Interesting article about this subject:

http://reason.com/9907/fe.ks.is.shtml
GCT | 10.25.05 - 3:01 pm | #

That article contains so many flaws, it would be hard to enumerate all of them. First of all, while Stenger plays with his simple models to show lots of universes would produce long lived stars (For example, he changes the electromagnetic coupling constants and shows that long lived stars might still be possible, but fails to mentions that atoms would be impossible), his arguments against fine tuning crumble all around him. Serious research into Carbon and Oxygen productions in stars, on the other hand, only increase the level of fine tuning. See, for example, H. Oberhummer, A. Cst, and H. Schlattl, Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe, Science 289 (2000): 88-90. (The fine tuning expressed in this paper is 0.5% for the strong coupling constant and 4% for the electromagnetic coupling constant.)

The paper you referenced discusses inflationary models which lead to an omega of one. These do solve some fine tuning problems (uniformity) but introduce a whopper--the cosmological constant (which the paper fails to mention.)

You probably should avoid getting your cosmology from "reasononline".

Stenger is the king of speculation, from his ideas to spontaneity to non-Carbon based life to ways to avoid the cosmological constant fine tuning--and of course nothing is wrong with speculation. But that's all it is.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.25.05 - 3:33 pm | #

Hey David,

Lets assume for a minute that a designer exists. By what means would you define this designer as intelligent?

I mean, this designer created an ecosystem in which, by necessity, more life forms (including humans) are born with each generation than can be supported by the environment in which they reside. Plus theres lots of birth defects, and plus the fact that every life form requires the destructio and consumption of other life forms in order to sustain themselves.

If there is a designer, it would be a "malicious" designer.

Therefore, the best thing you can argue in favor for is not "intelligent design," but "malicious design."
Aaron Kinney | Homepage | 10.25.05 - 4:41 pm | #

Aaron,

By "intelligent" it means that the universe displays, in its fine-tuning, the evidence of design from a super-intellect. Beyond that it says nothing about the intent of the designer--and is indeed, in and of itself, compatible with a malicious designer.

Your comment is not really about ID at all, but is instead theological--a variant on the "how can God allow suffering" question. That can be answered (perhaps not to your satisfaction) but regardless, it has nothing to do with ID.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.25.05 - 4:55 pm | #

Mr. Heddle, I only posted it as an interesting article. I raised no arguments. I thought it was interesting because it presented a different side to what you were talking about.

That said, I think this paper does make one very important point. You make the point to say that bio ID is a "God of the gaps" argument, while Cosmo ID is "God in the details." But, that's not quite right, is it? What you are really saying is that because we don't understand why certain constants are the way they are, then it must be God. That's just a "God of the gaps" argument, which is what you are making.
GCT | 10.26.05 - 6:38 am | #

GCT,

No, I am not saying "we don't understand why certain constants are the way they are, then it must be God"

That would be the case if cosmological ID was based on our lack of an explanation for the value of a constant.

But CID is based on the sensitivity to the value. Even if we develop theories that explain the values of the constants, the fine tuning does not go away. The design argument would merely shift from "God picked the lucky values" to "God picked the laws that, in turn, explain the lucky values.

Stenger is on the right track--there are only two ways to defeat CID. One is to detect another universe. The other is to show that the fine tuning is an illusion.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.26.05 - 6:50 am | #

Detecting another universe only defeats CID if you specify that CID posits only one universe. I still don't understand why that must be the case.

I don't think it is possible to show that "fine tuning" is an illusion as you have described it. Change any physical constant anywhere, and life would probably be much different. That, to you is fine tuning. But, you really are putting on unnecessary requirements. Who says that life like ours has to form, or even life at all? Is the formation of a viable universe enough for you, or does an alternate David Heddle have to appear?

We don't understand why the cosmological constant is the value it is, as you posted yourself. That is a lack of explanation for the value of the constant, which is God of the gaps. Also, please define sensitivity.
GCT | 10.26.05 - 7:11 am | #

If there are many universes with different constants then you can no longer claim that we are fine tuned. The far more reasonable explanation would be that we are, of course, in one of the lucky universes that support life.

As for whether fine-tuning can be shown to be an illusion, it is in theory possible--that is what Stenger is trying to do.

As for life--the fine tuning comes in at various levels. For example, there is fine tuning that stars even exist. That is independent of "what type of life." Then there is fine-tuning necessary for carbon based life. That is still pretty generic--carbon has the richest chemistry. And most would agree you need complex chemistry for life, since life would seem to require some way of storing information in complex molecules.

