Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Individually, we're talking about some numbers which even if you could write down a zero on each atom in the observable universe, you literally couldn't write some of these numbers down. And then you're multiplying them together. So really, really, really, really, really, really, really unlikely that a universe would have these conditions that permit functional, interesting complexity, such as chemistry and.
The Future, A podcast about Evolution and
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Intelligent Design by now you may be familiar with the fine tuning argument for Intelligent design. Scientists have discovered a whole suite of parameters and initial conditions appearing to be exquisitely tuned to allow for complex life to exist. And the argument is that Intelligent Design better explains that evidence than chance or necessity or other proposals on the table. But you may not know that the most common objections to the fine tuning argument are definitely out there, and we do need to know about them and indeed have responses to them as well.
Welcome then to ID the future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today I welcome philosopher and intelligent Design scholar Peter S. Williams to the show to discuss his comprehensive list of objections to the fine tuning argument as well as his responses to each.
Based in Southampton, England, Williams is Assistant professor in Communication and Worldviews at NLA University College in Norway. He is also a Trustee of the Christian Evidence Society. He is author of several books, including An Informed Essays on Intelligent Design Theory. He speaks internationally on topics in philosophy, apologetics and intelligent design. Peter, welcome back to Idea the Future.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Thank you very much for having me back on the show. A small adjustment to your introduction to me. Since this last summer I've shifted to being an adjunct professor with NLR University College because as many institutions have, they've had to make some sort of job cuts to those folks on part time positions.
So I'm now an adjunct professor rather than an assistant.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Got it. Okay. And how have you found that experience and interacting with students?
[00:02:29] Speaker A: I love the students at NI University College.
It's a Christian university college, but serving non Christian students as well.
Although I've tended to do teaching on courses that are fairly kind of focused on apologetics or science and theology, but also I've taught kind of logic to general student populace and so on.
But they're great students and I always love interacting with them, particularly on their Once a year they bring a study tour of students over to the UK and they come and stay at Labrie in Hampshire and visit Oxford and London.
And we have this study tour based around the apologetic legacy of C.S. lewis and Francis Schaeffer and John Stott in the UK.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Oh wow, that sounds great. Yeah. So you're not just interacting with the students online, are you in a classroom environment or do you at least get to meet them during this study tour?
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yes, I at least get to meet them in the study tour. When I was an assistant professor, I would fly out once a year when they had gathered teaching and also go and do some speaking at apologetics conference, Veritas conference. That happened around the same time of year as well. So I kind of got two birds for one stone, as it were. But yeah, I still get to look forward to seeing the students who come over on the study tour.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Oh, that's great.
Well, we last Talked back in 2023 on ID the future about your book An Informed Cosmos.
But for those who are not familiar with your background, tell us a little bit about how you got into philosophy.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Well, I'd studied classical civilization at what we in England call A level the two years prior to when we go to university here, and that would give me a little bit of an introduction to like reading Plato and so on. I went off to Cardiff University intending to do a joint degree in music and English Literature and I took philosophy as my third humanities course. This is the way they structure it at the University of Wales.
And then after my first year I swapped what I was doing so that I was studying single honors philosophy. And I kept going with that through a master's degree at Sheffield and then a MPhil, two year research degree at the University of East Anglia.
And I kind of specialized as I went through that into issues in philosophy of religion. But it was whilst I was at the University of East Anglia that I was getting interested in philosophy of science discussions and the discussion between about methodological naturalism in the sciences and the kind of ID advocates who were arguing against methodological naturalism and for a so called open philosophy of science.
And I came to think that the ID folks had their philosophy of science correct, which opened up a door for me for thinking, well, maybe they have other things correct, because at that time I would have considered myself a content and well informed theistic evolutionist.
But that door kind of opened for me and I gradually came to think that the ID folks had substantive evidential points to make on their side as well as having their philosophy of science. Right. But it was through the philosophy of science that I kind of came into the whole thing, even though I think that's in a sense the least important part of the discussion.
Because the way I would argue now is if you think the evidential argumentative structure that you make from that genuinely points towards design being.
Being real and detectable.
Well, then it becomes really implausible not to just call that science.
I mean, what else are you going to do? Suddenly transfer loads of money from the science department to the philosophy department or the theology department or something in order to increase your actual understanding of the way in which the world has actually come about?
