Evidence · Case 09 · Atheism
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Fine-Tuning”
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Physicists identify a set of constants and initial conditions that must fall within narrow ranges for a life-permitting universe. The cosmological constant is a standard case. Its observed value is smaller than some theoretical expectations by roughly 120 orders of magnitude, and if it were much larger, galaxies and stars could not form. The strong nuclear force is another. A shift of a few percent would prevent the formation of the elements life depends on.
Sources
Objections & responses
- A designer who wanted life wouldn’t need fine-tuning at all. An omnipotent God could sustain life in any universe by fiat. Isn’t fine-tuning what you’d expect if life depends on physics, which is the naturalist’s assumption?
A clever objection, associated with Hans Halvorson among others. The reply is that theism does not predict that God would sustain life miraculously against the physics; it predicts a universe with regular laws that make life possible, because a lawful world is what allows rational creatures to understand it and act in it. Fine-tuning is what one expects if God chose to create through natural regularities. The objection does show something: fine-tuning is not evidence for every conception of God, only for one that values a lawful creation.
- The same encyclopedia entry surveys serious objections to the design inference: the normalizability problem, observer selection, and the possibility that the constants aren’t independent. Isn’t citing it only for the phenomenon selective?
The entry is used for the narrow point that the constants sit in narrow ranges, which it confirms, and the objections are taken up in the exhibits that follow: the multiverse, the anthropic reply, and the firing-squad response. It is fair to say that the same source presents the objections, and you should read those sections too. The normalizability problem in particular is the strongest technical objection, and it is treated under the Science case’s fine-tuning claim.