Our own VicRuiz writes:
I have heard fine-tuning advocates argue that a physical universe would be impossible for which (for example) the gravitational constant was not identical or near-identical to the extant value we observe. Therefore our universe bespeaks creation by someone or something capable of selecting that value.
This causes me to consider that something vaguely analogical to the Euthypro dilemma could be in play.
Is God constrained by the value of G if his intent is to create a universe with living, corporeal beings?
If yes, then God’s choice is limited by something beyond God’s control.
If no, then that phrasing of the fine-tuning argument does not seem particularly strong.
My comment:
Your thoughts run parallel with mine. When I was an atheist, the fine tuning argument did not strike me as particularly strong, nor now when I am faithful Catholic.
The Fine Tuning argument makes the informal fallacy of ambiguity, using the word “impossible” both to mean logically impossible and statistically impossible.
The Fine Tuning argument also makes the formal fallacy of irrelevance. The conclusion that if an event is unlikely, therefore it is deliberate, does not follow. If an event is unlikely, all that means is that it is unlikely.
If we compare it to other events that happened under similar circumstances then we can determine the unlikelihood, and this indeed can rouse our suspicion that the matter was deliberate, but it does not prove it so.
And these suspicions can only land in cases where we see parallel cases.
If I live in a world where monsters rarely eat cookies and children often do, and I enter the kitchen to find the cookie jar raided and junior with crumbs on his cheeks, practical wisdom tells me to disbelieve his tale that a monster ate the cookie and slapped his face.
If, on the other hand, I live on Sesame Street, and the only cookies I ever saw eaten were by a cookie monster, and no good little boy nor girl ever tells a fib, my wisdom would urge the opposite conclusion.
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