Right, yeah. So arose by any other name the labels not really what matters here.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And it is fun to point out that science is actually an offshoot of philosophy, you know, because it was originally called natural philosophy.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Philosophy. That's right.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: You know, scientists want to dismiss a lot of the philosophers these days, but the scientific pursuit actually came out of philosophy, you know, the search for wisdom. So they belong together.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Well, over two episodes of the podcast, I'd like to unpack with you some of the most common objections to the fine tuning argument.
You've done work in kind of assembling. These are not all of your responses, of course, you're assembling what's out there, but I found it very helpful to kind of see it all in one place.
These were your notes for a recent conversation that you had. And I think it'll be great just to share with you with our audience.
Some people won't be familiar with all of them. And so just to touch on. On a number of them will be great over two episodes. So let's start with a review of the evidence.
Can you first touch on the fine tuning data that has been discovered? You know, because that's what this argument is all about. It's the data that's been found. Can you just briefly touch. Yeah.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: So the data is kind of premise one of the argument, if you like, that our universe exhibits this highly unlikely and specific pattern of natural laws and constants of nature and initial conditions of the universe that jointly permit the existence of kind of interesting functional complexity such as chemistry being possible, let alone organic chemistry being possible. Right.
And that would include things like the force of gravity being finely tuned by, if it were adjusted by the scientists say one part out of 10 to the 50, adjustment to it would no longer permit a life permitting universe.
The low entropy. The initial low entropy condition of the universe has odds calculated at one chance in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123. I think that was Roger Penrose's calculation on that. Or the cosmological constant is fine tuned to about one part in 10 to the 120th power.
And of course then you multiply all of these by values together so the Overall improbability of the complexity, life permitting kind of conditions is literally speaking beyond astronomical.
Scientists generally reckon kind of back of the envelope calculation, there are about 10 to the 80th power atoms in the observable universe.
So these, these individually we're talking about some numbers which even if you could write down a zero on each atom in the observable universe, you literally couldn't write some of these numbers down and then you're multiplying them together. So really, really, really, really, really, really, really unlikely that a universe would have these conditions that permit functional, interesting complexity, such as chemistry and such as organic life.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: And is this data that's been found, is it widely acknowledged by scientists or is it held in dispute?
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, this is really widely acknowledged. So just a couple of quotes for you. Stephen Hawking, writing with co author Leonard Malovnow, wrote that for life to exist, the initial state of the universe had to be set up in a very special and highly improbable way.
Very special and highly improbable.
Astrophysicist Geraint Lewis, who's an atheist, writing with his co author and theist Luke Barnes, says that life is very unusual in the set of possible universes, in stark contrast to, for example, black holes. Those are easy, but life is, is unlikely.
So it's widely acknowledged, even by critics of the fine tuning argument, that there is evidence here of fine tuning that needs to be explained in some way.
A lot of the discussion amongst the kind of scientific community I think is about what is the best explanation of that data and whether design is an allowable explanation, whether design is the best explanation, or whether there are other alternative explanations that are better.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Okay, well let's jump into some of the most common objections to the fine tuning. We can group a handful of them together and call them. It's not even real. Right. You've got a few that are just denying the fact that there is fine tuning. The first is that fine tuning is just hypothetical, based on scientific theory rather than direct observation. What would you say to that?
[00:12:29] Speaker A: I'd say this is based on a very restrictive philosophy of science.
Particularly if you say we're only going to take seriously things that are based on direct observation, you could broaden that slightly to say, well, we'll take seriously things that are based on indirect observation.
But when you're saying we don't need to take this argument seriously because the data it's based on is just hypothetical, just theoretical, well really, you're undermining huge chunks of the scientific program here because a Lot of science is about our theoretical understanding and explanation of the universe and how it functions and so on.
So you're really going to cut the legs from, from under huge chunks of the scientific enterprise. And that seems to be a really high price tag to pay to avoid the fine tuning argument.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And wouldn't that also, by the way, dismiss the multiverse proposals because those are theoretical as well.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Those are not consistent explanations. You can't say, well, there's nothing to see here, and then propose some sort of alternative explanation for the thing that you don't admit is there to be explained. Right. So the multiverse comes in as an explanation for data that you admit exists and needs explaining.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: There are a few folks out there who want to sort of cut the argument off at the root and say, nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Well, what about the argument that the fine tuning evidence is no big deal because the parameters and initial conditions are just necessary? How do you respond to that?
