3 Responses to “Science’s Alternative To an Intelligent Creator”

1. Mat
   November 17th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

   This reminds me of a discussion we had over large amounts of caffeine a number of years ago - it went something like this:

   1) Many of the laws governing our universe are seemingly arbitrary - all of the constants and formulas governing our existence (physics) don’t seem to have any a priori significance; rather, they just happen to be the rules that were written for our universe.
   2) A universe could exist with any of an infinite number of combinations of arbitrarily-written laws of physics.
   3) Assuming our universe is fully describable through mathematical formulas, it is, in effect, a pure idea (just a very complex one).
   4) Pure ideas exist a priori (many would argue with this, of course).
   5) Our universe exists a priori, simply by virtue of its being a coherent and describable idea.
   6) All other possible universes exist a priori as well.
   7) Thus, all other possible universes exist in the same sense that our universe does.
   Most arbitrary combinations of physical laws would not yield a highly complex, structured physical reality like ours as an emergent behavior. Thus, most of the infinite universes in existence are highly entropic and not at all interesting.
   9) However, we happen to exist under a set of physical laws whose emergent behavior is one of enormous complexity and structure.
   10) The emergence of life on Earth (and presumably elsewhere) is the result of an arbitrary set of physical laws that happen to result in the formation of life.

   Thus, the question, “Did it require an intelligence to effect the formation of life in the universe?” is analogous to the question of “Did it require an intelligence to effect the formation of life on Earth?”, and the answer is the same: No. Rather, life formed on Earth because Earth can support life; life formed in the universe because the universe can support life.

   Or perhaps the analogy of the monkeys with typewriters: there are infinite monkeys; we are Hamlet; and no Shakespeare was required.

2. Mat
   November 17th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

   That face with sunglasses should be eight, followed by a closing parenthesis.

3. Nathan
   November 17th, 2008 at 3:52 pm

   I like the face with sunglasses so I’m not gonna change it.

   Thanks for the comment! That was definitely a mind-altering evening. I don’t know if I’ve ever shared with you the essay I wrote about it at the time—it dealt mainly with epistemological issues, not cosmological ones. That is: the universe is consciousness.

   The fine-tuning argument (that because the universe is so well built for us, it must have been made for us by an intelligent creator) is such a funny one because it points to how people intuitively think of ourselves in the universe. For some, the most important thing about the universe is that we exist, and since that’s highly unlikely, the whole shebang must have been jerry-rigged that way. On the other hand, for those willing to see ourselves as pretty insignificant in the enormous scheme of things (except, of course, to ourselves), the fact that we are also very improbable makes pretty good sense also.

   What I think is neat, though, is this back-door way in which the very mechanism used to explain the materialist position makes way for a whole other kind of intelligent design (i.e., by aliens). I highly recommend the RadioLab podcast, linked to above, which touches on this point.

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