In January 2014, I finished a series of four posts (one, two, three, four) critiquing some articles on fine-tuning by Richard Carrier, including one titled “Neither Life nor the Universe Appear Intelligently Designed” in The End of Christianity (following Carrier, I’ll refer to it as TEC). In May 2014, Jeffery Jay Lowder of The Secular Outpost reviewed these posts and Carrier’s responses, concluding that my posts were “a prima facie devastating critique”. Carrier recently responded to my posts on his blog (“On the Bayesian Reversal …“, hereafter OBR.)
(I don’t mind the delay. We’re all busy. I’ve still got posts I began in 2014 that I haven’t finished.)
First, a few short replies. I’ll skim through Carrier’s comments and provide a few one(-ish)-line responses. I’m assuming you’ve read Carriers’s post, so the quotes below (from OBR unless otherwise noted) are meant to point to (rather than reproduce) the relevant section. My discussion here is incomplete; later posts will go into more detail.
Part 1
Carrier notes that his argument is a popularisation of other works, saying later that “Barnes … ignores the original papers I’m summarizing.”
I’ve responded to Ikeda and Jeffrey’s article here and here. Their reasoning is valid, but is not about fine-tuning. I show how the fine-tuning argument, properly formulated, avoids their critique. My response to Sober would be similar.
Lowder agrees with Barnes on a few things, but only by trusting that Barnes actually correctly described my argument. He didn’t.
The first of umpteen “Barnes just doesn’t understand me” complaints. The reader will have to decide for themselves. Note both the numerous lengthy quotes I typed out in my posts, and my many attempts to formulate Carrier’s arguments in precise, mathematical notation.
On the general problem of deriving frequencies from reference classes, Bayesians have written extensively.
Deriving frequencies from reference classes is trivial – you just count members and divide. The problem that references classes create for finite frequentism is their definition, not how one counts their members. So, Carrier doesn’t understand the reference class problem.
This last is the more bizarre gaffe of his, because calculating the range of possible universes is a routine practice in cosmological science.
What I said was “The restriction to known, actual events creates an obvious problem for the study of unique events.” Bayesians can apply probability to the universe; finite frequentists can’t. That’s why most cosmologists are Bayesians.
Our universe is not the only logically possible one to have arisen. That in fact it is not sitting in a reference class of one, but a reference class of an infinite number of configurations of laws and constants.
Keep clearly in mind my claim in Part 1: Carrier’s approach to probability is inconsistent. He keeps shifting the goalposts. In TEC, when talking about a cosmic designer, he says “Probability measures frequency (whether of things happening or of things being true)”. Only known cases, verified by science, can be allowed in a reference class. But now, in OBR, it’s OK to put hypothetical possibilities in a reference class.
This destroys his argument on page 282-3 of TEC, in which Carrier distinguishes cases that science has verified from “alleged cases”, which must be excluded from the reference class. But alleged cases are logically possible, so they should have been included all along, according to OBR.
Barnes would notice that if he didn’t also repeatedly confuse my estimating of the prior (at 25% “God created the universe”) with the threshold probability of coincidences (a distinction I illustrated with the “miraculous machinegun” argument I discuss, a discussion Barnes never actually interacted with, in TEC, pp. 296-98).
My discussion is in Part 2, “The Firing Squad Machine” and following. I quote from Carrier’s essay at length, put Carrier’s argument into standard probability notation, and show that it is invalid. By confusing priors and posteriors, Carrier is not updating in the Bayesian way.
Barnes attacked what I addressed in the chapter as the “threshold” probability discussed in note 31 … [a complete reproduction of the note 31] … This argument Barnes never rebutted.
I never attacked that argument, because the Bayesian approach doesn’t need a probability “threshold”. Dembski’s approach is pure frequentism. His threshold applies to likelihoods; Dembski, as a frequentist, doesn’t believe in priors. As a Bayesian, I agree with Carrier that this approach is flawed. The footnote is not rebutted because there is nothing for the Bayesian to rebut.
In short, since the only universes that can ever be observed (if there is no God) are universes capable of producing life, if only fine tuned universes are capable of producing life, then if God does not exist, only fine tuned universes can ever be observed. This counter-intuitively entails that fine-tuning is 100% expected on atheism.