Sensitivity means simply what is says--if things are tweaked then some aspect that appears essential (such as stars, or carbon production, or stable orbits) would not exist or occur. There is no precise numerical definition for "sensitive", but when it gets down to roughly ~1% level it causes most to take notice.

For the cosmological constant, it is a special case. There is some sensitivity on its value, even though we don't know it precisely. We do know it accounts for 70% of the universe, and that if it were, say, doubled the dark energy would dominate and the universe would have expanded too quickly. The incredible fine tuning of the CC is not so much, at the moment, in its sensitivity, but in the fact that it is 120 orders of magnitude smaller than expected, and at the same time it is not zero.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.26.05 - 7:39 am | #

Or the intelligent designer could have stumbled upon our universe and fine tuned it in order to support life. Only if you make the assumption that the intelligent designer created the universe is your statement necessary, and I was under the impression that ID proponents were doing all they could to distance themselves from such an outright theological stance.

Stenger's work is showing that fine tuning doesn't exist for stars. You even admit that his models show stars forming. Also, what is the threshold of fine tuning? Do we presume that there has to be fine tuning for stars or chemistry, or carbon-based life? What I mean is, what would an alternate universe have to contain for you to say that our universe is NOT fine tuned?

Sensitivity is how much a constant can be tweaked before David Heddle no longer exists, or people in general, or carbon based life, or life at all? Which is it please?

Also, we don't know WHY the cosmological constant is what it is. That's what I was driving at.
GCT | 10.26.05 - 8:08 am | #

GCT, yes a designer could create infinite parallel universes and fine tune just one--but here we would have to yield to Ockham's (pick your spelling) razor--the simplest explanation would be that we are in a fertile universe, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it. However if there is just one universe, then design is the simplest answer.

If there are infinite universes, then our universe is still fine tuned in a sense. The difference is that the fine tuning cannot be argued to be a result of design--it is just inevitable luck given that there is an infinite sample size.

Stenger might show in some simple model that stars could still exists. He has to show that they would produce heavy elements, that they would live long enough for complex life to evolve, and that they new constants he picks do detroy something else--that has been the case in previous studies. I can tweak, say, two constant to avoid some fine-tuning, but what happens is other problems pop up. Essentially you must redo all physics with the new values, not just one isolated problem.

"Sensitivity is how much a constant can be tweaked before David Heddle no longer exists, or people in general, or carbon based life, or life at all? Which is it please?"

Depends on the constant. For example, it appears that carbon/oxygen production is fine tuned to less than 1% on the value of the strong force. On the other hand, to produce a sun such as oue own, the fine tuning on the ratio of the gravitational to the electromagnetic appears to be much, much tighter, maybe as small as one part in 10^40. The fine tuning on the ratio of electrons to protons is on the order of one part in 10^37. The fine tuning on the number of expanding space dimensions from String theory is infinitely precise: only three would work.

"Also, we don't know WHY the cosmological constant is what it is. That's what I was driving at."

Not sure what you mean by that--we know what it has to be from experiment. It is a great mystery how it is fine tuned by 120 orders of magnitude from its best theoretical value.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.26.05 - 9:11 am | #

Fine tuned by luck Mr. Heddle? I don't buy that at all. I still don't agree that multiple universes would disprove CID. You even said it yourself, multiple universes could exist and this one would still be fine tuned according to you. That doesn't sound like CID would be disproven. Also, you should be careful of invoking Occam's (that's the spelling I usually use, but I have no idea what is the "correct" spelling) Razor in that design is most assuredly NOT the simplest answer.

As for what Stenger is doing, I was asking you what would we have to see before you would admit that a viable universe has sprung up. You can't say that stars are fine tuned, but another universe could arise with stars, but that doesn't count unless those stars also form heavier elements.

I'm also asking you to define sensitivity in terms of what differences are allowed. How sensitive are constants to allowing a viable universe, and what makes a universe viable? Do human lifeforms have to be able to exist, or just life in general, etc?

