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Do you think the seeming improbability of the origin of life is evidence for theism?
I don’t mean with respect to so-called cosmic "fine tuning." I refer to the fact that even with our potentially finely tuned cosmos it’s still incredibly unlikely that life would emerge. I took an earth science course in college, and our prof said that Abiogenesis is still the main theory: namely, non living matter gave rise to living matter through a combination of exquisitely improbable events. A bunch of chemicals mixed with other chemicals and were struck by lightning or something, creating the first self-replicating molecule. If you protest “but that’s about as likely as a fighter jet being assembled out of chance collisions,” he says “given the law of large numbers, given enough opportunities a fantastically unlikely event will eventually happen. And the observable universe is just so so vast.
I just realized this might imply that, actually, there probably is a fighter jet somewhere in the universe that arose from chance collisions of matter, or at least that this result wasn't any less likely than life arising from nonliving matter. If you say no to the fighter jet thing, but yes to a self-replicating molecular machine finding a stable enough environment in which to proliferate for millions of years, then presumably you would need to explain the asymmetry in your expectations.
Maybe the chance fighter jet is just… even more unlikely than that? Based on what? The fact that there are many more optimally arranged parts involved in a fighter jet? Maybe, but if that’s actually true, why have we been able to create fighter jets, but not engineer a self-replicating molecular organism from inorganic matter?
About cosmic "fine tuning":
If you buy any of the typical objections to cosmological fine tuning, there is a concern about whether your view "proves too much" by failing to admit of scenarios that would intuitively serve as compelling evidence for Christianity. For instance, in a universe in which the words "made-by-Jesus-Christ" were written into every square inch of matter as a direct result of the way the initial parameters of the universe were ordered, you would have to conclude that we had absolutely zero evidence in favor of Christianity.
Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #1: "But we don't know how to weight the prior probabilities of alternative universes. At best, we can only assume that the life-permitting parameters are unlikely given all of the non-life-permitting alternatives."
This is equally true of the made-by-Jesus world, but do you really want to say that that world would offer no evidence in favor of Christianity? Isn't that just an unreasonably high degree of skepticism?
Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #2: "According to the anthropic principle, we wouldn't be in a position to ask about how we appeared in a life-permitting universe if it hadn't been life-permitting to begin with, so fine-tuning requires no explanation/is explained by the fact that it had to happen from our POV."
It's not always clear what is being proposed by the objector making the anthropic principle argument, but on one interpretation the objection is saying something like "any phenomenon which presupposes an explainer requires no explanation/is automatically explained by the fact that it allows for an explainer to exist and wonder about it."
So, for instance, we needn't explain the complexity of life via evolution because had it not occurred, we wouldn't be in a position to wonder about it. Or a falling man who prays for a parachute and is saved when one spontaneously materializes out of thin air needn't explain this miracle because, had it not occurred, he wouldn't be alive to consider candidate explanations.
But notice that the anthropic principle objection can also be posed to the "made-by-Jesus" world, and even still, the "made-by-Jesus" world would be compelling evidence in favor of Christianity.
Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #3: God could have any number of purposes. Why assume that he wants life to evolve?
This equally applies to the "Made-by-Jesus" world. I can imagine any number of deities who don't want to create a made-by-Jesus world. So in the "made-by-Jesus" world would we have absolutely zero indication that Christianity is true?
Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #4: Maybe the fine-tuning is just necessary and had to be that way. Since God is supposed to be a necessary being, is it any better to suppose that an explanation that proposes a necessary God + a contingent universe is better than simply a necessary universe all on its own?
This equally applies to the "Made-by-Jesus" world. Maybe the initial parameters of the universe just had to be set up so that the words "made-by-Jesus-Christ" were written into every square inch of matter everywhere. So is the "made-by-Jesus" world not strong evidence for Christianity?
Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #5: If the multi-verse hypothesis is true, then a finely tuned universe is due to chance. Given enough opportunities, a life permitting arrangement of the parameters will eventually come about, no matter how unlikely one is.
