1. Rebuttal:
Goldilocks Zone:
Cosmological Fine Tuning
Goldilocks Zone:
Cosmological Fine Tuning
Summary:
Earth is in a unique position in space to support life.
DIRECT ARGUMENTS
The Puddle Analogy
Douglas Adams, English science-fiction author, 1952-2001-
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, Macmillan, 2002
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, Macmillan, 2002
Paul Davies, PhD, English physicist & professor, 1946-
“Another objection sometimes raised is that life evolves to suit the prevailing conditions, so that it is no surprise after all to find life so well adapted to its circumstances. This may be true as far as the general state of the environment is concerned. Moderate climatic changes, for example, are likely to be accommodated. It would certainly be a mistake to point to the Earth and say: ‘Look how favorable the conditions are for life! The climate is just right, there is a plentiful supply of oxygen and water, the strength of gravity is just right for the size of limbs, etc., etc. What an extraordinary series of coincidences!’ The Earth is but one planet among a huge ensemble spread throughout our galaxy and beyond. Life can form only on those planets where the conditions are suitable. Had the Earth not been one of them, then this book might have been written in another galaxy instead. We are not concerned here with anything so parochial as life on Earth. The question is, under what conditions might life arise at least somewhere in the universe? If that life arises, it will inevitably find itself situated in a suitable location.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p205
“But does design necessarily imply a designer? John Leslie has argued that it doesn’t. Recall that in his theory of creation the universe exists as a result of ‘ethical requirement.’ He writes: ‘A world existing as a result of an ethical need could be just the same, just as rich in seeming evidence of a designer’s touch, whether or not the need depended for its influence on creative acts direct by a benevolent intelligence.’ In short, a good universe would look designed to us, even if it had not been.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p214
“Another objection sometimes raised is that life evolves to suit the prevailing conditions, so that it is no surprise after all to find life so well adapted to its circumstances. This may be true as far as the general state of the environment is concerned. Moderate climatic changes, for example, are likely to be accommodated. It would certainly be a mistake to point to the Earth and say: ‘Look how favorable the conditions are for life! The climate is just right, there is a plentiful supply of oxygen and water, the strength of gravity is just right for the size of limbs, etc., etc. What an extraordinary series of coincidences!’ The Earth is but one planet among a huge ensemble spread throughout our galaxy and beyond. Life can form only on those planets where the conditions are suitable. Had the Earth not been one of them, then this book might have been written in another galaxy instead. We are not concerned here with anything so parochial as life on Earth. The question is, under what conditions might life arise at least somewhere in the universe? If that life arises, it will inevitably find itself situated in a suitable location.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p205
“But does design necessarily imply a designer? John Leslie has argued that it doesn’t. Recall that in his theory of creation the universe exists as a result of ‘ethical requirement.’ He writes: ‘A world existing as a result of an ethical need could be just the same, just as rich in seeming evidence of a designer’s touch, whether or not the need depended for its influence on creative acts direct by a benevolent intelligence.’ In short, a good universe would look designed to us, even if it had not been.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p214
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher & polymath, 1872-1970
“The next step in this process brings us to the argument from design. You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design [fine-tuning]. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy argument to parody. You all know Voltaire’s remark, that obviously the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.”
— Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” (1927) Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, Touchstone Books, 1957, p9-10
“The next step in this process brings us to the argument from design. You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design [fine-tuning]. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy argument to parody. You all know Voltaire’s remark, that obviously the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.”
— Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” (1927) Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, Touchstone Books, 1957, p9-10
Rebuttal:
Anthropic Principle:
Argument from Fine Tuning of Physical Laws
Anthropic Principle:
Argument from Fine Tuning of Physical Laws
Summary:
“Anthropic Principle: Conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist” (Merriam-Webster)
The universal conditions and physical laws required to support life are very specific and the chances of them happening are too low to have happened by chance.
The universal conditions and physical laws required to support life are very specific and the chances of them happening are too low to have happened by chance.
Multiverse theory: Many universes exist, or have existed, or will exist, and while life may not be possible in all of them, it is possible in ours.
Multiverse Rebuttals to Anthropic Principle can be found under No God Multiverse Argument Direct, with Theist rebuttals in kind.
Rather than coming about by chance, there may be yet-unknown physical laws that account for the life-friendly nature of the universe. (This topic does not include multiverse arguments.)