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah, so the idea is then they're not unlikely because they just have to be that way.
And this, I think, really goes against our modal intuitions, as a philosopher would say about this. It sure seems like the relevant values and conditions and so on could have been different.
Cosmologists generally share this intuition.
Indeed, scientists think that the cosmological constant, for example, may be growing slightly over time.
The Big Bang inflation theory, which is a very popular theory of the Big Bang of the universe, theorizes that our cosmological constant was very briefly, very high at first and then lowered, dropped close to zero, as it is now.
So on that scientific theory, that is one thing that has been different.
So it sure seems like it can be different. Right.
And indeed, a multiverse model, like we just mentioned, there seem to be possible models of the universe that include a multiverse.
That seems to be a possibility at least.
And within those, you can have models that have some sort of scientifically describable mechanism that produces different universes with different tunings of the law.
And that seems possible. But if that's possible, then the tunings are not necessary.
Right. So I think our modal intuitions here put the burden of proof on anyone evoking necessity. And I ask, well, what, what kind of independent, reasonable evidence do you have to think that they're necessary?
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, another claim is that you can't really measure fine tuning.
Is that true? What's, what's a good answer for that one?
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Well, first of all, I point out that kind of, you don't need to think that you can measure all of these things precisely, kind of even back of the envelope kind of calculations will be enough to motivate the argument here.
There was a recent paper that I'm sure we can point folks to by a philosopher called Roberto Fumigale, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, saying that he wasn't siding with any explanation of the fine tuning, but he was saying he reviewing the arguments that said there's nothing to see here, and basically saying, no, there is something to see here. There is something to be explained.
He said that the claim that the probability of fine tuning conditional on it not being chance, is much higher than the probability of fine tuning on chance.
He says that claim does not require one to ascribe quantitatively precise probabilities
[00:17:28] Speaker B: on
[00:17:28] Speaker A: the data on the propositions here.
He says that fine tuning arguments can draw on both theoretical reasons and empirical evidence to identify defensible bounds on the range of possible parameter values that are in that data. And he says that on most proposed identifications of that boundary, the range of parameter values falling within those bounds is wide enough to make the fine tuning constraints that we notice significant.
So the philosopher of science, Robin Collins also, he both defends this idea that sometimes there are empirical bounds you can put on where we draw the kind of range of possibilities, but also where we can't. He says we can work with what he calls the illuminated range of values, the values for which we can calculate even if there might be values beyond those that we can't calculate. Right.
So I think a good illustration of this is to think of seeing an arrow hit a bullseye that's in the center of a huge blank area on a wall.
Now, even if outside of that blank area that the bullseye is in, the center of the whole wall was just chock full of targets of bullseyes.
Right.
Still, seeing an arrow hit the bullseye that's in the center of a blank, huge blank region would indicate design.
Okay, so that would be like, we can calculate this illuminated region, so who cares about what's outside?
Like, even if it's all bullseye outside, we can calculate that our universe and laws and so on are tuned in a way that is in the center of a. Of our unfruitful unlife, permitting huge range of values that we can calculate.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Mm, I like that. Yeah. Gotta have an explanation for being in that illuminated range even if there's bullseyes out beyond.
Well, another objection tries to take the sting out of the combined force of the fine tuning evidence by Saying that fine tuning investigations vary just one parameter to make their claims.
What do you say to that?
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah, this is particularly the idea that, you know, because, I mean, I did it at the beginning, like mentioning particular values and that's kind of done to simplify explaining some of this data.
And that leaves people to mistakenly think that, well, you've only valued made, you know, let's change the force of gravity and see what happens. But maybe if you changed other values at the same time, you could get life permitting universes. Right. So you're kind of underestimating the proportion of life permitting universes by only thinking about changing one value at a time. That's kind of the objection.
And basically, to quote Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes, again, this is just wrong.
They say that this is a surprisingly persistent myth and one with no basis in fact whatsoever. There never was a time when fine tuning investigations varied just one parameter.
