I am responding to a challenge made by
@TagliatelliMonster
@TagliatelliMonster said:
So my best argument is the fine tuning argument, let’s see if you can show that the argument is wrong or fallacious.
The argument
0 The universe is FT for the existence of atoms, molecules, stars, planets and other stuff required for life
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1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.
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I have the same view than William Lane Creig, so unless I clarify otherwise, you can assume that WLC writings and videos represent my view
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more detail
The Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Principle | Reasonable Faith
Teleological Argument (part 1) | Reasonable Faith
Teleological Argument (part 2) | Reasonable Faith
Teleological Argument (part 3) | Reasonable Faith
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You can trump the argument by:
1 Showing that any of the premises is likely to be wrong
2 showing that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises
3 showing that the universe is not FT (stawman definitions of FT are not allowed)
4 showing that there is a better explanation for FT
5 show that there is a logical fallacy
Please specify exactly what avenue are you going to use to refute the argument (explicitly choose any of the options above)
I will begin with an examination of some of the claimed "constants" broadcast at the start of the video:
I raised my eyebrows when I saw "Cosmological Constant: (2.3 * 10^-3 eV)^4," because this is a value that could famously be radically different and still get a universe that looks like the one we see today (it would just have a different past and future).
My research last year was entirely about constraining the dark energy and the dark energy equation of state parameter, and while (yes) we can rule a lot of possibilities out to match the observed universe (yet still, not all of them!), it could be different and you would still get a universe that could support planets and stars, just not the one we observe.
This raises some concerns that the video-maker is not actually familiar with the physics.
Some of these things have questionable... I don't know. Thought behind them? For instance it mentions the strong force coupling constant. But from QCD [quantum chromodynamics], the strong force coupling constant goes to infinity as distance increases. It's not actually really the important part I would want to point out if I were making a fine-tuning argument. The important part would be the color confinement: that which keeps the strong force from operating over long distances, which is poorly understood, but probably has something to do with the energy favorability of instead popping off particle-antiparticle pairs. Now could
that be slightly different and still get a universe with matter? Since it's
inherently probabilistic, I really don't see why not, there would be some wiggle room there. I am not in QCD so I don't know how much (in fact I am pretty sure nobody does; I originally had a lot of interest in going into QCD before I went astrophysics).
So, it is clear to me that the arguer is using something of a shotgun method where they're just throwing out a bunch of things without a lot of
real physics insight to see what sticks, and that turns me off a little bit from the video itself.
But maybe they have some good examples that aren't easily explained (I don't know, I am not an expert in some of the fields required). I think many of the other responses in this thread have done a good job, but I also think this: multiverses don't even have to be scientifically viable (e.g. even if they're untestable) to simply say "ok, a multiverse explains this about as well as a designer does, so we still can't just say 'therefore, design.'" And that would be true. Fine-tuning still wouldn't really get us across the goal line to theism. (Which by the way, this would be an attack on premise 2, that it "can't be by chance," because it
could be).
