I do, yes. It completely fails. There's a good response
here.
His first point is that the physical constants may be set at their precise values (they couldn't be other than what they are. Here's my response:
"Besides being entirely speculative, the problem with postulating such a law is that it simply moves the improbability of the fine-tuning up one level, to that of the postulated physical law itself. As astrophysicists Bernard Carr and Martin Rees note "even if all apparently anthropic coincidences could be explained [in terms of some grand unified theory], it would still be remarkable that the relationships dictated by physical theory happened also to be those propitious for life" (1979, p. 612).
A similar sort of response can be given to the claim that the fine-tuning is not improbable because it might be logically necessary for the constants of physics to have life-permitting values. That is, according to this claim, the constants of physics must have life-permitting values in the same way 2 + 2 must equal 4, or the interior angles of a triangle must add up to 180 degrees in Euclidian geometry. Like the "more fundamental law" proposal above, however, this postulate simply transfers the improbability up one level: of all the laws and constants of physics that conceivably could have been logically necessary, it seems highly improbable that it would be those that are life-permitting."
http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/finetune/anth.htm.htm
It would be astonishing to learn that the physical constants are set in stone (as it were) at just the right levels to support life- that there is some cosmological principle that every possible universe that can emerge is life-permitting. The impossibility of life-less universes would be a far-stronger argument than the current FT argument.
I agree with his next point that we are constrained somewhat by not having any universes to compare this one to, but that does not mean we can't look at the values of the constants and speculate what would happen if they were off even the tiniest bit. Even Victor Stenger admits this point:
"
But if the gravitational attraction between protons in stars had not been many orders of magnitude weaker than the electric repulsion, as represented by the very large value of N1, stars would have collapsed and burned out long before nuclear processes could build up the periodic table from the original hydrogen and deuterium.”
“The element-synthesizing processes in stars depend sensitively on
the properties and abundances of deuterium and helium produced in the early universe. Deuterium would not exist if the difference between the masses of a neutron and a proton were just slightly displaced from its actual value. The relative abundances of hydrogen and helium also depend strongly on this parameter. They, too, require a delicate balance of the relative strengths of gravity and the weak force, the force responsible for nuclear beta decay. A slightly stronger weak force, and the universe would be 100 percent hydrogen; all the neutrons in the early universe would have decayed, leaving none around to be saved in deuterium nuclei for later use in the synthesizing elements in stars. A slightly weaker weak force, and few neutrons would have decayed, leaving about the same numbers of protons and neutrons; then, all the protons and neutrons would have been bound up in helium nuclei, with two protons and two neutrons in each. This would have led to a universe that was 100 percent helium, with no hydrogen to fuel the fusion processes in stars"
Stenger then goes on to wonder about whether non-molecular life could exist. Anyway, Stanford's article comes across as a little more scholarly than Hurben's (had trouble fiding Hurben's field of study), and what we're doing is pretty much throwing papers at each other.
His next point (that one constant may compensate for the change in value of another constant), is actually contradicted by Stenger's Monkey God experiment.
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/v...mo/monkey.html
Play around with it a bit. I was never able to generate a random universe that was even close to an earthlike planet with a star like our sun and atomic nuclei that weren't centimeters wide.
This is interesting:
"However, since alternate universes can imaginably posses different laws and even different particles (or something else entirely), we have no way of judging the improbability of life in those cases. And if this line of argument seems far-fetched, remember it is merely an example of giving the AD proponents a taste of their own medicine. After all, if one can argue by making statements of the form "we can imagine so many possible universes where life could not exist" then it is fair play to propose exotic universes where life is abundant."
But here the theist is on stronger evidentiary ground because they can whip out every biological text book ever written as evidence that non-carbon-based life is improbable- we certainly haven't seen any. Granted, our sample size is very small, but the evidence, however scant it is, is still on the theist's side: non-carbon based life is pure speculation and all life observed so far has been carbon-based. If the FT opponent goes further and claims (like Stenger) that non-molecular life is possible, the theist is on even firmer biological ground.
"
But let us also suppose that the firing squad has the overwhelming task of executing a trillion and one prisoners, one after the other. In that case, no one would be surprised if one prisoner was not killed. (One could also modify this by considering N different firing squads firing at N different prisoners.)"
This is a reubttal to the firing squad analogy only if there are a gazillion actual universes. If there was only 1 firing squad, and you were it's sole victim, the fact that you survived would naturally lead you to wonder how you survived. I agree that the multiverse hypothesis is deadly to the FT argument.
"All of the calculations, probabilities, and "fine-tuning" aside, I contend that the biggest flaw in the modern AD is the one which was there from the beginning, the one that David Hume pointed out so long ago.[13] To argue for design is make an inductive argument, an argument by analogy, about the universe as a whole (of which there is only one, which we know of at least), and about its origin in particular, about which we know very little. One should be hesitant to draw many conclusions from a comparison of such dissimilar entities."
This cuts both ways: if so little is known about the universe, why study it at all? Any study of the universe is going to rely on induction. And if we know so little about the universe's origin, why should we be so quick to assume it was a purely physical process?
The easiest and simplest response is just to note that we have no evidence for a directed firing squad. We were taken out to a field and heard a lot of gunshots. Until and unless you can prove that there was actually a firing squad or that any of the riflemen were aiming at you, then there's nothing to explain in the fact that you weren't hit.
This goes back to the point that the constants could have had different values that compensated for each other, or life could have a lot more variety than the uniform carbon-based life we've observed so far. Basically, we can't even make a guess as to how rare life-permitting universes are. There are two objections to this:
1. The many cosmologists who have argued how precise the values need to be for anything resembling a life-permitting universe to come about
2. Even if the odds were only 1-100, the FT argument receives significant confirmation (if the multiverse is not part of the background knowledge. If the Multiverse IS part of the background knowledge, it really doesn't matter what the odds of a life-permitting universe are- given enough universes, all possibilities are actualized). Hurben seems to be arguing for almost complete ignorance about the universe and biology, which I'm not sure a lot of physicists or biologists would agree with.
Suppose that, as a news reporter, I decide that I will interview the "expected" survivor afterwards. Should I be surprised that I have someone to interview? And while he is probably shocked and elated, I find it rather ho-hum.
You would find it ho-hum that a firing squad of 100 marksmen missed a stationary target just a few feet away?
Are you still in Hurben's cosmic ignorance mode?
Is it a miracle that I have interview footage to show? Of course not. And while the fact that any one prisoner survived is unusual, the fact that someone would survive is predictable
Are you now assuming multiple firing squads? That is the only way it would be predictable that an entire firing squad should miss the target.
