Ignorance isn't evidence (in the pre-Bush era)

Fine-tuning full of loose logic

John Bice

Some readers have urged me to consider a popular creationist assertion called the “fine-tuning argument.”

It’s said that the laws of physics are precariously balanced. If the value of one fundamental physical constant were slightly different — such as the strength of electromagnetic and nuclear forces — life couldn’t exist. Lacking an explanation for this seemingly lucky happenstance, the inescapable conclusion, according to creationists, is the universe was “fine-tuned” by God with intelligent life in mind.

It’s worth noting that physicists, who are most capable of understanding these issues, are among the least religious people on earth. A 1998 article in Nature titled “Leading scientists still reject God” reported that a mere 7.5 percent of eminent physicists and astronomers believe in God.

I’ll offer three concise responses to the fine-tuning argument:

1) Ignorance isn’t evidence.

The fine-tuning argument, like other design assertions, tries to spin ignorance into evidence for a pre-existing belief.

In his article, “Why (almost all) cosmologists are atheists,” physicist Sean Carroll argues we couldn’t even predict life existing in our own universe based on nothing but the laws of subatomic physics — with no direct empirical knowledge. He writes, “at our current level of expertise we don’t really know what the universe would look like if the parameters of the standard model were different, nor do we know what are the necessary conditions for the formation of intelligent life,” therefore, “it seems highly presumptuous for anyone to claim that the laws of nature we observe are somehow delicately adjusted to allow for the existence of life.”

2) The universe has a bias in favor of intelligent life? Seriously?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote, “Mayhem abounds in the cosmos: monstrous gamma-ray bursts, deadly pulsars, matter-crushing gravitational fields … galaxies that collide and cannibalize each other, explosions of supermassive stars … The evidence all points to the fact that we occupy not a well-mannered clockwork universe, but a destructive, violent and hostile zoo … the universe wants to kill us all.”

The vast majority of our universe is absolutely lethal. Our planet offers a minuscule oasis from the chaotically inhospitable conditions that exist everywhere we look. If our universe was specifically designed for intelligent life, the designer was a wasteful and incompetent moron.

Physicist Peter Walker has the right perspective: “The supreme arrogance of religious thinking: that a carbon-based bag of mostly water on a speck of iron-silicate dust around a boring dwarf star in a minor galaxy … would look up at the sky and declare, ‘It was all made so that I could exist!’”

3) The multiverse.

A popular concept in modern cosmology is known as the multiverse. This idea has many forms, including one based on inflation theory that results in an infinite diversity of “pocket universes,” one of which is ours. Each pocket universe may have different underlying physical constants. Some have attributes compatible with the formation of life, while many do not. We live in one that does.

Creationists respond that physicists are “inventing” untestable multiverse possibilities in reaction to the fine-tuning argument and criticize it for violating the principle of parsimony.

However, in “Physics in the multiverse,” Aurélien Barrau, a French particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, writes, “The multiverse is not a hypothesis invented to answer a specific question,” it “appears as a consequence of some theories, and these have other predictions that can be tested within our own universe.”

The principle of parsimony, something creationists usually avoid religiously, is a preference for the most logically economical explanations. Barrau argues that the multiverse model fits that requirement best because it avoids “ad hoc assumptions that would have to be added to models to avoid the existence of other universes.”

Most scientists are entirely satisfied with a strictly materialist conception of the universe — no designer required. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg sums it up best: “We don’t know the final laws yet, but as far as we have been able to see, they are utterly impersonal and quite without any special role for life.”

John Bice is a State News columnist.

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