Paul Davies, PhD, English physicist & professor, 1946-
“The question we now have to address is whether the evidence for design can equally well be taken as evidence for many universes. For example, the spatial organization of the cosmos on a large scale is important for life. If the universe were highly irregular, it might produce black holes, or turbulent gas rather than well-ordered galaxies containing life-encouraging stable stars and planets. If you imagine a limitless variety of worlds in which matter was distributed at random, chaos would generally prevail. But here and there, purely by chance, an oasis of order would arise, permitting life to form. An adaptation of the inflationary-universe scenario along these lines has been proposed and studied by the Soviet physicist Andrei Linde. Although the quiescent oases would be almost unthinkably rare, it is no surprise that we find ourselves inhabiting one, for we could not live elsewhere. We are, after all, not surprised that we find ourselves atypically located on the surface of a planet, when the overwhelming proportion of the universe consists of near-empty space. So the cosmic order need not be attributed to the providential arrangement of things, but, rather, to the inevitable selection effect connected with our own existence.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p217-218
“The question we now have to address is whether the evidence for design can equally well be taken as evidence for many universes. For example, the spatial organization of the cosmos on a large scale is important for life. If the universe were highly irregular, it might produce black holes, or turbulent gas rather than well-ordered galaxies containing life-encouraging stable stars and planets. If you imagine a limitless variety of worlds in which matter was distributed at random, chaos would generally prevail. But here and there, purely by chance, an oasis of order would arise, permitting life to form. An adaptation of the inflationary-universe scenario along these lines has been proposed and studied by the Soviet physicist Andrei Linde. Although the quiescent oases would be almost unthinkably rare, it is no surprise that we find ourselves inhabiting one, for we could not live elsewhere. We are, after all, not surprised that we find ourselves atypically located on the surface of a planet, when the overwhelming proportion of the universe consists of near-empty space. So the cosmic order need not be attributed to the providential arrangement of things, but, rather, to the inevitable selection effect connected with our own existence.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p217-218
The physical constants in our universe are the right balance for life. But other combinations of those constants could also allow for life. That is, if just one changed, life could not exist, but if all of them were different in the right way, life could. There may be many such combinations, making life more likely.
Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
“...Could there be other combinations of values of the six numbers which would turn out to be friendly to life, in ways that we do not discover if we consider them only one at a time?...”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p170 (footnote)
“...Could there be other combinations of values of the six numbers which would turn out to be friendly to life, in ways that we do not discover if we consider them only one at a time?...”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p170 (footnote)
Paul Davies, PhD, English physicist & professor, 1946-
“...We can write down the equations of physics and then tinker with them a bit to see what difference it makes. In this way, theorists can construct artificial-model universes, to test mathematically whether they can support life. Considerable effort has gone into studying this question. Most investigations conclude that the existence of complex systems, especially biological systems, is remarkably sensitive to the form of the laws of physics, and that in some cases the most minute changes to the laws are sufficient to wreck the chances of life arising, at least in the form we know it. This topic goes under the name of the Anthropic Principle, because it relates our existence as observers of the universe to the laws and conditions of the universe...
“Of course, demanding that the laws admit conscious organisms may in any case be excessively chauvinistic. There could be many ways in which the laws are special, such as possessing all sorts of mathematical properties of which we may still be unaware. There are many obscure quantities that might be maximized or minimized by these particular laws. We just don’t know.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p175
“This is by no means the only conjecture for an ensemble of worlds. Another, somewhat easier to visualize, is that what we have been calling ‘the universe’ might just be a small patch of a much larger system extended in space. If we could look beyond the ten billion or so light-years accessible to our instruments, we would see (so the theory goes) other regions of the universe that are very different from ours. There is no limit to the number of different domains that could be included in this way, as the universe might be infinitely large. Strictly speaking, if we define ‘universe’ to be everything that there is, then this is a many-regions rather than a many-universes theory, but the distinction is irrelevant for our purposes.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p217
“...We can write down the equations of physics and then tinker with them a bit to see what difference it makes. In this way, theorists can construct artificial-model universes, to test mathematically whether they can support life. Considerable effort has gone into studying this question. Most investigations conclude that the existence of complex systems, especially biological systems, is remarkably sensitive to the form of the laws of physics, and that in some cases the most minute changes to the laws are sufficient to wreck the chances of life arising, at least in the form we know it. This topic goes under the name of the Anthropic Principle, because it relates our existence as observers of the universe to the laws and conditions of the universe...
“Of course, demanding that the laws admit conscious organisms may in any case be excessively chauvinistic. There could be many ways in which the laws are special, such as possessing all sorts of mathematical properties of which we may still be unaware. There are many obscure quantities that might be maximized or minimized by these particular laws. We just don’t know.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p175
“This is by no means the only conjecture for an ensemble of worlds. Another, somewhat easier to visualize, is that what we have been calling ‘the universe’ might just be a small patch of a much larger system extended in space. If we could look beyond the ten billion or so light-years accessible to our instruments, we would see (so the theory goes) other regions of the universe that are very different from ours. There is no limit to the number of different domains that could be included in this way, as the universe might be infinitely large. Strictly speaking, if we define ‘universe’ to be everything that there is, then this is a many-regions rather than a many-universes theory, but the distinction is irrelevant for our purposes.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p217
An omnipotent God could just as easily created a universe that did not require fine tuning, so this is not sufficient evidence for a creator.
