The Fine Tuning Argument: the critics strike back

At the end of of 2022, we released a film offering a reply to the fine tuning argument for God from leading physicists and philosophers of physics. This included both those that doubt there is any fine tuning and those that think there is but it can be solved by naturalistic means.
Subsequently astrophysicist Luke Barnes and philosopher Philip Goff offered their criticism of our criticism. Here we have assembled some of our original talking heads to review their criticism and offer a reply, defending the original position that fine tuning argument for God does not work.

Our panel consists of Graham Priest , Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, well known for his work in logic especially non classical logic, the philosophy of mathematics and science and Buddhist philosophy.

Barry Loewer, who is the distinguished professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and director of the Rutgers Center for Philosophy and the Sciences. Barry specialises in philosophy of science and philosophical logic and the foundations of quantum mechanics, statical mechanics and probability .

Dan Linford who is one of the rising stars in the intersection of the philosophy of physics and philosophy of religion. He did his Phd in philosophy, under Paul Draper and had well known atheist cosmologist Sean Carroll and theistic fine tuning advocate Rob Collins on his thesis committee. He’s now doing a postdoc at the University of Nebraska and recently authored the book Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs with Joe Schmidt.

Niayesh Afshordi who is an astrophysicist and cosmologist , he’s Professor at the University fo Waterloo and faculty at the Permitter Institute for Theoretical physics. Niayesh won the silver medal at the world physics Olympiad as a teenager, won 1st prize the The Buchalter Cosmology Prize and works in a variety of fields from early universe cosmology, black holes, dark energy and quantum gravity

OUTLINE

0:00 Intro
3:26 Dan’s opening thoughts
6:43 Graham opening thoughts
11:23 Niayesh opening thoughts
13:33 Barry opening thoughts
20:51Bias
28:53 Changing the constants
40:21 Bayes theorem
41:36 Objective Bayesianism
51:13 Principle of Indifference
58:27 Infinities
1:00:00 Infinity again
1:06:00 Gob vs God
1:15:08 Probability of life given God
1:20:11 Does god need to fine tune?
1:24:10 Boltzmann Brains
1:32:57 Entropy
1:39:54 Cosmic Darwin

[SpeakersCornerUK]

Great to hear from some exceptional minds in the different fields!

[B.S...]

I’m scratching my head thinking - How can theists avoid the problems that arise from theistic dualism? How is mind contingent on material constants?
_"under theism life could exist under any conditions"_ - Sean Carroll

[Theactivepsychos]

I always thought the fine tuning argument was akin to claiming that Victoria sponge is so finely crafted that the ingredients moving just a little would mean other cakes don’t exist.

[CosmoPhiloPharmaco]

That's cool! I'm adding this video to my counter-apologetics playlist.

[Cat_Woods]

I respected Barnes and Goff at certain earlier times that I encountered their thoughts. I even brought up Barnes' arguments to people who dismissed fine-tuning on what I thought was an unfair or uninformed basis. I eventually discovered that Barnes was motivated by his theism rather than science. (I was so disappointed! I really thought it was an interesting scientific question why the constants are the values they are.)

Seeing Goff's participation in the Capturing Christianity video made me more skeptical of his other ideas. That video prioritized theism over a dispassionate analysis of the facts. Do I know enough to critique their science? No. But I know enough to trust the scientists who are starting with the science, without a theological axe to grind, more.

And again, I'm just really disappointed. Why can't interesting questions be explored without trying to turn it into a "therefore God" argument? You will never have a real "therefore God" unless God comes out and speaks for him (or her or it) self at some point. (And I mean without depending on telepathy to our minds. If a God wants to communicate to us, it has a lot of ways that could be independently confirmed.) The best you can get is "this seems unlikely" and when you're talking about universes, you don't know the landscape of possible universes and creators in the first place to know the likelihoods.

[New_Essay_]

Thank you Phil for this amazing video! 🙏

[JohnCamacho]

God really like phenomenon P. 99% of all universes have P, so God is happy. Unfortunately it so happens that life exists in the 1% of universes that do not have P. So God doesn't care about life at all. He cares about P

[TimoteoTheOsprey]

This was frustrating. Why not just have Goff and Barnes sit down and talk with Loewer and Priest (or whoever)? Having the conversation always one step removed makes it hard to get clear on where exactly the disagreements lie and why exactly each side lands where they do.

[HarryNicNicholas]

my other (!) thought is, if god has to turn the dials to just the right values, whose laws of physics is he using? he should be able to use any value he feels like.

[juan_martinez]

can god create life using only one particular set of constants? if yes then god is not all powerful.
can god create life with any set of constants? if yes then why speak of fine tuning?

[garybala]

We can only be sure of this: the universe is either fine-tuned or it appears to be fine-tuned based on our flawed limited observation and theory, to allow for life at least here on this one planet. And we and consciousness are here or appear to be here. Thanks for another provocative video.

[nicholasrandazzo]

While I do believe that in actual fact the universe was fine tuned by an omniperfect agent, I always appreciate the counterarguments and various perspectives of well-respected experts in their fields. Love these videos!

[terryleddra]

If your father never met your mother you would not exist.
The fact that you do exist is not an argument that your father meeting your mother was fine tuned.

[MrGustavier]

1:29:54 _"I'm suggesting is that you know so you realize that you're not a pulseman brain some of these hypotheses uh have balls and brains of predominate but and so those certainly take a hit"_

Godda love Youtube automatic transcription !

[adreaminxy]

Really appreciate all the videos on this, thanks all!

[dr.shousa]

I completely agree with Loewer that objective Bayes is completely useless, which has been known in statistics for a few decades now. It's just a made up idea to make their argument seem more legitimate.

[ElGatoMarcus]

My first response upon learning that Trump was going to be president was to intuitively exclaim, “There is no god!” 😂

[DeconvertedMan]

Took millions of years for life to even be a thing so how is it that the unverse is "tuned" for life again? Its so silly. Theists will say anything to get to the god they beleve in.

[justus]

I think it's funny how Graham is just sitting there nearly through the whole thing😂

[MarcWhitaker]

Surely, if our universe needed to be fine tuned for us to exist, there must be someplace, some meta universe where God exists. Who fine-tuned that meta universe for God?