The last point I was making was that your cosmological constant and all the other constants might be known, but it has raised other questions. Those questions are where you have inserted God, which makes your argument a God of the gaps argument, as much as you want to call it God in the details.
GCT | 10.26.05 - 11:27 am | #

I should explain my first statement better. If "luck" is the answer, then the universe was not fine tuned, because fine tuning implies something doing some kind of tinkering.
GCT | 10.26.05 - 11:57 am | #

David,

Your argument(s) is(are) all wet, as in Douglas Adams' musing mud puddle. Design as the simplest answer, indeed.

Admit it please, that you are making a theological argument. Why in creation you think it is necessary to try to detect God (as if God were an estimable parameter) points only to problems with your theology and does nothing to advance science.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 10.26.05 - 11:58 am | #

I would think it clear what "lucky" fine tuning means--namely that the constants are still highly constrained, but that our universe still got them right by the luck of the draw.

As for God in the details, a good example is Carbon and Oxygen production. There at least four coincidences are necessary if stars are to produce abdundant C12 and O16. If we had no idea how stars worked, and said "God did it," that would be God in the gaps. But it is our detailed knowledge that causes us to be amazed--God in the details.

As for theology/God etc., I have never shied away from saying that I think God is the designer. Why other IDers do not want to say it is God--well you'd have to ask them.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.26.05 - 1:24 pm | #

"Lucky" fine tuning means that you are making the metaphysical statement that the constants are "just right" to make you specifically. To get things "right" by luck of the draw or not is to assume that the outcome was inevitable and/or desired. Scientifically you can't do that.

As for your God in the details example, you are still making those assumptions. Either way, it is an argument from incredulity. "Wow, those constants are such that our specific form of life was possible. We don't know how or why those constants came out like that, so it must have been God." That is God of the gaps. Dress it up whichever way you like and it is still a God of the gaps argument.
GCT | 10.26.05 - 1:59 pm | #

"We don't know how or why those constants came out like that, so it must have been God"

Sigh. I said quite clearly that the argument is not based on the ignorance of the source of the values. Even a fundamental theory that explained the values would change nothing.

No more arguing--it is just going round 'n round.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.26.05 - 2:20 pm | #

David,

Thank you for clarifying the theological basis of your argument - an ultimately a priori basis it seems to me. Leaving aside the "details" such as they are, how do you theologically justify the proposition that you or any human scientist has the knowledge of God implied by the claimed derivation of God's agency from scientific observation? Theologically speaking, it's starting to smell a bit like apple pie in here, me thinks.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 10.26.05 - 2:39 pm | #

About detecting another universe - how could it be done? Do you think seeing a significant blueshift would constitute such a measurement? It seems to me, if there were infinite universes springing up all over the place, at least some of them would be open and therefore rushing at us. Unless there is something special about the time our universe began, some of these must be older than our universe and should have already collided with ours. So there should already be observable blueshifted objects. Ergo, even if there are multiple universes, there appears to be a first cause.

This argument does leave out other universes that are intrinsically undetectable. Of course, I guess they could be "dark" universes
Jacob Yoder | Homepage | 10.26.05 - 9:36 pm | #

Mr. Heddle, it is not the source of the values, but the why. You write one post where you go on and on about how we don't know why the cosmological constant is the value it is and call it "fine tuning" and then another post talking about how fine tuning is real, but because we know all this stuff it is God in the details. Those are contradictory posts. Are you being obtuse on purpose?
GCT | 10.27.05 - 6:46 am | #

Shaggy,

I don't know how to answer your question, other than to point out that I believe God tells us to do science (Rom. 1:20)

Jacob,

We can not, in principle, ever detect another universe. They are outside our "event horizon." It might help to note that universes are not expanding or moving about otherwise empty space, but are creating space.

GCT,

You raise a fair question. The mysterious reduction of the CC by 120 orders of magnitude, taken alone, could be characterized as "god in the gaps."

Even so, it is a special case in light of the unprecedented magnitude of the discrepancy between theory and experiment.

At any rate, there is more to the story. Even if we never did the theory, would know that the CC, if it is the explanation for dark energy and if dark energy is real, is fine-tuned in the traditional sense: it impacts the expansion of the universe, and the production of galaxies is highly sensitive to the expansion rate.

So the 120 oom reduction is icing on the cake. But yes, you are correct to point out that the mystery of the reduction does not fall into the "God in the details" category.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.27.05 - 7:07 am | #

Thank you for admitting that much.

