Don Page is one of the world’s leading experts on theoretical gravitational physics and cosmology, as well as a previous guest-blogger around these parts. (There are more world experts in theoretical physics than there are people who have guest-blogged for me, so the latter category is arguably a greater honor.) He is also, somewhat unusually among cosmologists, an Evangelical Christian, and interested in the relationship between cosmology and religious belief.
Longtime readers may have noticed that I’m not very religious myself. But I’m always willing to engage with people with whom I disagree, if the conversation is substantive and proceeds in good faith. I may disagree with Don, but I’m always interested in what he has to say.
Recently Don watched the debate I had with William Lane Craig on “God and Cosmology.” I think these remarks from a devoted Christian who understands the cosmology very well will be of interest to people on either side of the debate.
Open letter to Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig:
I just ran across your debate at the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum, and greatly enjoyed listening to it. Since my own views are often a combination of one or the others of yours (though they also often differ from both of yours), I thought I would give some comments.
I tend to be skeptical of philosophical arguments for the existence of God, since I do not believe there are any that start with assumptions universally accepted. My own attempt at what I call the Optimal Argument for God (one, two, three, four), certainly makes assumptions that only a small fraction of people, and perhaps even only a small fraction of theists, believe in, such as my assumption that the world is the best possible. You know that well, Sean, from my provocative seminar at Caltech in November on “Cosmological Ontology and Epistemology” that included this argument at the end.
I mainly think philosophical arguments might be useful for motivating someone to think about theism in a new way and perhaps raise the prior probability someone might assign to theism. I do think that if one assigns theism not too low a prior probability, the historical evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus can lead to a posterior probability for theism (and for Jesus being the Son of God) being quite high. But if one thinks a priori that theism is extremely improbable, then the historical evidence for the Resurrection would be discounted and not lead to a high posterior probability for theism.
I tend to favor a Bayesian approach in which one assigns prior probabilities based on simplicity and then weights these by the likelihoods (the probabilities that different theories assign to our observations) to get, when the product is normalized by dividing by the sum of the products for all theories, the posterior probabilities for the theories. Of course, this is an idealized approach, since we don’t yet have _any_ plausible complete theory for the universe to calculate the conditional probability, given the theory, of any realistic observation.
For me, when I consider evidence from cosmology and physics, I find it remarkable that it seems consistent with all we know that the ultimate theory might be extremely simple and yet lead to sentient experiences such as ours. A Bayesian analysis with Occam’s razor to assign simpler theories higher prior probabilities would favor simpler theories, but the observations we do make preclude the simplest possible theories (such as the theory that nothing concrete exists, or the theory that all logically possible sentient experiences occur with equal probability, which would presumably make ours have zero probability in this theory if there are indeed an infinite number of logically possible sentient experiences). So it seems mysterious why the best theory of the universe (which we don’t have yet) may be extremely simple but yet not maximally simple. I don’t see that naturalism would explain this, though it could well accept it as a brute fact.
One might think that adding the hypothesis that the world (all that exists) includes God would make the theory for the entire world more complex, but it is not obvious that is the case, since it might be that God is even simpler than the universe, so that one would get a simpler explanation starting with God than starting with just the universe. But I agree with your point, Sean, that theism is not very well defined, since for a complete theory of a world that includes God, one would need to specify the nature of God.
For example, I have postulated that God loves mathematical elegance, as well as loving to create sentient beings, so something like this might explain both why the laws of physics, and the quantum state of the universe, and the rules for getting from those to the probabilities of observations, seem much simpler than they might have been, and why there are sentient experiences with a rather high degree of order. However, I admit there is a lot of logically possible variation on what God’s nature could be, so that it seems to me that at least we humans have to take that nature as a brute fact, analogous to the way naturalists would have to take the laws of physics and other aspects of the natural universe as brute facts. I don’t think either theism or naturalism solves this problem, so it seems to me rather a matter of faith which makes more progress toward solving it. That is, theism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of God (e.g., when would He prefer to maintain elegant laws of physics, and when would He prefer to cure someone from cancer in a truly miraculous way that changes the laws of physics), and naturalism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of the universe (e.g., what are the dynamical laws of physics, what are the boundary conditions, what are the rules for getting probabilities, etc.).
In view of these beliefs of mine, I am not convinced that most philosophical arguments for the existence of God are very persuasive. In particular, I am highly skeptical of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which I shall quote here from one of your slides, Bill:
- If the universe began to exist, then there is a transcendent cause
which brought the universe into existence. - The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, there is a transcendent cause which brought the
universe into existence.
I do not believe that the first premise is metaphysically necessary, and I am also not at all sure that our universe had a beginning. (I do believe that the first premise is true in the actual world, since I do believe that God exists as a transcendent cause which brought the universe into existence, but I do not see that this premise is true in all logically possible worlds.)
