Is there positive scientific evidence for the existence of God? Today, we focus on the fine-tuning of the universe with special guest, Allen Hainline. Links: Allen's articles on cross-examined.org Allen's Youtube channel Overview of Fine-Tuning by Reasonable Faith Recommended book:
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3 Comments
For me, the key problem with fine-tuning arguments isn't the science, but rather the probability judgments involved. It seems to me that the analogies we usually hear, like dart boards or firing squads (or selecting a grain of sand, to follow Hainline), fail to do justice to the issues at play here. This is because we don't know what if any mechanisms are behind the formation of the universe. Hainline himself seems to acknowledge this. He said (regarding the gravitational constant G): "there's no underlying theory that's driving that value [G] to anything in particular" (8:20). But that's actually a problem for the fine-tuning apologist, not a boon. Since we don't know what drives the values, we have no way to make probability judgments about where they will be driven.
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Allen Hainline
6/2/2018 01:04:39 pm
The probability judgments are simply derived from the principle of indifference. Our best theories indicate a wide range of possibilities and the lack of any known constraints on the values for fundamental parameters within the theories forms the basis then for estimating the probability of obtaining a parameter in the life-permitting range. In the lack of any known constraints or distributions, the principle of indifference then leads one to assume a uniform distribution of values among possibilities. For further details on evaluating probabilities - this article by Luke Barnes may be of help:
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Ben
6/2/2018 06:42:23 pm
Thank you for the response. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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