A Rebuttal to the Fine-Tuning Argument

A Rebuttal to the Fine-Tuning Argument

One of the arguments that Christian apologists love to trot out is idea of a fine-tuned universe. Christian author Eric Metaxas promoted it in the Wall Street Journal not too long ago.

The apologists say that the physics required for our planet to be able to sustain life are so precise and changing any one of those constants would make our existence impossible.

If Earth were slightly out of orbit, we'd be screwed.

If massive Jupiter wasn't pulling dangerous asteroids into its own orbit and out of our way, we'd be in trouble.

If gravity wasn't as strong (or weak) as it is, the whole universe wouldn't work right and we wouldn't be here.

Therefore, God must have set things in motion just that way. There's no way it could've happened on its own like that.

There are so many things wrong with this argument.

The simplest response is that, regardless of the supposed odds, if they were really so unachievable, we wouldn’t be here contemplating the “miracle” of existence.

There's also a famous analogy that Douglas Adams used -- it's like a puddle in a hole that thinks "Wow, I fit perfectly in this hole! It must have been designed for me!"

No, it's more like you just found a way to fit into the hole.

Similarly, the universe wasn't created for us. We just evolved to fit the universe.

And if the parameters weren't right for us to exist, we wouldn't be here to talk about all this.

Let me offer a different way of looking at it. Forget the universe. Just look at your own life. How many improbable things had to happen for your life to turn out the way it did?

I remember auditioning for a competitive public speaking team in high school and making it -- and that totally changed my life. I still coach a forensics team today. If i was sick that day or I chose not to do it, my life would be very different.

Or what about when I was standing at a bus stop in college one day and happened to talk to a girl who was also waiting? We ended up dating for two years and that changed my life.

And of course you think about the countless numbers of our ancestors meeting and mating. And that one magical sperm fertilizing the egg. And all the ways that could've gone differently.

Our lives are nothing but a large string of coincidences put together. Each one seems incredible on its own and it would be impossible to predict it all in advance.

But you have to travel down some path. It only looks “miraculous” in hindsight. And we don't get to see what the alternatives would've been. We only get to see the final result.

One last example. Get out a deck of cards and shuffle them really well. Then look at the order of those cards. The odds that they would've ended up in that precise order is astronomically small.

But it had to go in some order. It's only weird if you wonder why it happened to go in that order, as if there's a divine reason it ended up that way.

So back to fine-tuning: The universe works the same way. If some of those constants were different, it's true we may not be here, as us. But maybe some other planets and life forms could've evolved. Or maybe we would've adapted to different conditions. Who knows?

But to say the universe was fine-tuned just for us requires this assumption that we're special, that everything in the universe was geared toward our creation. It's a very arrogant approach to the world and it's not based on any evidence.

Sorry. We're not that important.

And you know what? If the universe were really fine-tuned, maybe more of this universe would be hospitable to life. It's not. Way more than 99% of the universe is a giant death trap for us.

It's a silly argument, and if someone uses it, it tells you way more about that person's flawed thinking than it does about how we came to exist.

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[avan]

Our guts are the perfect environment for tapeworms. Clearly we were designed for them to live there.

[Scarabola]

God created Jupiter to keep away asteroids? So why did God create asteroids? Better yet, why didn't he create a magical sheild around us?

[ConservativeAnthem]

This answer doesn't seem up to the subject.

[maxdoubt]

Yes, it's true on the one hand that had the universe been tuned ever-so-slightly different, we wouldn't be here. But it's also true that of this universe is deadly to life. A universe designed for life wouldn't be so hostile to it.

[trainiax]

This "rebuttal" represents a serious misunderstanding of what "fine-tuning" - as defined by science - actually means. It's not about Earth's orbit, or Jupiter attracting asteroids (although those things are tangentially related). It's not about us "fitting" our universe. It’s not about the possibility of other planets supporting life if Earth did not. It’s not about the large stretches of universe that are not suited to life as we know it. (And, in passing, the notion that “if it were improbable, we wouldn’t be here” is a logical fallacy, because the only universe that life forms can possibly observe is - obviously - a universe that supports life).

