![\"NASA](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2022\/07\/main_image_star-forming_region_carina_nircam_final-1280-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>This landscape of \u201cmountains\u201d and \u201cvalleys\u201d speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA\u2019s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.
Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb\u2019s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest \u201cpeaks\u201d in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Recently, I\u2019ve published four blog posts \u2014 see my \u201cAn initial survey of the \u201cfour fundamental forces\u201d and the \u201ccosmological constant\u201d<\/a> and \u201cInitial Conditions and \u2018Brute Facts\u2019\u201d<\/a> and\u00a0\u201cLocal\u201d Planetary Conditions<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cThree More \u201cLocal Planetary Conditions\u201d\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 that have been based on the online \u201cList of Fine-Tuning Parameters\u201d<\/a> posted by Jay W. Richards<\/a>.\u00a0 These four blog posts represent an initial pass through a topic that interests me very much and that, should I continue<\/em> to survive past my sell-by date, I intend to deepen and extend considerably.\u00a0 They do not claim any originality for themselves or for me.\u00a0 And the same can be said about this blog entry itself.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The late atheist polemicist Christopher Hitchens is said to have called the fine-tuning argument \u201cthe most intriguing\u201d among the arguments for the existence of God.\u00a0 The vocally atheistic physicist Sean Carroll has grudgingly termed it \u201cthe best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology.\u201d<\/p>\n And it\u2019s no wonder that Hitchens and Carroll and others have been at least slightly taken aback by evidence for fine-tuning.\u00a0 It can be quite impressive \u2014 and certainly so at first glance.\u00a0 If, for example, the strength of gravity were not \u201ctuned\u201d to one part in 10 to the sixtieth power, neither planets nor stars nor even galaxies could have been formed.\u00a0 And it\u2019s impossible to imagine any way in which organic life could have developed in the absence of planets, stars, and galaxies.\u00a0 Wrong strength of gravitational force?\u00a0 No life.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 End of story.\u00a0 Moreover, if positive and negative charge were not \u201ctuned\u201d to a fantastic degree of precision, no molecules would exist.\u00a0 And, accordingly, no organic life could exist.\u00a0 A third example:\u00a0 If the strong nuclear force, which provides the attraction between neutrons and protons, were just five percent weaker, the matter in the universe would be entirely made of hydrogen.\u00a0 If it were just five percent stronger, there would be no hydrogen at all.\u00a0 And life could not arise or survive \u2014 in any sense of which we can conceive \u2014 in either condition.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, though, there are those who don\u2019t buy into the idea of cosmic fine-tuning, and they\u2019ve mounted counterarguments to undermine it. They accuse its proponents of mere anthropomorphism or anthropocentrism, of falsely (and arrogantly) presuming that we humans are somehow the center of the universe.<\/p>\n One well-known response on the popular level is often called \u201cthe puddle analogy.\u201d\u00a0 The most famous expression of it appears in The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time<\/em>, a posthumously published collection of essays, talks, and unfinished fiction by the brilliant, hilarious, passionately atheistic, and sadly short-lived English writer Douglas Adams (1952-2001):<\/p>\n This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, \u201cThis is an interesting world I find myself in \u2014 an interesting hole I find myself in \u2014 fits me rather neatly, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!\u201d\u00a0 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0 I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What Adams is advancing in his characteristically witty way is a form of what is sometimes called the \u201cWeak Anthropic Principle\u201d or WAP.\u00a0 The WAP accepts as a given that, yes, the constants required for life to exist (the strengths of gravity and the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force, for example, and the balance of positive and negative charge, and so forth) are indeed very well tuned for the existence of life.\u00a0 But, suggests the WAP, this is not evidence for an intelligent designer.\u00a0 Life has adapted itself to the universe, according to the Weak Anthropic Principle, rather than the other way around.\u00a0 (My 27 February 2014 article for the Deseret News<\/em>, \u201cMaybe the firing squad was on your side,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0is relevant here.)<\/p>\n Some atheists and critics of the idea of fine-tuning regard the \u201csentient puddle argument\u201d (or something very like it) as a lethal knock-down blow against the idea.