To me the answer is ‘no’ but the title of this post was suggested by this essay by Philip Goff, a professor of philosophy, who clearly wants to find one. The subheading says, “Neither atheism nor theism adequately explains reality. That is why we must consider the middle ground between the two.”
Goff says that he was brought up as a Catholic but started identifying himself as an atheist at the age of 14 and was comfortable with it for about two decades. Then about five years ago, he had to teach a course on the philosophy of religion that required him to present the arguments for and against God. In doing so he says that he found the arguments for God “incredibly compelling too! In particular, the argument from the fine-tuning of physics for life couldn’t be responded to as easily as I had previously thought.”
A few weeks into this existential morass I was peacefully watching some ducks quack in a nearby nature reserve, when I suddenly realised there was a startingly simple and obvious solution to my dilemma. The two arguments I was finding compelling – the fine-tuning argument for ‘God’, and the argument from evil and suffering against ‘God’ – were not actually opposed to each other. The argument from evil and suffering targets a very specific kind of God, namely the Omni-God: all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good creator of the universe. Meanwhile, the fine-tuning argument supports something much more generic, some kind of cosmic purpose or goal-directedness towards life that might not be attached to a supernatural designer. So if you go for cosmic purpose but not one rooted in the desires of an Omni-God, then you can have your cake and eat it by accepting both arguments.
And thus my worldview was radically changed.
…Perhaps the most striking case is that of the cosmological constant, the number that measures the force that powers the accelerating expansion of the universe. The cosmological constant is an odd number: it’s extremely small but non-zero. You don’t tend to find fundamental constants with that kind of value. But it’s a good job that it does. Because, if the cosmological constant were a bit bigger, everything would have been forced apart so rapidly that no two particles would ever have met. We would have no stars, no planets nor any kind of structural complexity. On the other hand, if the cosmological constant was less than zero, it would have added to gravity, meaning that the entire universe would have collapsed back on itself within a split second. For life to be possible, this number had to be in the strange, highly specific category it in fact occupies: extremely close to zero without crossing over into the negative. There are many other examples of finely tuned constants in current physics.
Fundamentally, we face a choice. Either:
* it’s a coincidence that, of all the possible values that the finely tuned constants of physics may have had, they just happen to have the right values for life;
or:
*the constants have those values because they are right for life.The former option is wildly improbable; on a conservative estimate, the odds of getting finely tuned constants by chance is less than 1 in 10^-136. The latter option amounts to a belief that something at the fundamental level of reality is directed towards the emergence of life. I call this kind of fundamental goal-directedness ‘cosmic purpose’.
…Thomas Nagel has defended the idea of teleological laws: laws of nature with goals built into them. Rather than grounding cosmic purpose in the desires of a creator, perhaps there just is a natural tendency towards life inherent in the universe, one that interacts with the more familiar laws of physics in ways we don’t yet understand.
For some, the idea of purpose without a mind directing it makes no sense. An alternative possibility is a non-standard designer, one that lacks the ‘omni’ qualities – all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good – of the traditional God.
I find the appeal of the fine-tuning argument somewhat mystifying. It assumes that God started out by deciding what kind of universe and life he wanted to have and then carefully reverse-engineered the laws of science and the initial conditions so that starting from the Big Bang, that specific form would eventually come into being. And that required fine-tuning the cosmological constant, among other things.
But why go to all that trouble? Being God, he could have designed life to exist in any kind of universe that he created. And he could have designed life without many of the negative features that they currently have. For example, if every living thing were vegetarian, then that would eliminate many of the environmental problems and sources of conflict that we now have. Why create a universe with carnivores at all?
Goff makes an attempt at addressing this.
Perhaps the designer of our universe would have loved to create intelligent life in an instant, avoiding all the misery of natural selection, but their only option was to create a universe from a singularity, with the right physics, so that it will eventually evolve intelligent life. Maybe our limited designer feels awful about how messy such a process inevitably is, but it was that or nothing.
