I was arguing with Hermit and Loren, our two intrepid regular atheists on my blogs. They both feel, apparently, that there is no way to justify a sense of divine purpose. I appeal to the fine tuning argument for such as sense, this elicited a challenge from Loren to debate her on fine turning.
The problem is even though I use the fine tuning argument on my God argument list (that's just to help me get 42 God arguments so I can have the answer to God, the Universe, and everything, which as we all know is the number 42--well I have to do something with my nights), I still have a problem with using it. The problem is that I argue as a standard approach that God is beyond empirical proof. Yet this is an argument ostensibly proving God and yet it's empirical. I over come this difficulty by using it, not as proof for the existence of God, but as an indication of divine purpose being detectable in creation.
This is not the only indication of divine purpose. One could certainly argue that the basic nature of all religions indicates a purpose, that special revelation such as the Bible explicitly states a purpose (although God's ultimate plans and reasons remain a mystery) and one could point to the nature of religious experince for evidence of a purpose. Let's not forget that ever loving Transcendental signifier argument. That TS argument is chock full of purpose. I don't want to get into an argument about the Bible, for the simple reason that this will derail the whole discussion. I am expecting those two loyal opponents to discuss this at length. But I think we can bracket the Bible as just understood as a source for believers to point to for things like this and argue about it latter. I will sketch out the other three sources and then indicate why the fine tuning argument is an indication of purpose.
Now in these first three I'm assuming other arguments for God. Fine tuning is used a God argument, don't let that confuse you. I'm not saying these are arguments for the existence of God. I'm saying having assumed there is some kind of God, this is how we know that God has an overall purpose concerning humanity.
(1)The nature of religion itself
The purpose of religion is to identify the nature of the human problematic, and to resolve the problematic by means of mediation of ultimate transformative experinces. This being the case, the basic reason for religion as a whole is to transform the live of the individual in such a way as to enable self actualization and to surmount the existential angst inherent in the human problematic. Since this seems to be the goal of all world religion, regardless of how differently it is construed, we can postulate that if there is some form of reality behind world religions then this must be a motive or a purpose.
(2) special relation
I have already stipulated that I want to bracket this discussion. But the Bible tells us (Ecclesiastees) that the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep his commandments. Thus we can logically infer that since we have a duty the duty giver must have purpose in giving it. In fact the whole sense of duty and devotion that all religious believers feel might also weigh in the discussion.
(3) Nature of RE (overlapps with no 1)
One of the major affects of RE is that it gives us a sense that we understand there is an ultimate purpose. This is one of the major peace making aspects of such experinces. It's universal, people all over the world have these experinces and they almost always get this sense that they now see there is an ultimate purpose and its' good. Part of that experince is a deep abiding sense of a presence of love. That is enough to tell us that love is the basic motivation of purpose.
This is an indication, not an overall argument for the existence of God. The purpose indicated would be the propagation of life.The major evidence that I use for fine tuning comes from an atheist, the atheist physicist who invented one of the primary models for inflationary universe: Andre Linde.
(4) Fine tuning.
fine tuning, in so much as the universe is totally unlikely, demonstrates that a purpose had to be behind the fine turning since it would require purposive action to fine tune. Since the universe is unlikely the odds are overwhelmingly against it we should assume the game is fixed. If it's fixed it's fixed for a reason. That doesn't mean God has to sit down and design it like a giant building contractor in the sky. But he would have to put in motion some kind of principle that would allow for the unlike protection of life where it could develop. Fine tuning indicates that there is some sort of systematic bias introduced into the process that causes it turn out to protect life.
Adrei Linde,Scientific American. Oct 97
http://www.sciam.com/specialissues/0398cosmos/0398linde.html (this url may not be good any more it was a long time ago).
[explaining problems with the BB for which the new inflationary model is propossed. The first problem listed above--that the universe pops into exitence out of nothing]
a) something from nothing
b) Flatness of Universe
"A second trouble spot is the flatness of space. General relativity suggests that space may be very curved, with a typical radius on the order of the Planck length, or 10^-33 centimeter. We see however, that our universe is just about flat on a scale of 10^28 centimeters, the radius of the observable part of the universe. This result of our observation differs from theoretical expectations by more than 60 orders of magnitude."
c) Size of Universe--Plank Density
"A similar discrepancy between theory and observations concerns the size of the universe. Cosmological examinations show that our part of the universe contains at least IO^88 elementary particles. But why is the universe so big? If one takes a universe of a typical initial size given by the Planck length and a typical initial density equal to the Planck density, then, using the standard big bang theory, one can calculate how many elementary particles such a universe might encompass. The answer is rather unexpected: the entire universe should only be large enough to accommodate just one elementary particle or at most 10 of them. it would be unable to house even a single reader of Scientiftc American, who consists of about 10^29 elementary particles. Obviously something is wrong with this theory."
d) Timing of expansion
"The fourth problem deals with the timing of the expansion. In its standard form, the big bang theory assumes that all parts of the universe began expanding simultaneously. But how could all the different parts of the universe synchromize the beginning of their expansion? Who gave the command?