\u00a0 After all, if that sentient pondering puddle shouldn\u2019t be surprised about how well it fits the hole in which it sits, we<\/em> shouldn\u2019t be surprised about fitting into the universe in which we<\/em> fit.<\/p>\n The \u201csentient puddle argument\u201d is an argument from or by analogy.\u00a0 In any analogical argument, the assumption is that, because A is similar to B, what is true of A must also be true of B.\u00a0 But, for such an argument to be solid, the analogy has to be a good<\/em> one.\u00a0 And the similarity must be a relevant<\/em> similarity.\u00a0 It should be fairly obvious that the fact that Clara is a lanky red-haired schoolgirl and is musically talented doesn\u2019t establish that Alexis is also musically talented simply because she\u2019s another lanky red-haired schoolgirl.<\/p>\n Obviously, no analogy is perfect. There will always be differences.\u00a0 (Otherwise, plainly, the relationship between X and Y wouldn\u2019t be one of analogy<\/em> but one of identity<\/em>.\u00a0 X wouldn\u2019t merely be similar<\/em> to Y; it would be<\/em> Y.)\u00a0 But the question must always be asked whether the similarities are significant and whether the differences are, for the purpose at hand, merely superficial.\u00a0 If the differences<\/em> are significant and similarities merely superficial<\/em>, the analogy is of no useful value and any argument based upon that analogy will fail.<\/p>\n So how does the \u201csentient puddle argument\u201d fare?\u00a0 Spoiler alert:\u00a0 In my judgment, the differences between the puddle and the cosmos are significant and the similarities are merely superficial,<\/p>\n In an article entitled \u201cThe Trouble with Puddle Thinking: A User\u2019s Guide to the Anthropic Principle\u201d (in Proceedings and Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales<\/em> 154\/1 [June 2021]), the Welsh-Australian astrophysicist Geraint F. Lewis<\/a> and the Australian astrophysicist and cosmologist Luke A. Barnes<\/a> explain the failure of the analogy as follows:<\/p>\n Consider more closely the puddle\u2019s reasoning.\u00a0 Let\u2019s name our puddle Doug<\/em>.\u00a0 He has noticed a precise match between two things:\u00a0 1) his shape and 2) the shape of the hole in which he lives.\u00a0 Doug is amazed!\u00a0 What Doug doesn\u2019t know is that, given A) the fluidity of water, B) the solidity of the hole, and C) the constant downward force of gravity, he will always take the same shape as his hole.\u00a0 If the hole had been different, his shape would adjust to match it.\u00a0 Any hole will do for a puddle<\/em>.<\/p>\n This is precisely where the analogy fails: any universe will not<\/em> do for life<\/em>.\u00a0 Life is not a fluid.\u00a0 It will not adjust to any old universe.\u00a0 There could have been a completely dead universe: perhaps one that lasts for 1 second before recollapsing or is so sparse that no two particles ever interact in the entire history of the universe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the puddle analogy, Doug the Puddle can exist in any<\/em> hole.\u00a0 That\u2019s the nature of puddles.\u00a0 The shape of the hole in which the puddle exists is essentially irrelevant to the existence<\/em> of the puddle.\u00a0 If the shape of the hole is changed, the shape of the puddle will change.\u00a0 But, as long as there is a hole of some shape or other, the puddle will still exist.<\/p>\n But life is very different from a puddle.\u00a0 Life cannot exist in just any<\/em> kind of cosmos.\u00a0 The fine-tuning argument recognizes that fact.\u00a0 If any one of a fairly large list of numbers were changed, life would not exist anywhere in the universe.\u00a0 If, for example, you were to increase the mass of the electron or of the up-quark, the result would be a universe utterly devoid of anything but neutrons.\u00a0 There would be no stars.\u00a0 No planets.\u00a0 There would be no chemistry \u2014 and, as an inescapable result, there would be no life.<\/p>\n So the \u201csentient puddle argument\u201d rests on a false analogy.\u00a0 A life-permitting cosmos is hugely different from a puddle-permitting hole.<\/p>\n But we\u2019re not quite done yet:\u00a0 Another way of trying to escape the \u201cStrong Anthropic Principle,\u201d the idea that the universe seems in some sense to have been designed to be friendly to life and even to intelligent life, is to posit the existence of an essentially infinite number of number of universes.\u00a0 On this notion, the fact that we just happen<\/em> to live in a universe in which we can<\/em> live (note the tautology) is pretty much sheer dumb luck, and not even especially interesting.\u00a0 (See the link to my Deseret News<\/em> article above.)\u00a0 If I fall fifty-five thousand feet from a high-altitude airplane without a parachute and somehow land on my feet, completely unhurt, with my unspilled cup of Coke Zero and ice still in my hand, well, I just happen to live in a universe in which that happened.\u00a0 No questions needed.\u00a0 No mystery.\u00a0 Move along!\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing to see here!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n