I agree with you, Sean, that we learn our ideas of causation from the lawfulness of nature and from the directionality of the second law of thermodynamics that lead to the commonsense view that causes precede their effects (or occur at the same time, if Bill insists). But then we have learned that the laws of physics are CPT invariant (essentially the same in each direction of time), so in a fundamental sense the future determines the past just as much as the past determines the future. I agree that just from our experience of the one-way causation we observe within the universe, which is just a merely effective description and not fundamental, we cannot logically derive the conclusion that the entire universe has a cause, since the effective unidirectional causation we commonly experience is something just within the universe and need not be extrapolated to a putative cause for the universe as a whole.
However, since to me the totality of data, including the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus, is most simply explained by postulating that there is a God who is the Creator of the universe, I do believe by faith that God is indeed the cause of the universe (and indeed the ultimate Cause and Determiner of everything concrete, that is, everything not logically necessary, other than Himself—and I do believe, like Richard Swinburne, that God is concrete and not logically necessary, the ultimate brute fact). I have a hunch that God created a universe with apparent unidirectional causation in order to give His creatures some dim picture of the true causation that He has in relation to the universe He has created. But I do not see any metaphysical necessity in this.
(I have a similar hunch that God created us with the illusion of libertarian free will as a picture of the true freedom that He has, though it might be that if God does only what is best and if there is a unique best, one could object that even God does not have libertarian free will, but in any case I would believe that it would be better for God to do what is best than to have any putative libertarian free will, for which I see little value. Yet another hunch I have is that it is actually sentient experiences rather than created individual `persons’ that are fundamental, but God created our experiences to include beliefs that we are individual persons to give us a dim image of Him as the one true Person, or Persons in the Trinitarian perspective. However, this would take us too far afield from my points here.)
On the issue of whether our universe had a beginning, besides not believing that this is at all relevant to the issue of whether or not God exists, I agreed almost entirely with Sean’s points rather than yours, Bill, on this issue. We simply do not know whether or not our universe had a beginning, but there are certainly models, such as Sean’s with Jennifer Chen (hep-th/0410270 and gr-qc/0505037), that do not have a beginning. I myself have also favored a bounce model in which there is something like a quantum superposition of semiclassical spacetimes (though I don’t really think quantum theory gives probabilities for histories, just for sentient experiences), in most of which the universe contracts from past infinite time and then has a bounce to expand forever. In as much as these spacetimes are approximately classical throughout, there is a time in each that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity.
In this model, as in Sean’s, the coarse-grained entropy has a minimum at or near the time when the spatial volume is minimized (at the bounce), so that entropy increases in both directions away from the bounce. At times well away from the bounce, there is a strong arrow of time, so that in those regions if one defines the direction of time as the direction in which entropy increases, it is rather as if there are two expanding universes both coming out from the bounce. But it is erroneous to say that the bounce is a true beginning of time, since the structure of spacetime there (at least if there is an approximately classical spacetime there) has timelike curves going from a proper time of minus infinity through the bounce (say at proper time zero) and then to proper time of plus infinity. That is, there are worldlines that go through the bounce and have no beginning there, so it seems rather artificial to say the universe began at the bounce that is in the middle just because it happens to be when the entropy is minimized. I think Sean made this point very well in the debate.
In other words, in this model there is a time coordinate t on the spacetime (say the proper time t of a suitable collection of worldlines, such as timelike geodesics that are orthogonal to the extremal hypersurface of minimal spatial volume at the bounce, where one sets 
) that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity with no beginning (and no end). Well away from the bounce, there is a different thermodynamic time 
(increasing with increasing entropy) that for 
increases with 
but for 
decreases with (so there becomes more positive as becomes more negative). For example, if one said that is only defined for 
, say, one might have something like
the positive square root of one less than the square of . This thermodynamic time only has real values when the absolute value of the coordinate time , that is, 
, is no smaller than 1, and then increases with .
One might say that begins (at 
) at 
(for one universe that has growing as decreases from -1 to minus infinity) and at 
(for another universe that has growing as increases from +1 to plus infinity). But since the spacetime exists for all real , with respect to that time arising from general relativity there is no beginning and no end of this universe.