A supernatural designer comes with a parsimony cost. As scientists and philosophers, we aspire to find not just any old theory that can account for the data but the simplest such theory. All things being equal, it’d be better not to have to believe in both a physical universe and a non-physical supernatural designer.
For these reasons, I think overall the best theory of cosmic purpose is cosmopsychism, the view that the universe is itself a conscious mind with its own goals.
But why is that the only option that God has?
This kind of special pleading is not new. Recall that when Newton formulated his laws of motion and his theory of gravity, it seemed to show that the solar system was unstable and would fairly quickly collapse. To solve that problem, the suggested that periodically, God would intervene and reset that planetary motions. This ‘solution’ may also have appealed to him by preventing his theories from making God a necessary and active participant and not becoming completely redundant. But he was ridiculed by some of his contemporaries for the implication that his god was an incompetent engineer who did not know how to design a stable system.
I find Goff’s argument to be similarly weak. The whole idea of any supernatural entities or a teleological purpose built into a completely material world seems incoherent to me and more a sign that there are people who are desperate to find some intellectually respectable reason for believing in a god or at least some kind of cosmic purpose. Such people seem to find it unsettling to think that the universe itself has no purpose or meaning and that only we can provide either. But while it is better than the Ontological Argument, the fine-tuning argument seems to me to fall short of reaching that goal.
Atheism doesnt explain anything and doesnt claim to. Its simply not being convince in the existence of any gods. Everything else an atheist may or may not believe is not related to atheism. If a god designed me in a ‘fine tuned’ way, why do I need glasses? The fine tuning argument is silly. You have to prove your god exists before you can claim it did anything then you have to prove the god did it. Im 70, havent seen any evidence for any gods yet. This guys arguments are silly.
But why is that the only option that God has?
Cuz his daddy only lets him play with baby Big Bangs instead of the real power tools in the garage.
Also, the argument from fine tuning is, quite frankly, a horrible and stupid argument. Douglas Adams skewered this sort of argument with:
No scientist truly likes the Anthropic Principle, the idea that ‘things are the way they are because if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to ask why’, because of its complete lack of explanatory power. But sometimes it’s all we’ve can find, and frankly from an Occam’s Razor perspective, ‘sometimes shit just happens’ involves a whole lot less multiplication of entities than ‘therefore God’.
If the multiverse hypothesis is correct, then every possible version of the universe exists, and there is no issue of fine tuning.
The probability of things being how they are is 1 because they are what they are. Assigning any other probability is just guessing based on some model and starting conditions that may or may not be true (and most likely is not true and complete).
And the universe is not tuned for us, we are tuned for the universe.
As a professor of philosophy he should know better.
My first thought, from just the head-line, was that he re-invented Deism. Yay for him!
But it’s worse than that. It’s Roger Penrose’s speculations in, The Emperor’s New Mind writ large.
When will the great thinkers of the world realize that consciousness is not a requirement for existence.
@4, Dunc,
If every possible version of the universe exists, then does that mean at least one exists with a creator?
If you answer “yes” to the above question, then what prevents us from existing in that one?
If you answer “no” to the above question, then there are limits to every possible version.
If you answer “mu” to the above question, then you recognize that the question is unanswerable and the question should be unasked.
As this is my second comment, I will stop now.
Goff has gone to such great lengths here in order to find or define a universe that has either a god, a grand designer, or supernatural, cosmic purpose that he’s actually defined any such thing out of existence. Parsimony? The actual parsimonious position is to accept the idea that the universe is not designed. Even if there is a supernatural being/cosmic principle/whatever, that fact would have no bearing on anyone or anything. Whether a person believes or doesn’t believe, that decision only affects that person and has no effect on the universe.
Kali fine-tuned this universe to create black holes, not life. 😉
A trait common in our species which will never cease to disappoint me: Many of us feel the need to come to profound conclusions about the universe, even though we are largely ignorant of how it works. Why is “I have no idea” anathema to so many people?