This equally applies to the "Made-by-Jesus" world. So is the "made-by-Jesus" world not strong evidence for Christianity?
Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #6: There's no telling whether the other parameters of the universe would be life-permitting.
The typical response to this objection is to point out that the features of the universe on which the parameters depend are extremely broad, so that changes would result in a world where, say, all we would have is a distribution of matter in a pattern of random TV static, or each particle being separated from the other by so much space that complex structures could never form, or a giant undifferentiated lump of matter, etc.
But anyway, why couldn't the same objection be made to the "made-by-Jesus" world? For all we know, most arrangements of the parameters of the universe result in a "made-by-Jesus world." We haven't observed those universes, so who is really to say otherwise?
Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #7: The fine-tuning argument is just an appeal to our ignorance, or a "god-of-the-gaps"-style inference.
Is this also true of saying that the truth of Christianity is a good explanation for the made-by-Jesus universe?
TL;DR: If you buy any of the typical objections to cosmological fine tuning, there is a concern about whether your view "proves too much" by failing to admit scenarios that would intuitively serve as compelling evidence for Christianity. For instance, in a universe in which the words "made-by-Jesus-Christ" were written into every square inch of matter as a direct result of the way the initial parameters of the universe were ordered, you would have to conclude that we had absolutely zero evidence in favor of Christianity.
IMO the fact that the universe exists is a fairly compelling argument for theism generally. Any science undergraduate will understand that zero everywhere is a very satisfactory solution to all of the relevant field equations, but the fact that anything is here at all implies a far more complicated arrangement. I personally find it more compelling than life, even intelligent life, existing within the universe.
But that's just my opinion and it's hardly conclusive ontological proof.
The universe is heading toward a state of maximal entropy; when it reaches that state, known as “thermal equilibrium”, all life processes will be impossible. If you imagine all the possible ways of arranging stuff in the universe, an extremely high proportion of them would put the universe in thermal equilibrium immediately. Life is only possible (for a while – it will eventually run down) because our universe luckily started out very far from thermal equilibrium, with extremely low entropy, 14 billion years ago, for some unknown reason.
So, given that almost all ways of assigning values to the universe’s parameters would be unfriendly to life, why does the universe in fact have life-friendly parameters?
The initial entropy of the universe was ridiculously low. According to the traditional Big Bang theory, the universe originated in a giant explosion about 14 billion years ago. At its beginning, the universe had an incredibly low entropy. According to one estimate, if you randomly picked a possible initial state for a universe, the probability of picking one with such a low entropy is about 1 in ten to the power of ten to the power of 124. The low initial entropy, in turn, is crucial to explaining life and everything else in the universe that we care about.
Eh, the counter to this argument is that in reality there are 10^10^124 (or more) different universes out there and we're just present in the one that's suitable for life.
It reminds me of the old football "oracle" scam where the scammer sends you the outcome of a future football match via post and gets it right. Then he sends you another one and gets it right again. And then again 5 more times. After 7 matches of getting it right in a row he sends a message saying: "Clearly I've demonstrated my football prediction abilities with a less than 1% change of this happening at random, if you want the results of the next match (to bet on etc.) send me $1,000". The poor victim is convinced by this and sends over $1,000 only to get a prediction that's no better than anyone else's.
The trick here is that the scammer sends out the initial message to 128 different people, half getting told Team A is going to win, and half Team B. If Team A actually wins he continues sending messages to the first half of people, otherwise he sticks with the second half (since the ones he sent the wrong prediction to are never going to believe his prediction powers now). He then splits this group into half and tells half of them that Team C are going to win and half that Team D are going to win etc. etc.
After 7 rounds of this he's down to his victim who's the (un)lucky dude who the scammer sent all 7 correct predicitons to. This person then thinks he's dealing with someone who can actually predict football game outcomes with >99% probability and is much more likely to part with his money, only to get a rude surprise afterwards...
Why do you think the multiverse exists?
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