Robin Le Poidevin, British professor of metaphysics, 1962-
“A further objection to using fine-tuning to argue for the existence of God – and this is more of a direct attack – is that it is not obvious that God would choose to create a universe which required fine-tuning in order for life to emerge. For all we know, he could have created a universe which had the kind of laws which didn’t require fine-tuning in order for life to emerge. And if he could, it’s rather puzzling that he didn’t choose this method. So until we know whether or not such a world is possible, we cannot point to fine-tuning as evidence for the existence of God. Unfortunately, on this question, we are just reduced to guesswork: it just isn’t clear what would establish the possibility or impossibility of such laws.”
— Robin Le Poidevin, Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2020 p63
“A further objection to using fine-tuning to argue for the existence of God – and this is more of a direct attack – is that it is not obvious that God would choose to create a universe which required fine-tuning in order for life to emerge. For all we know, he could have created a universe which had the kind of laws which didn’t require fine-tuning in order for life to emerge. And if he could, it’s rather puzzling that he didn’t choose this method. So until we know whether or not such a world is possible, we cannot point to fine-tuning as evidence for the existence of God. Unfortunately, on this question, we are just reduced to guesswork: it just isn’t clear what would establish the possibility or impossibility of such laws.”
— Robin Le Poidevin, Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2020 p63
Just because the probability for something is low doesn’t mean it’s zero. Space is a big enough (100 billion stars in our galaxy, 2 trillion galaxies, endless possible universes) and has been around long enough that anything with a non-zero chance can eventually happen.
Paul Davies, PhD, English physicist & professor, 1946-
“...The essence of quantum physics, as I have remarked, is uncertainty: prediction in a quantum theory is prediction of probabilities rather than certainties. The Hartle-Hawking mathematical formalism supplies the probabilities that a particular universe, with a particular arrangement of matter, exists at each moment. In predicting that there is a nonzero probability for some particular universe, one is saying that there is a definite chance that it will be actualized. This creation ex nihilo is here given the concrete interpretation of ‘actualization of possibilities.’”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p69
“...The essence of quantum physics, as I have remarked, is uncertainty: prediction in a quantum theory is prediction of probabilities rather than certainties. The Hartle-Hawking mathematical formalism supplies the probabilities that a particular universe, with a particular arrangement of matter, exists at each moment. In predicting that there is a nonzero probability for some particular universe, one is saying that there is a definite chance that it will be actualized. This creation ex nihilo is here given the concrete interpretation of ‘actualization of possibilities.’”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p69
Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
“It is a strange fact, incidentally, that religious apologists love the anthropic principle. For some reason that makes no sense at all, they think it supports their case. Precisely the opposite is true. The anthropic principle, like natural selection, is an alternative to the design hypothesis. It provides a rational, design-free explanation for the fact that we find ourselves in a situation propitious to our existence. I think the confusion arises in the religious mind because the anthropic principle is only ever mentioned in the context of the problem that it solves, namely the fact that we live in a life-friendly place. What the religious mind then fails to grasp is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives.
“Liquid water is a necessary condition for life as we know it, but it is far from sufficient. Life still has to originate in the water, and the origin of life may have been a highly improbable occurrence. Darwinian evolution proceeds merrily once life has originated. But how does life get started? The origin of life was the chemical event, or series of events, whereby the vital conditions for natural selection first came about... Once the vital ingredient – some kind of genetic molecule – is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as the eventual consequence. But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable...
“Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here...
“Again, as with Goldilocks, the anthropic alternative to the design hypothesis is statistical. Scientists invoke the magic of large numbers. It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reasons of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe. Now, suppose the origin of life, the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA, really was a quite staggeringly improbable event. Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets. A grant-giving body would laugh at any chemist who admitted that the chance of his proposed research succeeding was only one in a hundred. But here we are talking about odds of one in a billion. And yet...even with such absurdly long odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets – of which Earth, of course, is one...
“Any probability statement is made in the context of a certain level of ignorance. If we know nothing about a planet, we may postulate the odds of life’s arising on it as, say, one in a billion. But if we now import some new assumptions into our estimate, things change. A particular planet may have some peculiar properties, perhaps a special profile of element abundances in its rocks, which shift the odds in favour of life’s emerging. Some planets, in other words, are more ‘Earth-like’ than others. Earth itself, of course, is especially Earth-like! This should give encouragement to our chemists trying to recreate the event in the lab, for it could shorten the odds against their success. But my earlier calculation demonstrated that even a chemical model with odds of success as low as one in a billion would still predict that life would arise on a billion planets in the universe. And the beauty of the anthropic principle is that it tells us, against all intuition, that a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for the presence of life here...
