Existence of God

Does the Anthropic Principle Explain the Fine Tuning of the Universe?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most fascinating discoveries of modern science has been that the universe is finely tuned to support human life.  Philosopher of science John Lennox, in his book God’s Undertaker, notes that “this perception on the part of scientists, that the universe has to be very precisely structured in order to support life, has been called the anthropic principle.”

Christian theists argue that this fine tuning calls for an intelligent creator of the universe as an explanation.  How do non-theists respond to the fine tuning of the universe?

Lennox explains:

Some scientists and philosophers maintain that we ought not to be surprised at the order and fine-tuning we see in the universe around us, since if it did not exist then carbon-based life would be impossible, and we would not be there to observe the fine-tuning.  In other words they use the anthropic principle against the inference of design.  In fact, Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion tells us that the anthropic principle and God function as alternative explanations.

One response, then, to fine tuning, is to say that we should not be surprised at fine tuning because if there were no fine tuning to explain the origin of intelligent observers, then we would not be alive, as intelligent observers, to observe the fine tuning.  Does this really explain anything, though?  This explanation seems like a sleight of hand, or no explanation at all.  Lennox reveals why we feel this way:

All the anthropic principle does is to tell us that for life to exist, certain necessary conditions must be fulfilled.  But what it does not tell us is why those necessary conditions are fulfilled, nor how, granted they are fulfilled, life arose.  Dawkins is making the elementary mistake of thinking that necessary conditions are sufficient.  But they are not: in order to get a first class degree at Oxford it is necessary to get into the University; but, as many students know, it is certainly not sufficient.  The anthropic principle, far from giving an explanation for the origin of life, is an observation that gives rise to the need for such an explanation.

One of the easiest ways to see that the anthropic principle, by itself, is not a sufficient explanation, is by reviewing an illustration given by philosopher John Leslie.  He says that using the anthropic principle against the design hypothesis

sounds like arguing that if you faced a firing squad with fifty guns trained on you, you should not be surprised to find that you were alive after they had fired.  After all, that is the only outcome you could possibly have observed – if one bullet had hit you, you would be dead.  However, you might still feel that there is something which very much needs explanation; namely why did they all miss?  Was it by deliberate design?  For there is no inconsistency in not being surprised that you do not observe that you are dead, and being surprised to observe that you are still alive.

Rather than give an explanation of the fine tuning of the universe, the anthropic principle merely invites us to ask for a real explanation.  I think we would all like to know why all 50 people in the firing squad missed us.

Philosophy

Are You a Romantic?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I don’t mean in the sense of displaying strong affection toward your spouse.  I mean in the sense of the nineteenth century movement of Romanticism.  I think the romantics still have something to say to us today, and I’m wondering how many of you can relate to their ideas.

According to William Lawhead, in his The Voyage of Discovery,  “Romanticism was a quasi-philosophical literary and artistic movement that reacted against the Enlightenment picture of the universe as a machine that could best be studied by the analytical techniques of the sciences.”

Lawhead expands on this theme:

For the romantics, the scientific vision of the world was too alienating, for it threatened to turn our moral, aesthetic, and religious longings into isolated aberrations within an otherwise mathematically ordered cosmos.  As the romantics looked out on nature, they did not see atomistic particles in motion.  Instead, they felt they were in the mystical presence of an organic unity that resonated with the human spirit. 

Furthermore, they were convinced that logic and telescopes missed what was most important about reality.  Rather than reason and science revealing the secrets of this world to us, they fragmented nature and turned it into a catalogue of abstractions.  In place of the banquet table of life, full of rich colors, tastes, and textures, science offered us only a cookbook of recipes. 

To be sure, every savory dish present at the banquet of nature was represented in the scientists’ recipes.  But to mistake the scientists’ calculations for the fullness of reality would lead to spiritual starvation.  The physicist could summarize the sunset and rainbow in optical equations, and the physiologist could describe the body of one’s lover as a machine made up of organic pumps, tubing, levers, and pulleys.  However, in each case the scientific account missed the beauty and the mystery of these realities.