I still don't agree with you on the other matters, but I'll agree to let them slide since I also don't see us making any more headway.
GCT | 10.27.05 - 9:03 am | #

David,

While it is fair enough that you (presumably as a matter of faith) consider the mandate to conduct science as deriving from God, it certainly doesn’t necessarily follow that God god’s self or God’s agency should be amenable to scientific “discovery” or “verification”.

Does your theology really allow that God or God’s agency can be reduced to a (material) scientific observation or inference? If so, doesn’t that proposition assume an awful lot about what one can know about God’s nature and motivations?

Clearly, I don’t think the inference of “design” (divine or otherwise) from nature is warranted (in fact I think it is a hubristic projection of our view of human intelligence and design), but I am equally disturbed by the theological implications of such a proposition as it seems clearly to go far beyond what one can legitimately claim to know about God.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 10.27.05 - 10:23 am | #

Shaggy,

I don't see why. If we are in fact living in God's creation, why would a study of God's creation (science)not be expected to reveal something of God?

I think it gets to a very common (even among Christians) misrepresentation of Christianity along the lines of: God expects blind faith. God never expects blind faith. He always provides evidence. That is, in fact, why there were miracles.

But--I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.27.05 - 11:41 am | #

Hi David,

Expecting the creation, on its own terms, to reveal something about God is, imo, very theologically misguided. There is one source of revelation about God - God. The former is a case of confusing the Creator with the creation. God can, and does I acknowledge as a confession of faith, work in, with and under God's creation to reveal God's self, but that revelation comes as a gracious gift of faith, not an empirical observation.

It is not really an issue of so-called "blind" faith, it is an issue of who is the source of the faith. Faith in God comes from God as God's gracious gift, not as a derivation of material observation. We might see the creation as God's handiwork through the eyes of our faith, but that comes as a result of the gift of faith, not vice versa.

I submit that the only conclusion about God you could validly draw from material evidence and the assumption of God as creator would be that God is entirely apathetic to human kind and, indeed, all of creation. We can only know otherwise because of God's agency to make it known as a matter of faith.

Theologically speaking, looking for "evidence" of God or God's agency in material observation is a fool's errand, IMO. It is both fruitless and utterly unnecessary. It seeks to do the job of revelation that God already does through the gift of faith.

Of course, you may disagree with me theologically, but let us confirm that it is indeed a theological disagreement.

Now here's what puzzles me... from your appreciated acknowledgement that cosmological ID is a theological proposition (and that it cannot be science), why again is it that you think it should be presented in the context of teaching science?

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 10.27.05 - 1:34 pm | #

Shaggy,

I think I have answered this a million times. I don't think ID of any sort should be part of the curriculum. On the other hand, rabbit trails down the ID (or other paths) can make science class interesting, and they should not be banned. (You can't ban the students from bringing them up, but you can ban the teachers--that would be a mistake.)

Of course, all rabbit trails must be limited--the purpose of science class it to teach science. However, if a philosophical discussion now and then makes the whole class more interesting, then pedagogy is served.

As for the only source of revelation about God being from God, well thate statement is indisputable. However, Christianity has always recognized both general and special revelation. General revelation, available to all, included creation itself--i.e., science.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.27.05 - 2:46 pm | #

Hi David,

Even general revelation, if it is of God, comes from God in, with and under one's experience of the creation, an experience possible only by faith.

Apart from God's agency, the scientific exploration of the universe, on the other hand, is, IMO, impotent to tell us anything about God. We may well have a faith based experience of God through creation that is complementary to the material nature of the universe, but again, such an experience has God, and not the universe or material observation thereof, as its source.

It is indeed a divine gift of faith that we can experience the creation and know God as creator in complement to a scientific understanding of the universe which is an utterly human and God-devoid enterprise. If you claim that science and the understanding it reveals are more than that, then I submit you are talking about something other than science.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 10.27.05 - 4:48 pm | #

Hi, again, David,

I just wanted to add that I do appreciate the thoughtfulness of your responses and enjoy the opportunity for conversation. In the end we may well disagree but I enjoying learning the perspective of others and, in so doing, learning more about myself.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 10.27.05 - 4:58 pm | #

Re: Multiple universes and metaphysics.

1. Multilple universes is not a satisfactory explanation for fine tuning because it amounts to hand waving, it's a smoke and mirrors argument. As David has said, in principle we cannot detect multiple universes so we will *never* know whether there are any or not and there is no reason to suspect their are except to explain fine tuning.

In theory at least, ID makes a scientific hypothesis about the universe, in that the best explanation for the Fine Tuning we see is the result of a designer.