“Even accepting the most pessimistic estimate of the probability that life might spontaneously originate, this statistical argument completely demolishes any suggestion that we should postulate design to fill the gap... Yet even so big a gap as this is easily filled by statistically informed science, while the very same statistical science rules out a divine creator on the ‘Ultimate 747’ grounds we met earlier...
“The anthropic principle is impotent to explain the multifarious details of living creatures. We really need Darwin’s powerful crane to account for the diversity of life on Earth, and especially the persuasive illusion of design. The origin of life, by contrast, lies outside the reach of that crane, because natural selection cannot proceed without it. Here the anthropic principle comes into its own. We can deal with the unique origin of life by postulating a very large number of planetary opportunities. Once that initial stroke of luck has been granted – and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us – natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck.”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p164-168
“It is a strange fact, incidentally, that religious apologists love the anthropic principle. For some reason that makes no sense at all, they think it supports their case. Precisely the opposite is true. The anthropic principle, like natural selection, is an alternative to the design hypothesis. It provides a rational, design-free explanation for the fact that we find ourselves in a situation propitious to our existence. I think the confusion arises in the religious mind because the anthropic principle is only ever mentioned in the context of the problem that it solves, namely the fact that we live in a life-friendly place. What the religious mind then fails to grasp is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives.
“Liquid water is a necessary condition for life as we know it, but it is far from sufficient. Life still has to originate in the water, and the origin of life may have been a highly improbable occurrence. Darwinian evolution proceeds merrily once life has originated. But how does life get started? The origin of life was the chemical event, or series of events, whereby the vital conditions for natural selection first came about... Once the vital ingredient – some kind of genetic molecule – is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as the eventual consequence. But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable...
“Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here...
“Again, as with Goldilocks, the anthropic alternative to the design hypothesis is statistical. Scientists invoke the magic of large numbers. It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reasons of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe. Now, suppose the origin of life, the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA, really was a quite staggeringly improbable event. Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets. A grant-giving body would laugh at any chemist who admitted that the chance of his proposed research succeeding was only one in a hundred. But here we are talking about odds of one in a billion. And yet...even with such absurdly long odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets – of which Earth, of course, is one...
“Any probability statement is made in the context of a certain level of ignorance. If we know nothing about a planet, we may postulate the odds of life’s arising on it as, say, one in a billion. But if we now import some new assumptions into our estimate, things change. A particular planet may have some peculiar properties, perhaps a special profile of element abundances in its rocks, which shift the odds in favour of life’s emerging. Some planets, in other words, are more ‘Earth-like’ than others. Earth itself, of course, is especially Earth-like! This should give encouragement to our chemists trying to recreate the event in the lab, for it could shorten the odds against their success. But my earlier calculation demonstrated that even a chemical model with odds of success as low as one in a billion would still predict that life would arise on a billion planets in the universe. And the beauty of the anthropic principle is that it tells us, against all intuition, that a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for the presence of life here...
“Even accepting the most pessimistic estimate of the probability that life might spontaneously originate, this statistical argument completely demolishes any suggestion that we should postulate design to fill the gap... Yet even so big a gap as this is easily filled by statistically informed science, while the very same statistical science rules out a divine creator on the ‘Ultimate 747’ grounds we met earlier...
“The anthropic principle is impotent to explain the multifarious details of living creatures. We really need Darwin’s powerful crane to account for the diversity of life on Earth, and especially the persuasive illusion of design. The origin of life, by contrast, lies outside the reach of that crane, because natural selection cannot proceed without it. Here the anthropic principle comes into its own. We can deal with the unique origin of life by postulating a very large number of planetary opportunities. Once that initial stroke of luck has been granted – and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us – natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck.”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p164-168
God’s existence is even more improbable than the chances of a life-friendly universe happening by chance or by yet-unknown physical laws. It is therefore not a satisfactory solution to the Fine Tuning problem.
Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
“We live not only on a friendly planet but also in a friendly universe. It follows from the fact of our existence that the laws of physics must be friendly enough to allow life to arise... Physicists have calculated that, if the laws and constants of physics had been even slightly different, the universe would have developed in such a way that life would have been impossible. Different physicists put it in different ways, but the conclusion is always much the same. Martin Rees, in Just Six Numbers, lists six fundamental constants, which are believed to hold all around the universe. Each of these six numbers is finely tuned in the sense that, if it were slightly different, the universe would be comprehensively different and presumably unfriendly to life.
