The Fine-Tuning Argument: Is it Successful?

I'm working on a paper on fine-tuning to present to the Chico Triad on Philosophy, Theology, and Science. I'm interested to know what you think.

The argument from fine-tuning is successful or unsuccessful depending on what we ask of it. It does not successfully prove that God as the Designer exists if proof means a knock-down, drag-out, deductive proof, the conclusions of which cannot be denied. It does, nonetheless, offer evidences of God’s design, which is what we would expect from a Designer and is more supportive of theism than of naturalism. 

Two specific points must be dealt with right away. First of all, a clarification: here we are in the realm of suppositional arguments, which proceed as follows: If we suppose there to be a God who desired the universe, we should expect that this universe would have evidences of the design. The fine-tuning of various physical constants is consistent with God’s design. Therefore it is reasonable to assert that God exists. 

I mention this to clarify how the argument works or doesn’t work. We cannot expect more of the fine-tuning argument than it can deliver.

Secondly, a definition: What is the fine-tuning argument? I’ll let Wikipedia be my guide: 

the conditions that allow life in the Universe can only occur when certain universal fundamental physical constants lie within a very narrow range, so that if any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different, the Universe would be unlikely to be conducive to the establishment and development of matter, astronomical structures, elemental diversity, or life as it is understood.

What then are those specific parameters that are fine tuned to create a universe with moral, intelligent life? Physicists have identified over thirty discrete, precisely calibrated parameters that produced the universe we know. Even one of these parameters could be described as “wildly improbable.” Oxford physicist Roger Penrose comments that the “phase-space volume” requires a meticulous fine-tuning such that the “Creator’s aim must have been [precise] to an accuracy of one part in 10^{10 123} ”—a number almost impossible to write, “1” followed by 10¹²³  zeroes.

So far this might seem conclusive to many readers. So here's the best argument against fine-tuning: it’s a tautology. Simply put, we are already here in this type of universe. Similarly, it’s just as intrinsically improbable that a person named Greg is typing on a MacBook pro at California State University Chico on the fine-tuning argument because his friend and colleague Ric offered a challenge, etc., etc. But we don’t offer that set of data as evidence for a Designer.

Fair enough—I’ve already conceded that this is not a deductive proof for God that leaves no room for disagreement. It is a suppositional argument that offers confirmation for the judgment that this universe has design and that design is confirmed, to some degree, by the incredible particularity of its parameters.

I offer a counter analogy. Suppose that tonight is my wedding anniversary. In one scenario, when Laura arrives home I declare, “Laura, I’ve been planning to celebrate this anniversary big time!” I immediately call a pizza company to deliver, grab a piebald set of napkins, glasses, and plates (there’s nothing washed of the same set), fumble through some music on my iPod for background, etc., etc. Second scenario: before Laura arrives home, a limo picks her up, with me in the backseat, pouring Veuve Clicquot into luxurious champagne flutes, and I say, “Here’s to our anniversary!” We arrive home, and a chef is set to serve dinner at our house on a candle-lit table with crystal glassware while a string quartet plays in the background. Etc... Etc... (You get the picture.)

Which of the two scenarios has more specific parameters and therefore better supports my contention that I really intended to celebrate my anniversary?

All the widely calibrated, fine-tuned parameters have led some to agree with the conclusions of Freeman Dyson, the physicist who has spent many years at Princeton’s famed Institute for Advanced Study: 

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense most have known we are coming.

I join hands with Dyson. Fine tuning adds scientific evidence that God created the world out of love for us in order that we could be in relationship with our Creator. This confirming evidence in the structure of creation appears to be the fingerprint of God.

Toward A New Paper on the Natural Knowledge of God

Since recently I've been putting my more finished pieces on my Huffington Post blog, I thought I'd offer in this blog a more unfinished, academic fragment, a theologia viatorum, as it were. Here goes:

Is there natural knowledge of the Triune God who reveals?

Lake Tahoe offers an easy answer to this question

The question I intend to address is not whether the attributes of God can be known through natural theology (which I define as systematic reflections on the Deity without recourse to special revelation). Instead I am asking whether one attribute of the Triune God is that this God acts in self-revelation so that all human beings have some natural knowledge of God. 

Since this natural knowledge is so broad, I might also call it "transcendence." Instead of a natural theology, this might be termed a “theology of nature” (with Ian Barbour) or better “the natural knowledge of God” (Wolfhart Pannenberg). The latter term better fits my purposes.

Here then is my proposition, set in the clearest terms I can find: it is in God’s nature to reveal, and this fact creates the natural knowledge of God.

This focus implies some negatives. I am not seeking to prove God’s existence. Natural knowledge of God is not a proof for God. Instead I am elaborating on the implications of belief in the Triune God who reveals.

     

I am also not, like Alvin Plantinga, emphasizing the importance of evidence or rationality for belief in God, which is certainly a critical question. I am pursuing the question of whether God is known, in some way, to all human beings

      

As a related issue, I am particularly interested in how this knowledge applies to the health of the church and to what degree the natural knowledge of God can be enhanced by the natural sciences. Cognitive science, for example, has discerned common structures in human cognition that lead to religious faith.

So my argument is disarmingly simple: If the church confesses that God takes the initiative in revelation, then it is consistent to discover that God has acted in self-revelation so that human beings have some natural knowledge of God. The character of that natural knowledge is what I want to unfold in the paper I'm working on.

What do you think?

