Physics and Philosophy Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome back to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. We’ve been examining an interview that Neil deGrasse Tyson had with Dr. Sean Carroll. We are going to continue that in part two today on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig.

Now let’s get to the answer. Sean Carroll talks about the fine-tuning argument in addressing that question. Here’s the clip.

DR. CARROLL: The fine-tuning argument for the existence of God is what I think is the best argument for the existence of God. I also think it's a terrible argument, but still it's the best of the ones that they have. So I'm glad when they refer to it. And the idea is that you look around the world – the world in which we live; the universe that we find ourselves in – and you say there are features of this universe that need to be the way they are in order for life to exist. If they were different, life couldn't exist. But they easily could have been different. Right? The things like the amount of energy in empty space could have been so large that it would rip planets apart before they ever formed. But we seem to have gotten lucky. We seem to find ourselves in a universe that allows for our existence. So the argument is: I know why! It's because God did it. Because God created a universe in which that's possible. A very common counterargument is, well, it also could just be a multiverse, right? There could be many different parts of the universe, and we just are finding ourselves in the hospitable one. But there's two things . . .

DR. TYSON: But you're not in all the others to have this conversation, right?

DR. CARROLL: They help play an explanatory role in accounting for why our universe looks so fine-tuned.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, it's the best argument, but it's terrible. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: I think it's good that Carroll recognizes that the fine-tuning argument is the best argument. This opinion is not unusual these days. And far from being terrible, I have found that many non-theists think that the argument from fine-tuning is a good argument for a cosmic designer. In writing on this for my systematic philosophical theology, in the most current literature the fine-tuning argument is regarded by many non-theists as a good argument for God's existence. Now, that doesn't mean they're ready to believe in God because they might also say that there's countervailing evidence on the other side of the scale that offsets the fine-tuning argument. But they would say, considered in and of itself, this is a powerful and persuasive argument for the existence of a cosmic designer. Now, notice what the main alternative to cosmic design is – it's the multiverse. That is highly significant. Notice that the alternative to design is not just sheer chance – that it's just a chance that the constants and quantities are fine-tuned for the existence of embodied conscious agents. Rather, in order to give this hypothesis a reasonable purchase, you've got to multiply your probabilistic resources by postulating this vast, vast multiverse so that somewhere in the multiverse by chance alone fine-tuned universes will appear. And that's very sobering that otherwise hard-headed scientists would embrace so metaphysical a hypothesis as the multiverse in order to avoid a cosmic designer as the explanation of the fine-tuning. That in itself is a very, very significant concession. Moreover, the multiverse hypothesis faces very formidable objections today such as the so-called Boltzmann Brain problem which I discuss again in the debate with Carroll and in my articles on fine-tuning. So this is where the debate lies today. How will you explain the fine-tuning of the universe? Will you adopt the metaphysical hypothesis of a multiverse and try to answer the objections to it, or will you adopt the metaphysical hypothesis of a cosmic transcendent designer?

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's get more of his answer then. Dr. Carroll continues answering the question in this next clip. Here it is.

DR. CARROLL: Two things going on here. One is the proponents of this argument tend to exaggerate the degree of fine-tuning that they need. And that's what the questioner is referring to. There's certain things that William Lane Craig and others say, “I just don't get it. That's so fine-tuned.” But you can raise your hand and say actually physics has completely explained that one now. We don't need to go beyond the realm of physics to account for that. But in other ways, it still looks fine-tuned. And my favorite rejoinder is actually this is a great argument for the non-existence of God because if God existed and God created life, God is not beholden to the local laws of physics. God can create life however God wants to because he's God. God can do anything. You don't need the physical conditions to allow for the existence of life unless God does not exist.

CHUCK NICE: All right, now let me just ask a question here. Just to further clarify. What if, instead of needing the laws of physics, the laws themselves are a reflection of what God has done. So it's not necessarily that the laws are needed, it's that the laws exist because they just happen to be a byproduct of the creation itself.

DR. CARROLL: That is completely possible, and Neil will raise his hand here and say, “How do we observationally test that hypothesis?”

CHUCK NICE: OK. Listen, I'm 100% with . . . I'm on board with that. OK. Good. I just wanted to make sure that that could be an argument to be had.

DR. TYSON: This smells like Spinoza's God, right? Which is that whatever God is to you, the laws of physics are the manifestation of it.

CHUCK NICE: Oh, so I'm not that smart. Somebody already thought of my question!

KEVIN HARRIS: There's a lot to address from that clip. Chuck Nice, he's kind of starting to get it. And here's that authority thing that you were talking about – that scientific authority that Sean Carroll has, including his assertion that some of the parameters that you and others use are not accurate. Though he didn't elaborate.