“An example of Rees’s six numbers is the magnitude of the so-called ‘strong’ force, the force that binds the components of an atomic nucleus: the nuclear force that has to be overcome when one ‘splits’ the atom. It is measured as E, the proportion of the mass of a hydrogen nucleus that is converted to energy when hydrogen fuses to form helium. The value of this number in our universe is 0.007, and it looks as though it had to be very close to this value in order for any chemistry (which is a perequisite for life) to exist. Chemistry as we know it consists of the combination and recombination of the ninety or so naturally occurring elements of the periodic table. Hydrogen is the simplest and commonest of the elements. All the other elements in the universe are made ultimately from hydrogen by nuclear fusion... Relative small stars, such as our sun, can make only light elements such as helium, the seconding lightest in the periodic table after hydrogen. It takes larger and larger stars to develop the high temperatures needed to forge most of the heavier elements, in a cascade of nuclear fusion processes whose details were worked out by Fred Hoyle and two colleagues (an achievement for which, mysteriously, Hoyle was not given a share of the Nobel Prize received by the others). These big stars may explode as supernovas, scattering their materials, including the elements of the periodic table, in dust clouds. These dust clouds eventually condense to form new stars and planets, including our own. This is why Earth is rich in elements over and above the ubiquitous hydrogen: elements without which chemistry, and life, would be impossible.
“The relevant point here is that the value of the strong force crucially determines how far up the periodic table the nuclear fusion cascade goes. If the strong force were too small, say 0.006 instead of 0.007, the universe would contain nothing but hydrogen, and no interesting chemistry could result. If it were too large, say 0.008, all the hydrogen would have fused to make heavier elements. A chemistry without hydrogen could not generate life as we know it. For one thing, there would be no water. The Goldilocks value – 0.007 – is just right for yielding the richness of elements that we need for an interesting and life-supporting chemistry.
“I won’t go through the rest of Rees’s six numbers. The bottom line for each of them is the same... How should we respond to this? Yet again, we have the theist’s answer on the one hand, and the anthropic answer on the other. The theist says that God, when setting up the universe, tuned the fundamental constants of the universe so that each one lay in its Goldilocks zone for the production of life. It is as though God had six knobs that he could twiddle, and he carefully tuned each knob to its Goldilocks value. As ever, the theist’s answer is deeply unsatisfying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained. A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself, and that’s very improbable indeed. This is exactly the premise of the whole discussion we are having. It follows that the theist’s answer has utterly failed to make any headway towards solving the problem at hand. I see no alternative but to dismiss it, while at the same time marveling at the number of people who can’t see the problem and seem genuinely satisfied by the ‘Divine Knob-Twiddler’ argument...
“Biologists, with their raised consciousness of the power of natural selection to explain the rise of improbable things, are unlikely to be satisfied with any theory that evades the problem of improbability altogether. And the theistic response to the riddle of improbability is an evasion of stupendous proportions. It is more than a restatement of the problem, it is a grotesque amplification of it...”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p169-172
“We live not only on a friendly planet but also in a friendly universe. It follows from the fact of our existence that the laws of physics must be friendly enough to allow life to arise... Physicists have calculated that, if the laws and constants of physics had been even slightly different, the universe would have developed in such a way that life would have been impossible. Different physicists put it in different ways, but the conclusion is always much the same. Martin Rees, in Just Six Numbers, lists six fundamental constants, which are believed to hold all around the universe. Each of these six numbers is finely tuned in the sense that, if it were slightly different, the universe would be comprehensively different and presumably unfriendly to life.
“An example of Rees’s six numbers is the magnitude of the so-called ‘strong’ force, the force that binds the components of an atomic nucleus: the nuclear force that has to be overcome when one ‘splits’ the atom. It is measured as E, the proportion of the mass of a hydrogen nucleus that is converted to energy when hydrogen fuses to form helium. The value of this number in our universe is 0.007, and it looks as though it had to be very close to this value in order for any chemistry (which is a perequisite for life) to exist. Chemistry as we know it consists of the combination and recombination of the ninety or so naturally occurring elements of the periodic table. Hydrogen is the simplest and commonest of the elements. All the other elements in the universe are made ultimately from hydrogen by nuclear fusion... Relative small stars, such as our sun, can make only light elements such as helium, the seconding lightest in the periodic table after hydrogen. It takes larger and larger stars to develop the high temperatures needed to forge most of the heavier elements, in a cascade of nuclear fusion processes whose details were worked out by Fred Hoyle and two colleagues (an achievement for which, mysteriously, Hoyle was not given a share of the Nobel Prize received by the others). These big stars may explode as supernovas, scattering their materials, including the elements of the periodic table, in dust clouds. These dust clouds eventually condense to form new stars and planets, including our own. This is why Earth is rich in elements over and above the ubiquitous hydrogen: elements without which chemistry, and life, would be impossible.