They give illustrations of that in their book again that we can point people to. And they say that spinning multiple dials is usually as destructive as spinning just one dial, changing just one of these parameters. So that objection seems to be just based in a myth which is kind of encouraged by the, the simpler illustrations that are used in the popular literature of the fine tuning.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Now, a fourth claim of the it's not even real type is that physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger's computer modeling debunked fine tuning. Is this true? Explain this one to us.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Sneyer particularly looked at stellar evolution. So the evolution of stars in relation to kind of habitat, habitability and life, life in the universe.
But he's, his modeling has been criticized as being overly simplistic.
So to quote philosopher of science Robin Collins, again, he says that life prohibiting effects related to stellar lifetimes and stability only come to light when one begins to consider the complexity of the physics involved in stellar evolution.
Something Stenger has not done.
Ouch. But basically Stenger's models were overly simplistic. And when you include more of the physics that we know, then it's been shown that his evaluation is incorrect basically. And he's only kind of looking I think at this kind of narrow area as well. So. Yeah, doesn't really gently argument.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Well, one more in the it's not even real category.
So the universe is mostly hostile to life, therefore it, it isn't finely tuned. What would we say to that one?
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Yeah, so first of all, I would say that the principal evidence here is fine tuning for functional complexity, not fine tuning for life. Although it's often talked about in Terms of fine tuning for life, and sometimes even called, like the anthropic argument from the Greek anthropos for people, like fine tuned for people.
Some of the evidence can relate more to life and people. But there is evidence here at the broader level about, just as I said, even having chemistry, let alone having organic chemistry, let alone having complex life that can do science and technology and things. And some of the fine tuning also relates to that.
But so the principal evidence is this functional complexity, not just life per se, but the fact that any part of the universe at all is life permitting, depends upon fine tuning.
Right. So you can't dismiss that data by saying, but there's lots of bits in the universe where organic life couldn't exist.
Well, fine, but it's still surprising that there's any bit of universe in which organic life can exist. And that is data. And that does need explaining. So also, here's a fun fact that I came across.
If, for example, the whole universe consisted of breathable air, so you could have air breathing life all over the universe.
Well, the density of a universe that was just full of air would lead it to collapse within a day.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: So that wouldn't be a very fruitful universe in terms of how long it could keep life going for. Right. So, you know, be wary of what you ask for, perhaps.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
Well, let's pivot to some of the it's no big deal.
There might be fine tuning, but it's no big deal type of objections.
One claim is that life just adapts to whatever universe it develops in. In other words, in a different universe, life would be different.
So no big deal. What's your answer to that?
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah, and this has particularly been popularized by Richard Dawkins using an illustration from the the author Douglas Adams, who talks about, imagine a puddle, waking up one morning and thinking, you know, this is a really interesting world. I find myself in, an interesting hole that I find myself in. It fits me really, you know, really well, really neatly.
It fits me staggeringly well. This hole that I'm in, It must have been made to have me in it. Right. But of course, it's a puddle of water. So it will adapt. It will fit any hole that it was in that was there, any depressed configuration of dirt, if you like, would support water.
But very few configurations of physics support life to the point of fine tuning. So these are not analogous kind of descriptions of reality. Without fine tuning, there'd be no chemistry, let alone organic chemistry. So as the philosopher Michael Rota says, any universe in which life can arise, must provide the conditions for the storage and processing of information.
A thin soup of only hydrogen and helium, for example, which is one of the very common universes that you get when you adjust some of these parameters, just like hydrogen and helium atoms bouncing around, that sort of universe simply doesn't provide for the processing of information.
So, you know, life is not going to adapt to a universe that is just full of helium.
You need to have certain conditions in place in order to have life that is capable of evolving and adapting to the conditions.
So those fine tuning deals with how physics has to be set up before life can get started or can exist.
Without fine tuning, there'd be no thing to evolve to adapt to the universe that you have.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very good point. What about the claim there might be other or better life permitting value ranges beyond the illuminated range? Now, I know you, you touched on this already, and I do like that idea, but let's just dwell on that for a second.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Yes, we kind of touched on this when I gave that illustration about the bullseye on the wall. Or you might think about, you know, finding a radio, an old radio that was tuned to a radio station, and you turn the dial in both directions. You don't get anything for ages.
Even if then you hit a range where there were suddenly lots of stations that were easy to tune into, the fact that you found it, the dial tuned to a radio station in the middle of this desert of signals still is something that requires explanation. Right, so there is that. But you also might say this kind of objection. Well, there might be other things, right? Well, Sean, we might all actually be in the Matrix, but unless you shoulder the burden of proof to show that we are in the Matrix, simply asserting that we might be or that we are is an ad hoc argument from ignorance, like shifting from when it might be the case. So let's just say that it is the case without any evidential basis.
