Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (52 page)

1.
The General Scholium to Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica
, published for the first time as an appendix to the 2nd (1713) edition of the
Principia
.

2.
Carr and Rees, “The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World” (
Nature
, 1979), p. 605.

3.
Brandon Carter, “Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology,” in M. S. Longair, ed,
Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data
, 1979, p. 72. Carter concludes that if the strength of gravity were even slightly different, habitable planets would not exist.

4.
Hawking, “The Anisotropy of the Universe at Large Times” in
Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data
, p. 285.

5.
John Polkinghorne,
Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding
(Boston: New Science Library; New York: Random House, 1989), p. 22.

6.
Davies, P. C. W.,
The Accidental Universe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Davies adds that All this prompts the question of why, from the infinite range of possible values that nature could have selected for the fundamental constants, and from the infinite variety of initial conditions that could have characterized the primeval universe, the actual values and conditions conspire to produce the particular range of very special features that we observe. For clearly the universe is a very special place: exceedingly uniform on a large scale, yet not so precisely uniform that galaxies could not form;… an expansion rate tuned to the energy content to unbelievable accuracy; values for the strengths of its forces that permit nuclei to exist, yet do not burn up all the cosmic hydrogen, and many more apparent accidents of fortune (p. 111).

7.
Among the most prominent: John Leslie,
Universes
(New York: Routledge, 1989), and Martin Rees,
Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe
(New York: Basic, 2000).

8.
It is easy to see why this distribution is likely to end in gunfire: the probability of that distribution is much greater on the hypothesis that I am cheating than on the hypothesis that the cards have been dealt fairly; by Bayes theorem it therefore follows that the probability of my cheating given this distribution is much greater than on other distributions. The same goes for the fine-tuning arguments: the probability of fine-tuning on the proposition that God has created the universe is much greater than on the proposition that the universe has not been created; consequently the probability of God’s having created the universe is greater on fine-tuning than on other distributions of values over those constants.

9.
E.g., see Polkinghorne,
Science and Creation
, p. 23.

10.
White, “Fine-Tuning and Multiple Universes,”
Nous
34 (2000); Craig, “Design and the anthropic fine-tuning of the Universe” in Neil Manson, ed.,
God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science
(London: Routledge, 2003); Swinburne, “Argument from the fine-tuning of the Universe” in John Leslie, ed.,
Physical Cosmology and Philosophy
(New York: Macmillan, 1990) and “The Argument to God from Fine-Tuning Reassessed” in Manson, ed.,
God and Design
; Collins, “A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine-Tuning Design Argument” in
Reason for the Hope Within
, ed. Michael Murray (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) and “The Teleological Argument: an Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe” in
The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology
, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland. (New York: Wiley, 2009).

11.
“Evidence for Fine-Tuning” in Manson, pp. 191–192.

12.
Collins, “Evidence for Fine Tuning,” pp. 180–83.

13.
See Michael Denton,
Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe
(New York: The Free Press, 1998).

14.
Martin Gardner distinguishes the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP), the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP), the Future Anthropic Principle (FAP), the Participatory Anthropic Principle (PAP), and the Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle; see his “WAP, SAP, FAP and PAP,”
New York Review of Books
, May 8, 1986.

15.
See, e.g., Richard Dawkins in
The God Delusion
(New York: Bantam, 2006), chapter 4.

16.
Sober, “Absence of Evidence and Evidence of Absence: Evidential Transitivity in Connection with Fossils, Fishing, Fine-tuning and Firing-squads,”
Philosophical Studies
, vol. 143, no. 1.

17.
See Sober’s “The Design Argument” in Manson, and “Absence of Evidence and Evidence of Absence: Evidential Transitivity in connection with Fossils, Fishing, Fine-Tuning, and Firing Squads.”

18.
Eddington,
The Philosophy of Physical Science
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939).

19.
Due to Leslie,
Universes
.

20.
McGrew et al., “Probabilities and the Fine-tuning Argument: A Skeptical View,” in Manson,
God and Design
, p. 200.

21.
McGrew et al., “Probabilities and the Fine-tuning Argument,” p. 201.

22.
McGrew et al., “Probabilities and the Fine-tuning Argument,” p. 203.

23.
McGrew et al., “Probabilities and the Fine-tuning Argument,” p. 203.

24.
See Bas van Fraassen’s
Laws and Symmetries
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 325–31 for a brief but instructive account (with further references) of this history.

25.
Royden,
Real Analysis
(New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 53–54.

26.
It’s not obvious that propositions form a set at all: for any set
S
of propositions, there is presumably the proposition that
S
is distinct from the Taj Mahal; but then the set of propositions (supposing there is one) will be as large in cardinality as its power set; and this conflicts with the theorem of ordinary set theories to the effect that the power set of a set
S
always exceeds
S
in cardinality. It is also far from obvious that if propositions form a set, they form a countable set: if there are actual infinities at all, it seems likely that there are uncountably many possible worlds. You are h inches tall; for any real number
r
in some interval centering on h, there is a possible world in which you are
r
inches tall.

