The argument from the "Just Right" universe seems to catch on among some "design" creationists, and I find that puzzling. The faults of this argument is so apparent that I suspect that the emotional desires of these scholars who support them may have lead them to lower their intellectual guards to accept a story that, so to say, tickled their ears.
The argument is usually called the "anthropic principle", and exists in several forms. This principle, hotly contested, states that the universe must be in such a state that it at least in some of its history can allow life to develop. It follows, some theoriets argued, from the seemingly remarkable coincidences in the makeup of the universe, withiut which life as we know it could not develop.
Indeed, even if it was accepted as it stands, the anthropic principle can mean different things:
1) Theists interpret it to mean that this is the only universe, and it was designed with the purpose of ultimately hosting the life we currently find on planet Earth.
2) That the universe only exists because observers are here to see it. This is a common new age belief. It is a form of solipsism; new agers have misunderstood certain aspects of quantum mechanics they sometimes state to support this idea.
3) That there is a multitude of universes, some of which allow life and others that do not. We happen to live in one that does. Many well-renowed modern cosmologists have come to speculate about this in all seriousness. It actually seems to follow from some of the equations describing quantum mechanics that every time a basic particle can go zing or zang, the universe actually splits in two, one for each possible state. Mind-boggling, indeed, but almost certainly impossible to ever disprove or prove.
If we ditch version (2) above, we remain with one interpretation that seems to lend support to theism (1) and one which does not in any meaningful sense support the argument of theists (3).
There are a number of more or less hidden premises in the anthropic argument from theism. One is that the different parameters are indeed random and are not in fact guided by a fundamental principle in the order of things. For example, Fred Hoyle's famous discovery of an excited state of carbon at 7.66 MeV sparked much interest in the 'anthropic principle' argument. It does not follow from the axioms of the theory. But is it really certain that it just as well could have been, say, 5.2 MeV, which would not allow Life As We Know It? Maybe. But maybe not. No cosmologist have actually demonstrated as fact that any value for all these "constants" would indeed be as likely as any other, or indeed that any universe could develop at all based on different values. The claim seems to be unfalsifiable, and that is a serious charge, because it pushes it outside the realm of science.
Another premise, which is just as problematic, is that it deals merely with Life As We Know It. It asserts, without good evidence, that life cannot possibly exist in any (or many of) the many theoretical universes where the fine-tuning was different. What design creationists fear, with good reason, is to be dismissed because they mix up cause an effect.Of course life in this universe must exist in a form that is compatible with the physical laws we have. How could it not? We, life as we know it, is compatible with this universe precisely because this is where we originated. But who can guarantee that life forms we cannot even imagine could not possibly have existed in these alternative universes?
These flaws in the argument from design are serious enough, but actually, they only scratch the surface of the massive problems this argument suffers from.
One begins to suspect quite early that this "design" argument is merely a slighly modernized and repainted version of the old and famous "watchmaker analogy". I have earlier pointed out the serious flaws this argument suffers from, and it should not be a surprise that this modern version has retained some of the same weaknesses. The watchmaker argument has a built-in weakness of serious proportions, and this has always been the major problem with the design argument: if the fantastic properties of nature could only exist if it was created by a wise Designer, what then about the even more fantastic Designer himself? Would not the argument require a Super-Designer that was even more powerful, and so on, with an eternal regress of Designer-Designers? Indeed it would. So the only rational conclusion is that the one entity we know about, the universe, does not require a designer, even though it may appear (to some) to do so.
The same is true about the 'anthropic principle' design argument. Theists have pointed out countless properties of this universe without which Life As We Know It could not exist. Fair enough. But what about the proposed Designer? Would not this designer need to have an even more impressive array of qualities, that 'coincidentally' corresponds to what a designer of our specific universe would need? Theists often claim talk about God's wisdom, ability to plan, immense power, timelessness, love, compassion, etc, etc, that are manifest, they say, in this universe. Obviously, we can imagine countless different universe-designers, many of which have all sorts of odd combination of different qualities, few of which would create the Universe we know. Thus, it follows that this Designer was himself designer by a Supreme Designer-Designer. And so on ad infinitum.
The most serious flaw in the argument by design is actually mentioned in Hugh Ross' summary of counter-arguments on the page at http://www.reasons.org/resources/books/creatorandthecosmos/catc14.html Ross formulates it this way "We would not be here to observe the universe unless the extremely unlikely did take place." Indeed, this begs the question whether it was so unlikely after all, but let's leave this aside for now.
It is a fundamental principle of science that a theory that describes a phenomenon must be falsifiable, that is, there must be (theoretical) observations that would disprove the theory if it is wrong. More generally, it is a principle that a theory that explains everything explains nothing. That means, that if there are no theoretical observations that cannot be accounted for by the theory, then it has no predictive power and is effectively useless.
A theory that should try to prove that this universe is created by an intelligent Designer, must follow such rules. It must be possible to postulate a universe not created by a Designer, and then explain how this universe differs from the universe we have. It would then follow, if the arguments were sound, that ours was a universe created by an Intelligent Designer.
But the problem is, that by definition such a universe would be one without life, since it could not possibly sustain life. The argument is thus demonstrated to be pitifully circular, since the conclusion (that life is designed) is already smuggled into the hidden premises of the argument.
Thus, in any theoretical universe, even one that was the result of only natural processes, the inhabitants could think up the Design Argument and apply it. And they could just as well be wrong. Thus, the argument fails even the most basic test by not having any predictive power whatsoever.
(I'll leave out answering carefully the totally ridiculous sharpshooter-'rebuttal' that Ross borrows from Craig. It is merely an analogy that has nothing to do with the subject at hand since 1) the participants are intelligent agents in the first place, and 2) the rules they follow are known, unlike the rules that creates universes.)
I will also point out one serious flaw of the design argument based on the anthropic principle. I will argue that the weak anthropic principle (set out in the beginning) in fact is more compatible with naturlism than supernaturalism. The argument goes like this: the universe is in a form that is friendly to the development of life as we know it. But why, if the cause of Life is indeed a supernatural agent we usually call God, should we expect the universe to be naturally hospitable to life? A superhuman agent, in particular an omnipotent one, does not need the universe to be hospitable to life. Indeed, design theorists have pointed out that life as we know it consists of matter in the form of e.g. carbon, which is naturally created by supernova explosions. We are indeed star matter. But if God created life, why should he go through this elaborate process requiring billions of years? There is no good reason for this. God could just as well used creation by fiat in the sense that young earth creationists believe in (and then, the facts would support this).
Actually, the anthropic principle seems to be a better argument against theism than for it.
- Jan
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- "How do you write women so well?" - "I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability." (Jack Nicholson in "As Good as it Gets")
