Quote:Objections to the Argument from Fine-Tuning
The argument from fine-tuning is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God, not only because it is logically air-tight and finds support in modern science, but because it exposes the unreasonable lengths to which skeptics will go to deny evidence of God’s existence and creative activity. In this post we’ll consider some of the more common objections to the argument and show why they fail as refutations.
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Objection 3: If the universe weren’t fine-tuned, we wouldn’t be here to observe it. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised by fine-tuning, and we shouldn’t waste time trying to explain it.
It is true that, given the fact that we’re here and we’re alive, we should expect to observe a life-permitting universe. This is called the Anthropic Principle. But that expectation, and our observations which confirm it, do nothing to explain why the universe is life-permitting when it didn’t have to be. A life-prohibiting universe is vastly more probable than a life-permitting one, so why does a life-permitting universe exist? What is the best explanation? Is it chance, necessity, or design? Fine-tuning cries out for an explanation, but the anthropic principle is not the answer. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is helpful once more: "While trivially true, [the anthropic] principle has no explanatory power, and does not constitute a substantive alternative explanation."
http://logicalfaith.org/?p=1190