Although I don’t agree with everything the Romantics had to say, there is much to be commended about their movement, and I find myself agreeing with several aspects of it.  It often seems to me that the battle of worldviews today is between the reductionists who want to explain every part of human experience in terms of scientific data and theory, and the modern romantics who see that human experience is so much more than what scientific data can explain.

Where do you stand?  Do you align yourself more with the reductionists or the romantics?  Why?

Existence of God, Science and God

Is the Multiverse Hypothesis Scientific Or Not? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this series, we learned that there are two versions of the multiverse hypothesis, level 1 and level 2.  The level 1 multiverse is non-controversial as it is basically an extension of our current universe in space.  The level 2 multiverse, however, makes much grander claims and is fraught with problems.  We pick up with cosmologist George F. R. Ellis’s Scientific American article from August 2011.

So what is wrong with the level 2 multiverse hypothesis? Ellis explains:

What is new is the assertion that the multiverse is a scientific theory, with all that implies about being mathematically rigorous and experimentally testable. I am skeptical about this claim. I do not believe the existence of those other universes has been proved—or ever could be. Proponents of the multiverse, as well as greatly enlarging our conception of physical reality, are implicitly redefining what is meant by “science.”

Why is the level 2 multiverse not scientific?

The key step in justifying a multiverse is extrapolation from the known to the unknown, from the testable to the untestable. You get different answers depending on what you choose to extrapolate.  Because theories involving a multiverse can explain almost anything whatsoever, any observation can be accommodated by some multiverse variant. The various “proofs,” in effect, propose that we should accept a theoretical explanation instead of insisting on observational testing. But such testing has, up until now, been the central requirement of the scientific endeavor, and we abandon it at our peril. If we weaken the requirement of solid data, we weaken the core reason for the success of science over the past centuries.

Ellis sympathizes with those scientists who posit the level 2 multiverse as a “way of resolving deep issues about the nature of existence,” but he argues they are misguided. 

All the same issues that arise in relation to the universe arise again in relation to the multiverse.  If the multiverse exists, did it come into existence through necessity, chance or purpose?  That is a metaphysical question that no physical theory can answer for either the universe or the multiverse.

The level 2 multiverse, then, is not a scientific explanation, but is philosophical speculation.  It is an alternative metaphysical idea that is simply meant to replace the metaphysical idea of a supernatural Designer.  Those skeptics who constantly chastise Christians for doing metaphysics, and who then turn around and posit the level 2 multiverse as the cause of the fine tuning of the universe, find themselves also doing metaphysics. 

It seems that skeptics come to a fork in the road here.  Either admit that metaphysics is unavoidable and climb onboard with theists, or stop offering the multiverse as an explanation to anything.  What skeptics may not do is claim that they are only offering scientific explanations while at the same time arguing for the multiverse.  That door is closed.

Existence of God, Science and God

Is the Multiverse Hypothesis Scientific Or Not? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most powerful arguments for God’s existence is the fine tuning argument.  Rather than rehearse it here, please read Wintery Knight’s presentation of the argument.  Many atheist scholars acknowledge the persuasiveness of this argument (e.g., philosopher Peter Millican did as much in his recent debate with William Lane Craig), although not granting its conclusion.

The most common escape hatch that atheists scurry through when confronted with this argument is to offer the multiverse hypothesis.  This hypothesis, some of them argue, is much more plausible than the God hypothesis because it is a scientific explanation for the fine tuning of the universe for life.  What is this hypothesis and is it scientific?

In the August 2011 issue of Scientific American the world-renowned cosmologist George F. R. Ellis weighs in to explain exactly what the multiverse is.  First, Ellis clarifies what cosmologists mean by the term “multiverse.”

The word “multiverse” has different meanings. Astronomers are able to see out to a distance of about 42 billion light-years, our cosmic visual horizon. We have no reason to suspect the universe stops there. Beyond it could be many—even infinitely many—domains much like the one we see. Each has a different initial distribution of matter, but the same laws of physics operate in all. Nearly all cosmologists today (including me) accept this type of multiverse, which Max Tegmark calls “level 1.”