Fine tuning arguments don’t hold any weight because they are arguments from ignorance. It’s saying “Science doesn’t know why this value is what it is so it must have been God.” As scientists work towards a theory of everything it’s likely that some of those constants will turn out to have reasons or be tied other constants, reducing the number of tuning factors. Even if physics can not explain them, it may be they are tied to things outside our universe and can have no other value.
To add to what @JM said above, it is an argument from ignorance.
It also assumes that under any other assumptions/values of the cosmological constant/whatever life must not be possible. Who knows?
Possibly under another value of the cosmological constant the universe collapses quicker, but the conditions for life of some sort of also occur quicker? It may not be life as we know it, but hey, we don’t know!
Or under another value of the cosmological constant, the universe does not collapse at all, but interactions between atoms are so rare that it takes a gazillion years for anything complex to emerge, and who knows, it may be become complex it enough to start to think, but the thought “why do I exist” would take a million years in our timeframe. Who knows?
Unless we obtain the ability to simulate universes at the subatomic level, under different values of cosmological constants, we cannot know if, and in what form, life will emerge there. Even then, we may also simply not recognise it…
When I was much younger I mocked the idea of the universe having a human-centered purpose by claiming that the only reason why it exists was so that a being named Dufi Gogi would be born 2635 years from now and 125 billion light years away, and their short, horrible life would be recorded by the universe’s creator as a sadistic comedy show. Everything else, including the existence of Earth, is an irrelevant side effect. Though mostly this was about how speculating on the “purpose” of existence is pointless -- if it has one, we aren’t positioned to know or understand what it is.
“Neither atheism nor theism adequately explains reality. That is why we must consider the middle ground between the two.”
umm…no
atheism and theism are just beliefs about the existence of deities. they have nothing to do with explaining reality.
science explains reality.
as for fine tuning: we don’t know yet if the universe is fine tuned. more research necessary. so you can’t use fine tuning to explain anything yet.
PBS Spacetime put out a YT video a month ago:
“Are The Fundamental Constants Finely Tuned? | The Naturalness Problem”
What if there are a whole bunch of gods?
Why is this presented as a choice between the Abrahamic Monogod and no god(s)?
^ With the Greek pantheon at least, one can worship a different Olympian each day of the week, depending on one’s mood. Or on a bad day, hell, go with one of the chthonics. No need to confabulate all these confusing, misaligned traits around a single do-gooder.
It also looks like he carved out his middle ground by setting up the argument. He casts it as atheism vs god but sets up the god side as Christian all powerful/all knowing/all benevolent god. Once you do this there is a lot of space for beliefs that are supernatural but no Christian between the two.
If you just set it up as atheism vs one or more gods. Where the gods may have limitations and be flawed themselves. Setup in this more correct way there is still a little space to be an atheist and believe in the supernatural but it’s smaller and requires weaker entities.
The sort of universe as sentient, supernatural and rigging the system but not a god doesn’t work any more. It becomes obvious he is a theist, just not Catholic any more.
His argument seems neither new, nor interesting, nor is it in any way a compromise with atheism. This is just the deist “watchmaker” or “clockmaker” god. I’ve never found it a better explanation for the universe than simply accepting that the universe is what it is for unknown reasons. Adding a “god” to the mix is a pointless epicycle in that case. Not to mention the fact that a non-personal “god” is pointless in our everyday lives. This “god” is such a remote abstraction that even if it does exist, we should all pretty much live our lives as if it doesn’t exist. I can’t rule this god out any more than I can rule out living in the Matrix. The Matrix, however unlikely, could potentially have real world consequences, while the deist watchmaker is pointless intellectual masturbation.
It’s not any sort of convincing argument because of its unspoken assumptions. No multiverse+, no other universes, this is it*. Well if you make such assumptions then it does seem unlikely… that your assumptions are correct. It’s begging the question yet again.