Again … A fine-tuned universe is 100% expected on atheism if and only if observers are 100% expected on atheism. Observers are not 100% expected on atheism, because most possible universes do not support observers – that’s the point of fine-tuning. Thus, a fine-tuned universe is not 100% expected on atheism. I formalise this argument in Part 4.
Not only did I never argue my chapter’s conclusion from a multiverse, I explicitly said I was rejecting the existence of a multiverse for the sake of a fortiori argument. That Barnes ignored me, even though I kept telling him this, and he instead kept trying to attack some argument from multiverses.
As Lowder’s quotes [6] and [7] demonstrate, I never contend that Carrier argues the “chapter’s conclusion from a multiverse”. Rather, Carrier’s discussion of the multiverse uses a different approach to probability, one that is inconsistent with the approach to probability applied to fine-tuning elsewhere in TEC. This inconsistency undermines his entire approach – the goalposts shift at will.
Because this is where Barnes flips his lid about “finite” frequentism (in case you were wondering what that was in reference to). Note I at no point rely on transfinite frequentism in the argument of my chapter
There is no such thing as “transfinite frequentism”. Take a moment to Google that phrase – the only result is Carrier’s blog post (and possibly now this one). Literally no one ever – no mathematician,no scientist, no philosopher … not even a clueless quack – has ever used that phrase before, so far as Google (and Google Scholar, Google Books, Wikipedia, arxiv.org, Bing, Yahoo!, and even Ask Jeeves) can tell. Draw your own conclusion.
The two kinds of frequentism are called “finite frequentism” and “hypothetical frequentism”. See, for example, the entry “Interpretations of Probability” at SEP, and these two MUST READ critiques by Alan Hajek: “Fifteen Arguments against Finite Frequentism” and “Fifteen Arguments Against Hypothetical Frequentism“.
This statement [“If we are using Bayes’ theorem, the likelihood of each hypothesis is extremely relevant”] simply repeats what I myself argue in my chapter in TEC. Illustrating how much Barnes is simply not even interacting with that chapter’s actual argument.
Again, my problem is that Carrier’s approach is inconsistent. He says that likelihoods are relevant, but abandons this principle when convenient. See Part 1 under “Forgetting Bayes’ Theorem” to see an example of this inconsistency. Restating the principle does not answer my charge.
Part Two
Therefore life will never observe itself being in any other kind of universe than one that’s fine tuned. … Barnes to this day has never responded to it.
As above, and in Part 4, under “The Main Attraction”. If my mathematical formulation is in error, then correct it.
… the example proves to us that fine tuning never entails [intelligent design]. To the contrary, every randomly generated universe that has life in it will be finely tuned. That is what the example illustrates. Therefore, in cosmology, there is no meaningful correlation between fine tuning and intelligent design.
No entailment, therefore no correlation. In the context of a probabilistic argument.
If I may intrude in your debate, I find the cosmos fascinating, and perhaps it is even weirder than we can imagine (to quote Haldane). It also appears like we do not come into the cosmos but out of it. In fact complexity appears to be something the cosmos does. That being said, it appears like the cosmos might also be viewed as a sort of immense experiment with all this matter and energy in constant flux, shaken endlessly–with incessant birth and death going on in teensy portions of the cosmos like on the quaking surface of our particular rock hurtling through space. Incessant life and death, evolution and extinction, even major extinction events, with the odds of another major asteroid strike or super volcano eruption increasing over time, along with the inevitable aging and inflation of our sun’s diameter whose solar wind will destabilize our moon’s orbit causing it to approach the earth too slowly and explode, raining death from above, an inevitable extinction event.
What I am saying is that the cosmos gives with one hand and takes with the other. At best it is in equilibrium with life and death, evolution and extinction. And it appears that if one wanted to reject the idea of a cosmos weirder than we can imagine but instead wished to posit some transcendent God or Demi urge for its origin, then it appears that about the best one could come up with on the basis of what we know is a Tinkerer of some sort. Judging by all the extinction events, both massive and continual and inevitable in the future, one might even wonder how many cosmoses of different types and sizes this Tinkerer might have tried out before setting up this experiment with this much matter and energy roiling about for billions of years.
As for the human species, it just arrived on the scene in the last cosmic second, and could conceivably be snuffed out the next, and the stars could go on burning for eons more. In fact I read two articles recently that said the cosmos has yet to reach its maximum number of either stars or planets yet!
