"Why is the universe fine-tuned for life?": On Guard, Class 5 Recap

Answer: God! On Monday November 3rd we met for our fifth class to discuss "Why is the universe fine-tuned for life?" from the fifth chapter of On Guard. The argument in this chapter formed the third in our four-part case that we'll build for the existence of God. The argument goes like this: The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. The fine-tuning is not due to physical necessity or chance. Therefore it is due to design. Before we discussed fine-tuning, we did a little apologetics role playing. I played the part of an atheist who has de-converted from a nominally Christian background because of the revelation that science can answer so much so we don't need God to be nice to one another and live life to the fullest. I asked everyone else to convince me there's a God by trying to stick to the first two arguments that we've learned (the Leibniz and Kalam Cosmological Arguments). Everyone did a great job of being respectful yet challenging. Although I tried to weasel out of some of your points and arguments, you did a great job stumping the atheist and responding. I had a lot of fun doing that and hopefully you did too! Real Life Example: The Fine-Tuning Argument In Normal Conversation Amazingly fine-tuning came up in a conversation with my co-workers the very next day! We were chatting about the Virgin Galactic flight failure and then my one co-worker commented that he wouldn't want to go to space because the microgravity ravages the human body. Then he noted that gravity here on Earth is astonishingly just right for sustainable human life. That fit in perfectly for me to comment about the fine-tuning of the gravitational constant for life in general! As engineers we're familiar with calculating the force due to gravity using G, the gravitational constant. So I shared with them that apparently if G were even off by a hair's breadth there'd be no chance for life. I went on to tell them that if the initial low entropy conditions of our universe were off by 1 / 10 to the 10 to the 203th power then there'd be no life! They were amazed. My one co-worker remarked, "well there'd jsut be a different sort of chemistry, right?". And I corrected him that no, in fact there wouldn't even be chemistry if those constants and quantities were the slightest bit different. Their reaction was, "wow life is so fragile!" I didn't have the opportunity to then ask about the explanation of that fine-tuning for life, but it was enough to get us talking and thinking about it. So this stuff can come up in normal conversation. The Fine-Tuning Argument So what's the gist of the argument? Well, it simply asserts that there is cosmic fine-tuning for life, asks what the explanation could be, then shows that physical necessity and chance aren't plausible explanations to conclude that it is due to design. So this argument shows that there is an intelligent mind, a cosmic designer! Frankly I think that the biggest hurdle with this argument is simply informing the lay person that our universe is fine-tuned for life. We don't often think about or even know this so just talking about fine-tuning (a religious and scientifically neutral term) is extremely useful. Naturally we will wonder about the explanation and hopefully deduce that it is design. For more information on tweaks to constants and quantities and their effects to life, check out this blog post from a Phd student who used to work for Reasonable Faith on "A List of Physical Values and What Happens When They Change." Check out this great video summarizing the Fine-Tuning Argument (click the picture) The presentation from Monday is available digitally on the website here. Next time we will meet on November 17th, same place, same time, to discuss the topic "Can we be good without God?" Please read through chapter 6 before then and jot down some answers to the homework questions for discussion next time we meet. If you have any questions or thoughts along the way, please feel free to shoot me an email. Also consider inviting a friend, all are welcome!

Finally, I just wanted to encourage everyone to check out the Reasonable Faith website. They have a wealth of content to learn more about the topics we've been discussing in the class.  A really great resource are the videos of Dr. Craig's talk, interviews, and debates. If you've got time to watch a debate I really would encourage you to do so. Just pick a topic and watch!