This is a continuation of a critique of Frank Turek’s arguments in favor of Christianity from his book Stealing from God. See the beginning of the discussion here.
Let’s conclude the critique of Turek’s first argument, Cosmos.
Fine tuning of the universe
Turek says that if the expansion rate from the Big Bang were different by 10^–15, the universe would have either collapsed or never developed galaxies. What explains this fine tuning?
Good question. Why does the universe look finely tuned? This is a scientific question, not incontrovertible evidence of the hand of God. Replacing “Science doesn’t know” with “Well, if you don’t, I do—it was God!” doesn’t help. Advancing a god as the cause of the universe simply moves the question back one level: if we assume that a deity did it, where did it come from? How did it create the universe out of nothing? What laws of nature did it break, and what as-yet-undiscovered laws did it use? We’ve resolved nothing. It is merely one more supernatural claim that science must set aside on its way to finding the truth.
And what is the universe finely tuned for? There is life on earth, a tiny speck in an inhospitable and inconceivably vast sea of space. Most of the mass in the universe isn’t ordinary matter, and almost all of that isn’t part of a habitable world. It’s hard to call the harsh wasteland that is the universe “tuned for life,” so why imagine that life was what it was finely tuned for? There are probably trillions of black holes in the universe—you could more logically say that it was fine tuned for them.
Turek argues that we have two possibilities: (1) that our universe just got really lucky with its constants or (2) a supernatural being created it. He concludes: (1) is really improbable, so therefore (2). But what is the probability of (2)?? How can we compare these two options when we haven’t even analyzed one of them? He doesn’t even acknowledge the problem.
Multiverse
Of course, the in-your-face response to the fine tuning argument sidesteps the question of whether the universe was finely tuned by arguing for a multiverse—uncountably many universes with varying cosmic constants, of which ours is just one. A very unlikely universe will pop up eventually if you have enough of them. In fact, Alexander Vilenkin, the cosmologist that Turek praised earlier, makes clear his view on the multiverse question in an article titled, “The Case for Parallel Universes: Why the multiverse, crazy as it sounds, is a solid scientific idea.”
(Does Turek still want to cite Vilenkin as a reliable source?)
Just to hit this a little harder, Jerry Coyne wrote a post subtitled with the very question that I had been asking: “Is the multiverse a Hail Mary pass by godless physicists?” No, the multiverse is not just a “well, it’s possible” gambit for which atheists admit they have no evidence for but which they toss out simply to annoy apologists. He quotes physicist Sean Carroll, who makes clear that the multiverse is a prediction made by other well-accepted theories. It wasn’t pulled out of a hat; it is a consequence of accepted physics.
(I discuss the related Kalam Cosmological Argument here and here.)
Cause and causelessness
Turek says, “If the universe had a beginning, it must’ve had a Beginner.” Does everything have a cause? When an electron comes out of a decaying nucleus or a photon comes out of an electron dropping to a lower energy level, what was the cause? Nothing. Quantum events (like the Big Bang presumably was) don’t necessarily need causes. “Everything has a cause” sounds right coming from our experience, but common sense isn’t a reliable tool at the edge of science.
Turek has one final salvo for this argument: “Either no one created something out of nothing or someone created something out of nothing.” Huh? So we’ve already established that the universe came from nothing? That’s possible, but there is no consensus. Why imagine that nothing was more likely before the Big Bang than something?
Lacking evidence but not confidence, Turek picks the latter option, as if it makes more sense that someone created something out of nothing. But how does anyone make something out of nothing? Turek falls back on an uncaused god, without evidence.
And even if we grant fine tuning, a supernatural agent creating the universe is just one of lots of explanations. Maybe our universe was created by powerful but limited aliens. We could be in the Matrix of a computer designed by an alien race. And so on. No need to imagine an unlimited god.
Unless there’s evidence, of course.
I’ve written more about the fine-tuning argument here and here.
Continue with the discussion of R = Reason.

“In God We Trust.” 
I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were true. 
— Mark Twain

There’s a phrase we live by in America: “In God We Trust.”
It’s right there where Jesus would want it: on our money. 
— Bill Maher

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/1/13.)
Image credit: Seigner, CC
 

This is the conclusion of a summary of the recent 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.”

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 has no fallback. 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.

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

Photo credit: strollerdos