professor at CalTech.

Craig has made clear where his truth comes from. He states in Reasonable Faith (2008):

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa. (p. 48)

See what I mean about picking his facts to support his conclusion? Perhaps that also explains his unwarranted confidence in getting into the ring with someone who is actually an expert on the topic.

There’s not much to say about Craig’s 20-minute opening to those familiar with his arguments. He used two of his favorites, the Kalam cosmological argument and the fine tuning argument. One surprise was that his arguments were more remote than usual. The average Christian may have difficulty with terms like entropy, singularity, and arrow of time. Here, Craig also used, without definition, the terms cosmogonic, de Sitter space, “unitarity of quantum theory,” and Boltzmann brains.

However, I was pleased that he avoided my usual complaint, which is his using “just think about it” to introduce some bit of pop philosophy. Yes, common sense is tempting, but it’s not the final arbiter at the frontier of science. Maybe he knew that this kind of argument would be laughed down by an expert. If so, let’s remember that next time he uses such an argument when Sean Carroll isn’t around to laugh at him.

Sean Carroll’s response

Carroll began by making clear that this debate is not an ongoing one within the cosmology community. You’ll hear theories of origins debated at cosmology conferences, but there is no discussion of God as a plausible explanation.

He responded to Craig’s Kalam argument by attacking point 2, “the universe began to exist.” He noted that Craig gave no evidence to back up the claim and, indeed, there isn’t any.

The bigger problem is that the point isn’t even false since Craig doesn’t use the right vocabulary for discussing cosmology. Carroll said, “Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2500 years ago; today we know better.” Referring back to his opening point, he noted that you don’t find the words “transcendent cause” in a cosmology textbook; what you find are differential equations! There simply is no need for metaphysical baggage on top of the known physics—it is unnecessary baggage that adds nothing.

Borde Guth Vilenkin

The idea of a beginning to the universe suits Craig. He’s concerned about the naturalist who says that, even if the Big Bang were the beginning of our universe, it could have come from an eternal multiverse. To anticipate this, Craig invariably brings up the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (BGV), which says that the multiverse did have a beginning.

Carroll responded by ticking off variant universes. A universe with a beginning but no cause? There’s a model for that. A universe that is eternal without a beginning? There’s a model for that, too—indeed, there are at least 17 plausible models.

BGV points to a beginning to the universe, but it starts with assumptions. Discard those assumptions, and the rules are different and eternality is possible. What BGV says is simply that our ability to describe the universe classically, that is, without quantum mechanics, gives out. Craig is simply wrong when he insists that BGV proves a beginning to everything.

Potpourri

It was a pleasure to see a competent physicist dismantle Craig’s uninformed cosmological dabblings. Craig cited the Second Law of Thermodynamics to support a finite universe, and Carroll responded that he’d written an entire book on the subject. About the puzzle of why the universe began with low entropy, Carroll said, “To imagine that cosmologists cannot answer that question without somehow invoking God is a classic God-of-the-gaps move. I know that Dr. Craig says that that’s not what he’s doing, but then he does it.”

About Craig’s criticism of Carroll’s own cosmological model, Carroll responded, “[Dr. Craig] says that my model is not working very well because it violates unitarity, the conservation of information, and that is straightforwardly false.” He then pointed out how Craig took a Hawking quote “completely out of context.”

I appreciated Carroll’s polite but direct approach. (I’ve written more about Carroll’s insights here and here.)

Cosmology vs. Theism

Carroll pointed out that a major problem is the very definition of theism. One theist may give a thorough definition, but then dozens (or thousands) more will give competing definitions. More to the point, theism is not a serious cosmological model. Cosmology is a mature science, and models are expected to address real issues. For example: What is the predicted spatial curvature of this universe? What is the amplitude of density perturbations? What causes the matter/antimatter asymmetry? What is the dark matter? And so on.

Theism doesn’t even try. It has nothing to offer.

Some things happen for “reasons” and some don’t, 
and you don’t get to demand 
that this or that thing must have a reason. 
Some things just are. 
Claims to the contrary are merely assertions,
and we are as free to ignore them 
as you are to assert them.
— Sean Carroll

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 04/25/14.)

Photo credit: brett jordan, flickr, CC

 

Anti-Choicers’ Misfire on the Fertility Clinic Hypothetical: a Response (2 of 2)

Posted on by

Ice!

The fertility clinic problem is this: if a fertility clinic were on fire and you could save either a five-year-old child or a canister with a thousand human embryos, which would you save?

In part 1, I looked at the anti-choice responses by Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, and Greg Koukl. They largely accepted the point of the argument, that we’d all save the child over the embryos, but then rambled on down many tangents, oblivious to the fact that the case was closed. “An embryo is a child” is the foundational moral claim for many in the anti-choice community, and by admitting that one child is more important than many embryos, they showed that claim to be false.

Let’s wrap up our look at the points made in these anti-choice arguments.

Unfair! It’s an emotional argument.