The concept of “fine-tuning” concerns constants that relate to the laws of physics - constants that can be expressed as unitless entities and that are independent of the mathematical formulation of the laws themselves. These constants do not just define simple numerical issues (like the distance between the Earth and the Sun) but the fundamental properties of the universe and the elements that compose it. Although theists have adopted the notion of fine-tuning to support their viewpoints, the constants themselves are directly measurable and our knowledge of them is strictly the result of scientific experiment and discovery.

Probabilities related to “fine tuning” are calculated based on taking all possible values for these constants that do not contradict the mathematics of the laws of physics, and comparing them to the range of constants that create the conditions necessary for life. These “conditions for life” are not related to the likelihood of finding a planet like Earth orbiting the sun - but rather, conditions such as whether the universe would continually explode or shrink into a black hole; whether or not carbon could be formed from collisions of helium and radioactive beryllium (related to resonance of carbon-12); whether or not stars can exist that are larger than a red dwarf but smaller than a blue giant; and even whether elements heaver than hydrogen can exist.

Some of the issues relate to the four fundamental forces of nature: the strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational forces. Changes to any one of these forces may affect any of the issues above and preclude the actual formation of the basic elements of the universe and their distribution.  We’re not talking about the “chance” of winning an audition (say, 1 in 10) - we’re talking variances on the order of 1 in 10^40, which is exceptionally more precise.

But don’t take my word for it - I’m not a post-doctoral researcher in astronomy. But Dr. Luke Barnes is. He’s not advocating atheism, and he's not advocating theism - he’s a scientist, and therefore is more qualified to discuss fine-tuning than most any theism or atheism devotee. Look him up - or any other author he cites who has written scientific papers about fine-tuning - to know what “fine tuning” is actually about.

[mattbilyeu]

The Fine Tuning of the universe is one of the more challenging arguments because it is such a technical argument. Mr. Mehta didn't present the argument in the form that Philosophers use. It is presented below:

1) The fine tuning of the universe is due to physical necessity, chance, or design.
2) The fine tuning is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3) Therefore the fine tuning is due to design.

Mr. Mehta presents 5 critiques of this argument in the video.

1) If the odds were really impossible, then we wouldn't be here to talk about it.
Here Mr. Mehta assumes his own conclusion. This statement only makes sense if you assume beforehand that there is no God. He doesn't give any reason for the belief that our being here shows that the fine tuning was due to chance, he just asserts it.

2) We evolved to fit the universe, so whatever changes there might be we would evolve to fit them.
Mr. Mehta has drastically underestimated the effects of changes to the fundamental constants and quantities with this critique. If these values were changed by a tiny degree, life of any kind would be impossible. If the weak force was slightly different, there would be no chemistry. If the cosmological constant were slightly different, then there would be no planets for life to form on. If there wasn't a low entropy state as an initial condition of the universe, then any form of life would be impossible.

3) Any combination of values is equally improbable, so the combination in our universe is not any less improbable than any other combination.
This again misunderstands the argument. The question is not why our combination exists rather than some other combination, but why a life permitting combination exists rather than a life-prohibiting combination. The odds that a life permitting universe would exist is fantastically less probable than a life prohibiting one.

4) Deck of cards analogy
Mr. Mehta's deck of cards analogy comes from the misunderstanding above. Let me give you an analogy to demonstrate the improbability. Imagine that every human on the planet were to have a billion children, and that everyone in the resulting population had a billion red ping pong balls. Now imagine that you through one yellow ping pong ball in and mixed them all up. The odds that you would draw the yellow ball a billion times in a row out of the mass is 1 in 10 to the 36th power. Now compare that to the odds that the values above fall within the life permitting range. The odds that just the three values mentioned in #2 above are within a life permitting range are 1 in 10 to the 1450th power.

5) The fine tuning argument is arrogant because it assumes that the universe was fine tuned for us.
The argument recognizes that the constants and quantities fall within a narrow life permitting range. It isn't arrogant, it is just a fact.