+I hate the idea of the multiverse, even if it makes logical sense. All possible eventualities means endless suffering, worse than the worst you can possibly imagine
*It’s a bit like when people thought the Earth was it. Some still do, and some pine for signs of an intelligent creator
The argument from evil and suffering targets a very specific kind of God, namely the Omni-God: all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good creator of the universe. Meanwhile, the fine-tuning argument supports something much more generic, some kind of cosmic purpose or goal-directedness towards life that might not be attached to a supernatural designer. So if you go for cosmic purpose but not one rooted in the desires of an Omni-God, then you can have your cake and eat it by accepting both arguments.
In other words, we need “god” to explain the universe, as long as it’s a very vague, nebulous, noncommittal idea of “god” that doesn’t have specific agreed-upon characteristics and doesn’t really explain anything.
Been there, tried that. Has this guy ever heard of Paganism? There’s a whole lot of beliefs and stories about all manner of gods, none of whom are “omni-gods.” These beliefs are, IMO, a lot less ridiculous and self-contradictory than all the Abrahamic stuff most of us grew up with — but none of them really “explain” anything about our Universe any better than your average nontheistic/atheistic scientist can. And I’ve never heard any sort of Pagan or Heathen assert that their particular pantheon is necessary to explain anything other than maybe a subjective experience like seeing one’s father after he had died.
As for all this “cosmological constant” stuff: first, how can anyone calculate the probability of something happening if it’s only known to happen once (i.e., the creation of a universe)? And second, that cosmological constant isn’t the only natural law that vary and get us different kinds of universes. What if a different cosmological constant, combined with different values or attributes of other things, gives us a different kind of universe where different kinds of life can evolve?
Lewis was right. I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.
The Language of God -- Francis Collins
The answer to the question of this column is simply NO! For both atheism and theism are two sides of the same counterfeit coin, offering similar vanities and pretentions. Both are founded upon natual reason and both demonstrate the limitations of the human condition. Theism, whatever its claims, because it remains an all to human theological construct and atheism because it is equally unable to demonstrate what neither have yet to comprehend. That human nature itself exists in a perfect ignaorance of such a reality as God. And filling that void with magical thinking of any kind does little to resolve the issue.
“Possible” in this context means “compatible with the laws of physics”, rather than “imaginable by people”. Lots of things that people can imagine turn it to be logically inconsistent, and therefore not possible (assuming the universe makes any kind of sense at all).
I don’t personally think that any kind of creator diety is likely to be compatible with the laws of physics, although I can’t be particularly confident because we don’t actually know what the laws of physics are completely, or what permutations might be possible across the multiverse (if such a thing exists).
I think that the argument from fine tuning has a whiff of circularity about it.
1. humanity/intelligent life/life is the purpose of the universe
2. if the universe was much different from how it is humanity/intelligent life/life wouldn’t be present
3. therefore the universe was designed
4. therefore humanity/intelligent life/life is the purpose of the universe
My counterargument is that any sufficiently complex system produces low probability results. The relevant number is not the likelihood of a particular low probability result, but the likelihood of any low probability result. Otherwise you’re presuming that there’s something special about that particular low probability result, which is tantamount to the first axiom in the syllogismoid above.
Just like theism, fine-tuning-ism starts from a non evidenced and highly improbable premise:
“on a conservative estimate, the odds of getting finely tuned constants by chance is less than 1 in 10^-136.”
Really? So you have evidence to support the assertion the Cosmological Constant could have 10^136 different values, or even more? I would love to see that evidence.
The way I see it, either the universe *has* to have these exact values of constants, or it can have different constants sometimes, but then no intelligent life could ever evolve to observe or record those cases. However, since the universe definitely came into existence one time, that allows the possibility that it can come into existence an infinite number of times, and since it has all of eternity to reinvent itself, a universe that has intelligent life is still quite possible with no creator needed.
Robert #22
That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that there is a middle ground, similar to the middle grounds between intelligence and stupidity, reason and unreason, understanding and wishful thinking, etc.
…and atheism because it is equally unable to demonstrate what neither have yet to comprehend.
I’m sorry, WTF does that even mean?