Bill, I think you also objected to a model like this by saying that it violates the second law (presumably in the sense that the coarse-grained entropy does not increase monotonically with for all real ). But if we exist for 
(or for 
; there would be no change to the overall behavior if were replaced with 
, since the laws are CPT invariant), then we would be in a region where the second law is observed to hold, with coarse-grained entropy increasing with 
(or with 
if ). A viable bounce model would have it so that it would be very difficult or impossible for us directly to observe the bounce region where the second law does not apply, so our observations would be in accord with the second law even though it does not apply for the entire universe. I think I objected to both of your probability estimates for various things regarding fine tuning. Probabilities depend on the theory or model, so without a definite model, one cannot claim that the probability for some feature like fine tuning is small. It was correct to list me among the people believing in fine tuning in the sense that I do believe that there are parameters that naively are far different from what one might expect (such as the cosmological constant), but I agreed with the sentiment of the woman questioner that there are not really probabilities in the absence of a model. Bill, you referred to using some “non-standard” probabilities, as if there is just one standard. But there isn’t. As Sean noted, there are models giving high probabilities for Boltzmann brain observations (which I think count strongly against such models) and other models giving low probabilities for them (which on this regard fits our ordered observations statistically). We don’t yet know the best model for avoiding Boltzmann brain domination (and, Sean, you know that I am skeptical of your recent ingenious model), though just because I am skeptical of this particular model does not imply that I believe that the problem is insoluble or gives evidence against a multiverse; in any case it seems also to be a problem that needs to be dealt with even in just single-universe models.
Sean, at one point your referred to some naive estimate of the very low probability of the flatness of the universe, but then you said that we now know the probability of flatness is very near unity. This is indeed true, as Stephen Hawking and I showed long ago (“How Probable Is Inflation?” Nuclear Physics B298, 789-809, 1988) when we used the canonical measure for classical universes, but one could get other probabilities by using other measures from other models.
In summary, I think the evidence from fine tuning is ambiguous, since the probabilities depend on the models. Whether or not the universe had a beginning also is ambiguous, and furthermore I don’t see that it has any relevance to the question of whether or not God exists, since the first premise of the Kalam cosmological argument is highly dubious metaphysically, depending on contingent intuitions we have developed from living in a universe with relatively simple laws of physics and with a strong thermodynamic arrow of time.
Nevertheless, in view of all the evidence, including both the elegance of the laws of physics, the existence of orderly sentient experiences, and the historical evidence, I do believe that God exists and think the world is actually simpler if it contains God than it would have been without God. So I do not agree with you, Sean, that naturalism is simpler than theism, though I can appreciate how you might view it that way.
Best wishes,
Don
Since we’re on the topic of fine tuning. I think there’s an even bigger issue than the weak anthropic principle to contend with if you’re going to argue for Theism on the basis of fine tuning.
It seems to me that the premise that the universe is fine-tuned for sentience, presupposes that physics needs to be a certain way for sentience to exist. But if so, how do we account for God, who is said to be a completely non-physical sentient being, and a simple one to boot.
Accepting the premise that it even makes sense for the universe to be fine tuned seems to me to imply
1) There is a necessary connection between physical structure and sentience. This means that the complexity of naturalism cannot include an extra term to account for the mind-body problem, since for fine tuning to be well-defined, we must have decided, in advance, which physical structures are sentient.
2) If our universe (where significantly less than a trillionth of the energy content is sentient) is going to be considered fine-tuned for sentience, then sentience had better be pretty complicated.
e.g. if sentience requires only 160 bits of information to specify, assuming the laws of physics were pretty much indifferent to life, you’d estimate that humanity would be outnumbered by Boltzmann brains in the sun. — the entropy of the sun is something like 2^193 = 30-billion x 2^160 in natural units. Note this lower bound on the complexity of intelligence is already high enough to set the prior for theism around 2^-160, but as I said before, I suspect the prior should be much lower still.
@Ty:
“On a closely related topic. What is “evidence”? Is it only derived through the scientific method? Are other kinks of evidence inadmissible in the search for understanding or for the basis of belief?”
Interesting question. In Hinduism (and Buddhism) it is said that experience of divinity is extra sensory. It cannot be obtained by doing experiments using sensory perceptions. Hindu yogis (Buddhist monks) have suggested that this experience can be obtained by clearing mind of all worldly ideas and meditate. In the final stage of “Samadhi” one obtains the knowledge of the ultimate. I am not suggesting that we give up scientific method in favor of meditation!! But just realize the limitation of scientific method to answer these questions. In view of the ultimate failure of our (classical) logic, that may be the only way to understand divinity.My guess is that even if this thread goes to 450 trillion comments, there will not be any resolution of this question by using our everyday classical logic and arguments!
Kashyap , this is just a “Readers’s Digest” summary and I give my best understanding as a non-philosopher. If you feel more challenged, there are lots of good books available.
Broadly speaking, evidence comprises ordinary sense experiences (including consciousness). We obtain this type of evidence though the scientific method of testing through repeatable observations. So essentially, science relies on observations. There is also the historical method of obtaining evidence. That the historian cannot carry our repeated experiment is not an indictment of history (or much of what we learn, we might as well toss out as useless knowledge). As Professor Aron Wall says, “The historians cannot “repeat” the experiment by calling for a new set of eyewitnesses to e.g. the assassination of Julius Caesar.” But although the historian has to work with what he has, his analysis can be repeated.
The second type of evidence is God’s direct and indirect (through intermediaries) communication with us. You can say that’s where the supernatural enters the picture. Our atheist friends don’t like to hear this one bit.