Or, conversely, if humanity does survive longer than a cosmic blip and our species gets off the cradle planet and starts spreading throughout the cosmos what will humans look like a billion years in the future? Will those humans look back at us a bit like we look back at Australopithecus? How might genetic and cyber technologies alter our species, or the environmental pressures of having to survive on different planets? Will we use new technologies to uplift other species to human-like levels of sentience, or even find ways to join our sentience with theirs? What will AI be like in future? Maybe humanity is a stepping stone to some future silicon based life forms, or advanced sentient non human species? And so we might be here merely to pass along the torch.
Of course if something like the Carrigton Event from the 1800s occurs and a solar flare explodes the world’s transformers, we could simply revert back to barbarism. Same thing if super resistant microbes keep arising.
Does any Christian apologist really imagine he has definitive answers to all such questions, very real questions too, since new stars and planets are indeed continuing to form, and by all astronomical data they have enough fuel to continue to burn for billions of years should humanity take a tumble back toward barbarism or even extinction. Heck, humanity might even evolve into something less cerebral and more ape like. That appears to be yet another possibility.
Interesting thoughts. I’ll stay focussed on Carrier, here. There are more fine-tuning posts to come, especially when my book comes out.
Luke
I have read Carriers ideas, his debates, and your work as well and I got to say I knew this could go nowhere except allowing the public to witness just how belligerent Carrier and his little band of followers are.
The problem with these types of atheists, and Its not all, is they are gonna go down with their sinking ship. Ive seen this stuff for years and majority of atheists turn, rendering their arguments dust, but Carrier at this point is like trying to reason with top soil. He starts losing and he breaks out the ” he must be delusional” rant so his followers think he’s kickin butt and takin names when in fact he’s just so lost in a bottomless pit of equations that make no difference because he cuts his throat from the jump. If ” pedantic” ever needed an illustration, just dig through Carriers pile of smoke and mirrors people.
Anyway , I enjoy you work
(Flew is a good example of the exception to the rule of an atheist who argued as if he granted a single point, he’d be doomed by God)
@Luke
As I am unable to follow the science other than at a very basic level, if we assume that Fine Tuning did occur could you please identify specifically who or what you believe is the cause?
Thanks.
Ark
I’ll have more to say about the viable options when my book comes out.
Options? Plural! Well, that’s interesting.
May I ask, do any of these options not include a deity?
What do you care? You’ve already obsessed with Luke’s hints at his own views on the subject as some sort of fanatic. It’s hilarious how much atheists here come to froth at the mouth on Luke’s blog.
Here’s 11 options: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=8109
Really? Who’s frothing?
What an odd thing to say.
Hi Luke,
Good response, I am really enjoying your fine-tuning series.
I also had a chance to discuss the fine-tuning argument with Carrier on his thread and have also written a response here:
(btw. the comment section also contains a “frequency space” and a “permutation theory”* if you are collection new terms)
I think I got to the heart of Carriers argument: For the longest time I couldn’t understand why he kept insisting that not conditioning on O (life exist) in all probabilities is counterfactual or wrong, however if you look at his last 3 points to me right before the comment thread closes he provides his argument for why this is the case.
According to him, this is because if you do not condition on O, you must condition on ~O, i.e. p(H|b) = p(H|~Ob) (see “POINT TWO” near the bottom), and a (wrong of course) proof is provided for this. So I think this is his reason why he believes you can’t separate O from b in his notation: according to him you end up conditioning on ~O. This at least clarified to me why he is so insistent this is the case, but it is a bit sad if so much time has been spend on a simple formal error :-).
Have you read chapter 6 of Proving History where he lays out his view of probabilities?
Cheers,
-t
*okay so this exists but i am sure it was supposed to be perturbation theory
Sorry for the embedded document, I only meant to post a link.
Tim,
I went to your site and was able to find the link to your article. I’m looking forward to reading it! 🙂
And as always, great stuff Luke!
Amusing stuff. Carrier is a classical crackpot and a proven liar. Much of what he writes is not even wrong. Consider (from OBR):
So, BT is at the same time an argument and a form of argument. Yeah, right, Mr. Category Error.
