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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.
The anthropic principle simply says that the probability of every "explanation" (particular sequence of events through which life came to be?) we need to consider in determining the most likely one is its probability conditioned on our existence, since our existence is a given. What this does is countering arguments that actually are along the lines of "abiogenesis is unlikely, therefore the existence of a creator must be likely, since probabilities sum to 1", because there is no requirement for the absolute probability to sum to 1. If there is a 10^-8 probability of a creator god and a 10^-6 probability of abiogenesis (whatever even is the sample space; call it "multiverse hypothesis" if you need to reify it by imagining 10^8 different universes of which one has a creator god and about 100 have abiogenesis occurring), the anthropic principle simply states that if you find yourself alive, there is nothing to "explain" about the ~10^-6 probability of this having happened at all. Honestly, maybe I've been brainwashed by probability theory too much, but it's hard for me to even imagine what there is to be confused by - whenever you are dealt a hand in a game of cards, do you feel the need to explain the fantastically unlikely event that just unfolded before you? What exactly do you consider an explanation, anyway?
He will still need to explain his memories of existing before he started to skydive (and everyone else's cultural and individual memory of there having been life before it).
Fighter jets are huge. Even ignoring the far greater fluidity of organic soup compared to fighter jet parts, an agglomeration of raw materials for as many potential fighter jets as there were for potential basic amino acid replicators in the organic soup on Earth's surface they presumably arose on would rapidly collapse into a black hole.
Because our eyes and hands are far better suited for arranging hunks of metal than they are for arranging molecules. Forget fighter jets - artificial diamonds at least as of a few decades ago still were smaller and less pretty than their natural counterpart, but nature has never wrought a single steel knife of the type we've had for centuries. Do you consider this an argument for divine creation of diamonds?
If we were to turn out to live in the "Made-by-Jesus" world, I would have no problem updating in favour of Christianity, although the question of course would remain somewhat open because I'd have to ask if there was some way the Jesus crowd could have put that string there (or knocked me out cold and locked me up in their Jesus-affirming VRMMO), or if maybe there was some connection between that string being there and the words "made", "by" and "Jesus" coming to mean what they do in modern English to begin with.
To be clear, the anthropic principle says that there's nothing to explain if we're in a multiverse.
That's much less clear for a one-shot.
Re: cards, wouldn't you suspect the dealer, if you got a royal flush in poker, or a full suit in bridge? For an ordinary hand, yes, the event is unlikely, but it's not unlikely in an interesting way such that any other hypotheses are privileged enough to overcome their prior lower probability.
It seems pretty clear to me that our existence raises the probability of the "multiverse" hypothesis and the "God" hypothesis relative to a hypothetical observerless universe.
Even a single universe still contains quintillions of planets, in which potential abiogenesis would take place almost completely independently, so I'm not sure it would be correct to consider a single universe a single chance for the emergence of life.
Right, the abiogenesis isn't a single chance. The relevant part is cosmic fine-tuning, like fine-tuning of the physical constants to exactly what they need to be. That seems to be something where we have to go universe by universe instead of bucket of chemicals by bucket of chemicals.
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