The level 1 multiverse refers to what lies outside our visual horizon.  This “multiverse” contains the same laws of physics as the universe we can observe, and it is really just an extension of our universe.  I find the term “multiverse” to be misleading in this case, but I don’t get to choose the names for scientific theories.  As Ellis says, the level 1 multiverse is not controversial.  But this is not the notion of the multiverse that atheists invoke to avoid the conclusion of the fine tuning argument. 

Ellis continues:

Yet some go further. They suggest completely different kinds of universes, with different physics, different histories, maybe different numbers of spatial dimensions. Most will be sterile, although some will be teeming with life.  A chief proponent of this “level 2” multiverse is Alexander Vilenkin, who paints a dramatic picture of an infinite set of universes with an infinite number of galaxies, an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people with your name who are reading this article.

If there truly are an infinite set of universes, argue some atheists, then it seems that at least one would have the life-permitting fine tuning of our universe.  Therefore, there is no need to posit a Designer of our universe at all.  The level 2 multiverse virtually guarantees that our universe would exist, as it guarantees that every other kind of conceivable universe exists.

In part 2 of this series, we will look at what is wrong with the level 2 multiverse hypothesis.

Science and God

Does Quantum Mechanics Invalidate the Law of Non-contradiction? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this series, Walt Tucker gave an explanation of the two slit experiment and its relation to quantum mechanics.  In part 2, Walt explains why this experiment does not violate the law of non-contradiction.  Below are Walt’s words.

The quick answer is: if a particle could actually be observed as A and not A at the same time, that would violate the law of non-contradiction. Since that cannot be done, even in the quantum world, there is no violation!

Quantum superposition is the mathematical addition of probability densities of all of the possible states of a quantum system.  The result of the superposition of the densities is used to calculate the probability of observing the system in one of the states.  In a binary probability space there is a chance that a quantum event can be observed as A or as not A.  

In the two slit experiment, it is the probability of a photon going through slit A or slit B.  Slit B would be not A.  When you don’t observe the slits to know which slit the particle went through, you find that it goes through both.  So, this guy is saying that both A and not A exist simultaneously and the law of non-contradiction is violated.  But that is not exactly the case!

When the quantum system is observed, it is observed in the context of a particle with specific location and it can only be A or not A, it can’t be both. But when the system is not being observed, it is not in the form of a point like particle, it is in a wave form where the quanta of energy is spread across the possible states as a wave.  It is in the wave form until it is observed. The observation collapses the wave to a point like particle where the law of non-contradiction is also observed (like popping a whole balloon by a pin at only one point on the surface of the balloon).

One could say the law of non-contradiction is only valid in the world of observables (the world in which we interact). But it can also be said that since the energy is in a wave form when it is not being observed, that it is not true that it is A and not A at the same time, but that it is something else, a wave, that only has the potential to be either A or not A once it is observed.  In other words, it is a whole other form that makes no sense in terms of A and non-A.

It is like saying a potato is mashed potatoes, French fries, and a baked potato all at the same time, when it is not any of them when it is a potato in the garden.  The potato has the potential to be any of those forms of potato, but isn’t any of them until one takes the potato and does something with it.  The same thing applies in the quantum world.  A wave has the potential to be observed at slit A or slit B (since a quanta of energy must be observed at one point), but while it is still a wave, it cannot be observed at both slits at the same time because an observation would cause it to no longer be a wave, but a particle.

Bottom line is that having the potential to be one thing or another does not violate the law of non-contradiction.  If the particle could actually be observed as A and not A at the same time, then there would be a violation of the law of non-contradiction!

[Bill Pratt]  Thanks for the explanation, Walt.  Great stuff.

Science and God

Does Quantum Mechanics Invalidate the Law of Non-contradiction? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This seems to be a common misconception, one that I have seen many times on the blog.  Recently, one of the most helpful commenters on the TQA blog, Walt Tucker, wrote a detailed response to this claim as a comment on another post.  He has given me permission to share his commentary in this blog post.  Every word below is Walt’s unless I indicate otherwise, and I thank him for giving me permission to use his excellent response.

A friend of mine was using his apologetics know-how with an atheist and using principles that are self-evident in nature, such as the law of non-contradiction, to argue for the existence of God.  The atheist claimed that quantum superposition violates the law of non-contradiction and thus my friend’s whole argument was null and void.  Knowing that I have knowledge in quantum theory and apologetics, my friend asked whether quantum superposition does violate the law of non-contradiction. 