There is erroneous view that science is the only reliable way to discover evidence or empirical data. Some are even bold to say that science is the only basis for epistemology. It‘s called scientism and it’s next of kin is naturalism, which says that only natural laws and forces operate in the world. And so by definition, the supernatural or the spiritual is not evidence, or at best not authoritative evidence.
As you can see, the controversy here is the result of two opposing view for what constitutes “evidence”.
Bill Jefferys, you are making the same mistake that Glymour did, of saying P(E) = 1 for old evidence E. As you correctly pointed out, instead of representing P(E|E), P(E) really represents P(E|T_i), the probability of the evidence given some hypothesis or theory T_i. I am just pointing out that when you take E to be life, or L, your assumption that P(L) = 1 is really P(L|L) rather than what fine-tuners are discussing, P(L|T_i).
You also wrote the following (April 8, 2015 at 3:02 pm):
“No one suggests that you have to condition on all you know, only (as I clearly stated) that you have to condition on all relevant prior information, that is, information that can affect the data we are trying to observe. Surely you do not do this when doing physics!”
You seem to be asserting that there is something special about “relevant prior information,” including life L, so that you have to condition on it but not other evidence you know. But when you assert that this relevant prior information is “information that can affect the data we are trying to observe,” then I don’t see how you can unambiguously stop short of including all that you know as being relevant. Anything that I know (e.g., some piece of evidence E) logically affects that same anything I know, since P(E|E) = 1, whereas generically PE|E’) < 1 for other evidence E’.
Bill said “After all, the whole point of claims of miracles (e.g., the resurrection) is to prove theism by demonstrating things that cannot be explained if “physics is all there is.”
It is true that this is related to the anthropic principle discussion. Based on the probability of miracles which are departures from physics, the case for a universe without miracles is enhanced if the anthropic principle applies rigorously throughout.
However I think most theists are thinking that physics violating miracles are infrequent in the scheme of things and would not weigh heavily against the anthropic principle. (Which as has been said, we see evaluated hypothetically from the creation point).
@Ty
Although, a thiest, I am gradually coming to the conclusion that existence of divinity may be like one of the matters following from Godel’s theorem. This means that it cannot be either proved or disproved by the so called “logic” involving “evidence”. As these 455 comments with people talking past each other show, there will not be any conclusion or change of heart! There is no way to convince people who are non believers about divinity! My guess is that it will remain a matter of faith for a considerable time.
Agreed Kashyap. This is what is being missed in these 455 comments (hope you counted accurately). The eminent particle physicists, now Anglican priest, St. John (Polkinghorne) of Cambridge University (who studied under Paul Dirac, an atheist) said there is no knock down proof of God’s existence. All that is being presented is plausibility arguments and if that is insufficient to the atheists, then the burden of “proof” is theirs to argue otherwise.
And as you say science cannot disprove God. I agree with that.
“Bill Jefferys, you are making the same mistake that Glymour did, of saying P(E) = 1 for old evidence E.”
No, Don, I am not making Glymour’s mistake.
Let me put it this way: Before you analyze a physics experiment, do you contemplate the possibility that you might not have existed, and that your accelerator might not have existed? Of course not. You do the statistics and publish a result on the assumption that you and your apparatus exist and that the data you have collected is the data you have collected.
There is absolutely no reason, except for special pleading (which is what you are doing) to take this one situation of another physics experiment, namely determining whether “the constants are right” and treat it in an entirely different way.
My comments about Glymour have nothing to do with the present situation.
I do not wish to discuss anything with Kashyap Vasavada because of his “ad hominem” comments earlier on. I will, however, point to certain points in his argument where he makes further mistakes in exposition in addition to the ones I have already pointed out.
> Although, a thiest, I am gradually coming to the conclusion that existence of
> divinity may be like one of the matters following from Godel’s theorem. This
> means that it cannot be either proved or disproved by the so called “logic”
> involving “evidence”. As these 455 comments with people talking past each
> other show, there will not be any conclusion or change of heart!
It is improper to cite Godel’s theorem here. First, there are no matters “following from Godel’s theorem” that have anything to do with the existence of the divinity. Second, whether there are certain things that can be either proved or disproved has nothing to do with the sorts of things that Godel’s theorem actually dealt with. And, of course, it is impossible to change someone’s heart via merely discussing on the Internet, but that has to do with the sociology of the Internet.
The Godel’s theorem reference is a red herring. It would be much better to look at Catuskoti logic and see where that categorization of results of questions into multiple categories of responses take us.