DR. CRAIG: No. It's important for our listeners to understand that I do not exaggerate the degree of fine-tuning. I've been very careful to cite the work of professional physicists in this regard. So, for example, in our animated Zangmeister video on the fine-tuning argument, the values of the constants and quantities that we cite there come from Luke Barnes who is a professional astrophysicist at the University of Sydney and the co-author of this book A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos, written with Geraint Lewis. The parameters that are cited are so extreme that even if you exaggerated them by twice as much – if you cut them in half – they would still be incomprehensible numbers. If instead of one chance out of 10 to the 60th power it was one chance out of 10 to the 30th power, it would still be incomprehensibly improbable. And when you multiply these by one another, the probabilities just get completely out of control. To call the odds astronomical would be a wild understatement. And it's just not the degree of precision of this fine-tuning, but it's also the multiplicity of these constants and quantities so that they all have to fall into that exquisitely narrow life-permitting range. Now, Carroll tries to turn the tables and say this is an argument against God by saying that God didn't need to fine-tune the universe in order to create life or intelligent observers. Well, of course, it's true that God could create intelligent agents miraculously in defiance of the laws of physics, but that does nothing to show that if God exists then it's probable that he would have created life that way. Carroll has to presuppose what's been called divine psychology, that he has some insight into the divine mind to know that if God existed then he probably wouldn't have fine-tuned the universe for life. Instead he would have created the life miraculously in defiance of the laws of nature. And there's simply no way that Carroll can confidently assert that sort of divine psychology. Now, what's so funny to me is that the comedian Chuck Nice gets the point! He gets it. He's sharper than these other two professors. He says God doesn't need the laws of physics. True. But they are a reflection of God's intelligence, and so a revelation of God in nature in the universe. Now, that then raises the subsequent question: How do you test that hypothesis observationally? Well, by calculating the odds that an atheistic universe would have yielded such a fine-tuned cosmos. You compare the odds of a finely tuned universe on atheism with the odds of a finely tune universe on theism, and there can be no doubt that the odds of the fine-tuning on atheism and naturalism is incomprehensibly low and that therefore the probabilities favor the theistic hypothesis. As for deGrasse Tyson's suggestion that it is Spinoza’s God that is responsible for the fine-tuning, that's impossible because for Spinoza God just is the universe and therefore is not an intelligent transcendent person who can set the laws of nature and fine-tune them for intelligent observers. It really doesn't differ materially from atheism on which the fine-tuning of the universe is incomprehensibly improbable.

K: One more clip, and natural theology comes up in this excerpt. Here it is.

DR. CARROLL: But look, for the last 500 years as science has done more and more to explain why the universe is the way it is, the role for God as an explanatory move has gone away, has diminished. Right? And so you are . . .

DR. TYSON: And continues to do so.

DR. CARROLL: Yes. And so you're left with – if you want to believe in God, and there's plenty of very, very smart people who do – they tend not to rely on God to account for the things that we observe in the natural world (what is called natural theology as opposed to natural philosophy). Natural theology is not so popular anymore.

DR. CRAIG: Oh my goodness.

KEVIN HARRIS: So they both think that the gaps are being filled in, and Sean mentions the state of natural theology. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: This is so out of touch. It illustrates what I said before about how these professional scientists are like laypeople when it comes to theology and philosophy. We shouldn't be thinking about gaps in the first place. We're not talking about using God to plug up gaps in scientific knowledge. Rather, as I've said, science can provide evidence for a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion that has theological significance. Let me repeat that. Science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion that has theological significance. So, for example, in the kalam cosmological argument, the second premise “the universe began to exist” is a religiously neutral statement that you can find in any science textbook and for which there is powerful scientific evidence. And that is a premise in an argument that leads to a conclusion that is theologically significant. In the fine-tuning argument, it is asserted that the fine-tuning of the universe is not plausibly due to physical necessity or to chance, and that again is a theologically neutral statement. And there are powerful arguments against both the chance hypothesis and against the physical necessity hypothesis. And that argument in which that premise plays a role leads to a conclusion having theological significance. Similarly, in the argument from the applicability of mathematics to physical phenomena, the claim that “the applicability of mathematics to the physical world is not just a happy coincidence” is a premise that is supported by the scientific evidence. I just want to say here, as objectively as I can, contemporary science is more open to the reality of a transcendent designer and creator of the universe than it has been for centuries. With the advance of contemporary astrophysics and contemporary science, we are finding the project of natural theology to be as robust as ever, and that is not even to mention other fields in which scientific evidence can similarly support premises and arguments leading to conclusions of theological significance. For example, in the philosophy of mind or in origin of life studies and so forth. So it is by no means true that natural theology is in retreat. On the contrary, with the renaissance of Christian philosophy over the last half century or so in the Anglo-American world there has been a renaissance of natural theology. And anyone who denies that fact is simply ignorant and is blind to the evidence.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude today, give us your thoughts. And, am I right to conclude that the argument from fine-tuning is exciting because new discoveries are being made all the time so we can add the remarkable parameters and make adjustments to them if necessary?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I find that contemporary astrophysics is one of the most exciting fields of science today because as cosmologists probe the universe they are constantly making new discoveries that give deeper insight into the origin and parameters of this marvelous universe in which we live. So I would encourage any of our listeners that are high schoolers, say, or just beginning college to think about whether or not God might be calling them to a career in science where they, as part of their calling to serve the Lord, would do so as a professional scientist. We need committed Christians to be involved deeply in these disciplines in the future.^[1]