In addition to “transfinite frequentism” there are other mathematical chimaeras to be found in Carrier’s OBR post. For example, there is this:
I find no publication in which probability theory is “deduced” from, or even related to Willard Arithmetic. Is Dr. Carrier PhD perhaps confusing provability theory, in which Willard Arithmetic chiefly figures, with probability theory? It’s only one letter difference, after all. Googling “probability theory” + “willard arithmetic” only turns up two blog posts by the same Dr. Carrier PhD.
Carrier lies his pants off where he writes “Cosmologist Luke Barnes critiqued this in a series of posts, and Jeff Lowder concurred somewhat in The Carrier-Barnes Exchange on Fine-Tuning” and “Lowder agrees with Barnes on a few things, but only by trusting that Barnes actually correctly described my argument.”
Excuse me? Lowder “concurred somewhat”, and “agrees on a few things”? Anyone who bothers to read Lowders piece will see that Lowder largely sides with Dr. Barnes’s critique, which he calls “devastating” in more than one respect.
The amusing thing is that Carrier, who — crackpot that he is — is obviously writing about things he doesn’t fully grasp, calls Dr. Barnes “a kook who simply never understood or addressed what I actually said in my chapter.” The only kook in this farce is Carrier.
I look forward to reading the next instalments.
“Is Dr. Carrier PhD perhaps confusing provability theory, in which Willard Arithmetic chiefly figures, with probability theory?” I doubt it. Willard’s arithmetic “figures” in provability theory, where it was introduced as a theory so weak that Gödel’s theorem does not apply to it, yes. But it, itself, is not about provability. It is a theory of arithmetic, in the language of first order arithmetic.
Bayes Theorem cannot be expressed in the language of first order arithmetic let alone proven in it.
I was just speculating why Carrier would have linked Willard Arithmetic to probability theory. The simplest explanation is that he was just making up some random nonsense he thought would sound impressive to his fans (the guy likes to refer to his “avid readers” as his fans).
As an atheist who has read a lot of Carrier’s stuff over the years I was embarrassed by association by his response to you. I thought you did a nice job of conclusively demonstrating, especially in part 4, that he had botched the derivation of his prior. Have to say, all in all, that chapter is one terrible piece of writing.
I don’t take Carrier’s views to be typical or representative of atheism, so there’s no need for embarrassment.
Fine-Tuning question is something “we don’t understand well enough yet” to quote Tim Mauldin, Philos. Prof. NYU. Read Mauldin’s full statement here: http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2015/09/fine-tuning-is-something-we-dont.html
Ed – please stop spamming. We all know there’s a debate about fine-tuning and its relevance to theism. This post is specifically about Carrier’s treatment of the issue.
I apologize, didn’t mean to interrupt the flow of insults being traded by Barnes and Carrier (now with actual cartoon memes!). And apparently there is a scarcity of electrons going around. We must conserve. Oh, and if anyone has been spamming the world surely it is Christian apologists and evangelists with their endless “Christian” bookstores, tracts, whole forests cut down to produce endless quantities of Bibles they hand out at random. At least I target my prey, pop questions since I have more questions than answers, and don’t threaten them in e least with even an implication of eternal hellfire. For that matter I don’t even preach eternal annihilation like some hard atheists. But if you would rather play the game that mathematical logic will answer the fine-tuning question go right ahead, just beware that mathematical formulas all depend on what you put into them in the beginning. So study the questions a bit more before dismissing them as “spam.”
I disagree with Maudlin: https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/reply-to-maudlin-the-calibrated-cosmos/
The Fine-Tuning Argument Raises As Many Questions As It Answers. See full article with links to resources: http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2015/07/resources-concerning-big-questions-god.html
[…] « Richard Carrier: One Liners, Part 1 […]
I would like to point out that the level of mathematical incompetence Carrier displays in the comments is absolutely baffling. He links to this article on the Kolmogorov axioms
Click to access kolmogorov_foundations.pdf
and then goes on to claim that
“First, Kolmogorov could not have been clearer. His axioms explicitly define all probabilities as frequency measures between elements in sets. I linked you to his work on this. How you can think he “was not very clear” is astonishing to me. It makes me think you have not actually read him.
Second, Kolmogorov never said anything about pi/4 even being a legitimate probability measure. I suspect in fact that his axioms would rule it out, but I haven’t verified that (I could be wrong, see below); in any case, anyone who would claim that that’s an actual probability measure bears the burden of proving that it is. At first glance to me, a (pi/4)% chance of winning at poker is as unintelligible as a 110% chance of winning at poker.”
