Fine-tuned universe

From PhiloWiki

If the fundamental constants of the universe are changed at all, life could not have formed. This conclusion tends to split people into believing in a Creator or a multiverse.

Noted ratios include:

• number of constants
• strong nuclear force
• gravity
• cosmological constant
• masses of protons and neutrons
• electomagnetic force

We inhabit a fine-tuned universe, in which the smallest variation in the fundamental constants apparently render the universe uninhabitable. How is this cosmic coincidence explained?

Christian views

• Strobel states that the universe is fine-tuned to permit life [Case for a Creator, pp 74, 106].

• Design and the Anthropic Principle - Hugh Ross, Reasons to Believe

"Human existence is possible because the constants of physics and the parameters for the universe and for planet Earth lie within certain highly restricted ranges... The 'coincidental' values of the constants of physics and the parameters of the universe point... to a designer who transcends the dimensions and limits of the physical universe."

• Prior probabilities and confirmation theory: A problem with the fine-tuning argument (PDF) - Kenneth Einar Himma, Kluwer Journals

"Though the theist obviously hopes for a proof of God’s existence, any argument that contributes to objectively rationalizing belief should be seen as representing considerable progress; after all, one of the big weapons in the skeptic’s arsenal has traditionally been the claim that religious belief is non-rational, if not irrational. Any argument that succeeds in objectively rationalizing belief that God exists defeats this skeptical claim. Indeed, by showing that religious belief has roughly the same epistemic status as our moral beliefs on controversial issues, the Fine-Tuning Argument shows that belief that God exists is intellectually respectable. And this, it seems to me, is nothing to sneeze at."

Secular views

• How could laws have been created AFTER the big bang if the universe started out as a 'fluctuation' of some kind? - Dr. Sten Odenwald, Astronomy Cafe

"[S]ome or perhaps even all, of the known physical laws are emergent features of nature that are not present initially provided the universe emerges from a very hot state. Quantum fluctuations are, at their root, completely a-causal, in the sense that cause and effect and ordering of events in time is not a part of how these fluctuations work. Because of this, there seem not to be any correlations built into these kinds of fluctuations because 'law' as we understand the term requires some kind of cause-and-effect structure to pre-exist. Quantum fluctuations can precede physical law, but it seems that the converse is not true. So in the big bang, the establishment of 'law' came after the event itself, but of course even the concept of time and causality may not have been quite the same back then as they are now."

• The Anthropic Principle - Victor J. Stenger, The Encyclopedia of Non-Belief (PDF)

"We have examined possible natural explanations for the anthropic coincidences. A wide variation of constants of physics has been shown to lead to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve and exhibit 'anthropic' coincidences, though human life would certainly not exist in such alternate scenarios. Human life is special only in the minds of humans.

Although not needed to negate the fine-tuning argument, which falls of its own weight, from all that we know of fundamental physics and cosmology other universes besides are own are not ruled out. The theory of a multiverse composed of many universes with different laws and physical properties is actually more parsimonious, more consistent with Occam's razor, than a single universe. We would need to hypothesize a new principle to rule out all but a single universe. If, indeed, there exist multiple universes, then we are simply in that particular universe of all the logically consistent possibilities that had the properties needed to produce us."

• The Anthropic Principle Does Not Support Supernaturalism - Michael Ikeda and Bill Jefferys

"In this article we will show that this argument is wrong. Not only is it wrong, but in fact we will show that the observation that the universe is 'fine-tuned' in this sense can only count against a supernatural origin of the universe. And we shall furthermore show that with certain theologies suggested by deities that are both inscrutable and very powerful, the more 'finely-tuned' the universe is, the more a supernatural origin of the universe is undermined...

While recognizing the force and validity of these arguments, the main points we will make go in quite different directions, and show that even if Ross is correct about 'fine-tuning' and even if ours is the only universe that exists, the 'fine-tuning' argument fails."

• The Fine-Tuning Argument - Theodore Drange, Secular Web

"The very best explanation of the given fact is that our universe, with the particular combination of physical constants that it has, was created out of nothing by a single being who is omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving, eternal, and interested in sentient organic systems, and that he "fine-tuned" those constants in a way which would lead to the evolution of such systems.

Various objections might be raised against this argument."

• The Fine-Tuning Argument Revisited - Theodore Drange, Secular Web

"FTA, even in its improved version, can still be dismissed as unsupported, doubtful, and weak."

• A Designer Universe? - Steven Weinberg, PhysLink

"...there would be no difficulty in understanding why these constants take values favorable to intelligent life. There would be a vast number of big bangs in which the constants of nature take values unfavorable for life, and many fewer where life is possible. You don't have to invoke a benevolent designer to explain why we are in one of the parts of the universe where life is possible: in all the other parts of the universe there is no one to raise the question."

• MonkeyGod - Victor J. Stenger

"An infinity of random universes is suggested by the modern inflationary model of the early universe... Recall that a quantum fluctuation can produce a tiny, empty region of curved space that will exponentially expand, increasing its energy sufficiently in the process to produce energy equivalent to all the mass of the universe in a mere 10E-42 second.

Cosmologist Andre Linde has proposed that a spacetime 'foam' empty of matter and radiation will experience local quantum fluctuations in curvature, forming bubbles of 'false vacuum' that individually inflate... into mini-universes with random characteristics. In this view, our universe is one of those expanding bubbles, the product of a single monkey banging away at the keys of a single word processor...

I have written a program, MonkeyGod, listed in the Appendix to this chapter, which the reader is welcome to use. Try your own hand at generating universes. Just choose different values of the four constants and see what happens. While these are really only 'toy' universes, the exercise illustrates that there could be many ways to produce a universe old enough to have some form of life...

I think it is safe to conclude that the conditions for the appearance of a universe with life are not so improbable as the those authors, enamored by the anthropic principle, would have you think."