If I were an Atheist

[Surgenator]

Changing the Laws of Nature

What if the laws of nature were different? Stenger says:

… what about a universe with a different set of “laws”? There is not much we can say about such a universe, nor do we need to. Not knowing what any of their parameters are, no one can claim that they are fine-tuned. [FOFT p. 69]

In reply, fine-tuning isn’t about what the parameters and laws are in a particular universe. Given some other set of laws, we ask: if a universe were chosen at random from the set of universes with those laws, what is the probability that it would support intelligent life? If that probability is suitably (and robustly) small, then we conclude that that region of possible-physics-space contributes negligibly to the total life-permitting subset. It is easy to find examples of such claims.
* A universe governed by Maxwell’s Laws “all the way down” (i.e. with no quantum regime at small scales) will not have stable atoms | electrons radiate their kinetic energy and spiral rapidly into the nucleus | and hence no chemistry (Barrow & Tipler, 1986, pg. 303). We don’t need to know what the parameters are to know that life in such a universe is plausibly impossible.
* If electrons were bosons, rather than fermions, then they would not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. There would be no chemistry.
* If gravity were repulsive rather than attractive, then matter wouldn’t clump into complex structures. Remember: your density, thank gravity, is 10^30 times greater than the average density of the universe.
* If the strong force were a long rather than short-range force, then there would be no atoms. Any structures that formed would be uniform, spherical, undifferentiated lumps, of arbitrary size and incapable of complexity.
* If, in electromagnetism, like charges attracted and opposites repelled, then there would be no atoms. As above, we would just have undifferentiated lumps of matter.
* The electromagnetic force allows matter to cool into galaxies, stars, and planets. Without such interactions, all matter would be like dark matter, which can only form into large, diffuse, roughly spherical haloes of matter whose only internal structure consists of smaller, diffuse, roughly spherical subhaloes. (p. 18)

The fine-tuning argument is an argument from ignorance, a fallacy. The whole argument boils down to
1) Look at all these (maybe) independent variable that are tightly constrained to get the universe I know of.
2) Life is in my universe
3) So these parameters determine what life-permitting universe are possible (another fallacy)
4) I cannot understand how these variables came to be what they are (ignorance)
5) God did it.

All the fancy science concepts that you can throw out doesn't prevent the main problem of the argument, ignorance.