The employment of Catuskoti logic by Buddhist philosophers such as Nagarjuna is quite interesting, and worth reading. It is, by the way, open to criticism as well. (The openness to criticism that Buddhism displays along with a persistent mindset of inquiry yields the conclusion that it is indeed the reason why humanity has survived all these years despite persistent attacks from Christianity and other illogical religions. I mention Buddhism but, of course, Hinduism is included. If Christianity took us to the Dark Ages once, it is quite capable of doing so once more – if left to its devices – with non-believers consigned to an other worldly hell and gays to a hell right here on earth. But that is a different discussion.) It will be clear from a reading of Nagarjuna that *that* indeed is the right direction to take – there is a fundamental misunderstanding of Godel’s result here.
Don wrote:
“But when you assert that this relevant prior information is “information that can affect the data we are trying to observe,” then I don’t see how you can unambiguously stop short of including all that you know as being relevant. Anything that I know (e.g., some piece of evidence E) logically affects that same anything I know, since P(E|E) = 1, whereas generically PE|E’) < 1 for other evidence E’.”
Now you are being silly. Whether “the constants are right” doesn’t depend on what I had for breakfast, where I went to school, and almost everything else that I may have as prior information. It does depend (statistically) on the fact that I exist as an observer.
Basically, Don, here’s the problem.
The claim made by theists is that “observing that the constants are right” (for our own existence) is strong evidence for theism and against naturalism. (That’s what Barnes claims).
But at the same time, it is self-evident that “observing that the constants are not right” refutes naturalism and is therefore conclusive evidence for theism and against naturalism.
Therefore, the theists who make the first claim are basically saying “heads I win, tails you lose”. Put another way if #1 is true, and it is evident that #2 is true, then we don’t even have to make an observation as to whether “the constants are right” or not to decide that theism is almost certainly correct.
That is absurd.
It would be great if we could do all of physics with thought experiments like this and not get our hands dirty in the lab, but that’s not the way it works.
Therefore, if #2 is true, as it evidently is, then #1 must be false, and Barnes is simply wrong.
Think about it.
Simon, a quotation from professor/ St Aron (Wall):
“One might object that miracles should not be accepted, even when they appear in Historical texts, because Science has shown that miracles do not happen. This claim, however, makes no sense. You can only rule out a claim by experiment if the claim is contradicted by that experiment. Now most religions do not claim that miracles are an every day event. Rather, they are claimed to be an exception to the usual course of nature, as a result of the intervention of God granted to a few privileged people. It is true that e.g. dead people do not normally come to life again. I think it is a little strange to call this fact a discovery of Science; I cannot myself recall any great experiments on this topic, and I suspect that people actually knew that most people stay dead long before the Scientific Revolution; surely even the founders of religions were acquainted with this fact! ”
See: http://www.wall.org/~aron/evidence.htm
Kashyap , this is just a “Readers’s Digest” summary and I give my best understanding as a non-philosopher. If you feel more challenged, there are lots of good books available.
Broadly speaking, evidence comprises ordinary sense experiences (including consciousness). We obtain this type of evidence though the scientific method of testing through repeatable observations. So essentially, science relies on observations. There is also the historical method of obtaining evidence. That the historian cannot carry our repeated experiment is not an indictment of history (or much of what we learn, we might as well toss out as useless knowledge). As Professor Aron Wall says, “The historians cannot “repeat” the experiment by calling for a new set of eyewitnesses to e.g. the assassination of Julius Caesar.” But although the historian has to work with what he has, his analysis can be repeated.
The second type of evidence is God’s direct and indirect (through intermediaries) communication with us. You can say that’s where the supernatural enters the picture. Our atheist friends don’t like to hear this one bit.
Buddhists and bhikkhus, this is why it is important not to let anyone categorize you. It is not that atheists don’t like to hear this said. It is that they don’t know what to make of such claims. Because if you can invoke magic to explain away things, why can’t I? This is one of the reasons Nagarjuna warned us about categories – they prevent us from perceiving reality. In this case, the category of atheists is a very broad one – there are “atheists” who are more accurately described as agnostics, and then there are “atheists” who simply have been categorized as such by someone else. One should not let oneself be categorized in any way, because to be categorized can mean to have one’s views be decided upon by someone else.
Person X could claim: “God spoke to me just now and told me that I won this argument”, and so, now, could X then go on to claim that X defeated you, your friends and Don Page in a discussion? And therefore, the matter is settled in terms of a win for Buddhism? If magic based arguments are allowed, then the question arises as to who should be allowed to use them and when.
There is erroneous view that science is the only reliable way to discover evidence or empirical data. Some are even bold to say that science is the only basis for epistemology. It‘s called scientism and it’s next of kin is naturalism, which says that only natural laws and forces operate in the world. And so by definition, the supernatural or the spiritual is not evidence, or at best not authoritative evidence.
As you can see, the controversy here is the result of two opposing view for what constitutes “evidence”.
No, no. The problem is: where does one draw the line? How does one decide which specific events were triggered by God and which weren’t?
