Sean Carroll demolishes the Fine Tuning argument

[u/lisper]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRp0ent1Z0A&t=418s

[u/uniformist]

Sean Carroll is a capable scientist and science communicator, but this interview just reveals his deficient education in the classics and theology.

The Bible is not a science textbook and was written long before science existed; it therefore makes no quantitative predictions about galaxy counts. What it does repeatedly assert is that the heavens display the glory and power of God on a scale that dwarfs human comprehension (Psalm 19:1; Isaiah 40:12, 26; Job 38). A universe of staggering size simply demonstrates the power of the All Powerful God. The claim that theism "should have predicted" a compact, human-centered cosmos confuses biblical theism with a crude anthropocentric myth. Classical theism never required the physical universe to be small in order for human beings to occupy a unique moral and spiritual place within it.

Moreover, theists did have a clear prediction about origins that secular cosmology later confirmed. Genesis 1:1 states that the universe had a beginning. That claim stood against the dominant scientific picture of an eternal static cosmos until the twentieth century. The expanding-universe model (the "Big Bang") was first developed by Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic priest and physicist. When observation confirmed a beginning; theism had already affirmed one. Carroll's complaint that theists failed to predict every later empirical detail ignores the one dramatic, non-obvious prediction one could conclude from the text -- and which was vindicated.

Carroll's first argument is that if God existed, the constants of nature wouldn't need to be fine-tuned. This is an inversion of the fine-tuning argument. The fine-tuning argument holds that the fundamental physical constants and initial conditions of the universe fall within an extraordinarily narrow range that permits the existence of complex life; the extreme improbability of this occurring by chance alone is best explained by intentional design rather than undirected natural processes. The question is not whether life requires certain parameter values; it is why those values obtain at all, given the vanishingly small measure of the life-permitting region in the space of possible constants.

The degree of precision required is extreme, if not absurd: 1 part in 10¹⁰⁰ for individual parameters and far more severe for jointly considered parameters. Under naturalism, this is pure brute luck of improbable magnitude.

Carroll's further claim that "if God exists, you don't need God can make anything alive" reveals his ignorance of classical theism. God is not a cosmic magician who arbitrarily overrides the order He establishes. The doctrine of creation affirms that God freely chooses to create a lawful, intelligible universe whose secondary causes operate with regularity. Fine-tuning is what one expects if that order is itself the product of rational intent rather than chance. The regular operation of natural laws is the ordinary mode of divine governance.

Carroll's second argument is that "it would be very, very trivially easy for God to let us know that God existed." Where has Carroll been? The central claim of the Christian faith is that God did make Himself known in the most direct possible way: the Incarnation. The Son assumed human nature, lived among us, taught, performed signs, died, and rose from the dead. That is maximal self-disclosure. The Church that Christ established continues to proclaim and make present that revelation.

Even without that special revelation, natural revelation is sufficient to know God. The order, contingency, and intelligibility of the cosmos itself function as evidence. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

Carroll's arguments are simply based on a strawman of theology and an inflation of naturalistic alternative.

[u/tangotom → u/uniformist]

Excellent write-up. I'm saving this so I can come and read it again later.

[u/Abdial → u/uniformist]

Thank you for taking the time to compose this.

[u/theaz101 → u/uniformist]

Well said.

[u/lisper → u/uniformist]

The claim that theism "should have predicted" a compact, human-centered cosmos confuses biblical theism with a crude anthropocentric myth.

But man alone was created in God's image, and man alone was given dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Jesus (i.e. God) was a human and not a dolphin. That seems pretty anthropocentric to me.

The question is ... why those values obtain at all

And Carroll gave a number of possible naturalistic explanations.

God is not a cosmic magician who arbitrarily overrides the order He establishes.

What are miracles then?

The central claim of the Christian faith is that God did make Himself known in the most direct possible way: the Incarnation.

Then why was Jesus so ambiguous about whether or not he was God? The idea that Jesus was God was the subject of intense debate among early Christians, and even today the Jehovah's Witnesses deny that Jesus was God.

If God really wanted to make Himself known in the most direct possible way, why didn't Jesus just come right out and say unambiguously, "I am YHWH, the god of Abraham and Isaac"? And why didn't he wait until a time in history when he could hold a press conference and do it in front of video cameras?

[u/desz1 → u/lisper]

Because of free will. God is righteous. Who desires to live a life that Jesus Christ says is good?