27.
For a similar example, see Collins, “The Teleological Argument,” in
The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology
, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (London: Blackwell, 2009), p. 250.

28.
See Daniel Dennett,
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
(Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 179.

29.
See, e.g., my
The Nature of Necessity
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)

30.
Lewis,
On the Plurality of Worlds
(Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 1986). They differ from Lewis worlds, however, in that, first, Lewis posits many more worlds—at least 2 to the power of the continuum—and second, for any kind of object (a donkey or a flea, for example) there is a Lewisian possible world that is an object of that kind. So some Lewis worlds are fleas, and others are donkeys.

31.
Although those are usually thought of as occurring, not simultaneously, but in some kind of temporal order; the nature of the time in which they are thus related is not ordinarily discussed.

32.
See White, “Fine-Tuning and Multiple Universes,”
Nous
34.

33.
Manson,
God and Design
, p. 21.

34.
“Our universe”: this term is to rigidly denote the universe in which in fact we find ourselves. It is not to be taken as a definite description, e.g., as “the universe in which we find ourselves.” It is therefore logically possible that we fail to exist in our universe; the sentence “we do not exist in our universe” does not express the same proposition as “we do not exist in the universe in which we find ourselves.”

35.
But isn’t it the whole point of fine-tuning to claim that living things such as trees and animals and you and I could not have existed, had these parameters had even minutely different values? First, the claim is not that life requires the precise values the constants do in fact display; for each of the constants there is a life-permitting
range
of values. Second, and more important, the claim is not that life
logically
requires that the constants fall into that range, i.e., that it is logically impossible that life arise when those values fall outside that range. The claim is much weaker:
given the laws (or regularities) that do in fact obtain
, those values must fall within those ranges if there is to be life.

36.
For a more complete evaluation of the FTA coming to a similar conclusion, see Collins, “The Teleological Argument.”

37.
There are problems with the notion of antecedent probabilities in this context (in particular, the problem of old evidence: see Bradley Monton, “God, Fine-tuning and the Problem of Old Evidence,”
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
(June 2006, 57 (2), 405 ff), but they don’t essentially affect the line of argument we’re pursuing.

38.
Sober, “The Design Argument,” in Manson, p. 109.

39.
See Bradley Monton,
Seeking God in Science: an Atheist Defends Intelligent Design
(Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2009). Monton is an atheist, and says that the FTA slightly raises the probability of theism, for him, but only slightly. On the other hand, see Antony Flew,
There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
(New York: Harper, 2007). On the strength of scientific arguments for theism, in particular biological arguments, but also the argument from fine-tuning, the late Antony Flew renounced his atheism in favor of some form of deism.

1.
Behe,
Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).

2.
Behe,
Darwin’s Black Box
, p. 39.

3.
Behe,
Darwin’s Black Box
, pp. 18–22.

4.
Darwin’s Black Box
, p. 39. Elsewhere Behe seems to suggest, not that such systems
cannot
be produced directly, but that it is prohibitively improbable that they should be so produced.

5.
A spandrel is a characteristic not itself adaptive developed as a side effect of an adaptive trait. Pliotropy occurs when a single gene influences multiple traits; such a gene might be selected for by virtue of one of these traits, but nonetheless induce changes with respect to other of them. See also footnote 26 in chapter 1.

6.
Behe,
Darwin’s Black Box
, chapters 3–6 and pp. 192ff.

7.
“Despite Dr. Behe’s training as a scientist, he has been brought up in a religious milieu, where answers by instant gratification are the norm”; his view is “silly, lazy, ignorant and intellectually abominable”; he deserts reason, instead “invoking that first resort of the intellectually challenged (that is, God).” Peter Atkins, review of
Darwin’s Black Box
. Available at
http://infidels.org/library/modern/peter_atkins/behe.html
. Some of the reaction to Behe’s work on the part of the scientific community—rivaling, as it does, the irrationality of extremist political discourse—would make a fascinating case-study in the sociology of science.

8.
Draper, “Irreducible Complexity and Darwinian Gradualism: a Reply to Michael J. Behe,”
Faith and Philosophy
22 (2002), pp. 3–21.

9.
Draper, “Irreducible Complexity,” p. 12.

10.
Draper, “Irreducible Complexity,” p. 15.

11.
Draper, “Irreducible Complexity,” p. 20.

12.
Draper, “Irreducible Complexity,” p. 26.

13.
Behe,
The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
, (New York: The Free Press, 2007).

14.
Alberts, “The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists,”
Cell
, (1998) 92(3): 291–94.

15.
Behe,
The Edge of Evolution
, p. 136.

16.
“Simultaneous”: the thought is that if they didn’t develop simultaneously, the first mutation would be selected against and disappear before the second showed up.