As Josh pointed out, the issue (and it is also as I see it) with Don Page’s argument is the matter of priors. I don’t see that the issue of priors raised by Josh has been sufficiently addressed here by Don Page.
As long as you are willing to admit evidence from God’s direct intervention, you might as well say that scientific evidence is also evidence but put there by God. And God can, of course, change the results of the experiment any time he wants. (This sort of argumentation technique is similar to the techniques used by the Flying Spaghetti Monster crowd.)
Buddhism offers a way to think about this. It allows you to allow for any claims – even supernatural claims, if you wish – but only to the extent that it helps you perceive reality. The problem is ultimately that people are not using reasonable argumentation techniques. If everybody agreed to use the codes of Right Speech, then not only would there be no more “ad hominem”s, we would possibly get closer to getting answers to these questions as well.
So, you see, it has as much to do with the rules of debate as with anything else.
I will try to avoid Buddhist references, because beyond what I have said, it is not going to be particularly helpful in perceiving reality and being reality based in this discussion.
Bill Jeffreys said:
Basically, Don, here’s the problem.
The claim made by theists is that “observing that the constants are right” (for our own existence) is strong evidence for theism and against naturalism. (That’s what Barnes claims).
But at the same time, it is self-evident that “observing that the constants are not right” refutes naturalism and is therefore conclusive evidence for theism and against naturalism.
Therefore, the theists who make the first claim are basically saying “heads I win, tails you lose”. Put another way if #1 is true, and it is evident that #2 is true, then we don’t even have to make an observation as to whether “the constants are right” or not to decide that theism is almost certainly correct.
That is absurd.
It would be great if we could do all of physics with thought experiments like this and not get our hands dirty in the lab, but that’s not the way it works.
Therefore, if #2 is true, as it evidently is, then #1 must be false, and Barnes is simply wrong.
Think about it.
What Bill Jeffreys says here is right. Recall the earlier statements made by him.
Michael and I know very well what the point of the “fine tuning argument” for theism is; our point is that their point is simply wrong.
The fine-tuners misunderstand the point of the anthropic principle as first stated by Brandon Carter and others (e.g., Bob Dicke). That point was that our own existence implies that we should observe certain ranges for certain physical constants and not other ranges. In some cases we may be able to predict what should be observed using the fact of our own existence.
It is worth noting that the Strong Anthropic Principle makes a much stronger claim. All one needs to claim is the weaker form of the anthropic principle, namely, that “only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing and reflecting upon any such fine tuning, while a universe less compatible with life will go unbeheld.”
@ James Bonilla:
“I do not wish to discuss anything with Kashyap Vasavada because of his “ad hominem” comments earlier on.”
Sorry about your interpretation of my previous discussions. I have absolutely no intention of insulting anyone. As I mentioned before, Hinduism may be the most tolerant religion on earth (in my biased view anyway!) saying that there are thousands of paths leading to God. You and Anand Manikutty have constitutional rights to your beliefs! But as I said I already found learned people who spent years and years studying Hindu scriptures. You cannot force me to read Anand Manikutty’s ideas about Hindu religion!!!
It seems my concerns are not currying any further discussion and that my points are going ignored. Having summed up what I think are the bigger issues in my last comment, I think I’ll take this as an opportunity to bow out.
Regards ‘gents, and be well!
Professor/St Don put it best in his April 6, 2015 at 11:57 pm comment.
“Since TY just put in a personal note, I would like to as well. I am greatly enjoying this discussion, even though of course I disagree with many of you. I do recognize that many of these issues are not clear, so it is not surprising that we can have a variety of opinions about them.
I am advocating Christian theism first because I believe it is true and second because I believe that faith in it can lead to a better life. I don’t think God will judge anyone just because he or she comes to the wrong conclusion about theism, though I do believe that God will discipline us if we fail to show love to others in order to cleanse us to make us eventually into perfect (though not infinite) beings who can fully enjoy God’s love and express it to others.”
Like Josh. I too would bow out but before I exit the debating stage I want to say I truly enjoyed the arguments.
It was a privilege to be in the company of my fellow Christians (Don and Simon, and others) defending the Faith, and while I’m 99% sure we few didn’t sway minds (which was never the intention), I think you — my atheistic friends of this blog — now have a better understanding that we (theists) are not crack pots (not saying someone said that). We can do rigorous science or we can appreciate science, and still be passionate and sincere about the Christian faith in thought, word, and deed.
By and large, the discussion was very civil (a teeny-weeny intemperate at times) but I’ve seen worse.
Thanks GUYS!
Thanks for your comments, Josh. Speaking for myself, I wasn’t ignoring them but found nothing to disagree with or which I thought I could clarify further.
Doing a little Googling, I was surprised to see how many long posts are out there defending the “fine-tuning” argument for theism, which a number of us have refuted for a number of reasons on this thread, without much in the way of response. (Nor are these reasons considered by the defenders whose long essays I read.) Lack of a meaningful response has to be its own reward, in some discussions. (Although no one is obliged to respond to the meandering musings of a randomly-evolved and thus imperfect, trial-and-error thinker such as myself.)
