The Argument: "The Universe is Fine-tuned to Produce Life by God!"

Quick answer: Christians cannot accept that for it implies the universe was set up to make life whereas life for a Christian really means the ghostly soul each person has and also the Bible says God intervened to make Adam and Eve.  It was a miracle.  The Christians do not believe the argument but just pretend they do in order to come across as pro-science.  And what if science decides tomorrow that there is no fine-tuning after all?  The universe then would become an argument against God!!

Intelligent Design Argument from fine tuning: The universe is fine-tuned for life. If its properties were even slightly different - and we are talking about slightly as in unimaginably slight - then human life would not be possible. Fine-tuning - the life permitting nature of the universe is extremely improbable suggesting that it was probably not the result of chance. The universe was fine-tuned for life. Only an intelligence greater than we can imagine could perform the fine-tuning.

But if you say there is fine-tuning there is also fine-pruning going on.  To tune up one thing means you have to prune another.  But to prune all things does not mean you are doing any tuning.  If something is fine-pruned then it can look fine-tuned and not be fine-tuned at all. Fine-pruning implies that the universe was not created by God because God should have the power to control what he creates. He should not need to treat it as something that needed to be fixed. A God who sets up a universe that allows life to exist is not the same as a God who sets up a universe that plans life to exist. Allowing shows that he takes the risk of it not appearing at all!

Also, extremely improbable things do happen by chance. And is man with his limited knowledge really in a position to be sure he knows that life is extremely improbable?

And as we do not understand God's ways and he seems to need to make viruses to torment little babies it follows that God being the designer or fine-tuner does not help if you want to argue, "The designer is simpler than the universe he makes." What if God chose to or needed to make a designer who is far more complex than a billion universes? If we cannot see the designer then we have to accept that unimaginably complex designer might exist. It is no answer to say that the ultimate designer is God, the God who has no designer for he does not need one. It is not an answer for we want to simply have a simple designer designing the universe but that simply is not available. And science which says we must use the simplest explanation is deprived of it. Science looks at the evidence and chooses what explanation fits it best. It cannot assume the simplest explanation. Only evidence can help you work out the simplest explanation. Without it what you think may be simplest may not be simplest at all or there may be an equally good explanation.

Plantinga is one person who uses the fine-tuning argument but he is honest enough to admit that scientists know that life would still be possible if the universe was different but it would rule out the emergence of human life. But read Plantinga carefully. “The universe seems to be fine-tuned for life”. The seems show that the argument is not a very strong or convincing one. The argument is popular and even appeared in Flew’s There is a God. But it is nonsense. Popularity does not make it believable or right.
 
The universe’s fine tuning produces galaxies not life. The fine tuning that produces galaxies risks the following. Say a planet appears that can produce life. The fine tuning will not prevent that planet being destroyed by an asteroid before it produces life or after.
 
There are far too many worlds that serve no purpose. Also, there are far too many particles. Matter is made up of six quarks and six leptons. But "only four of them - the up and down quarks and the electron and its neutrino - are necessary for the existence of physical objects, including planets and humans. The remaining eight "matter particles" decayed away immediately after the Big Bang. They, as well as the mysterious "dark matter", don't have an obvious theist explanation" page 163, Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible.
 
The fine-tuning cannot exist just for the sake of life. It could be that life is a side-effect if the fine-tuning is meant for producing a universe like ours.
 
We only think the universe is set to produce life because we are here but it could easily have happened that the earth might have been turned from a planet with the potential to make life into one without it through some accident. Whatever killed the dinosaurs could have killed us too. It is only by pure accident that we not only got here but are still here.
 
If a planet produces life it does not follow it was intended to make life. If my paint roller makes specks it does not mean that it was meant for making specks. The entire universe virtually consists of stars. There is too little of life to imagine that the universe was made to produce life.
 
Christians insist that the universe is so unimaginably complex that it must have had a fine-tuner - a God who is more powerful than it. But if there is a fine tuning intelligence it does not follow that it is necessarily God or anything like the God that Jesus proposed.
 