“The relevant point here is that the value of the strong force crucially determines how far up the periodic table the nuclear fusion cascade goes. If the strong force were too small, say 0.006 instead of 0.007, the universe would contain nothing but hydrogen, and no interesting chemistry could result. If it were too large, say 0.008, all the hydrogen would have fused to make heavier elements. A chemistry without hydrogen could not generate life as we know it. For one thing, there would be no water. The Goldilocks value – 0.007 – is just right for yielding the richness of elements that we need for an interesting and life-supporting chemistry.
“I won’t go through the rest of Rees’s six numbers. The bottom line for each of them is the same... How should we respond to this? Yet again, we have the theist’s answer on the one hand, and the anthropic answer on the other. The theist says that God, when setting up the universe, tuned the fundamental constants of the universe so that each one lay in its Goldilocks zone for the production of life. It is as though God had six knobs that he could twiddle, and he carefully tuned each knob to its Goldilocks value. As ever, the theist’s answer is deeply unsatisfying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained. A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself, and that’s very improbable indeed. This is exactly the premise of the whole discussion we are having. It follows that the theist’s answer has utterly failed to make any headway towards solving the problem at hand. I see no alternative but to dismiss it, while at the same time marveling at the number of people who can’t see the problem and seem genuinely satisfied by the ‘Divine Knob-Twiddler’ argument...
“Biologists, with their raised consciousness of the power of natural selection to explain the rise of improbable things, are unlikely to be satisfied with any theory that evades the problem of improbability altogether. And the theistic response to the riddle of improbability is an evasion of stupendous proportions. It is more than a restatement of the problem, it is a grotesque amplification of it...”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p169-172
Multiverse theory: Rather than coming about by chance, there may be yet-unknown physical laws that account for the life-friendly nature of the universe. This includes the Multiverse Theory: Many universes exist, or have existed, or will exist, and while life may not be possible in all of them, it is possible in ours.
Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
“...Different physicists espouse different kinds of anthropic solutions to the riddle of our existence.
“Hard-nosed physicists say that the six knobs [of physical constants necessary for life] were never free to vary in the first place. When we finally reach the long-hoped for Theory of Everything, we shall see that the six key numbers depend upon each other, or on something else as yet unknown, in ways that we today cannot imagine. The six numbers may turn out to be no freer to vary than is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It will turn out that there is only one way for a universe to be. Far from God being needed to twiddle six knobs, there are no knobs to twiddle.
“Other physicists (Martin Rees himself would be an example) find this unsatisfying, and I think I agree with them. It is indeed perfectly plausible that there is only one way for a universe to be. But why did that one way have to be such a set-up for our eventual evolution? Why did it have to be the kind of universe which seems almost as if, in the words of the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, it ‘must have known we were coming’?...
“This objection can be answered by the suggestion, which Martin Rees himself supports, that there are many universes, co-existing like bubbles of foam, in a ‘multiverse’ (or ‘megaverse,’ as Leonard Susskind prefers to call it). The laws and constants of any one universe, such as our observable universe, are by-laws. The multiverse as a whole has a plethora of alternative sets of by-laws. The anthropic principle kicks in to explain that we have to be in one of those universes (presumably a minority) whose by-laws happened to be propitious to our eventual evolution and hence contemplation of the problem...
“Another theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin, has developed a tantalizingly Darwinian variant on the multiverse theory, including both serial and parallel elements. Smolin’s idea, expounded in The Life of the Cosmos, hinges on the theory that daughter universes are born of parent universes, not in a fully fledged big crunch but more locally in black holes. Smolin adds a form of heredity: the fundamental constants of a daughter universe are slightly ‘mutated’ versions of the constants of its parent. Heredity is the essential ingredient of Darwinian natural selection, and the rest of Smolin’s theory follows naturally. Those universes that have what it takes to ‘survive’ and ‘reproduce’ come to predominate in the multiverse. ‘What it takes’ includes lasting long enough to ‘reproduce.’ Because the act of reproduction takes place in black holes, successful universes must have what it takes to make black holes. This ability entails various other properties. For example, the tendency for matter to condense into clouds and then stars is a prerequisite to making black holes. Stars also, as we have seen, are the precursors to the development of interesting chemistry, and hence life. So, Smolin suggests, there has been a Darwinian natural selection of universes in the multiverse, directly favouring the evolution of black hole fecundity and indirectly favouring the production of life...”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p172-175
“It is tempting to think (and many have succumbed) that to postulate a plethora of universes is a profligate luxury which should not be allowed. If we are going to permit the extravagance of a multiverse, so the argument runs we might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and allow a God. Aren’t they both equally uparsimonirous ad hoc hypotheses, and equally unsatisfactory? People who think that have not had their consciousness raised by natural selection. The key difference between the genuinely extravagant God hypothesis and the apparently extravagant multiverse hypothesis is one of statistical improbability. The multiverse, for all that it is extravagant, is simple. God, or any intelligent, decision-taking, calculating agent, would have to be highly improbably in the very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain. The multiverse may seem extravagant in sheer number of universes. But if each one of those universes is simple in its fundamental laws, we are still not postulating anything highly improbable. The very opposite has to be said of any kind of intelligence.”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p175-176
“...Different physicists espouse different kinds of anthropic solutions to the riddle of our existence.