What in the world is this guy thinking? The axioms in that article not only make no reference to frequencies, but these axioms trivially allow for pi/4, 110%, 5 or 113565345564+pi/10 as valid probabilities. How can anyone reach this combination of delusion?
In case you are wondering about the idiotic mistake in the last post (which I can’t see while typing this because it hasn’t been approved yet):
Obviously probabilities can’t be higher than 1 and I meant to put a “.” in front of some of these numbers. That’s what I get for misclicking and having to double post
Not that I have much to add, just a compliment to Tim Hendrix displaying a saintlike patience while arguing in that comment section with someone who clearly can’t understand any of it.
There’s a Barnes book in the pipeline? Awesome, I’ll buy it. Er, is it accessible to the layman?
[…] my response to Carrier (here’s Part 1 and Part […]
@Luke
Thanks for the link.
Phew! That was in depth philosophy etc that meandered all over the place without once you seeming to answer a direct question concerning
Yahweh ( God).Unless I missed it?
It was a point noted and applauded by the commenter Singer(?), towards the end of the thread.
Well,that post is six years old so I am sure you have done more work on Fine Tuning.
However, unless you have changed your POV, you still seem to be hanging on to the ”God-did-it” eventuality, without actually saying it of course.
Which I must say is rather clever of you. And as Singer noted, it keeps the pundits sort of guessing, but maybe it lacks a little straightforward honesty?
What do you think ,Luke?
I don’t know, maybe this is the way you clever blokes present your arguments?
As I don’t relate so well to philosophy, especially the type dished out by Craig and his rather unsavoury and dishonest ilk, I am going to have to stick with evidence, if it’s all the same with you?
And as clever as your argument and the science and cosmology probably are – way above my head, I’m afraid – evidence that a goddidit you have absolutely zero.
Regards.
Ark
I haven’t discussed goddidit in a published work. Have you read any of the people who have?
* Robin Collins http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/
* Richard Swinburne
* Alister McGrath
* Gerald Schroeder
* John Polkinghorne
* Rodney Holder
Or the responses to those people by, for example,
* Sean Carroll
* Hans Halvorson
* Mark Colyvan
* Bradley Monton
et al.
*Smile*
And yet again, another seeming Theological two-step. You are rather adept at this dance are you not?
Tell me, Luke, as a highly qualified scientist/cosmologist are you in any way concerned/afraid of the reaction if you were to ”nail your theological colours” to the door of the metaphorical Wittenberg Chapel?
Will, the man ever ”come clean?”, he wonders.
… “I’ll have more to say about the viable options when my book comes out.”
Apologies Luke!
No.11, Ark. You did miss it. And the above sounds like a mildly-threatening incoherent drunken ramble.
No , Stephen, you naughty little cantankerous dipshit, I did not miss it. Did you miss the term intelligent designer? ( Which could of course refer to one’s friendly neighborhood ET, yes?)
As for your ”mildly-threatening” remark.
Good grief! Honestly? How on earth do you come up with such a preposterous assertion?
Really,Stephen isn’t it about time you stopped wearing short pants and began to behave like a grown up?
Ark. With your patronising *smiles* and continual insinuations that Luke is somehow being dishonest – the “theological two-step”, his “dance”, your suggestion that he “comes clean” – you’re acting like the New Atheist Thought Police: exposing heresy by being a self-congratulatory inquisitorial doctrinaire bore. You appear to be incapable of addressing the arguments and taking part in the debate. Off you f*&% then.
mind your language, children.
@Stephen
Removing the theological carrot from your bottom will, I feel sure, improve your mood. And maybe even your bedside manner?
As for the argument. Well done, Stephen! Top Hole, as they say. You are perfectly correct, I am unable to address the arguments. ( at a scientific, philosophical or cosmological level)
How astute of you to notice my shortcomings in this highly specialised field.
If a regular Joe Bloggs like me could engage Luke at his level it wouldn’t make much of Luke’s years of study, now would it?
Nevertheless, I don’t have to be a scientific or philosophical genius to address the argument at a theological level, especially where evidence is concerned, and I am reasonably confident I can do that.
Also, Luke is a very clever bloke and I feel sure he doesn’t need a lackey to fight his battles for him, so unless you have something concrete you wish to add why not let Luke answer for himself. Or not answer as seems to be the case. ; >)
Or tell us if you think God Did It? and offer us your reason why you think so.
