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I’m delighted to announce that Dr. Robin Collins has written a thought-provoking paper titled, The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability, which develops a new fine-tuning argument for the existence of God, to the effect that some of the laws, initial conditions, and the fundamental parameters of physics were set in order to make the existence of an Intelligent Designer of the cosmos more easily discoverable by the embodied conscious agents (such as human beings) living in the cosmos. I should point out that Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards first drew attention to a striking correlation between habitability and measurability in their book, The Privileged Planet, back in 2004. As Richards put it in a conversation with lawyer and apologist Lee Strobel: “What’s mysterious is that the same conditions that give us a habitable planet also make our location so wonderful for scientific measurement and discovery” (The Case for a Creator, Zondervan, 2004, Chapter 4, p. 231). However, Dr. Collins’ new paper goes further, arguing that the laws, fundamental parameters, and initial conditions of the universe as a whole must be just right in order for the fine-tuning of the universe to be discovered by agents like us. Dr. Collins also addresses specific topics, such as the fine-structure constant (alpha), radiometric dating, the low entropy of the early universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation and dark energy, and he makes a strong case that their values can be scientifically explained in terms of their being fine-tuned for discoverability.
Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction to Dr. Collins’ draft paper:
One of the most persuasive evidences for the existence of God from the cosmos is the argument from the fine-tuning of the cosmos for the existence of life, the so-called anthropic fine-tuning… The most commonly cited case of anthropic fine-tuning is that of the cosmological constant. If it were not within one part in 10^120 of its theoretical possible range of values, either the universe would expand, or collapse, too quickly for galaxies and stars to form. There have been a variety of challenges to the fine-tuning evidence itself, and whether it supports the existence of God or a multiverse. I have developed a detailed argument elsewhere (Collins, 2009) that the fine-tuning evidence does provide strong confirmatory evidence for theism over naturalism. Here I primarily want to explore another kind of fine-tuning and its implications for this debate: the fine-tuning of the universe for being discovered. By this fine-tuning, I mean that the laws, fundamental parameters, and initial conditions of the universe must be just right for the universe to be as discoverable as ours. After presenting examples to illustrate this kind of this fine-tuning, I will argue that if this kind of fine-tuning exists, in general it cannot be explained by a multiverse hypothesis – by far the leading non-theistic explanation for anthropic fine-tuning. Further, I will show how the idea that the universe is fine-tuned for discovery answers some other commonly raised objections against the fine-tuning argument, and finally I will look at its potential predictive and explanatory power.
Finally, to be absolutely clear, my project in this paper is not so much to argue for the existence of God, but to explicate where one might look for new evidence one way or another. This is in keeping with the spirit of scientific inquiry.
So, is the universe designed in order that its fine-tuning can be discovered more easily? What do readers think?
Why should any universe be filled with Lego blocks to make stuff?
Why should any universe be filled with Lego blocks to make stuff?
Fine tuned for the discovery of a multiverse ain’t too shabby either.
In regards to the ‘Fine-Tuning for Discoverability’, I find it interesting that the Theistic presupposition of the world being rational, and approachable, by the human mind is what led to the founding of modern science in the first place.
The reason why Christian Theists such as Collins, Gonzalez and Ross, hold, (and the original Christian founders of modern science held), that the world is rational and approachable by the human mind is that they/we believe that since the world was created by the infinite Mind of God, and we are made in His image, then we are able to comprehend the universe. Moreover as Collins is currently showing, the fact that that the universe is discoverable by man since we are made in the image of God is now being born our empirically. As Dr. Torley has already pointed out, Gonzalez and Richards noticed the correlation between Habitability Discoverability
At the 38:10 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Huterer speaks of the “why right now? ‘coincidence problem’” for dark matter and visible matter:
In the following video, Dr. Hugh Ross points out that we live at the right time in Cosmic history to view the Cosmic Background Radiation (a discovery which has rightly been called ‘the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century’):
Moreover as Dr. Torley announced in the OP, Dr Robin Collins delivered a paper, at the Craig-Carrol debate, showing that the intensity of the Cosmic Background radiation is maximized for observers like us to discover:
Along that line, light is also found to be extremely fine tuned for life and ‘discoverability’:
As well, Michael Denton has also recently added to this line of evidence by showing multiple lines of evidence from chemistry that show that chemistry is ‘set up’ to be of maximal benefit for ‘air-breathing organisms such as ourselves’:
Of note, I believe, via rumor mill, that a documentary on ‘The Privileged Species’ theses, based in large part on Dr. Denton’s work, is coming out later this year (2014)
Here is another fact, echoing Denton’s book Nature’s Destiny’, that Dr. Robin Collins highlighted in his paper:
corroborating notes:
Verse, Quote, and Music:
I’m probably in the minority here and might get into hot water for saying this, but I’ve never been too impressed with the general thrust of the Privileged Planet argument.
