(Excepted from our series “The New Scientific Evidence that Points to the Existence of God – Part 2.” Edited for publication. See our store at jashow.org to order this entire series.)
Dr. John Ankerberg: Stephen, in previous articles you explained to us that the physical parameters of our universe are finely tuned to allow for the existence of life. And you showed us why many physicists have concluded that this evidence of fine tuning suggests a fine tuner, or an intelligent designer, who’s behind it all. We believe that there is, and His name is God, all right?
Today we’re going to look at some objections to this argument. We know there’s a lot of folks that would say, “I don’t believe that!” We’re going to give them more scientific evidence. But first, Stephen, let’s briefly review the fine-tuning evidence. Can you tell us what scientists mean by cosmic fine tuning, and give us a few examples of it?
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Absolutely. By fine tuning, physicists mean that many fundamental parameters of the universe fall within very narrow ranges or tolerances, such that if, for example, the force of gravity were a little stronger or a little weaker, the chemical basis of life would be impossible. Or if the masses of the elementary particles were a little heavier or a little lighter, same thing; we wouldn’t get basic chemistry off the ground. Or if the force causing the expansion of the universe that we were talking about in previous episodes when we were discussing the big bang, if that force were a little stronger, or a little weaker, we’d either have a heat death of the universe, where all the matter and energy dissipated throughout the universe and we’d have a cold, dead universe; or we’d get a big crunch where the force would be too weak and gravity would cause a re-collapse of the universe and we’d all be in a black hole, which is to say we all would not be at all.
So you have these multiple parameters that have to fall within these very narrow ranges, and they do so against all odds and for no underlying physical reason. There’s no underlying physical theory that explains why the parameters have these specific contingent values that they have. And the values are extremely improbable, because it’s such a tiny range out of a natural range of possibilities. So, you have multiple parameters that are highly improbable, but yet jointly work together to make life possible in the universe, which, in the minds of many physicists, has suggested intuitively a designing mind behind it all, making life in the universe possible.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Now, how has the discovery of the fine tuning affected what some physicists who before didn’t believe in God, how did it affect their thinking that now they do believe in God—the God question?
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Well, it’s really a fascinating story. In the late 20th century as these fine-tuning parameters were one by one being discovered—and, again, against all odds and for no underlying physical reason—many physicists were either shifting from a materialist or atheist worldview to a more theistic worldview; or were acknowledging that these discoveries were creating a great deal of cognitive dissonance for them. One atheist physicist, George Greenstein, said that the thought that some supernatural agency must be involved, he says, “insistently arises.” He couldn’t get it out of his mind. But he didn’t want to embrace it.
And perhaps the most dramatic example of this was the shift in view that the discovery of the fine tuning produced for the famous Cambridge astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle. Hoyle discovered a number of these fine-tuning parameters. He was initially a very staunch and even strident atheist, and eventually came to the view that, as he put it, “a commonsense interpretation of this fine-tuning evidence suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics… [and] chemistry” in order to make life possible.
And you have a number of younger physicists; Luke Barnes from Australia has written a fascinating book called Fortunate Universe, and he defends a theistic design hypothesis or inference as the best explanation of the fine tuning. And so, I think that’s an intellectual trend that has developed in the last 50 to 60 years within physics, of a greater openness to theism because of a discovery, a scientific discovery, that’s occurred within physics itself.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes. In your book, Return of the God Hypothesis, you give a lot of the stories of the fellows that were staunch atheists, like Sir Frederick Hoyle, and then they made just as strong statements on the other side when they came out after looking at the evidence for fine tuning. Doesn’t mean a lot of them are believing Christians, but it does mean that they recognize that there’s some kind of super intellect that did this in the universe. That’s why things are operating the way they are.
