One of the objections raised by an audience member at the VT debate on the existence of God was against the fine-tuning argument and probability (for my method of argumentation please see: VT Debate-My Method of Argumentation). In statistics a random sample drawn must have the same chance of being sampled as all the other samples. The objection was based on this problem. Since we know of only one universe we don’t know what the range of values for the constants and physics could be. This was also brought up in conversation with both atheists after the debate. Since we don’t know how narrow or broad these ranges could be there’s no way of drawing out any probability based argument from fine-tuning. The thing is that we can know what other universes would be like if the values were different. If our natural laws have counterfactuals that are in any way incoherent then this is an appropriate sampling. Also, to make this objection and advocate that we just so happen to live in a life permitting universe in the multiverse then this objection cannot be made since the claim that we happen to life in a life-permitting one amongst countless others suggest we can know what the other samplings are. For instance, here are a few examples:
March 24th, 2012
The Fine-Tuning Argument and Random Sampling
by Max Andrewsread more »
Posted in Apologetics, Arguments for the Existence of God, Cosmology, Philosophy, Physics, Science | 3 Comments »
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