Mar 18, 2025 08:13 PM
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/20...verse.html
INTRO: In “Calculating God,” Robert J. Sawyer’s first-contact novel, the aliens who arrive on Earth believe in the existence of God – without being particularly religious. Why?
There are certain physical forces, they explain, that make life in our universe possible only if they are tuned to very specific values. Which they are. We are here, after all. But there’s no physical reason that the values need to be set the way they are. The aliens have concluded that someone, or something, set the values of these parameters at the beginning of the universe to insure that life would come into existence. That something they call God.
Here’s a much earlier, very different version of this argument. If you were hiking through the woods and you picked up a shiny object that turned out to be a small stone, it would probably not occur to you that it might have been made by someone. If it turned out to be a watch, however, you would immediately conclude that it had been intentionally created. So, is the universe more like a stone or a watch?
[...] Friederich, like Boyce and Swenson, cites five fine-tuned constants, though some sources point to as many as 30 – and Friederich raises the possibility that the initial conditions of the universe, and some physical laws, might also be considered fine-tuned for life. Is God the right explanation for such pervasive fine-tuning?
Evolution may come to the rescue again. Not biological evolution, but physical evolution this time. [...] For simplicity, let’s just say that somehow, our universe is just one of a very large number of universes. Here’s an explanation for fine-tuning, then. There are many universes where the relevant constants are set at different values. Only where they are set just right, around here, for example, does life arise...
[...] We are not lucky to be in a universe made for us, on this view. We are, necessarily, in a universe that we could be in.
Here’s how Boyce and Swenson attempt to turn the tables in this debate. They say, it’s not that our universe being fine-tuned for life is explained by the multiverse. We don’t know that there is a multiverse, and fine-tuning is not, in and of itself, evidence for a multiverse. Rather, the fine-tuning of our universe makes it both more likely that there is a God – and less likely that there is a multiverse.
They use formal Bayesian inferences to make the argument. I am going to assume we can get the gist of it without all the machinery, though the devil, or in this case, maybe, God, is in the details – and those you can find here. They argue:
(1) The likelihood that our universe is finely-tuned and that there is a God is greater than the likelihood that the universe is finely-tuned and that there is no God.
That is essentially, the fine-tuning argument. Fine-tuning increases the likelihood that God exists. We’ll assume that this is true.
(2) If there is no God, then the likelihood that our universe, in particular, is finely tuned is still independent of whether a multiverse exists.
In other words, Boyce and Swenson assume (following Hacking and White) that fine-tuning is not, in and of itself, evidence for a multiverse.*
Here’s the reasoning.
The more you roll a pair of dice, the more likely it is that one of your rolls will be (the otherwise unlikely) double-sixes (1/36). But somebody rolling a double-six is not evidence that they’ve had many prior rolls. The probability of rolling double-sixes on any given roll is independent of the number of rolls. So, even if we believe that the fact that there are a large number of universes makes it more likely that some of these are fine-tuned for life, our universe being fine-tuned is not evidence that there are many universes – any more than double-sixes are evidence of a large number of rolls.
(3) If you assume there is a God, then the likelihood that this universe would be fine-tuned is greater if this is the only universe, than it is if there is a God and there are also many other untuned universes.
If we grant that various background beliefs suggest God is not a life-maximizer, (“the vast majority of regions of our universe are hostile to life,” for example, as Boyce and Swenson say), but God wants there to be some life; if this is the only universe, for there to be life, God would have to fine-tune this one.
God is more likely to fine-tune for life in this universe (which as far as we know is the only one), if it is, in fact the case, that it is the only one, than if there are many others. The punchline is that since this universe is finely-tuned, it’s actually less likely that there are other untuned universes.
I am not sure. Here’s my analogy... (MORE - missing details)
INTRO: In “Calculating God,” Robert J. Sawyer’s first-contact novel, the aliens who arrive on Earth believe in the existence of God – without being particularly religious. Why?
There are certain physical forces, they explain, that make life in our universe possible only if they are tuned to very specific values. Which they are. We are here, after all. But there’s no physical reason that the values need to be set the way they are. The aliens have concluded that someone, or something, set the values of these parameters at the beginning of the universe to insure that life would come into existence. That something they call God.
Here’s a much earlier, very different version of this argument. If you were hiking through the woods and you picked up a shiny object that turned out to be a small stone, it would probably not occur to you that it might have been made by someone. If it turned out to be a watch, however, you would immediately conclude that it had been intentionally created. So, is the universe more like a stone or a watch?
[...] Friederich, like Boyce and Swenson, cites five fine-tuned constants, though some sources point to as many as 30 – and Friederich raises the possibility that the initial conditions of the universe, and some physical laws, might also be considered fine-tuned for life. Is God the right explanation for such pervasive fine-tuning?
Evolution may come to the rescue again. Not biological evolution, but physical evolution this time. [...] For simplicity, let’s just say that somehow, our universe is just one of a very large number of universes. Here’s an explanation for fine-tuning, then. There are many universes where the relevant constants are set at different values. Only where they are set just right, around here, for example, does life arise...
[...] We are not lucky to be in a universe made for us, on this view. We are, necessarily, in a universe that we could be in.
Here’s how Boyce and Swenson attempt to turn the tables in this debate. They say, it’s not that our universe being fine-tuned for life is explained by the multiverse. We don’t know that there is a multiverse, and fine-tuning is not, in and of itself, evidence for a multiverse. Rather, the fine-tuning of our universe makes it both more likely that there is a God – and less likely that there is a multiverse.
They use formal Bayesian inferences to make the argument. I am going to assume we can get the gist of it without all the machinery, though the devil, or in this case, maybe, God, is in the details – and those you can find here. They argue:
(1) The likelihood that our universe is finely-tuned and that there is a God is greater than the likelihood that the universe is finely-tuned and that there is no God.
That is essentially, the fine-tuning argument. Fine-tuning increases the likelihood that God exists. We’ll assume that this is true.
(2) If there is no God, then the likelihood that our universe, in particular, is finely tuned is still independent of whether a multiverse exists.
In other words, Boyce and Swenson assume (following Hacking and White) that fine-tuning is not, in and of itself, evidence for a multiverse.*
Here’s the reasoning.
The more you roll a pair of dice, the more likely it is that one of your rolls will be (the otherwise unlikely) double-sixes (1/36). But somebody rolling a double-six is not evidence that they’ve had many prior rolls. The probability of rolling double-sixes on any given roll is independent of the number of rolls. So, even if we believe that the fact that there are a large number of universes makes it more likely that some of these are fine-tuned for life, our universe being fine-tuned is not evidence that there are many universes – any more than double-sixes are evidence of a large number of rolls.
(3) If you assume there is a God, then the likelihood that this universe would be fine-tuned is greater if this is the only universe, than it is if there is a God and there are also many other untuned universes.
If we grant that various background beliefs suggest God is not a life-maximizer, (“the vast majority of regions of our universe are hostile to life,” for example, as Boyce and Swenson say), but God wants there to be some life; if this is the only universe, for there to be life, God would have to fine-tune this one.
God is more likely to fine-tune for life in this universe (which as far as we know is the only one), if it is, in fact the case, that it is the only one, than if there are many others. The punchline is that since this universe is finely-tuned, it’s actually less likely that there are other untuned universes.
I am not sure. Here’s my analogy... (MORE - missing details)