The fact is that the argument from fine tuning is a strong argument. This argument, when paired with the other arguments for God's existence, make a powerful case for theism. At the very least, theism is shown to stand on sound intellectual grounds.

[leandronc]

The problem with Adams' analogy is that water can adapt to fit any hole. But it would be silly to believe life could adapt to fit any universe. How about a universe that lasted less than 1 second? Or a universe that expanded too quickly for atoms to form? Both are much more probable given an arbitrary, un-designed arrangement of parameters.

[joriswittenberg]

Actually, the universe is fined tuned for donuts.

[sonicpsycho]

I think it was AntiCitizenX who said, "It makes more sense to say that the universe was finely tuned for making black holes, because it seems that it spends more time making black holes than humans."

[KonbanwaJapan]

Just found out about this "fine tuned universe" argument one video ago. I certainly have not thrown this argument around shamelessly as this man has suggested Christians do. But I gotta say- and I must admit I have my bias, as we all do- but I feel like the video explaining this finely tuned universe sounded alot more convincing than this video's "rebuttal" of it. It actually feels more like a disagreement based on a personal opinion than it does refuting the facts.

[DieMasterMonkey]

The Fine Tuning argument always reminds me of the Demetri Martin joke:
Someone came up to me on the street and said "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else..."
I said "I am"

[macaronimick]

The first criticism I have of this video comes in the first 5 seconds: the immediate reference to "Christians". The implication is that arguments from ID are religiously motivated, founded upon some already preconceived bias (in this case a Christian bias). But, the fact is, even if proponents of and arguments for ID were religiously motivated, it would say nothing about the validity and propriety of ID. Therefore, an ID advocate's personal faith should not render an argument invalid by advancing critique on these grounds.

[Squary]

Why does the voice change at 3:13 and at 3:51???

[whydonaldwhat]

It's thirty degrees outside my house right now. This is not "fine tuned" to what I'd be comfortable with at all. Forget the universe; look at the Earth.

[jankopandza]

In theoretical physics, fine-tuning is the process in which parameters of a model must be adjusted very precisely in order to fit with certain observations. This had led to the discovery that the fundamental constants and quantities fall into such an extraordinarily precise range that if it did not, the origin and evolution of conscious agents in the universe would not be permitted . The fine tuning problem was first introduced by Nima Arkani-Hamed a theoretical physicist of Iranian descent, with interests in high-energy physics, quantum field theory, string theory, cosmology and collider physics.

[thechurchofsillybeggars]

of the universe is instantly fatal to life.
I have a problem with the idea of the way "fine tuning" is being used in a sentence.

[manleybeasley]

Hm. I honestly expected an actual scientific rebuttle. The title should probably be changed, here.

[MikeWinger]

I think that this rebuttal completely misses the actual fine tuning argument. Listen to Mr. Mehta again with the following in mind. The fine tuning argument is not merely based on the fact that the odds of the physical constants and quantities being just what they are is astronomical. It is also based on another key idea; that if these constants and quantities were only slightly different no intelligent life could exist. This is a key element in the argument and it is ignored by Mr. Mehta.
His analogies are all examples where any combination of variables produces an acceptable end. If the hole were differently sized then the puddle would easily adapt to fit it. But if the expansion rate of the universe were only slightly faster and no planets or stars ever formed then life wouldn't adapt, it would simply never happen. If the deck of cards came out differently after shuffling then it would seem unlikely but without consequence. But suppose gravity or the strong nuclear force were different and no life were possible at all. The issue which he ignores is the heart of the fine tuning argument, that life would not adapt because it simply wouldn't be chemically or physically possible for even a variation of life to exist.
I think that failed rebuttals to key theistic arguments is a very telling thing.

[XbooX]

How can you deny the fine tuning argument? God had to have those 5 extinction events before he could create us. How could an infinitely powerful being have done it any other way.

[BoyKagome]

Here's his argument...

A man is lined against a wall with 8 sharp shooters with freshly cleaned rifles pointing at him... They all fire, and all miss.

His argument says " I survived, because I wouldn't be alive to tell how I survived if I had died."