Oh, and Stephen? Even with all the ”squiggly” marks where the letters should be we all know the word is ”fuck”.
Even I managed to work this out.
Chill out a bit.
Remember, Jesus is watching you.
Ark.
evidence that a goddidit you have absolutely zero.
This is a fascinating discussion – cards on table, I’m a little bit of a Carrier fan, because I think he’s a thinker who really cares about the truth (not necessarily about himself, and not necessarily about society, but definitely about the world and the history of the world), and I think he has some great ideas. However, I do acknowledge his nerdy pomposity, which I can understand must vary from amusing to aggravating for theists and deists. I’m also a rationalist and atheist (in the sense of, “unconvinced by arguments for God, and think it highly likely there’s no God”) but I’ve never been scornful of deism, or even theism, just of revealed religion. “The God of the philosophers” is always worth pondering, in my book. I’m fairly good with philosophical argument but extremely sketchy with mathematics, so be gentle with me 🙂
In response to Carrier’s:-
you say:-
I think you may really be missing Carrier’s point here. Consider:-
1. (There is no God and) the situation we find ourselves in is that we exist as observers; we must be alive in order to observe; therefore whatever conditions are necessary for the life that we have (which enables us to observe) must obtain; therefore on whatever naturalistic theory we end up plumping for, those conditions are 100% expected (probability=1).
2. (There is a God and) the situation we find ourselves in is that we exist as observers; we must be alive in order to observe; therefore whatever conditions are necessary for the life that we have (which enables us to observe) must obtain; therefore on whatever idea of (a) God we end up plumping for, those conditions are 100% expected (probability=1).
1. is true, 2. is false, because we have no idea whether we ought to 100% expect any God we can conceive of to have chosen to create a universe with observers. We cannot presume know the mind of (any) God. For all we know, He might have preferred to create a Universe without observers, or a universe consisting of a single stuffed fish on a mantlepiece, or a universe of !”£$%-eyness. All we can say is that IF there is (whatever type of) God THEN He must have chosen those variables, but that doesn’t get us very far.
Whereas with 1., the “100% expectance” comes simply from the fact that we have (we suppose) a theory that explains everything, without remainder, naturalistically.
IOW there is a massive assymetry here: a mind can choose anything, a naturalistic process can only “choose” what it “chooses”, it is what it is.
Logical possibilities, alternative variable values, are just thought-experiments. We mustn’t be misled by the concept of “tuning” to think we know that the situation prior to the existence of the Universe was in any way (whether literally or metaphorically) some kind of selection-among-possibilities. Any more than the concept of “law” means the Universe is in any sense “forced” to be the way it is (as if it might have had some other inclination of its own, but the “laws” made it move the way it moves)
Hi gurugeorge,
Re. 1: Try to think about the logical conclusion of this line of argument. Suppose I ask about the chance of our solar system existing, then clearly it is 1 given we exist (since ‘we’ live in our solar system; this assumes that by ‘we’ I mean someone with our memories). However we would not say the chance of our solar system forming is high. I brought this up to Dr. Carrier on the thread in question but he ducked it by re-defining “we” and I didn’t want to pursue that discussion.
Re. 2: I think if we want to follow through with this type of argument we need to treat “life-permitting fine-tuning” and “fine-tuning under which life would evolve” separately as Luke does in installment 4 of his original reply (if memory serves). At any rate, I think the point Luke is making is that if we accept (2), *we have still not factored in the probability there are observers*. To put this succinctly what Dr. Carrier (or Ikeda and Jeffreys) give us is:
(1) p(F|OAb) = 1, p(F|OGb) <= 1
but you can't go from these probabilities to a conclusion about the relative posterior probability of God existing:
(2) p(G|FOb)/p(A|FOb)
(here F is fine-tuning, O is observers and G,A is Theism and Atheism respectively)
I am sorry to plug something I wrote myself (okay not really but I know it is bad) but if you look at my scribd document linked above I give an example (Carrie the Lawyer) where (1) holds but is entirely irrelevant to (2).