If all things need a cause, it only follows that the cause must be able to create something not that it has to control or mould what it creates. Perhaps a chaotic mess was created and an intelligence developed by pure chance and was able to do some organising.
 
A creator who is merely an impersonal intelligence is a simpler concept than the Christian God who is three persons united in one being. It would take more fine tuning to make an utterly simple God who is nonetheless three people than it would to make the whole universe!
 
Who or what was the fine tuner of the fine tuner? Surely if the universe needs fine tuning then the fine tuner of the universe would need as much fine tuning if not more? The Christian answer is that God the fine tuner is spirit - spirit is an immaterial reality. It is there but it is not material and does not consist of parts. So they claim God is so simple that he is just there and there is no need for anything to make God. The error in that is assuming that something can be so simple that it needs no explanation. If something is there it needs explanation and its simplicity or otherwise is irrelevant. Another error is in assuming that if something is so simple that it does not need a maker to put it together, that nothing put it together. It is sometimes harder to make something extremely simple than something complicated. Abstract artists know all about that! The biggest error of all is that it may be that the notion of a living force with no parts or components might be nonsense. We are prone to reification - where we mistake an idea for something that is real or could be real. Our concept of God, God is spirit, could be reification.
 
Believers say that neither spirit or matter can be understood properly. Our minds are too small. So if they were humble they would say they do not know if spirit exists or how matter came to be. They cannot even guess when they cannot understand matter or spirit. They are in fact arrogant. Their humble ways are an example of the power of cognitive dissonance.
 
Calling God a spirit does not help. The fine-tuning argument requires a fine-tuner yes but not necessary a spirit one. Science sees matter as a big enough mystery without complicating things by assuming there are spirits.
 
What about the notion that whatever the fine-tuner is, science cannot assume that it is a spirit for spirit is a religious and not a scientific concept? It would mean that science would accept that there is a fine-tuner but feels that nothing more can be said about the fine-tuner unless evidence turns up or there is some way of experimentally testing it to see what it is like and how it works.
 
Perfection is not a simple concept. Who or what fine-tuned God to make him perfect? So we see that a fine-tuned universe is thought to call for a fine-tuner and if God is a fine-tuner then who or what fine-tuned him?
 
If some material force is the fine-tuning intelligence, then we have to wonder what designed the fine-tuner. If fine-tuning is true then it is true despite the problem that it implies that scientifically you must assume that the fine-tuner of the universe itself has a fine-tuner and this one has too and it could go on forever. That is endlessly complex. Could it be that it is better to deny the fine-tuning than to go that far? Yes. Believers in fine-tuning say there is a minuscule chance that it is incorrect so we could avail then of that tiny bit of uncertainty. It would certainly mean that we must be reluctant to accept it even if it is true. If it implies God, which it doesn't, then that amounts to not wanting to believe in God.
 
Religion says spirit can be transmuted into matter. So how do they know that it is not the other way around? Perhaps matter comes first and changes into spirit? Spirit turning into the universe might not mean that spirit fine-tunes but that spirit makes a universe that can fine-tune itself. If matter can transform into spirit, then perhaps somehow matter can contain and be the fine-tuning experiment.
 
The fine tuning argument is based on the guess that this is the only universe and there was only one chance to make it. If anything had gone wrong the fine-tuner would have missed its chance. This contradicts the notion of an all-powerful God who makes all things and upon whom all things depend. The fine tuning argument for God is not really believed by those who propose it. How can it show their God exists when it contradicts his power?
 
If we had evidence that there was only one chance with this universe then the fine-tuning argument would have some force.

Sadly for believers, the fine tuning is nonsense. There is no fine tuning of the universe. Believers assume that the universe must be as it is now or life is impossible or life as we know it would be impossible. But that is only a guess not an argument in favour of fine tuning. They cannot do experiments to show that a different universe using different rules is unable to produce some form of life. Fine tuning is put in the guise of science but it is anything but.
 
The believers in fine-tuning would be like cranks who argue, “If any side of a 1 inch by 1 inch square were a different length, it would no longer be a square. Therefore, there is only one way to make a square.” Their version of this bizarre logic is, “If anything was different about the universe, life would not exist. Life exists therefore the universe was fixed to produce life.”
 