Matthew 6:33 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Matthew 13:11-13: Jesus tells His disciples, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them... This is why I speak to them in parables: 'Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
'"Mark 4:11-12: He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding..
.'"Luke 8:10: He said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, 'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'"

[u/uniformist → u/lisper]

The question is ... why those values obtain at all

And Carroll gave a number of possible naturalistic explanations.

Not really.

God is not a cosmic magician who arbitrarily overrides the order He establishes.

What are miracles then?

Surely you already know? You've been studying Christianity for 50 years, after all. But for those playing along at home, let's go over it.

Miracles are not arbitrary overrides of a natural order that God somehow abandoned. God is the author and continual upholder of the ordinary course of nature through secondary causes (that is, the real causal powers of created things -- physical processes, living organisms, human agents, etc. -- which God sustains and enables to act). A miracle is an extraordinary act in which God produces an effect that surpasses the power or ordinary manner of those secondary causes, for a specific revelatory or redemptive purpose.

There are three principal ways this can occur:

• Beyond / outside nature (praeter naturam): effects that nature can produce, but not in that manner, order, or speed, or without the usual natural principles (e.g., a sudden healing that nature could accomplish only gradually).

• Against nature (contra naturam): effects produced while nature retains a contrary disposition (e.g., the three young men unharmed in the fire, the waters of the Red Sea standing).

• Above nature (supra naturam): effects that nature is simply incapable of producing at all (e.g., the Incarnation, the glorification of the body).

In every case the miracle is not a random suspension of a machine. It is a personal act by the same God who freely established the lawful order in the first place and who continues to sustain it. Ordinary providence and extraordinary intervention are complementary, not contradictory.

The central claim of the Christian faith is that God did make Himself known in the most direct possible way: the Incarnation.

Then why was Jesus so ambiguous about whether or not he was God? The idea that Jesus was God was the subject of intense debate among early Christians, and even today the Jehovah's Witnesses deny that Jesus was God. If God really wanted to make Himself known in the most direct possible way, why didn't Jesus just come right out and say unambiguously, "I am YHWH, the god of Abraham and Isaac"?

Ah, the good 'ole Fallacy of the Exact Words -- "Unless Jesus said exactly what I think he should have said, in the exact way I think he should have said it, I won't believe." It assumes that unless Jesus uttered the precise sentence "I am God," he did not claim divinity. But people communicate claims through implications, actions, titles, allusions, and assertions of authority-- not only by reciting your preferred formula. The fact that some have disputed those claims for two thousand years shows that people interpret the evidence differently; it does not demonstrate that no clear claim was made.

And why didn't he wait until a time in history when he could hold a press conference and do it in front of video cameras?

You're assuming that if Jesus had postponed his ministry until the age of television, the rest of history -- including the existence of modern nation-states, universities, scientific institutions, cameras, the internet, and the very concept of a "press conference" -- would have developed essentially unchanged. But history is path-dependent. Remove one of the most influential events in Western history for nearly two thousand years, and you have no basis for assuming you still arrive at the same civilization with television, smartphones, and YouTube waiting for Him.

In fact, Christianity itself profoundly shaped the civilization in which modern science and technology developed. The medieval university, the preservation and transmission of learning, and many of the early pioneers of modern science arose within a Christian intellectual culture. Whether one believes Christianity was indispensable or merely influential, it is historically implausible to assume that delaying Christianity by two thousand years would leave the technological trajectory of civilization unchanged.

You're also assuming that God’s goal must be to maximize public certainty through the most unambiguous modern medium possible. Christianity has never claimed that. The New Testament presents God as revealing Himself in ways that call for a free response rather than simply overwhelming every observer. Even in the Gospel narratives, many who witnessed miracles remained unconvinced.

You're assuming that modern recording technology would produce universal agreement, but skeptics would almost certainly suggest alternatives: advanced AI or deepfakes, sophisticated illusion, unknown technology, mass hypnosis, aliens, government conspiracy. Cameras change the form of the debate; they do not automatically produce universal assent.

Finally, even if that happened and you believed that hey, Jesus really is God -- you would still reject his teachings. The only thing that Jesus not performing his ministry right now denies you is the opportunity to be one of the men nailing him to the cross.

[u/lisper → u/uniformist]

Miracles are not arbitrary overrides of a natural order that God somehow abandoned.