“Hard-nosed physicists say that the six knobs [of physical constants necessary for life] were never free to vary in the first place. When we finally reach the long-hoped for Theory of Everything, we shall see that the six key numbers depend upon each other, or on something else as yet unknown, in ways that we today cannot imagine. The six numbers may turn out to be no freer to vary than is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It will turn out that there is only one way for a universe to be. Far from God being needed to twiddle six knobs, there are no knobs to twiddle.
“Other physicists (Martin Rees himself would be an example) find this unsatisfying, and I think I agree with them. It is indeed perfectly plausible that there is only one way for a universe to be. But why did that one way have to be such a set-up for our eventual evolution? Why did it have to be the kind of universe which seems almost as if, in the words of the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, it ‘must have known we were coming’?...
“This objection can be answered by the suggestion, which Martin Rees himself supports, that there are many universes, co-existing like bubbles of foam, in a ‘multiverse’ (or ‘megaverse,’ as Leonard Susskind prefers to call it). The laws and constants of any one universe, such as our observable universe, are by-laws. The multiverse as a whole has a plethora of alternative sets of by-laws. The anthropic principle kicks in to explain that we have to be in one of those universes (presumably a minority) whose by-laws happened to be propitious to our eventual evolution and hence contemplation of the problem...
“Another theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin, has developed a tantalizingly Darwinian variant on the multiverse theory, including both serial and parallel elements. Smolin’s idea, expounded in The Life of the Cosmos, hinges on the theory that daughter universes are born of parent universes, not in a fully fledged big crunch but more locally in black holes. Smolin adds a form of heredity: the fundamental constants of a daughter universe are slightly ‘mutated’ versions of the constants of its parent. Heredity is the essential ingredient of Darwinian natural selection, and the rest of Smolin’s theory follows naturally. Those universes that have what it takes to ‘survive’ and ‘reproduce’ come to predominate in the multiverse. ‘What it takes’ includes lasting long enough to ‘reproduce.’ Because the act of reproduction takes place in black holes, successful universes must have what it takes to make black holes. This ability entails various other properties. For example, the tendency for matter to condense into clouds and then stars is a prerequisite to making black holes. Stars also, as we have seen, are the precursors to the development of interesting chemistry, and hence life. So, Smolin suggests, there has been a Darwinian natural selection of universes in the multiverse, directly favouring the evolution of black hole fecundity and indirectly favouring the production of life...”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p172-175
“It is tempting to think (and many have succumbed) that to postulate a plethora of universes is a profligate luxury which should not be allowed. If we are going to permit the extravagance of a multiverse, so the argument runs we might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and allow a God. Aren’t they both equally uparsimonirous ad hoc hypotheses, and equally unsatisfactory? People who think that have not had their consciousness raised by natural selection. The key difference between the genuinely extravagant God hypothesis and the apparently extravagant multiverse hypothesis is one of statistical improbability. The multiverse, for all that it is extravagant, is simple. God, or any intelligent, decision-taking, calculating agent, would have to be highly improbably in the very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain. The multiverse may seem extravagant in sheer number of universes. But if each one of those universes is simple in its fundamental laws, we are still not postulating anything highly improbable. The very opposite has to be said of any kind of intelligence.”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p175-176
Paul Davies, PhD, English physicist & professor, 1946-
“Before leaving the problem of the origin of the universe, I should say something about a recent cosmological theory in which the question of origin enters in a radically different way. In my book God and the New Physics I floated the idea that what we call the universe might have started out as an outgrowth of some larger system, which then detached itself to become an independent entity... Here space is represented as a two-dimensional sheet. In accordance with the general theory of relativity, we can imagine this sheet as curved. In particular, one can conceive of a localized bump forming on the sheet, and rising into a protuberance connected to the main sheet by a thin throat. It may then happen that the throat becomes progressively narrower, until it pinches off completely. The protuberance has then turned into a completely disconnected ‘bubble.’ The ‘mother’ sheet has given rise to a ‘child.’“Amazingly, there is good reason to expect something like this to be going on in the real universe. The random fluctuations associated with quantum physics imply that, on an ultramicroscopic scale, all manner of bumps, wormholes, and bridges should be forming and collapsing throughout space-time. The Soviet physicist Andrei Linde has the idea that our universe started out this way, as a little bubble of space-time, which then ‘inflated’ at a fantastic rate to produce a big bang. Others have developed similar models. The ‘mother’ universe which spawned ours is also continuously inflating at a fantastic rate, and spewing out baby universes for all it is worth. If this state of affairs is correct, it implies that ‘our’ universe is only part of an infinite assemblage of universes, although it is self-contained now. The assemblage as a whole has no beginning or end. There are problems in any case in using words like ‘beginning’ and ‘end,’ because there is no suprauniversal time in which this spawning process takes place, although each bubble has its own internal time.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p70