Well, we should take that just as seriously as someone who says you're all in the Matrix without actually giving us the correctly colored pillow to show us the evidence that that is the case.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah, and let's not forget that ID scholars and scientists take pains to remind each other and others that science is provisional. You know, so we're not saying, okay, we can go home, it's decided for once and for all, if new evidence comes to light, you know, about these other or better life permitting value ranges that somehow undermine the fine tuning argument, will be the first to acknowledge that. You know, but you've got to You've got to make a, you've got to stake your claim with the evidence that's available and allow that that is provisional. Right?
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Well, what about the claim that, you know, it's called the anthropic objection or selection effect claim, we can't exist in a life prohibiting universe. So again, what's the big deal?
What about that one?
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the fact that some event is a precondition of that event being observed by observers, that fact doesn't explain the occurrence of the event.
Right.
So sure, of course, of course we can deduce that the universe we exist in because here we are existing and we can deduce that the universe we exist in must have properties that are consistent with our existence.
Right, that must be the case.
But that is not to say, that's not to say that a universe with these life permitting qualities must exist or is likely to exist.
Right.
Unless you're assuming that your existence is necessary is like this is back to the it's just necessary objection otherwise. But just to say, well, the universe must be consistent with our existence.
Well, yeah, sure, but that's not the same thing as saying there must be a universe that has these conditions that are consistent with our existence.
So atheist philosopher Peter Cave says conscious beings exist, so of course the universe is such a place that conscious beings can kind of exist in. But he says, but it may still be surprising that the universe is such a place.
Or Richard Dawkins, he himself, I think in the God delusion, rejects this objection to the fine tuning argument. And he appeals to philosopher John Leslie's analogy of the firing squad. The man who's arraigned before the firing squad and they all shoot at him and the bullets all miss and the man is surprised to find himself still alive.
And his surprise would not be assuaged if you said to him, yes, but if any of the bullets had hit you, you wouldn't be here to be surprised.
So the bullets missing you is a precondition of your being here to observe that the bullets all missed you.
So nothing to be surprised about. Right? Well, Dawkins says the man could still forgivably wonder why they'd all missed and toy with the hypothesis that they were bribed. Maybe that's a better explanation of that data. You can't just say, well, I'm here to observe it. So there's nothing to explain. No, you still have to explain the thing that you observe.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's really interesting. Now the last objection we have time for today is this we only know of one universe. So the probability of life is one out of one. So why is how it's tuned such a big deal?
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Yeah, and I feel that this is related to where we started from in a sense that kind of, it's just hypothetical.
And what we observe, of course, we observe the universe being one way, but our best scientific theories about the universe suggest that it could have been different and that there are many ways in which it could have been different that were not fruitful, not life permitting and so on, and only a small subset of the ways that you can have universes in this kind of illuminated range that we've talked about that seem to make it unlikely and something that needs explaining.
But saying, you know, this is what we observe, so the probability is 1, 1 out of 1.
This is kind of an application of so called frequentist probability.
And it's a bit like saying, here's the world's first ever dice. I've created this 20 sided dice.
You roll the dice one time and it comes up seven.
You wouldn't therefore assume that the probability of rolling sevens on this dice is one out of one.
Right, Right. So there are many cases where in theoretical physics in which we can compute probabilities for events that don't rely upon observation of past statistical occurrences.
We don't have to have seen lots of different universes in order to think that since there are lots of different ways that the universe could be, and there is this, this significant difference in what you get out of those ways, of the universe being that there's something that needs explaining about the one universe we do observe being the way that it is.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great response. Well, this really gets us going on understanding and defending the fine tuning argument for intelligent design. But believe it or not, there's more objections and in a separate episode we'll unpack will unpack even more objections to fine tuning as well as responses to those objections. Peter, thanks so much for sharing what you've assembled and being on the show today.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Thank you very much.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Well, you can learn more about Peter's work, including his books, articles and even musical compositions at his website. That's peterswilliams.com don't forget the S in there. Peters williams.com well, for ID the Future, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for joining us.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Visit us at idthefuture.com and intelligent design.org this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