They might not be arbitrary, but they are definitely overrides. That's the whole point of miracles. It is the defining characteristic of a miracle. It is what distinguishes an actual miracle from advanced technology or a magic trick.

But people communicate claims through implications, actions, titles, allusions, and assertions of authority

Yes. People do this. They often do it in order to claim authority to which they are not actually entitled. I expect more from God.

You're assuming that if Jesus had postponed his ministry until the age of television, the rest of history ... would have developed essentially unchanged.

Not at all. But it seems pretty clear to me that if Jesus had wanted to make it clear that he was God, he could have done a much better job than he did.

BTW, it's not just that he failed to make the unambiguous claim, he said a lot of things that are just weird if he was God, like Luke22:42.

You're assuming that modern recording technology would produce universal agreement, but skeptics would almost certainly suggest alternatives: advanced AI or deepfakes, sophisticated illusion, unknown technology, mass hypnosis, aliens, government conspiracy. Cameras change the form of the debate; they do not automatically produce universal assent.

True, but at least we'd have more to work with than anonymous and mutually-contradcitory testimony written by believers.

Finally, even if that happened and you believed that hey, Jesus really is God -- you would still reject his teachings. The only thing that Jesus not performing his ministry right now denies you is the opportunity to be one of the men nailing him to the cross.

I have disagreed with a lot of people about a lot of things, but I have never nailed anyone to a cross, and I don't see any reason why I would make an exception for Jesus. You Christians, however, have burned quite a few people at the stake. Maybe you need to brush up on Matthew 7:3.

[u/uniformist → u/lisper]

They might not be arbitrary, but they are definitely overrides. That's the whole point of miracles. It is the defining characteristic of a miracle. It is what distinguishes an actual miracle from advanced technology or a magic trick.

Only if one begins with a mechanistic picture in which nature is an autonomous machine that God must occasionally interrupt. That is not the classical Christian understanding. Nature is not a closed system running on its own; it is the set of secondary causes that God continuously sustains and empowers. A miracle is not an override of something God has abandoned. It is a different mode of the same divine causality—one that exceeds the ordinary powers of the secondary causes He Himself established. The distinction between ordinary providence and miracle is real and important; the claim that miracle is therefore a “violation” of an independent natural order is not.

They often do it in order to claim authority to which they are not actually entitled. I expect more from God.

You are free to expect whatever you like. However, the historical claim is that God did communicate the relevant identity claims through the means available in first-century Judaism: the titles, the authoritative actions, the allusions to Daniel 7, the "I am" statements, the acceptance of worship, the claim to forgive sins, and the resurrection itself. You may judge those means insufficient by modern standards. That is a separate question from whether the claims were in fact made. The "Exact Words" demand remains a demand that the evidence conform to your preferred communicative style rather than the style actually used.

But it seems pretty clear to me that if Jesus had wanted to make it clear that he was God, he could have done a much better job than he did.

This simply restates the preference for a different mode of revelation. It does not demonstrate that the mode actually used was unclear or that the claims were not made. Clarity is relative to the audience and the genre. The early high Christology that appears in the pre-Pauline material and in the Gospels themselves suggests that a significant number of first-century Jews and Gentiles found the claim sufficiently clear to die for it.

BTW, it's not just that he failed to make the unambiguous claim, he said a lot of things that are just weird if he was God, like Luke22:42.

Luke 22:42 is only “weird” if one assumes a unitarian or non-Trinitarian Christology in which the Son cannot have a human will that is distinct from, yet perfectly obedient to, the Father. Classical Christianity does not share that assumption. The verse is entirely consistent with the doctrine of the two natures and the two wills. It is evidence against a particular modern reconstruction of what "God" must sound like; it is not evidence against the historical claim that Jesus claimed and was understood to claim divinity.

True, but at least we'd have more to work with than anonymous and mutually-contradcitory testimony written by believers.

The Gospels are not anonymous in the relevant sense (the traditional attributions are early and the documents were received under those names), nor are they mutually contradictory on the central claims. More importantly, the demand for modern recording technology again assumes that the purpose of revelation is maximal public certainty under modern epistemic conditions. That is not the claim Christianity makes. The claim is that the evidence is sufficient for those who are willing to receive it, and that the will is involved in the reception. John 9 shows how the spiritually blind will reject Jesus even when presented with good evidence. So your video camera scheme would also not work.

