Really well put, thanks for this article. It seems like the fine-tuning argument rhymes with all the other "science can't prove X, therefore God did it" arguments throughout the history of philosophy, and just in general I think that category of argument is counterproductive.
Thanks! While theists may prefer to deny that the fine tuning argument is a “god of the gaps” argument, it ultimately is: a new theory can always come up that explains a previously free constant. Even more interestingly, the genealogy of the fine tuning argument is ultimately shared with Aquinas’ first cause argument. Once you admit that everything has a cause (or, similarly, tunable parameters) you can follow the chain all the way back to something that you can decide to call God. But the choice of treating systems as causally open (that is, tunable or steerable) becomes questionable once you leave the realm of human made machines, where the causal closure obviously comes in the form of a human driver.
I studied physics and had a couple teachers (electromagnetism, classical mechanics) who marveled at just how beautiful and symmetric the physical laws were. I think this is the best argument you can make that the physical world hints at the existence of a higher power. Simply stopping at the limits of our understanding of physics and insisting the unexplained bits are evidence of god is missing the entire point of both physics and philosophy in my opinion.
Even the simple fact that there is something rather than nothing would be enough to induce a sense of awe bordering on the spiritual if we just stopped to think about it for a more than a second rather than taking it for granted.
Really well put, thanks for this article. It seems like the fine-tuning argument rhymes with all the other "science can't prove X, therefore God did it" arguments throughout the history of philosophy, and just in general I think that category of argument is counterproductive.
Thanks! While theists may prefer to deny that the fine tuning argument is a “god of the gaps” argument, it ultimately is: a new theory can always come up that explains a previously free constant. Even more interestingly, the genealogy of the fine tuning argument is ultimately shared with Aquinas’ first cause argument. Once you admit that everything has a cause (or, similarly, tunable parameters) you can follow the chain all the way back to something that you can decide to call God. But the choice of treating systems as causally open (that is, tunable or steerable) becomes questionable once you leave the realm of human made machines, where the causal closure obviously comes in the form of a human driver.
I studied physics and had a couple teachers (electromagnetism, classical mechanics) who marveled at just how beautiful and symmetric the physical laws were. I think this is the best argument you can make that the physical world hints at the existence of a higher power. Simply stopping at the limits of our understanding of physics and insisting the unexplained bits are evidence of god is missing the entire point of both physics and philosophy in my opinion.
Even the simple fact that there is something rather than nothing would be enough to induce a sense of awe bordering on the spiritual if we just stopped to think about it for a more than a second rather than taking it for granted.
Maybe you're forced to accept that the universe is not the totality of all that exists, DUN DUN DUN!
Ok, let's call the original universe plus the additional stuff "universe plus". Rinse and repeat?
The recursion stops if there are no equations that can describe "universe plus".