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Yes. I call that the God hypothesis—that many physicists have come to a basic form of theism as a result of their scientific discoveries. Some, for example, Sir John Polkinghorne, another great Cambridge physicist, had a complete religious conversion and became a Christian and eventually an Anglican priest. Professor Barnes in Australia is also a very religious person. But many of the physicists have come to a kind of basic or rudimentary form of theism as a result of the scientific discoveries, without knowing exactly what their religious point of view is in the totality of issues that they could address by thinking about religion.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes. Now, of course, there have been alternative explanations for the fine-tuning evidence. I mean, there’s dozens of them. They’ve been proposed, and they don’t include a fine tuner, and they challenge the idea of intellect and design. I’ve heard your debates, and it seems like everybody’s got a new one when they come after you. Can you tell us about one of them, called the weak anthropic principle. And how has it been used to explain the fine tuning?
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Sure. This was kind of the original go-to atheistic counterargument to the theistic argument based on fine tuning. And it was basically the idea that, well, of course, the universe is finely tuned to allow for the possibility of life. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here to observe the universe or to be alive. But we are alive, so obviously the universe had to be fine-tuned. So, there’s really nothing there to explain.
And that’s sort of intuitively plausible, except it also has a problem, and that is that it doesn’t really explain what needs explaining. It confuses a necessary condition of our existence—which is the fine tuning—with an explanation of the origin of the fine tuning, a causal explanation of the origin of the fine tuning. We still want to know, how did the universe get to be fine-tuned, and why is it that the fine-tuning parameters, the conditions of our existence, are so incredibly improbable? We could live in a universe where the conditions of our existence were extremely likely, and therefore it wouldn’t be so puzzling. So there is something there to explain.
And there’s a great philosopher of science named John Leslie, who has developed an illustration to show what’s wrong with this weak anthropic principle way of reasoning. He says, imagine you’re a member of the resistance during World War II. And you’ve been caught plotting against the Fuehrer. And the Gestapo come and collect you one morning. They put you up against a wall. You’re facing a firing squad of 100 Nazi marksmen. The command is given—“Ready, aim, fire”—and the bullets fly. You’re blindfolded. It’s all over; you’re still alive. You take the blindfold off, you turn around and you look, and the bullets perfectly circumscribe the shape of your body, but none have hit you.
Now, what do you infer? Do you say, “Well, you know, if all the Nazi marksmen hadn’t missed, I wouldn’t be here to even think about it, so there’s nothing to explain as to why they missed”? Or would you perhaps infer instead that the Nazi marksmen were also part of the resistance, and that they meant to miss? Which is a better explanation in that circumstance?
There certainly is still something to explain: Why did the 100 marksmen all miss in precisely the way that preserved your life? And in the same way that weak anthropic principle confuses a necessary condition of our existence—which is, the fine-tuning parameters, or by analogy that all the marksmen miss—with an explanation as to why they missed, or why the fine-tuning parameters arose. That still needs to be explained. And Leslie argues, as do I, that the best explanation is that there was intentionality behind it. There was intelligent design.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Let’s take the opposite. What about the strong anthropic principle?
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Well, this one’s a little bit wackier. It’s the idea of an observer-dependent universe. Have you ever heard the old saw from sophomore philosophy: if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? One answer to that question is no; you have to have an observer or a listener to hear the sound.
And physicists have applied that same kind of reasoning to the universe, and they’ve said, well, unless there are observers, the universe would not exist. And since we need the universe to be fine-tuned to produce life and human observers, the universe must have been fine-tuned from the beginning. But the cause of that fine tuning is the observers who confer existence on the universe. So it’s the observer-dependent universe idea, where the observer who arises billions of years after the beginning of the universe when the fine tuning was set, is the ultimate cause of the fine tuning at the beginning.
That has an obvious problem, which is, the cause is coming long after the effect. And that’s not the way cause and effect work: causes produce effects, and therefore precede them. While that had a certain sort of cachet as an exotic hypothesis in physics, most physicists have rejected that roundly as incoherent.
(Discussion of alternate theories will continue in Part 2)
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