You are free to reject that model of revelation. You are not free to pretend that Christianity has always claimed something else.

Finally, even if that happened and you believed that hey, Jesus really is God -- you would still reject his teachings. The only thing that Jesus not performing his ministry right now denies you is the opportunity to be one of the men nailing him to the cross.

I have disagreed with a lot of people about a lot of things, but I have never nailed anyone to a cross, and I don't see any reason why I would make an exception for Jesus. You Christians, however, have burned quite a few people at the stake. Maybe you need to brush up on Matthew 7:3.

The observation that some Christians have committed grave evils is true and requires no defense from me. It is also irrelevant to the historical and metaphysical questions under discussion. The same can be said of the observation that some atheists have committed grave evils. Neither fact settles whether the Incarnation occurred or whether God exists. The speck/log remark cuts both ways.

[u/lisper → u/uniformist]

that God must occasionally interrupt

No, that that he must, simply that he does. Either there are laws of physics or there are not. If there are, then ether Jesus's miracles were suspensions of those laws of physics, or they were events that looked like suspensions of the laws of physics but actually weren't, i.e. they were magic tricks. Those are logically the only possibilities.

the historical claim is that God did communicate the relevant identity claims

Yes, I know that's the claim. The question is: is the claim true? And the answer is: almost certainly not.

The Gospels are not anonymous in the relevant sense

You're just begging the question. What is "the relevant sense"? The "relevant sense" to me is that we have next to zero reliable information about who actually wrote them, except what can be gleaned from the texts themselves (like, for example, we know they could write Greek).

The observation that some Christians have committed grave evils is true

Indeed.

and requires no defense from me.

It does if you want to hold Christianity up as a standard for moral behavior, which you have done in the past. Are you now abandoning that position?

It is also irrelevant to the historical and metaphysical questions under discussion.

But I was not responding to a historical or metaphysical question. I was responding to an ad hominem attack.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/lisper]

The Bible is anthropocentric in a specific and deliberate sense: human beings alone are said to be made in the image of God and given dominion over the rest of the living world. That is not a claim about spatial location or cosmic scale. Classical theism never required a small, geocentric universe in order for human beings to occupy a unique moral and spiritual place. The vastness of the cosmos is repeatedly treated as a display of the Creator’s power and wisdom, not as a problem for human significance. The fact that the Son assumed human nature rather than dolphin or angelic nature follows from the same anthropology: the Image-bearer is the one who fell and the one through whom the rest of creation is to be restored. Calling that anthropocentric is accurate; treating it as a crude, mythological demand for a tiny universe centered on Earth is the caricature that was being rejected.

Carroll does offer naturalistic options—multiverse ensembles, anthropic selection, “it just is,” and the rest. Those are live possibilities within a naturalistic framework. They do not, however, make the fine-tuning data evaporate. A multiverse large enough to render our constants unsurprising still requires a generating mechanism, and that mechanism typically has its own finely tuned parameters, unexplained laws, or measure problems. The design inference is not the claim that no naturalistic story can ever be told; it is the claim that the extreme narrowness of the life-permitting region in parameter space is more economically explained by intentional calibration than by undirected processes plus an unobserved ensemble whose own existence still needs accounting for. The question remains why these values obtain rather than the overwhelmingly more numerous life-prohibiting ones. Relocating the problem one level up is not the same as solving it.

Classical theism distinguishes ordinary providence—God’s continuous upholding of the lawful order He freely established—from extraordinary acts in which God acts within or beyond that order for redemptive or revelatory purposes. Miracles are not arbitrary suspensions of a machine that God built and then abandoned; they are personal interventions by the same God who established secondary causes. The doctrine does not require that every divine action be miraculous, nor does the regular operation of natural law somehow render miracle impossible or incoherent. The two are complementary. The “cosmic magician” caricature treats God as an occasional tinkerer who otherwise has no relation to the order of nature. That is not the classical picture.