One objection was to reject this as an emotional argument. Koukl complained, “The dilemma simply forces us to make a choice in a no-win situation. It doesn’t draw out buried intuitions that show our real values; it draws out our emotions in a forced choice.”

Koukl calls this a “dilemma” and a “no-win situation,” but there’s no dilemma here. The choice is obvious.

He’s also wrong about emotional arguments being unfair. This is basically the Portman Effect, named after Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who turned against his party in 2013 to support same-sex marriage. What caused the turnaround was his son coming out as gay. You’d think that people would be good at hypotheticals like, “Gee—what if my son were gay? Would I still oppose same-sex marriage?” But for some reason, having it happen for real puts things in a new focus.

And so it is with abortion. It’s one thing to stroke one’s chin thoughtfully and harrumph that an embryo is a child, but it’s another to be told, “Child or embryos—choose now!”

(And don’t get me started about men weighing in on a matter that can never affect them personally.)

It’s absurd hearing a Christian complain about the unfairness of emotional arguments in support of abortion when anti-choice advocates torment women needing an abortion with posters showing an aborted fetus, the height of emotional manipulation.

More hypotheticals

Shapiro complains that a dangerous fire needing a quick choice has no parallel with the question of whether to have an abortion. “No such hard choice exists in 99.99 percent of abortion cases.” That’s true, but that’s the nature of hypotheticals like this. They’re designed to flush out one’s real attitudes, which are often a surprise to the opinion holders themselves.

Anyway, the complaint is misguided since the hypothetical has done its work by exposing “embryo = child” as false.

Each author is eager to provide his own hypotheticals to replace the original series of tweets from Tomlinson. Shapiro’s contribution: Imagine now that those thousand embryos are required to save humanity. “Do you save the five-year-old and doom the human species to extinction, or do you save the embryos? . . . .  Does that mean the five-year-old is no longer a human being?”

And another: “You can save the box of embryos or you can save the life of a woman who will die of cancer tomorrow. Which one do you save? If you choose the embryos, is the cancer-ridden woman therefore of no moral value?”

Where did “no moral value” enter the discussion? Ditto for the five-year-old no longer being a human being. The point is that Shapiro has agreed that the child is more significant than an embryo, which destroys the capstone of his moral high ground. This admission has exposed an enormous hole in the anti-choice argument. Even if the boys never personally argued “embryo = child,” they must know that it’s central to the anti-choice position. I’m amazed that they don’t confront this directly. Maybe because they can’t.

 

See also: The Limits of Open Mindedness in Debates on Same-Sex Marriage and Abortion

 

Cluelessness

I can’t leave without highlighting some unrepentant, world class cluelessness. Walsh pounds the virtual table, proclaiming that silly hypotheticals are the tools of a coward. He says, “You don’t seem willing to put all of your fantasy scenarios aside and just deal with what abortion is 99% of the time: the willful choice by a healthy woman to kill a healthy unborn child because the child is inconvenient.”

Inconvenient? Is that your final answer? Have you ever used this argument with a real woman seeking an abortion? Have you told her that her pregnancy is merely an inconvenience? Share with us how she replied.

Consider this example. Suppose a 15-year-old girl got pregnant in large part because the sex ed in her public school focused on abstinence, so she didn’t really know how to prevent pregnancy, and because no contraception was available. She had dreamed of college and a career as a teacher or maybe a doctor, but that’s all in jeopardy now because to take the fetus to term means a life as a mother. And don’t say that there’s always adoption since less than one percent of never-married women relinquish their newborns for adoption.

Convenience isn’t the issue when the girl’s entire life is in the balance. What an idiot.

Spectrum argument

Much of these anti-choice rebuttals were shadow boxing against nonexistent arguments, outraged that the fertility clinic hypothetical didn’t do a better job making arguments it never intended to make.

Let me summarize how this fits into an effective pro-choice argument. Personhood is a spectrum, and the newborn is a person while the single cell isn’t. During the development process, the fetus increasingly becomes a person.

The anti-choice response had been to say that the embryo is 100% a person. In response, you can point at the enormous gulf separating the single cell from the newborn, far more than what separates a newborn from an adult, but evidence and reason can’t move a person away from an argument that they didn’t use evidence and reason to reach. I know—I’ve tried.

But the conclusion of the fertility clinic hypothetical changes that. With it, they admit that the embryo isn’t a person.

The spectrum argument doesn’t conclude that abortion should always (or ever) be moral. You could still conclude that the single cell, though not a person, still must be protected, but you’ve got to make that argument. No longer can they fall back on, “Well, you wouldn’t kill a newborn, would you? The single cell is the moral equivalent.”

The increasing personhood of the fetus during gestation is the foundation of any argument for abortion, and this hypothetical clears the way.

Ever notice that in fantasy roleplaying games
the admittedly fictional gods answer prayers
much better than the so-called real gods?
— Bob Jase

Image credit: Wilhelm Joys Andersen, flickr, CC