@jenorafeuer, 3:
It doesn’t “lack explanatory power” at all. It fully explains why an apparently low-probability event is observed by the results of that low probability event.
See another stewart, 24: ” The relevant number is not the likelihood of a particular low probability result, but the likelihood of any low probability result.”
This is wonderfully put. What is the probability of A universe existing? That’s a solid 1, since we can observe that this universe exists. What’s the probabilty of THIS specific universe existing? Doesn’t matter. Once you admit that A universe can exist -- and I can’t imagine anyone obtuse enough to try arguing against that -- you would have to accept that any SPECIFIC universe (one where I just misspelled the word “specific” in capitals back there, for instance) is an astronomically unlikely occurrence within the space of possible occurrences. So sure, THIS specific one is unlikely… just like all the others. It’s not special.
Remember, you’re a unique individual… just like everyone else.
So it’s Betteridge’s Law of Headlines again.
I’m not sure I accept the notion that this particular universe is a “low probability” (in whatever manner you do that analysis). Until someone can show me a single example of another universe, with different constants, I must conclude that this version is the only possible one. What reason do I have to think otherwise?
Anyway, the cosmological constant thing doesn’t seem very different to me from the “argument from big numbers”. Ooh, it’s a small, non-zero number. Okay, so what? Is there any reason to think it shouldn’t be?
This all seems like a lot of hand-waving to get around the fact that there are some things we just don’t know yet. The answer to ignorance is not to pretend that your imaginings are reality. It’s to admit to ignorance and then investigate further.
I mean, I get the emotional need to believe that there’s somebody sensible in charge; someone who has a plan and will ensure that it’ll all work out if we just stick with it. I can’t fault anyone for feeling that way.
But a professor of philosophy ought to be held to a higher standard, especially when communicating his field to the public.
LykeX: Is this professor communicating with “the public,” or with paying clients who reward him (by buying his books or booking lectures) for saying things they want to hear?
The weak anthropic principle (WAP) says that we must be in a universe which is capable of supporting us. A question is whether this is no more than a tautology, or whether it has some predictive power. I believe that it potentially does have predictive power; if we have little capacity to constrain some property of the universe then it may be that application of the principle provides a tighter constraint that can be achieved by other methods. A possible example is Hoyle’s prediction of a C-12 energy level close to the combined energy of Be-8 + He-4, or 3He-4. (A counterargument is that the prediction is not particularly precise, and perhaps the existence of the energy level could have been predicted from knowledge of the scale of nuclear energy levels, which follows from gamma-ray spectra.) In hindsight perhaps it could have been applied to resolve the tension between physicists and geologists over astrophysical times, by predicting that the sun has an unknown source of energy.
I find stronger versions of the anthropic principle no more convincing than the fine tuning argument.
@29: I would distinguish that observation that if the universe was much different it couldn’t support us from the conclusion that it “fined tuned”, i.e. exists within an extremely small part of the possible parameter space. If we were to accept that conclusion, we still have the weak anthropic principle as an alternative explanation to inferring a designer.
But as you note, the conclusion of fine tuning is unsafe.
1) Proponents of fine tuning tend to minimise their estimates of the target parameter space -- they multiply the cross section fraction of each parameter together, ignoring that changes in one parameter can be combined with compensatory changes in another parameter. In two dimensions this changes the shape of the target parameter space from a square to, for example, a possibly much larger elongated ellipse. This may be the least of the problems; my intuition says that you only get a few orders of magnitude out of this, which is small on the scale of number thrown about.
2) We don’t know the range and distribution of possible values, so any probabilities given are unsupported.
3) Arguably not different (but it responds to the intuition of a flattish distribution), as it feeds into the distribution of possible values, but we don’t even know what the physically relevant (for tuning) variables are -- is it x or 1/x or ln x or e^-x or … For comparison in biology the meaning relationship between properties of different animals is not the ratio of the values of two properties, but some power of that ratio (often, but not always, a square-cube relationship).