“...Bother mother-and-child and the Hartle-Hawking theories adroitly circumvent the problems associated with a cosmic origin by appealing to quantum processes. The lesson to be learned is that quantum physics opens the door to universe of a finite age, the existence of which does not demand a well-defined prior cause. No special act of creation is needed.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p72
“In chapter 2 I argued that, given the laws of physics, the universe can create itself. Or, stated more correctly, the existence of a universe without an external first cause need no longer be regarded as conflicting with the laws of physics. This conclusion is based, in particular, on the application to cosmology of quantum physics. Given the laws, the existence of the universe is not itself miraculous. This makes it seem as if the laws of physics act as the ‘ground of being’ of the universe. Certainly, as far as most scientists are concerned, the bedrock of reality can be traced back to these laws. They are the eternal truths upon which the universe is built.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p73
“Before leaving the problem of the origin of the universe, I should say something about a recent cosmological theory in which the question of origin enters in a radically different way. In my book God and the New Physics I floated the idea that what we call the universe might have started out as an outgrowth of some larger system, which then detached itself to become an independent entity... Here space is represented as a two-dimensional sheet. In accordance with the general theory of relativity, we can imagine this sheet as curved. In particular, one can conceive of a localized bump forming on the sheet, and rising into a protuberance connected to the main sheet by a thin throat. It may then happen that the throat becomes progressively narrower, until it pinches off completely. The protuberance has then turned into a completely disconnected ‘bubble.’ The ‘mother’ sheet has given rise to a ‘child.’“Amazingly, there is good reason to expect something like this to be going on in the real universe. The random fluctuations associated with quantum physics imply that, on an ultramicroscopic scale, all manner of bumps, wormholes, and bridges should be forming and collapsing throughout space-time. The Soviet physicist Andrei Linde has the idea that our universe started out this way, as a little bubble of space-time, which then ‘inflated’ at a fantastic rate to produce a big bang. Others have developed similar models. The ‘mother’ universe which spawned ours is also continuously inflating at a fantastic rate, and spewing out baby universes for all it is worth. If this state of affairs is correct, it implies that ‘our’ universe is only part of an infinite assemblage of universes, although it is self-contained now. The assemblage as a whole has no beginning or end. There are problems in any case in using words like ‘beginning’ and ‘end,’ because there is no suprauniversal time in which this spawning process takes place, although each bubble has its own internal time.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p70
“...Bother mother-and-child and the Hartle-Hawking theories adroitly circumvent the problems associated with a cosmic origin by appealing to quantum processes. The lesson to be learned is that quantum physics opens the door to universe of a finite age, the existence of which does not demand a well-defined prior cause. No special act of creation is needed.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p72
“In chapter 2 I argued that, given the laws of physics, the universe can create itself. Or, stated more correctly, the existence of a universe without an external first cause need no longer be regarded as conflicting with the laws of physics. This conclusion is based, in particular, on the application to cosmology of quantum physics. Given the laws, the existence of the universe is not itself miraculous. This makes it seem as if the laws of physics act as the ‘ground of being’ of the universe. Certainly, as far as most scientists are concerned, the bedrock of reality can be traced back to these laws. They are the eternal truths upon which the universe is built.”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p73
Martin John Rees, British cosmologist & astrophysicist, 1942-
"If there is a large stack of clothing, you're not surprised to find a suit that fits. If there are many universes, each governed by a different set of numbers, there will be one where there is a particular set of numbers suitable to life. We are in that one."
— Martin Rees, PhD, (quoted by Lee Strobel), A Case for a Creator, Zondervan, 2004 p145
"If there is a large stack of clothing, you're not surprised to find a suit that fits. If there are many universes, each governed by a different set of numbers, there will be one where there is a particular set of numbers suitable to life. We are in that one."
— Martin Rees, PhD, (quoted by Lee Strobel), A Case for a Creator, Zondervan, 2004 p145