Fans of the fine-tuning mostly think the fine-tuner is supernatural. What if there is a supernatural fine-tuner who may tamper with the universe? He can use his power to turn a loaf into gold or mud into amoebas. There is no point in arguing or thinking that he is supernatural unless you think he can make life out of what is not alive. He may turn lead into bacteria. But this would imply that the universe is not fine-tuned for God has to meddle with it to produce life. It cannot do it without his interference. The supernaturalist version of the fine-tuning argument contradicts itself. The whole point of fine-tuning is that it is the laws of nature without supernatural tampering that produces life against all odds. But the supernaturalists presuppose a fine-tuner who tampers. If tampering happens then it is false that the appearance of life is down to only some being who has been fine-tuning. How can we be sure that this being was not tampering with his creation in order to produce life? You cannot tell what was the result of natural fine-tuning or what was interference. Suppose a leaf grows on a tree. If supernatural interference is possible or happens, you cannot be sure if the leaf appeared by magic or if it grew in accordance with natural laws. Supernatural interference can make the universe seem to be set to produce life when in fact it was not and only produced life because of divine intervention. The Christian God is not the fine-tuner for the Bible and Jesus ascribed a lot of magic to him.
 
The fine-tuning for life argument loses credibility when you consider that both those who regard life as a miraculous creation by God as outlined in the Bible and those who regard life as having evolved by a process that acted like pure chance accept it. The argument really belongs to evolutionists who believe in an infinite intelligence who ordered all things.
 
Life cannot be made in the lab yet. Until we show that life can arise by itself we cannot say the universe is fine-tuned for life. Such a universe would have the power to produce life as if by itself without any visible or obvious supernatural meddling.
 
If the universe is fine-tuned for life, it does not follow that the fine-tuner cares how long that life survives. It does nothing to ensure that if life appears for the first time in some primitive form that it will survive. Life in the universe could so easily just have lasted for a few seconds with the first seed of life disappearing forever. If the universe is fine-tuned for life, that does not mean that our existence and survival is not down to pure luck.
 
The fine tuner does not care what kind of life results. If you father a girl it does not follow that you meant to father a girl. A lot of life forms are just a waste of life. And does fine-tuning do a baby any good when he is born with a terminal disease and dies terribly?
 
Believers will say that God cares. But this is to deny what science says. It says that life survived by chance. If God made all things, he left them to function as if he didn't exist or wasn't involved.
 
What if God was not free to make a universe that does not need fine-tuning? If the answer is yes then fine tuning does not leave us with much of a God. If he wants us to find out about the fine tuning and then reason that he must exist and be the fine-tuner then he went an odd way about it. The fine-tuning idea is very recent.
 
People say there is a God for the universe required fine-tuning so there must be a fine tuning God. That is arguing in circles. It is a trick disguised as an argument.
 
Those who believe that the real you is a spirit that does not need a body do not believe in human life. The body is just a corpse moved around and controlled and lived in by the soul. So there is no physical human life. It is odd to argue as those believers do that the universe is fine-tuned for human life! They should say that Heaven is what is fine-tuned for that!!!
 
Remember too that the fine-tuning Christians are lying about how they believe it is God's plan for the universe to make life. No they think our resurrection to become creatures with ghost like bodies is the goal. The ghost like bodies thing is mad because our bodies are built for animal life. What use are sex organs and digestive systems and lungs and kidneys if that is our destiny? How can they be rebuilt for a resurrection body when there are no toilets in Heaven? The major function of our body is to endure damage and try to handle it and keep rebuilding. The resurrection body is not animal for it does not do that. It is not a body. The resurrection body is a ghost that is called a body - but its only a name! Why can't the pet monkey have a similar resurrection? Why say it cannot for it is an animal when we are animals too? We are treated no differently than from dogs and cats. We get sick and die and our babies die.
 
If fine-tuning is true, this is not a problem for atheists. Atheism and the notion of a fine-tuning intelligence are compatible for the intelligence is no more a God or a person than a calculator is.