Since this comes up so often with skeptics and atheists who try to use arguments from quantum mechanics against the classical apologetic argument for the existence, or at least the certainty of the existence, of God, I thought I would post my reply to my friend here for all of my Christian friends to use who might come across a person who tries to use the ill-fated quantum approach against God.  (Of course God created the quantum world, so it isn’t so likely that such arguments can be used against His existence.  Such attempts show either a misunderstanding of the nature of God, or a misunderstanding of nature itself.)

Before I present the reply, I need to give some background on how the argument the atheist is using arises in quantum mechanics.  There is a classic experiment used to demonstrate the non-intuitive nature of the quantum world.  It is called the two-slit experiment.  Light is made up of discrete packets of energy called “quanta.”  You can never have a half, or any fraction of, a quanta.  In one sense, it is like having a gum ball from a gum ball machine. You get a whole gum ball. You can smash it, chew it, or whatever, but you still have the same about of gum and it only comes in whole gum balls.

So, light is generated from atoms and absorbed by other atoms as quanta packets of energy (called a photon).  The light we see in a room with a typical incandescent light bulb is many millions of quanta, so one quanta of photon energy is very, very small.  In the experiment, a single quanta of light is shot towards the double slit (see figure below). 

There is a piece of film on the other side. When both slits are open, the light appears to go through one of the two slits and be absorbed by the film at one point at a random position. But when this is done over millions of shots, the image on the film is an interference pattern as if the photons went through both slits at the same time (the image on the film is the classical wave interference pattern of light).  An interference pattern is the crossing pattern you see when you drop two pebbles in a pond as the same time and the waves interfere – high crests and low crests – with light it is bright and dark areas.  

But since only one photon is shot at a time, it is odd that the film shows an interference pattern when intuition would say a particle of light, the photon, would only go through one slit or the other, but couldn’t go through both. To test that, one can put a detector at the slits to try and see if the photon goes through one slit or the other, or both. When that is done, the photons are detected at only one slit or the other, randomly, and the interference pattern on the film disappears (it is what you would expect if the photons did go through only one slit or the other).

So, knowing which slit the photon goes through destroys the interference that appears on the film that would appear when you don’t know which slit the photon goes through. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical formulation of this behavior for predicting the outcome of experiments called observations.  Each detection on the film would be an observation. As such, what is called an observation does not require a human observer, but does require some sort of detector, whether it be a film, a photo-detector, or anything that could absorb the photon. Now knowing the weird behavior of the quantum world, I give the reply to the question. 

[Bill Pratt] In part 2 of this series, Walt completes his explanation as to why quantum mechanics does not violate the law of non-contradiction.

Science and God, Top Ten Posts of 2011

What Are Four Things Science Will Never Explain? – #1 Post of 2011

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I’ve been reading physicist Edgar Andrews’ book Who Made God? and he claims that there are four things science will never explain.  Here they are:

  1. the origin of the universe
  2. the origin of the laws of nature
  3. the origin of life
  4. the origin of mind and thought

Andrews understands that when he claims science can never explain these four entities, all sorts of protests ensue.  He says:

Of course, atheists (and even some theists) will immediately cry foul, declaring that just because scientific explanations are not currently available it doesn’t mean they never will be.  Science is progressive and new discoveries are being made all the time, so that what seems scientifically impossible today may be scientifically explicable tomorrow.

I recognize the force of this argument but intend to stand my ground. The claim that, given time, science will explain everything is simply the atheist’s version of the God of the gaps. The gaps in our knowledge can be plugged, they say, by future (but as yet unknown) scientific advances. Thus the ‘God of the gaps’ is simply replaced by the ‘future science of the gaps’ — same gaps, different deity. It’s what philosopher of science Karl Popper called ‘promissory materialism’.

You’ll have to read Andrews’ book to see why he thinks these four will not be explained by science, but the basic reason is that each of these four (universe, laws of nature, life, mind and thought) consist of properties that transcend the material world.  Since science is only able to investigate the material world and not what transcends the material world, science cannot, in principle, ever explain these things.

