Eyre Lines

Having recently written a post about naturalism, in the way of these things I come across a couple of items which speak to what is often regarded as the overwhelming problem for naturalism, namely the Fine Tuning argument, and to one of the “answers” often provided to this in the form of multiverse concepts. The first is from a theological standpoint, and rather boldly claims that the fine tuning argument coupled with the exit into multiverse as an explanation represents a huge problem for science and it’s naturalistic bent. I recommend reading through to the comment on that as well. There has also been a recent interview with Keith Ward on Homebrewed Christianity which raises the fine tuning argument, The second is an excerpt from a discussion presentation by the cosmologist Sean Carroll, which takes an opposing view. I happen to think, with Carroll, that it is hugely premature to do probability assessments and to come up with the answer “It’s colossally improbable that the physical constants would have had exactly the values they do have, which would not produce life if they were only slightly different”. For one thing, as he points out, that argument should say not “life” but “life as we know it”; we do not know what the conditions would be for producing life of any kind, just those dear to our own hearts as they produced us. He also points out that one of the constants which has often been used to bolster this argument can actually be calculated from within the cosmological theory generating universes, and it turns out that the probability of the constant having the value it has is 1. In other words, it had to have that value anyhow. Moving on from that, he says (with justification) that at the moment we don’t know enough to be able to calculate the probabilities of other events. Although he doesn’t say it explicitly, it is entirely possible that there are mechanisms at work which force the values we actually see, so their probabilities are also 1; alternatively, other values might well produce life of some other kind, as we aren’t yet sure what constitutes “life”. This is not quite the old answer to the anthropic principle, which is that clearly the probability of the conditions which produced us is 1, as otherwise we would not be here to ask the question and try to generate the probability… but it is coming fairly close. Carroll does, however, think that a multiverse concept saves the day. I am much less with him on that point; multiverse theory multiplies the number of universes to a ridiculous extent (and would have utterly horrified William of Occam) at the same time as preserving the situation, as all possibilities become actualities in some universe. Do I therefore think that science (and therefore naturalism) has a problem here? Well, no. As the theologians rightly point out, the multiverse concept is not scientific. There are several reasons for this, but the obvious one is that there is no way to test the theory; it is axiomatic for the theory that the multiple universes do not interact with each other after their formation. However, that merely tells me that the problem is not a scientific one, it is a philosophical one. It goes beyond what science (naturalism) sets out to do. In essence it is enquiring as to the nature of causation and advancing the idea that there is no randomness and no probability at all about the universe, it is just that where we see randomness and probability, the universe actually splits and the two (or more) universes go their own way serenely unconnected with each other. This is actually a problem for some theologians as well, not so much in discussion of proofs for the existence of God (this is the teleological argument) but in discussion of the problem of free will versus determinism in the face of a belief in an omniscient God. Some theologians also come up with a multiverse concept to deal with this; at every point where a decision is made “by free will”, actually all possible decisions are made, and God knows all of them. (I don’t personally think that God is omniscient in this sense; any omniscience God has is limited to that which can be known, and what has not yet happened cannot be known except as a probability). At the root of both is an all too human horror of anything uncertain. And, perhaps, a persistent refusal to accept that there’s anything which is ultimately not capable of being understood by us, which is an astonishingly arrogant statement. This refusal drives science, and that is, on the whole, a good thing – I don’t think we should ever give up trying to understand everything, but it also drives theology, which is at root an attempt to find out enough about God to make God predictable. I don’t think we should stop doing that either. But I don’t think we should be too confident of success!