God and the question of human origins: A critique of the teleological “Fine-tuning” argument for the existence of God
In retreat, as the steam engine of evolutionary naturalism propels forwards, the “ teleological argument” so-called, has laboured intensively to remain relevant amidst constantly moving goalposts. An argument once focused on the presence of “Complexity in nature! Too much to be a coincidence” it has fallen back into the relevantly obscure realm of physics in the face of natural selection and the modern synthesis of biology that it underpins. For those who reject the synthesis the old views of special creation remain in vogue but for those who accept it, they seem left with the makeup of “the laws of nature”. In this case, the claim is that the universe has been constructed in such a way that if such construction were to deviate by even a millimeter there would be no life in our universe. To these theists, design as opposed to chance and physical necessity is the most plausible explanation for this purported observation.
Purported, for as cosmologist Dr. Sean M. Carroll notes (in his infamous debate with Christian Philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig), it has yet to be exhaustively demonstrated that the present arrangements of the fundamental constants of nature produce the only Life permitting scenario. I’d consider that a slam dunk on this argument but I wish to contend with it some more. Let us suppose that the present arrangement of constants was the only life-permitting arrangement, would that support the theistic inference of design? I think not, in fact, I find the constants of nature undermine the design inference in favour of chance.
When I look at the great expanse of our universe, the vast cold empty blackness of space, as it relates to our Earth, I fail to see the telltale signs of an architect. Instead, my mind drifts to an oasis in a desert. The conditions in which an oasis springs in say, the Sharia, are quite particularized, one might say, approximately “fine-tuned”. Yet we’d all see the oasis as a bug instead of a feature. An anomaly; undesigned. So why when theists peer out into our universe, do they conclude, via the nature of some regularities that make life a possibility, that this speck of blue, irrelevant in a sea of black is the apple of a creator’s eye? And to amplify that, a creator that is extremely powerful, very knowledgeable, and maybe even morally good? Design is not the most likely theory for the creation of the conditions of life on our planet, and given the above analysis, I’d say it’s implausible. For remember, if Earth is finely tuned so is the uninhabitable mass of space. The constants that supposedly procure the manifestation of life are universal after all. The more you ponder about this argument, the worse the problem gets.
Why would God create a massive universe and then populate one small planet? “So that Humans would be in awe of him.”, the theist responds. Yet, humans for most of our history were not aware of the great expanse of our universe, and philosophies that held to an infinitely expanding universe such as the epicureans in Ancient Greece used it to attack supernatural views of the world. How about “God wants us to explore it.”? Yet he started us off as a non-spacefaring species. The compounding of implausibility only seeks to make the theistic position look increasingly desperate, and maybe it should, for perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that theism is false.