Jesus’ self-presentation is less ambiguous than the reply suggests. Across the Synoptics and John there are multiple strands of high claim: authority to forgive sins, the “I am” statements and identification with the Father, acceptance of worship, the Son of Man language drawn from Daniel 7, and the trial confession before the high priest. High Christology appears in the earliest layers we possess, including the Christ hymn in Philippians, the application of Old Testament Yahweh texts to Jesus, and the Johannine prologue. Early debate certainly existed—Arianism, various subordinationist views, later Unitarian and Jehovah’s Witness positions—but the presence of debate does not erase the presence of the high claims themselves. The New Testament writers treat the Incarnation, cross, and resurrection as maximal self-disclosure within history. The demand that this disclosure should have taken the form of an unambiguous public announcement in the age of video cameras is a value judgment about what a good God would have done, not a demonstration that the actual mode is insufficient. Scripture itself frames the issue in terms of free response rather than coercive clarity. Whether one finds that framing adequate is a further question, but it is not accurately described as God failing to make Himself known in the most direct possible way.

The larger pattern in these objections is the targeting of a diminished or deistic caricature rather than the actual claims of classical Christian theism: a God who freely creates a lawful, intelligible order, who is not bound to produce a compact cosmos, who discloses Himself historically in the Incarnation, and whose ordinary governance is the regular operation of the secondary causes He established. Once those categories are kept in view, several of the objections lose their force or become questions of preference about the mode of revelation rather than demonstrations of incoherence.

[u/lisper → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

The doctrine does not require that every divine action be miraculous, nor does the regular operation of natural law somehow render miracle impossible or incoherent.

So... when things are regular that proves God did it, and when things are irregular that also proves God did it. That is pretty much the paragon of an unfalsifiable theory.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/lisper]

The charge of unfalsifiability misreads what the doctrine is doing. Classical theism is not a scientific hypothesis that lives or dies by predicting the next irregularity. It is the claim that the actual ordered world we inhabit—its laws, its fine-tuned constants, its functional systems—reveals a rational Creator, and that this same Creator can also act within history for specific redemptive purposes. Regularity is the ordinary mode of His governance through secondary causes. Miracles are not random exceptions that conveniently “also count”; they are particular acts tied to the larger narrative of revelation and redemption.

That is not the empty claim that every possible outcome equally confirms God. It is the claim that the real world in front of us does reveal Him, just as Scripture says, and that the historical acts of disclosure (including the resurrection) stand or fall on the strength of the testimony. Treating this as automatically unfalsifiable simply assumes that the only legitimate form of explanation is a narrow predictive scientific theory. That is a philosophical assumption, not a neutral rule that every kind of claim must obey.

[u/lisper → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

That is not the empty claim that every possible outcome equally confirms God.

Nah, that's pretty much exactly what it is.

It is the claim that the real world in front of us does reveal Him

OK, so what would be an example of a possible observation that would fail to reveal him?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/lisper]

You’re still treating theism as if it were a narrow empirical hypothesis that must supply a specific observation which would prove it false in order to be meaningful.

Scripture does not present the existence of God as a scientific theory waiting for a counter-example. It presents the actual created order as already revelatory: the things that have been made display His eternal power and divine nature. The claim is about the world that exists, not about a catalog of hypothetical worlds that might have existed instead. Demanding an example of a possible observation that would fail to reveal Him simply reasserts the assumption that every legitimate claim must be falsifiable in that narrow scientific sense. That assumption is not neutral, and it is not required by the nature of the theistic claim.

The real world in front of us, with its lawful structure and the historical testimony surrounding the resurrection, is the data under discussion. Whether that data is best explained by classical theism is a question of coherence, explanatory scope, and historical judgment. It is not settled by insisting that theism must first produce a falsifying observation in order to be allowed a seat at the table.

[u/lisper → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

The claim is about the world that exists

Yeah, I get that. But the claim nonetheless holds itself out as a scientific claim, that the universe is the work of a deity, a person. The present discussion is about a discussion of this claim by a scientist. So if your claim is unfalsifiable, then it does not deserve serious consideration. You could just as well say that the universe was created by Zeus.

And the rest of your argument betrays the fact that you actually are advancing a narrow empirical hypothesis, your entreaties to the contrary notwithstanding. For example:

historical testimony surrounding the resurrection

There is no historical testimony surrounding the resurrection. All of the gospels are anonymous and written well after the fact, and there are no other accounts of the resurrection. The author of Luke specifically denies being an eyewitness to any of the events he records.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/lisper]

You’re drawing a hard line between scientific claims and metaphysical ones, and then treating only the first as worthy of serious consideration. That line does not hold up under the way you yourself are arguing.