It doesn't (or at least shouldn't) claim to *prove* that there is a designer because facts cannot prove metaphysical theories. Rather we develop our metaphysical theories bases on the facts (and our presuppositions) and hope they explain the facts as best they can.

Gravity is a fact. But why we have gravity at the particular value we do will never be a fact, it will always be an explanation of the facts.

Thre are two competing explanations of the facts. Multiple Universes and A Designer. ID argues that a designer is the best explanation of the facts, that it is the simplest explanantion of the facts.

To put it simply, science works with How. Metaphysics works with why. In my experience lots of people on both sides mistake these for being the same thing (from what I can see I don't think David is doing this).

2. A number of people have implied that David is importing his metaphysics into his argument while ignoring the fact that they are doing the same. In fact we cannot argue without assuming our metaphysics, what we need to do is be clear about them (David has and the others haven't particularly). This is a tactic I find particularly frustrating in hardcore materialists, a tendency to point and yell "creationist" and dismiss a persons arguments on that basis while not acknowlegding thier own metaphysical assumptions and assuming them blindly in thier argumentation.

I am not a presuppositional apologist, but seeing this happening in various forms over and over again leads me down that path.
matt | Homepage | 10.27.05 - 5:33 pm | #

Let's suppose that fine tuning is real, and that the only possible explanations are a Designer and/or multiple universes. If we also suppose that the Designer and other universes cannot be otherwise detected, but only inferred from the fine tuning, we can only defer judgement, or postulate an answer based on plausibility.

For me, admittedly a non-physicist atheist, the multiple universes hypothesis seems a priori more plausible, because it doesn't invoke a supernatural (non-evolved) intelligence. Of course, one could concoct a story of the evolution of a super-intelligence outside of the Universe, but then all bets are off, and we're in the territory of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Charming but scientifically unmotivated.

The fine tuning argument for a Designer strikes me as the Anthropomorphic Argument (the Earth is perfect for humans, ergo designed for them) writ large, but unfalsifiable, barring other evidence, and hence not scientific.

Cheers from Vienna, zilch
zilch | 10.28.05 - 5:20 am | #

Matt, are you referring to me and my metaphysical assumptions? Perhaps you could clue me in to what those are?

The fact of the matter is that you have drawn a false dichotomy between ID and multiple universes. We don't know whether either of those is true, so to say that one or the other is true is false. Further, I've already pointed out that ID would NOT be falsified by finding multiple universes.

Speaking of falsification and ID, how exactly is ID scientific? Even Mr. Heddle does not say it is science. So, perhaps you have a scientific theory of ID to share with the rest of the class? You could start by telling us what the designer did and how he/she/it did it? The simple fact is that ID is NOT scientific, and it is NOT a scientific explanation to say "The Designer did it."
GCT | 10.28.05 - 6:12 am | #

Also Matt, can you tell me if my assumptions are a priori or not?
GCT | 10.28.05 - 6:13 am | #

Someone brought up Occam's razor w.r.t. multiple dimensions. Well, Occam's razor states that, if two explanations explain everything else equally well, then go with the one that makes fewer assumptions. Remember, people, alternate universes weren't originally posited to explain fine-tuning. IIRC, it was originally suggested as an alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum indeterminacy.

So, how well do they explain quantum indeterminacy? Well, as I said above, that's what many-worlds was made for; and for the idea of a Designer, yeah, one could invoke such a Being to explain quantum weirdness. (However, if such an entity could observe simultaneously the precise position and momentum of an electron, it just goes to show how drastically this intelligence differs from us.)

What about hypotheses? One assumes currently-nontestable alternate universes; the other assumes a presumably-untestable Deity. It is impossible, at our current level of technology, to say which is more correct. It is therefore premature to claim evidence of a designer.

I have only read of one suggested experiment testing for multiple universes, and it required a significant advance in the technological fields of AI and quantum computing, positing a wait of 20 years before a test could be made. Roger Penrose has suggested another alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation, and the wait there was suggested as being five years, with the only necessary technological leap being the ability to cut a mirror to the size of a grain of sand. (There was an article in Discover on it a few months back.)
drakvl | 12.12.05 - 9:56 am | #

"Stenger is the king of speculation..." Then what are you? David you should try to present your hypothesis where it matters; not out here.
shiva | 12.12.05 - 10:01 am | #