I agree with Bill Jefferys. However, there may be hidden assumptions that cause a reversal of the likelihood ratio for those making the fine-tuning argument. Not that I agree that these are reasonable, but suppose we assume:
1. All background evidence points to the most viable theory being that only a narrow range of the physical parameters of a Universe can support life, and
2. Only one Universe exists, has existed, or will exist, for all of eternity. Or a weaker form of this, such as “Only N Universes exist in all of etermity”, where N is not a very large integer.
3. Naturalism dictates that the parameters of the Universe should be random, and according to some probability measure, unlikely to fall into the narrow range of assumption 1.
4. Supernaturalism dictates that the parameters should be targeted (by the FSM, or whatever supernatural agent the proponent of the argument has chosen to believe in) to fall in the narrow range of assumption 1. Key to the argument is that supernatural intervention that allows for life occurs when the agent sets the parameters, not by the agent acting through history to overcome the parameters if they happen to be off-kilter. (In this case, the argument is moot about whether intervention in history is allowed.)
In the case that we accept these, one might say that “The probability that we would exist anywhere within eternity to observe the Universe, given naturalism, is very small, compared to the probability of our existence given supernaturalism; yet we do exist; therefore supernaturalism (unless we have very strong priors against it)”.
Have I captured the hidden assumptions of the fine-tuning crowd? I think, if any one of these is invalid, then this semantic form of the argument fails, leaving the other form, for which Bill’s Bayesian proof holds. If somebody sees another potential “out” then let me know, but that seems to be it as far as I can tell.
Note the difference between this form of the argument and the form that Bill’s proof refutes. Bill’s refutation is along the lines that observing the Universe to be “not fine-tuned” would mean that assumption 1 holds, but we find that the Universe is outside the narrow range; whereas this form of the argument holds that observing the Universe to be “not fine-tuned” would mean the negation of assumption 1 and the discovery that the range is quite wide after all. So there is a difference in semantics. Bill’s proof refutes just one of the two semantics.
So does this form of the argument hold water?
Assumption 1 is a dubious claim for reasons already pointed out elsewhere in this thread.
Assumption 2 is merely a conjecture, and seems to be an arrogant one at that.
The problem with assumption 3, given assumption 2, is this: How can you define a meaningful probability measure on a set of variables for which only a single sample exists for all eternity? (The weaker form of 2 overcomes this objection if N is large enough — but remember that too large an N undermines the argument.)
Assumption 4 is already refuted with the sharp rock objection raised by JimV, which shows that, like assumption 2, it is an embodiment of our own arrogance.
One may be tempted to ask, “What about other eternities? What makes this one so special?”, but I won’t go there.
TY
Thanks for your comments too, it is perhaps unfortunate that things got very focused on the theistic relevance of the anthropic thing, and some people felt overlooked. I have done it myself, there are several sub threads going on simultaneously, and I have probably ignored some things referred to me.
Blessings to you!
I agree with Richard’s analysis. Assumption 3 is the part I tried raising before for discussion. The theory certainly assigns no meaningful priors a priori to the value of the parameters, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a non-uniform prior.
I agree with Daniel, Richard’s analysis of what the theists are trying to say is pretty much as I understand it. And, the hidden assumptions are spot on.
I will note that the late Vic Stenger, who wrote a lot about this, says that the anthropic range where “the constants are right” is actually a lot larger than claimed.
See here:
http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591024811/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428600901&sr=1-1&keywords=vic+stenger
and more recently here:
http://www.amazon.com/God-Multiverse-Humanitys-Expanding-Cosmos/dp/1616149701/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428600901&sr=1-2&keywords=vic+stenger
I view this from the following point of view, which is very Bayesian: Suppose I learn or observe new evidence. How should this alter my prior probability, via Bayes’ theorem, to produce a posterior probability? In the case where the evidence is something that physics predicts must be observed, in no way can observing what is predicted undermine physics!
In other words, how does finding out that “the constants are right” affect my belief as regards “physics is all there is”? And the answer is that it cannot decrease my posterior probability that “physics is all there is”.
As I said before, the Barnes argument, and the argument that Richard is describing, is basically a frequentist one since it relies on the existence of data that have not been observed and which in fact we cannot observe (that is, universes where “the constants are wrong” and where there cannot be observers if “physics is all there is”). It also assumes a huge amount about the intentions of the FSM or other entity that is supposed to do all this.
Personally, if there is such an entity, I tend towards Maltheism or Lokiism. Under Maltheism, the divine entity has a hatred of living things and created them just so that he can watch them suffer; Lokiism is ruled by a trickster god (an alternative would be Coyote from native American stories) who enjoys being whimsical and doing all sorts of unexpected things.