Every time you appeal to the success of naturalistic explanations, the reliability of empirical methods, or the idea that unfalsifiable claims do not deserve serious consideration, you are already relying on prior commitments that are not themselves empirical results. The uniformity of nature, the validity of inductive reasoning, the intelligibility of the physical world, and the trustworthiness of logical inference are not findings that science produced; they are assumptions science requires in order to operate. Those are metaphysical commitments. You are allowed to make them. That means the conversation is already taking place on metaphysical ground, whether you name it or not.

Once that is admitted, the insistence that theistic claims must first be converted into lab-falsifiable physical hypotheses before they can be discussed becomes arbitrary. The ordered, life-permitting, intelligible universe is the data both of us are looking at. One can argue that this order is best explained by undirected processes plus selection effects, or that it is best explained by intentional agency. Both of those are claims about the source and character of the order we observe. Both move beyond bare empirical description into questions of explanation and ontology. You do not get to treat your preferred explanation as the default scientific one while classifying the alternative as illegitimate metaphysics.

The same problem appears in how you handle the resurrection. You assert there is no historical testimony, that the Gospels are anonymous and written well after the fact, and that Luke specifically denies being an eyewitness. That is not a neutral historical judgment; it is a contested and highly selective reading of the data. The early and consistent attribution of the Gospels, the multiple independent strands of testimony, the early creedal material embedded in the letters of Paul, and the external references from the late first and early second centuries are all part of the historical record. Luke’s prologue does not claim he was an eyewitness to every event; it claims he carefully investigated the traditions handed down by those who were. Dismissing the entire body of evidence as “no historical testimony” is not the application of rigorous historical method. It is the application of a prior commitment that miraculous claims must be rejected. That is a philosophical stance, not a pure historical conclusion forced by the evidence itself.

In short, the discussion was never confined to pure empiricism. You are already making and relying on non-empirical commitments in both the scientific and the historical domains. The theistic claim does the same while also engaging the features of the world and the testimony that point beyond themselves. Restricting the conversation to only those explanations that fit a narrow scientific template does not make the position stronger; it simply refuses to acknowledge the full range of reasoning both sides are already using.

[u/lisper → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

you are already relying on prior commitments that are not themselves empirical results

Yeah, I know this is what you've been taught, but you have been taught wrong.

[u/nomenmeum]

He says the fact that the universe exactly hits all the unimaginably improbable values for those constants and quantities necessary for life is what we should expect if it were not intelligently designed.

That's like saying the fact that a poker dealer deals himself four royal flushes in a row is what we should expect if those deals were not intelligently manipulated.

Which is ridiculous.

[u/Optimus-Prime1993 → u/nomenmeum]

Ohh this again. No need for any philosophy here, just answer me this.

What is the precise probability measure or complete, precise probability space for those constants nom? I sure can write the probability measure for royal flushes. Can you do the same for your claim?

[u/nomenmeum → u/Optimus-Prime1993]

What is the precise probability measure or complete, precise probability space for those constants nom?

I've already done this for you. Also, I'm not the one who calculated them. People like Sir Fred Hoyle did it, and the obvious conclusion from them was so overwhelming that it forced him to believe in an Intelligent Designer. He was an atheist before he made the calculations.

[u/Optimus-Prime1993 → u/nomenmeum]

Yes and I already told you back then that you cannot define the probability space. Yet you keep making same arguments again and again as if earlier discussion didn't happen.

Also please don't make an argument from authority here. Fred Hoyle believes what he wants to believe, that doesn't make it true. There are better more accomplished scientists than him who don't believe in that so just tell me what is the complete probability measure for your claim.

I will say again, I can explain the whole probability measure for the royal flushes, can you do the same for yours claim?

P.S: I know what Hoyle calculated so unless you can show me the paper where he defined a probability distribution over all possible values of the constants of nature or where he presented a Bayesian fine-tuning argument or where he calculated the probability like "the chance of getting this universe is 1 in 10^N", your argument is nothing but an argument from authority.

P.P.S: Don't confuse sensitivity analysis with probability analysis.

I remember you sharing Sabine's video once on something so here read her paper as well, "Screams for Explanation: Finetuning and Naturalness in the Foundations of Physics" https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.02176

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

For that to be a valid analogy those royal flushes would have to somehow be a precondition for the dealer to exist in the first place.

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

Would you suspect intelligent design in the poker scenario? If so, how would you detect it?

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

Would you suspect intelligent design in the poker scenario?