I highly recommend Who Made God? as a very accessible and entertaining read that posits the God hypothesis as an explanation for the universe, laws of nature, life, and mind, and then presents evidence to uphold the hypothesis.  It might even be a nice Christmas present for the skeptic in your family!

Morality, Philosophy, Polls, Top Ten Posts of 2011, Truth

Is Raping Little Children Just a Matter of Taste? – #2 Post of 2011

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some statements about the world are objectively true, meaning they are true for all people, places, and times, regardless of whether anyone actually believes the statements.  Other statements about the world are subjective, meaning they merely refer to a person’s preferences or tastes.

An objective statement would be: “The sum of three plus five equals eight.”  This statement is not a matter of taste, but is an objective fact about the world.  It is true for all people at all times in all places that “the sum of three plus five equals eight.”

A subjective statement would be: “French roast is the worst tasting coffee.”  This statement is clearly a matter of taste, of my personal preference.  It gives information about me, not French roast coffee; you don’t learn anything objective about French Roast coffee from the statement.  It should also be clear that for all people at all times in all places, it is not true that French roast is the worst tasting coffee.

That brings me to my question.  Consider the following statement: “It is wrong to rape little children for fun.”  Is this statement objectively true or subjectively true?  Is the statement referring to a matter of fact about the moral wrongness of raping little children for fun, or is it expressing a personal taste or preference that I have against raping little children for fun, similar to the statement about French roast coffee?

Please answer this question in the poll below and be sure to leave comments explaining why you have answered the way you answered.

Philosophy, Top Ten Posts of 2011

What Is the Law of Non-Contradiction? – #3 Post of 2011

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I am constantly amazed that there are people who try to deny the law of non-contradiction, which is the most basic principle of rational thought.  What is the law of non-contradiction?  There are at least three ways to state it:

  1. A thing cannot both be A and not-A at the same time and in the same sense.
  2. A thing cannot both exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense.
  3. A statement cannot both be true and not true at the same time and in the same sense.

It is impossible to deny this law without invoking it in your denial, yet time and again I have heard people try do just that!

Why would I spend a blog post writing about this?  Because a person who thinks that this law is not true will become a thoroughly confused individual whose thought life is a complete mess, full of contradictions and inconsistencies.  I have met a few of these people, and they both sadden and scare me.

All of our beliefs, thoughts, and knowledge are built on top of the law of non-contradiction, so when a person tries to deny this foundation, they are bound to go way off track in their pursuit of understanding reality as it really is.

If you have any doubts about this fundamental law of rationality, try and deny it, but then write out your denial in a sentence – “The law of non-contradiction is false” – and ask whether your statement is both true and false at the same time and in the same sense.

If the law of non-contradiction is false, then your statement of denial must be both true and false.  But if your denial is false, then the law of non-contradiction is true!  By denying the law of non-contradiction, you have just affirmed it.  The more you try to deny the law, the more you will affirm it.

Trust me.  You cannot win.

Atheism, Morality, Top Ten Posts of 2011

How Did Jeffrey Dahmer Define Morality? – #4 Post of 2011

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If morality is not grounded by a transcendent standard, a standard that is above all humanity, then it collapses to relativism.  This concept is not at all difficult to understand, but relativism retains a negative enough connotation these days that atheists, who deny a transcendent, objective standard of morality, are still squeamish about the word.

Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who gained notoriety for eating his victims, understood the connection between God and morality all too well.  Dahmer’s father recounted his son’s moral reasoning in a documentary produced in 1996: “If it all happens naturalistically, what’s the need for a God?  Can’t I set my own rules?  Who owns me?  I own myself.”

Exactly.  If there is no God, you have no accountability to anyone else at all.  You own yourself and you can do with yourself whatever you please.

In an interview in 1994, Dahmer himself explained his thinking.  He wondered that if there were no God and we all came “from the slime,” then “what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?”

The fact that we all instinctively cry out at Dahmer’s behavior does nothing to take away from the fact that his reasoning is right on target.  He embodied the atheist worldview taken to its logical extremes.  You may not like what Dahmer did, but unless you believe in an objective, transcendent moral standard, he didn’t do anything but act unfashionably.

A Christian Apologetics Blog