The Teleological Argument: an Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe

4 The Teleological Argument: An Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe ROBIN COLLINS 1. Introduction: Setting Up the Argument 1.1. Nature of project and summary of sections Historically, the argument from design probably has been the most widely cited argument for the existence of God, both in the West and the East (such as in theistic schools of Hin- duism). Modern scientific discoveries, particularly the discovery beginning around the 1950s that the fundamental structure of the universe is “balanced on a razor’s edge” for the existence of life, have given this argument significant new force in the last 30 years, with several books and many essays written on it.1 This precise setting of the structure of the universe for life is called the “fine-tuning of the cosmos.” This fine-tuning falls into three major categories: that of the laws of nature, that of the constants of physics, and that of the initial conditions of the universe, each of which we shall explore in Section 2. As will become clear in Section 5.2, the sort of life that is most significant for the argument is that of embodied moral agents, of which humans are one example. This chapter is a highly abridged version of an in-process book-length project in which I argue for the existence of God based on this fine-tuning of the cosmos for life along with the beauty and intelligibility of the laws of nature. The main purpose of the book is to put this argument on as rigorous as possible scientific and philosophical foundation. Although this chapter has the same purpose, it will focus solely on the argument based on the fine- tuning for life, although in my judgment the argument based on beauty and intelligibility is as strong. The sections of this chapter are arranged as follows. In Section 1.2, I present some key terms and definitions for easy reference. In Section 1.3, I present the basic form of what I call the core fine-tuning argument for the existence of God. This argument is explicated in terms of what I call the restricted version of the Likelihood Principle. In Section 1.4, I present an alternative way of formulating the argument using what I call the method of probabilistic 1. For shorter versions of the fine-tuning argument appropriate for undergraduates, see Collins (2002, 2007, 2008), Leslie (1988, 1998), and Collins (www.fine-tuning.org). For other book-length treatments of the fine- tuning argument, see Leslie (1989) and Holder (2004). c04.indd 202 1/16/2009 7:48:13 PM THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 203 tension. In Sections 2.1–2.6, I present the evidence for fine-tuning and consider some of the main criticisms of this evidence. Since I shall formulate the argument in Sections 1.3 and 1.4 in terms of certain conditional epistemic probabilities, I need to develop an account of conditional epistemic probability and a general method for determining the degree of conditional epistemic probability that one proposition has on another. I do this in Sections 3.1–3.3. In Sections 4.1–4.5, I address some further critical issues for my formulation of the fine-tuning argument, namely, the appropriate background information to use in the argument and the appropriate comparison range of values for the constants of physics. In Sections 5.1 and 5.2, I complete the core fine-tuning argument by using the results of the previous sections to derive the premises of the main argument presented in Sections 1.3 and 1.4. In Sections 6.1–6.3, I address the so-called multiverse hypothesis as an alternative explanation of the fine-tuning, or at least as a way of undermining the fine-tuning argument for theism. The multiverse hypothesis is widely considered the leading alternative to a theistic explanation. In Sections 7.1–7.5, I reply to various miscellaneous objections to the fine-tuning argument, such as the so-called “who designed God?” objection. Finally, in Section 8, I conclude the entire argument. My overall approach will be to present a version of the fine-tuning argument that is more rigorous than its predecessors by presenting the argument in a step-by-step fashion and then justifying each step using widely used principles of reasoning. This way of devel- oping the argument will not only show that the argument can be developed in a philosophi- cally principled way, but it automatically will answer many of the criticisms that have been raised against it; it also will help us go beyond a mere “battle of intuitions” between advo- cates and critics of the argument. Further, as much as possible, I shall avoid using theories of confirmation that attempt to account for everyday and scientific forms of reasoning but whose claims go significantly beyond what these forms of reasoning demand. Thus, for instance, I will avoid appealing to prior probabilities and to notions of purely logical probability that claim that relations of probability exist completely independently of human cognizers (see e.g. Sections 1.3 and 3.2). 1.2. Some key definitions, terminologies, and abbreviations In this section, I shall define some key terminologies and abbreviations that are used in more than one section. This will help the reader keep track of my terms and symbolisms. 1 Embodied moral agents. An “embodied moral agent” will be defined as an embodied conscious being that can make morally significant choices, without prejudging the status of moral truths. Our main concern, however, will be with embodied beings that are relevantly similar to humans – that is, who exist in a world with fixed laws and who can significantly affect each other for good or ill. Thus, whenever I talk about embodied moral agents, this is the type of agent I shall have in mind. 2 The existence of a life-permitting universe (LPU). This will always mean the existence of a material spatiotemporal reality that can support embodied moral agents, not merely life of some sort. Indeed, in every case where I use the word “life,” I shall have in mind embodied moral agents as the relevant kind of life. The reason that embodied moral agents are the relevant kind of life will become clear in Section 5.2, where I argue that LPU is not improbable under theism. Throughout, it will be c04.indd 203 1/16/2009 7:48:13 PM 204 ROBIN COLLINS assumed that the existence of such beings requires a high degree of organized material complexity, such as we find in the brains of higher-order animals. 3 Fine-tuning of the universe; existence of a fine-tuned universe; fine-tuning evidence; fine-tuning data. To stay in conformity with the literature, I shall mean by the “fine-tuning of the universe” or the “existence of a fine-tuned universe” the conjunc- tion of the following two claims: (i) the claim that the laws and values of the constants of physics, and the initial conditions of any universe with the same laws as our universe, must be set in a seemingly very precise way for the universe to support life; and (ii) the claim that such a universe exists, or when the background information includes the information that there is only one universe, the claim that this universe is life- permitting, where this is an indexical that picks out the one universe that actually exists. When I speak of the “fine-tuning evidence (data),” or “the evidence (data) of fine- tuning,” or variations of these, I shall be referring only to claim (i). The reason for this is that “evidence” and “data” implicitly refer to what physicists have discovered. Clearly, physicists have not discovered that the laws, constants, and initial conditions are life- permitting since we always knew that based on our existence. Rather, they have discovered claim (i). When I attempt rigorously to formulate the argument, the distinction between claim (i) and claim (ii), and the distinction between the “fine-tuning of the universe” and the “fine-tuning evidence (or data)” should be kept in mind. 4 Fine-tuning of a constant C of physics. When discussing a constant C of physics (see Sections 2.3 and 4.2), I shall use the term “fine-tuning” specifically to refer to the claim that the life-permitting range of C – that is, the range of values that allows for life – is very small compared with the some properly chosen “comparison range” for that constant. (For how to choose this comparison range, see Sections 4.3 and 4.4.) In connection with a constant C, the term “fine-tuning” will never be used to include the claim that it has a life-permitting value. 5 Constant C has a life-permitting value (Lpc). This denotes the claim that the value of a constant C is such that, given the laws of nature, the initial conditions of the universe, and the values of the other constants, the universe would allow for the existence of the relevant type of life – namely, embodied moral agents. 6 The Theistic hypothesis (T). According to this hypothesis, there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, everlasting or eternal, perfectly free creator of the universe whose existence does not depend on anything outside itself. 7 The naturalistic single-universe hypothesis (NSU). This is the hypothesis that there is only one universe, the existence of which is an unexplained, brute given, and that within that universe the laws and constants of physics do not significantly vary from one space-time region to another.

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