Not the idea that the Earth is relatively rare and that lots of conditions are needed to support life as we know it. That part is pretty secure.
I’m talking about the idea that various parameters required for life also happen to be particularly suited to lead to scientific discovery. I just don’t find it all that persuasive.
For example, yes, it is interesting that the angular size of the Sun and the Moon as seen from Earth both happen to be about the same, allowing for various eclipse-related discoveries over the centuries. But with the advent of spacecraft and satellites and special optical viewing equipment we can discover the same things even if the Moon didn’t exist or had a different angular size, or even if the atmosphere were completely opaque and so on.
And don’t tell me that there wouldn’t be spaceflight or satellites or telescopes if we couldn’t see the Sun’s corona or couldn’t see the stars. Nonsense. While it is true that many a young lad, myself included, has dreamed of adventures to the stars while gazing up at night, the desire for flight would have eventually arisen, and — once on the other side of the hypothetical dense cloud cover obscuring the heavens — the desire for further knowledge and exploration of the heavens would have taken hold just the same. It seems just as likely that some of the phenomena Gonzalez and Richards point to are (i) simply the way the engineering worked out, and/or (ii) there for beauty and wonder, as much as for scientific discovery.
Anyway, I think the fine tuning arguments are valuable in terms of discussing overall probabilities and drawing an inference about the likelihood of our universe and our home planet and life thereon. I’m just not convinced that those parameters happen to make things meaningfully more amenable to discovery than they would be otherwise.
Or, perhaps differently said, I think that is the weakest part of their argument.
I’ll have to read Dr. Collins’ paper to see if it is any more convincing.
Eric, and a lot of people also find it hard to believe that material reality does not exist until we look at it,,,
If you have trouble accepting the implications of the preceding video and article, don’t feel alone, Nobel prize winner Anthony Leggett, who developed Leggett’s inequality to try to prove that an objective material reality exists when we are not looking at it, still does not believe the results of the experiment that he himself was integral in devising, even though the inequality was violated by a stunning 80 orders of magnitude. He seems to have done this simply because the results contradicted the ‘realism’ he believes in (realism is the notion that an objective material reality exists apart from our conscious observation of it).
Thus Eric, why should you think it any more strange that the universe is ‘set up’ for discovery by human beings than material reality does not exist until we look at it???
Of related interest to this ‘set up for discovery’ topic, The following site is very interesting;
The preceding interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality (not just ‘nearly’ in the exponential center!). i.e. 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle;
Verse and Music:
Eric, without our moon we wouldn’t exist. And it just happens to provide us with an awesome natural experiment. Without it being exactly the way it is Einstein may have been forgotten as people doubted his equation until it was proven by an eclipse. Consider:
What type of gases may an opaque atmosphere?
Did you read the book- “The Privileged Planet”? Cause I got a whole lot mo…
For example:
Chapter 16 offers a “Skeptical Rejoinder” answering the following 14 objections:
supplemental notes:
Dr. Ross points out that the extremely long amount of time it took to prepare a suitable place for humans to exist in this universe, for the relatively short period of time that we can exist on this planet, is actually a point of evidence that argues strongly for Theism:
As a Christian, I like the metaphor of ‘preparing for a wedding’ that Dr. Ross uses in the following video to illustrate the disparity that ‘The Anthropic Inequality’ presents in terms of time:
At least one secular scientist is far more pessimistic about the ‘natural’ future lifespan of the human race than 20,000 years:
There are 19billion chickens in the world today. I can’t imagine humans being completely extinct in 100 years. At least a few roving bands of chicken hunters will survive?
BA77, your comments and links are always spectacular/insightful/informative. Thank you!