Cheers,
T
Unquestionably, this universe was fine-tuned, but not to the extent to which I think you are assuming. Self-evidently, the Creator does not dabble, this universe is painted with almost impenetrable naturalism, and this fact reveals much about the identity of the Creator…. a Creator who so clearly cherishes His anonymity. “Contrivance proves design,” observed William Paley, “and the predominant tendency of the contrivance indicates the disposition of the designer.” Know then the disposition, revealed as it must be through design, through the architecture, and one may know the designer.
God exists. That is true. What is also true is that Evil (here meaning the ways and means by which suffering can be delivered and experienced) not only exists, but its capacity, variety, and potency is increasing as God’s Creation faithfully fulfils its elemental instruction: to diversify and specialise and grow more complex over time. Hydrogen fuses to the heavier and more complex helium, helium fuses into the heavier and more complex carbon, single compounds bind to make double compounds, simple molecules marry to create amino acids, amino acids come together to model proteins and enzymes, proteins and enzymes experiment to prototype self-replicating systems where, according to the accepted paradigm of evolutionary biology, there is a continuum from simple to more complex organisms . The natural world witnessed prokaryotes before eukaryotes, primitive action potentials before antique nerve nets, bilateral nervous systems before central nervous systems, talons and incisors before arrow tips and hydrogen bombs, hunter-gatherers before gunsmiths and engineers, corporeal barter systems before ethereal derivative trading.
By simple but persuasive design, the old and the ordinary yield to the new and the exciting, and with the new comes more energetic and capable families of physiological, emotional, and psychological pain. This is Creation’s impulse, its bedrock personality. It spills out from a state of ancestral simplicity to contemporary complexity where the greater talents awarded to each succeeding generation have always produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. This is Creation’s single compulsion, its one and only passion where complexity—and the specialisation it affords—parents a wretched and forever diversifying family of more devoted fears and faithful anxieties, more pervasive ailments and skilful parasites, more virulent toxins, more capable diseases, and more affectionate expressions of pain, ruin, psychosis and loss. In the simplest possible statement: Creation is a vast entanglement apparatus—a complexity machine—whose single-minded mindless state of employment is geared entirely towards a greater potency and efficiency in the delivery and experience of misery and confusion, not harmony and peaceful accord.
Following then Paley’s observation, one must conclude that this world was brought into existence by a perfectly wicked, malevolent Creator; a maximally powerful being whose stimulatory and entertainment needs are satisfied best by the suffering which pervades all of Creation, and whose single-minded objective is to amplify His pleasure-taking over time. Some have named a lesser species of this being the Devil, others The Deceiver, Ahriman, Abaddon, Mara, Baphomet, Apollyon, Iblis, Beast, Angra Mainyu, Yama, Moloch, The Father of Lies, The Author of Sin, Druj, Samnu, Mammon, and The Great Spoiler, yet these characters of human literature and tradition do not begin to approach the nature and scope of this entity who may be identified as simply, The Owner of All Infernal Names: a being who does not share His creation with any other comparable spirit, does not seek to be known to or worshipped by that which He has created (or has allowed to be created), and whose greatest proof of existence is that there is no conspicuous proof of His existence—just teleological birthmarks that can be isolated and examined as testimony—for He understands that the trinkets of His greatest amusement and arousal must be blind to the nature of the world they inhabit so they may act freely, and suffer genuinely.
Why would increasing complexity lead to more pain but not more pleasure?
Pleasure increases, but only as a means to frame the suffering. A ship, after all, has to be floated and launched before it can be drowned and sunk. Dreams have to be erected before they can be torn down. The is no “Problem of Good.”
[…] with Luke Barnes on the fine-tuning argument, in a blog post (for Barnes’ reply, see his own blog post). Their discussion is quite tedious and personal, but at the heart of things I think Carrier is […]
[…] Richard Carrier: One Liners, Part 1 […]
The crux of Carrier’s argument is that if God doesn’t exist then we can only ever find ourselves in a fine-tuned universe. Therefore fine-tuning is 100% consistent with atheism.
This kind of reasoning would lead to a paradox if we used fine-tuning to test between the hypothesis that there is a single universe and the hypothesis that there is a multiverse in which the physical constants vary.
If there is a single universe and we exist it is 100% expected that this universe will be fine-tuned. Therefore fine-tuning is 100% consistent with a single universe. But in that case fine-tuning would be no evidence for a multiverse. Isn’t that paradoxical?
[…] https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/richard-carrier-one-liners-part-1/ […]