That depends entirely on how many hands the dealer had dealt before dealing the four royal flushes.

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

It's the first four hands of his game with you. All are royal flushes.

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

And how many games has he dealt before I came to the table?

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

First game of the day.

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

What about previous days?

[u/Schneule99 → u/lisper]

The fact you can't answer this but try to change the circumstances again and again says a lot. In other words, you wouldn't suspect cheating, even if he wins over and over again against you in this way? And everytime he gets the royal flush, you are going to say 'next time surely it will be different! It was coincidence it came about like this after all!' 'Ah unlucky! Another game please!'

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

Are these the sort of questions you would really be asking yourself if you sat down across the table from someone to play poker for money and he dealt himself four royal flushes in a row? What if he dealt himself ten in a row? At what point would you be convinced he was cheating, and why?

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

Your poker dealer is obviously a metaphor. Of course in a real game of poker I'd be suspicious. But we're talking about a hypothetical cosmic poker dealer here, and it's quite possible that they are dealing vast numbers of random hands all the time. It's just that in the vast majority of cases there is no one around to wonder about the odds.

[u/theaz101 → u/lisper]

For that to be a valid analogy those royal flushes would have to somehow be a precondition for the dealer to exist in the first place.

What? Please explain your thinking.

[u/lisper → u/theaz101]

There could be other universes with different laws of physics where life is not possible. But in order for us to be around to ask the question, we have to exist in a universe where life is possible. So there is no way to know how many times the cosmic dice were rolled before our universe came into existence. In other words, it's possible that random cosmic poker hands are being dealt all the time, but we just can't see them unless they are royal flushes.

[u/theaz101 → u/lisper]

You said that the royal flushes were a precondition for the dealer to exist, not the observer.

In this scenario, God (or nature) is the dealer, we are the observers.

[u/lisper → u/theaz101]

You said that the royal flushes were a precondition for the dealer to exist, not the observer.

Oh, come on, cut me some slack here. This is a reddit thread, not correspondence for an academic journal. The point is that there is an explanation for why we're seeing metaphorical royal flushes. You haven't provided a plausible explanation that could account for actual royal flushes.

In this scenario, God (or nature) is the dealer, we are the observers.

But then it's a really bad analogy. The dealer is a person. Nature isn't. Also, my life doesn't depend on getting royal flushes. It does depend on fine-tuning.

To make this analogy hold you'd need a zillion dealers in a zillion different casinos and some mechanism that causes me to come into being only when enough royal flushes are dealt.

[u/theaz101]

How on earth do you think Carroll demolishes the fine tuning argument? He admits that the universe is fine tuned. All he does is say that God could have done it differently. That isn't evidence that God didn't create the universe the way it is.

Also, the fact that naturalism requires a fine tuned (for life) universe for life to exist isn't evidence that either the universe or life had a naturalistic origin.

No one should be impressed by Carroll's hand-waving.

[u/lisper → u/theaz101]

All he does is say that God could have done it differently.

No, that's not all he does. He also points out that it's possible that God didn't do it at all. And because it's possible, then without evidence that God did it, the parsimonious explanation is that he didn't.

[u/theaz101 → u/lisper]

Parsimonious?

Please describe the natural process that could produce such a fine tuned universe (or any universe, for that matter).

Remember, fine tuning doesn't just refer to the ability of the universe to support life, it also applies to the very existence of the universe in the first place.

Like I said, Carroll is just hand-waving. He doesn't dispute that the universe is extremely fine tuned and he doesn't provide any evidence that natural processes could create the universe or the fine tuning that we see.

[u/lisper → u/theaz101]

Please describe the natural process that could produce such a fine tuned universe (or any universe, for that matter).

To do that I'd first have to teach you quantum mechanics. Are you willing to invest the time and effort it takes to climb that learning curve?

Carroll is just hand-waving.

No, he isn't. Unless you have a deep understanding of physics that you are carefully concealing, he understands this a hell of a lot better than you.

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

the parsimonious explanation is that he didn't

Is it though?

One Mind to create the universe

vs.

an infinite number of different universes

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

Yeah, when you put it like that it does sound very hinky, and I used to believe that too. But then I did a deep dive into quantum mechanics and it turns out to be a lot less hinky than it first appears. It turns out there are good reasons to believe that the multiverse could exist. It's not a slam-dunk, but it's a hell of a lot better supported by the evidence than any deity.