My Intellectual History, Part Deux

My first specifically academic training in the particulars of science and theology transpired in the classroom of Diogenes Allen when I took his Introduction to Philosophy at Princeton Seminary. (Incidentally, these lectures later became his book, Christian Belief in a Postmodern World: The Full Wealth of Conviction.) Dr. Allen (to this day, I would never call him “Diogenes”) started with the need to integrate theological insights with science, especially those of scientific methodology. It was intriguing, but I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. In fact, I recall a conversation with a co-seminarian, John, where I presented him with the question, “Why is Dr. Allen so into science? I’m not sure I understand.” John’s response: “Because science has a certain precision” (and therefore astonishing success). Though I was later to labor in the fields of the historical, even “scientific,” study of the Bible at Princeton, the specific work in which I’m now engaged, bringing together science and theology, was for me embryonic at best. 

      After my Master of Divinity at Princeton, I received a fellowship and a grant for a year’s study in Heidelberg and Tübingen, Germany—with renowned minds like Jürgen Moltmann and Hans Kung, and especially the then up-and-coming light, Michael Welker. Welker guided my inquiry into the concept of the world (and how it relates to God) by guiding me toward the thought the mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead. (Incidentally, Whitehead’s intricate and complex theory language—though putatively English—proved to be often more difficult than learning German.) It was a glorious year. Studying under the shadow of the Heidelberg Castle with this brilliant scholar and his double PhDs (one in philosophy, one in theology) constitutes, in my book, inspiration. 

      After that superb year away, I returned to California and started my PhD at the

Graduate Theological Union (GTU), where theology and science represented the best game in town (or at least on GTU’s Holy Hill). I began to set Whitehead’s thought in conversation with the theology of Karl Barth, that is, to compare a scientist with a theologian. I remember encountering my two mentors there, Ted Peters and Bob Russell. (This eventually became my book, God and the World.) In experiencing Bob in the classroom—lecturing, for example, on the relation of quantum theory to divine action—I encountered someone brilliant in three fields: theology, science, and philosophy (which are themselves really each sets of disciplines). There I observed Bob doing the work he loves so well: bringing together this sometimes messy, and often electrifying, combination

of theology and science with his characteristic wit, brilliance, and profound kindness. Ted, my dissertation advisor (or Doktorvater, as he and the Germans would call it), could as easily unveil the insights of genetics, Trinitarian theology, and the mythology of the Egyptian god Ra. Both Ted and Bob fully convinced me, as a student of theology, of the imperative to take in the importance of science. Actually, they also made the bridging of theology and science both enjoyable and compelling.

      It’s something I’m even more convinced of almost twenty years later.

Eight Problems Facing the Science-Faith Dialogue with Young Adults

I’m not one of those people who believes that you can transform every problem into a “challenge” or an “opportunity.” With that in mind, as I think back about my interviews with young adults (18-30 years old) for my research project on science and religion, I see at least eight problems we have to face:

And yet another way to respond...

1. Young adults sense that religion is against—is at war with—science (and vice versa, to some degree). They may not actually feel it themselves, but they hear it on the news.
2. Therefore they don’t think the integration of religion and science is possible.
3. The topic of science and religion seems too heady, takes too much effort, and is not connected with pressing life issues.
4. Speaking specifically of Christianity, the Bible seems outdated and unscientific.
5. In terms of the church’s often not embracing the LBGT community, religion seems uninformed by science and therefore actually immoral.
6. Many emerging adults would rather Google, than go than go to a congregation, in pursuing of answers about science and religion.
7. Interesting to note: Many students I’ve interviewed, even if they’re not traditionally religious, have difficulty with evolution, especially that “we came from monkeys.”
8. It’s hard to decide on one religion in light of all the possibilities for spirituality, which makes it difficult to know what religion to bring to science.

How do we solve these problems? My hunch is that the Christian church has to be honest about them, and neither leave its core commitments nor sidestep the problems.

      I’ll leave it there for now. What do you think?

Why I'm Interested In How Young Adults See Science and Religion

In relating science and religion, I fall into the Integration camp—that is, I agree with those thinkers that conclude the two need to make a difference to each other by learning from one another. I’m also fascinated by how emerging adults (18-30 year olds) understand this interaction of science and religion. It might be worthwhile to comment briefly on how I came to find all these strands compelling and why I’m seeking to wind them together in the current grant project I’m working on, Science for Emerging, Young Adults. 

      The precipitating event seems reasonably clear: I became a Christian as a first year college student at age 18—that is, during what is now know as “emerging adulthood” (a term coined by the psychologist Jeffrey Arnett in 2000—and that’s most likely why faith for 18-30 year olds will continue to allure me. My conversion also occurred in the secular environment of UC Berkeley. (In other words, “Go to Cal and become a Christian” should sound like an oxymoron.) I wasn’t nurtured from the cradle in the Bible Belt. All this means I’m also absorbed by the challenges and questions that an unbelieving culture presents. And often those arguments against faith derive from science (or science poorly understand and misused). Nevertheless, the issues of science qua science were not at first at the forefront of my faith. Instead, as a literature major during the Berkeley years, I was more engaged with the overall questions of culture. During my undergrad, I was much more concerned with religious pluralism (and still am); it’s a topic I confront through my C. S. Lewis book in “Jesus and the Crisis of Other Myths.” For the purposes of this brief essay, I’ll merely say that I, with Lewis, believe that truth can be found in many other narratives, religions, and philosophies (“myths” for Lewis), but that in Jesus the full revelation of God is present and that Jesus fulfills the longings of all human hearts. That doesn’t mean science was absent in my earlier theological development. Science, as a part of culture, emerged more gradually, primarily first as a way of integrating my faith with wider human knowledge, as well as ways that our culture resists and impugns faith.

      Later—after a sojourn in business—I continued my academic study in the history of Christian thought, and I found that science often posed a barrier to belief. Put simply I began to encounter the “warfare thesis” (science and religion are two warring forces with the former clearly winning), a position associated with Andrew Dickson White in the 19^th century and Richard Dawkins in ours. I also realized that this view was challenging, but simplistic... More on the next steps in a future post...