e)Distribution of matter in the universe
"Fifth, there is the question about the distribution of matter in the universe. on the very large scale, matter has spread out with remarkable uniformity. Across more than 10 billion light-years, its distribution departs from perfect homogeneity by less than one part in 10,000..... One of the cornerstones of the standard cosmology was the 'cosmological principle," which asserts that the universe must be homogeneous. This assumption. however, does not help much, because the universe incorporates important deviations from homogeneity, namely. stars, galaxies and other agglomerations of matter. Tence, we must explain why the universe is so uniform on large scales and at the same time suggest some mechanism that produces galaxies."
f) The "Uniqueness Problem"
"Finally, there is what I call the uniqueness problem. AIbert Einstein captured its essence when he said: "What really interests ine is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." Indeed, slight changes in the physical constants of nature could have made the universe unfold in a completeIy, different manner. ..... In some theories, compactilication can occur in billions of different ways. A few years ago it would have seemed rather meaningless to ask why space-time has four dimensions, why the gravitational constant is so small or why the proton is almost 2,000 times heavier than the electron. New developments in elementary particle physics make answering these questions crucial to understanding the construction of our world."
Now Linde is confident that the new inflationary theories will explain all of this, and indeed states that their purpose is to revolve the ambiguity with which cosmologists are forced to cope. The Scalar field is suppossed to explain all of this; but these inflationary models are still on the drawing board. Moreover, he never says where scalar fields come from, what makes them, and indeed never illustrates how they solve the initial problem of where it all came form in the first place. Finally, it seems that scalar fields would be a design feature that should trouble Linde as much as the initial problems, since he compares them the circuit breaker of a house which keeps the universe from heating up too fast before it can expand. Moreover, they might be arbitrary necessities (see argument I).
Loren has already issued her own argument against fine tuning:
Blogger Loren said...
Here is my broader point about alleged fine tuning. It's that the Earth's appearance of being fine tuned does NOT translate in the Universe as a whole being fine tuned. The Universe makes lots of different kinds of environments, and with that productivity, it's only a matter of time before the Universe produces at least one that can allow us to exist.
I think we can see that she doesn't grasp the dimensions of the argument. You can see from the evdience of Linde above the entire structure of the universe overall in its' earliest formation out of the BB is fine tuned. I don't eve mention earth.
It's like how if you play poker long enough, you'll eventually get dealt a high hand. It's very improbable, but if you play long enough, you get dealt LOTS of hands, and it's only a matter of time before you get a high one.
The fine tuning argument is not analogous to getting a "high hand." there are so many 0's in the odds given that it's like getting a thousand royal flushes in a row. In a real poker game those kind of odds would result in a lynching for marking the deck long before we got to even one hundred royal flushes in a row.
"No offense but I don't think you understand the argument. It says its' extremely improbable that we would hit the target levels. There are so many of them and if we missed one by just a small bit there would be no life possible in the galaxy or universe. So that means the game is rigged, and that implies purpose."The argument erroneously assumes that "life as we know it" is the only possible outcome. If the universe were different than it's still possible that some other form of life would arise.
Even life on Earth is pretty diverse; it arises everywhere from superheated volcanic ocean vents to the subfreezing desert of Antarctica.
The idea that the entire universe is somehow "fine-tuned"just for us puny humans is just absurd. This is another consequence of this anthropomorphizing habit; it ignores the vast and almost limitless variety of possibilities in the natural universe to make it all about us. It isn't.
That is merely argument from incredulity. 'O I can't believe it." that's not an argument. It doesn't do anything to the logic or the empriical data.
Blogger Loren said...
Very well. Thanx for inviting me. :)
I'm not especially interested in the question of cosmic purpose, since that seems to me to be a poorly-defined hypothesis. How would one tell one purpose from another, or from no purpose at all? For all we know, our Universe's purpose is to make lots of black holes.
See you got some things to say. We can understand protecting life. We can get that much. I'm not trying to say that I understand God's ultimate purposes. God is beyond understanding. But it seems pretty clear that we are given a series of breaks in this life in all kinds of things, one crucial one is the formation of life in the universe.
It may be plentiful or we may be all there is but it seems clear that a cold and hostile universe has been tweak, the purpose suggested is so that we will be here. That means we have a purpose. That is one of the major motivations for a religious life is understanding this,and seeking what that purpose is.
I'm more interested in the question of how fine-tuned the Universe is for allowing us to emerge and survive. I think that a few things may qualify as fine tuning, but for the most part, I think that the Universe is less fine-tuned than some fine-tuning advocates seem to think.
There are thousands of target levels. They are all over the place from early staler formation, even before from the basic crystallization of elements and formation of gravitation to stars to planets to life. Every step of the way we have a thousands totally unlikely events.
I will finally suggest that God's ultimate purpose is love. This is consistent with all four of the indications I give. God's basic motivation is love and all we have to do to understand everything important that we need to know is to love.