@Kashyap Vasavada:
I see, I see. The reason is simply that you have no wish to read the blog/the paper/ the ideas therein. No problem. That’s quite okay.
With metta, I believe we have resolved the issue in a most Dharmic way – that is, with compassion and respect towards all.
@Josh – there comes a point in a discussion where what someone says cannot be refuted and little can be added to it.
What is happening, to my eyes, is that each of us is raising issues with Biblical literalism and coming away unsatisfied with the extent of the support being offered here, with due respect, by Don Page.
Your point here is well taken.
I must admit some concern that we are all so very stuck on the specifics of Don’s analogy when I don’t think he rests his case on it. At worse, it’s a crude attempt for the possibility of considering god as an option, but realistically we would likely cede him this consideration anyway. I do not believe that if, even were the probabilities he mentioned entirely discredited, he would change or even should change his theology (as they are not essential to it).
There are far greater and more integral concerns afoot such as whether or not miracles such as the resurrection possess sufficient evidence to require belief in the first place.
The problem is the form of logic that would be employed when the resurrection is questioned. If magic (and divine intervention) can be used as part of the argument, then logic is pretty much out the window. To illustrate this, we could consider the balls rolling down the planes in greater detail, but I don’t know if anyone will have the time to go through it.
What will eventually happen is the following: (a) I will conduct a million experiments with a million balls rolling down planes; (b) I will conduct another million experiments with an object with specific gravity equal to that of a human sinking to the bottom of a vat of water. To be noted is that I can start a few of those million experiments right now. I could do ten of those in half an hour or over the next week – any time I boil an egg, I am doing this experiment. And I do boil quite a few eggs per week.
In each and every one of them, God will play no role and will not intervene. A million times God will be asked to “reveal his hand”, and he will not.
And then, of course, when Christians (and/or Don Page) are/is asked to point to evidence for Jesus “uprightly floating”/walking on water and/or any other Christian “uprightly floating”/walking on water, bam! – God! There is God intervening with his Divine Will. And if there is no telling when he will and when he won’t intervene, how can anyone even refute anything?
The basic question is why he didn’t intervene a million times. Once you carefully design your experiments and show how the other side of the issue may not be so watertight at all, the whole edifice of Bible literalism falls apart.
By the way, I find that it is helpful to add/specifically state something of the order of “I believe I have adequately defended my point of view/was “invincible” in this debate” to help clarify in what state things were left. I think the invincibility hypothesis must be put forth; otherwise, there is no knowing what conclusion the other person(s) may have come to regarding your argument or arguments.
Bill Jeffreys said:
Personally, if there is such an entity, I tend towards Maltheism or Lokiism. Under Maltheism, the divine entity has a hatred of living things and created them just so that he can watch them suffer; Lokiism is ruled by a trickster god (an alternative would be Coyote from native American stories) who enjoys being whimsical and doing all sorts of unexpected things.
I do not find much support for any supernatural entity. The Buddha’s observation that there is suffering in the world and then that the cause of suffering was Desire was profound. This is a much more substantive way of interpreting the world. The ideas of the Buddha can be and is being interpreted by me in a wholly supernatural-element-free fashion (a.k.a. Secular Buddhism). So, of course, what I am arguing here is free from any supernatural claims of any kind.
Agreed Kashyap. This is what is being missed in these 455 comments (hope you counted accurately). The eminent particle physicists, now Anglican priest, St. John (Polkinghorne) of Cambridge University (who studied under Paul Dirac, an atheist) said there is no knock down proof of God’s existence. All that is being presented is plausibility arguments and if that is insufficient to the atheists, then the burden of “proof” is theirs to argue otherwise.
And as you say science cannot disprove God. I agree with that.
There can be no knock down proof of God’s existence – based on the structure of the arguments advanced. (Witness: there is no knockdown refutation of my claim that I defeated Don Page in argument either. So we have a system that is mutually contradictory – on the one hand, there is the argument A that I defeated Don Page in argument and on the other hand, there is the argument B that I didn’t. Which argument should be preferred?)
Since Kashyap has been mentioned, I should note here that Kashyap Vasavada has not really said that he believes in Realized Souls although that is a part of most forms of Hinduisms. Perhaps, it is because he believes in Realized Souls that he does not want to get into substantive issues related to Hinduism, and argued that he does not want to read the works of someone of the order of “a community college professor”. Maybe I am not realized enough. Maybe Anand isn’t. Who knows? (In other words, it is not a knock in any way on me or Anand, because that sort of thing cannot be experimentally verified in any case). But that seems to be the structure of his argument. Without that sort of structure, it is impossible to refuse to look at definitional issues. Which is the tangle his arguments got into.
By the way, for the same reasons that I advanced earlier, the idea of a supernatural entity intervening to impose suffering on the world (“Maltheism”) also appears to be without support.