Perspectives: Fine tuning argument

I'm still discussing the perspective we take to God arguments and how that determines the outcome. This is an example, the fine tuning argument. This not an attempt to prove the argument but to show what difference attitude makes.

            The first such example of a God argument is that of “fine tuning.” Fine tuning is a subset of the anthropic principle, the idea that the universe is somehow biased in favor of life bearing. Fine tuning says that there are target levels that have to be hit exactly right in order for life to develop in a universe and hitting each one of them is so vastly improbable that the odds indicate some selection, some principle that is capable of selecting for life and controlling events in such a way as to make things happen rightly for the furtherance of life. This is evidence of mind behind the scenes. This is a design argument but it avoids the usual pitfalls of design. That is most design arguments are problematic because they don’t have a known designed universe to compare this one too. Conversely they don’t have a universe that we know is not designed to compare to. That makes it tough to say what actually design is. Yet we know what must be design if we can attach probability to the development of life. All that is not the target level is random and what hits the target must be assumed as design because it’s so unlikely. As I have said I won’t go into great depth on this argument, but just to give cursory explanation. The argument has many critics and a lot of arguments against it, but it is also very defensible if one does one’s homework. The major proponents of the argument are probably Paul Davies and Robin Collins (Messiah College in Grantham Pennsylvania). [1] Davies argues that there is a consensus among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is for the building blocks of life. That is to say the environments required for life are fine tuned.[2]

            For examples of fine turning we can turn to Andrei Linde who gives several. He refers to these as “puzzles” that forced physicists to look more closely at the standard theory:[3]

*First example, the problem of curved space and the flat universe. The General theory of relativity suggests curved space. The typical radius on the order o the Planck length (10^-33 centimeter). Yet, as Linde points out, the universe is flat on a scale 10^28 centimeters—“the radius of the observable part of the universe. This result of our observation differs from theoretical expectations by more than 60 orders of magnitude”[4]

*size of the universe: Our part of the universe contains at least IO^88 elementary particles.

But why is the universe so big? If one takes a universe of a typical initial size given by the Planck length and a typical initial density equal to the Planck density, then, using the standard big bang theory, one can calculate how many elementary particles such a universe might encompass. The answer is rather unexpected: the entire universe should only be large enough to accommodate just one elementary particle or at most 10 of them. it would be unable to house even a single reader of Scientiftc American, who consists of about 10^29 elementary particles. Obviously something is wrong with this theory.[5]

* Timing of expansion: In standard form the Big Bang theory suggests that all part of the universe began expanding simultaneously. How this could work, or what mechanism timed the expansion we can’t say.

* Distribution of matter in the universe: Matter is distributed with great uniformity. “Over 10 Billion light years it departs from perfect homogeneity by less than one part in 10,000…”

One of the cornerstones of the standard cosmology was the 'cosmological principle," which asserts that the universe must be homogeneous. This assumption. however, does not help much, because the universe incorporates important deviations from homogeneity, namely. stars, galaxies and other agglomerations of matter. Tence, we must explain why the universe is so uniform on large scales and at the same time suggest some mechanism that produces galaxies.[6]

*uniqueness Problem:

Finally, there is what I call the uniqueness problem. AIbert Einstein captured its essence when he said: "What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." Indeed, slight changes in the physical constants of nature could have made the universe unfold in a completeIy, different manner. ..... In some theories, compactilication can occur in billions of different ways. A few years ago it would have seemed rather meaningless to ask why space-time has four dimensions, why the gravitational constant is so small or why the proton is almost 2,000 times heavier than the electron. New developments in elementary particle physics make answering these questions crucial to understanding the construction of our world.[7]

The reason the list begins with the second example is because the first example is the big bang itself, that’s not really fine tuning per se. It is interesting that he mentions it because he states that the question of laws is still the major problem for physicists. This was back in 97 but that’s still true. The final paragraph is crucial he says these puzzles could have turned out differently and had that been the case the universe would have been totally different. He even points out that aspects of it could have worked out in billions of different ways. He doesn’t say it but that would suggest that meeting the target levels in just the right way for life to flourish (at least on one planet) is remarkable. There several standard examples used by those who make the fine tuning argument.

            Taking post shots at fine turning is immensely popular. Almost everyone admits the universe seems to be fine turned and that if these specifications were not met life would not abound. Yet there are a number of scholarly articles that purport to take the teeth out of the argument. Bradly Monton in an argument for British Journal for the Philosophy of Science states:

The fundamental constants that are involved in the laws of physics which describe our universe are finely tuned for life, in the sense that if some of the constants had slightly different values life could not exist. Some people hold that this provides evidence for the existence of God. I will present a probabilistic version of this fine-tuning argument which is stronger than all other versions in the literature. Nevertheless, I will show that one can have reasonable opinions such that the fine-tuning argument doesn't lead to an increase in one's probability for the existence of God.[8]

Matthew Kotzen makes a minimalist defense of the argument based upon the “likelihood principle” which seems somewhat in the vain of Bayes’ Theorem.

The idea behind LP, then, is that if one hypothesis makes E objectively more likely than another hypothesis, then the fact that E actually does occur is some evidence for the first hypothesis over the second. While there are certainly some philosophers who have raised doubts about the core idea behind LP,2 that core idea has been extremely influential and is accepted in some form by nearly all so-called ‘Likelihoodists’ and ‘Bayesians’.[9]

He overcomes the anthropic bias argument that says when all the evidence is taken into account we realize that fine tuning is just focusing on something which should be expected as a unremarkable part of the cosmic layout. He points out that critics mean different things by “take all evidence into account” and the likelihood principle establishes the validity of the argument. Of course the problem is this evokes the kind of selective bias discussed in chapter eight (can science disprove God?) in connection with Bayes. Yet it may be the bias can be over come but there wont be new information on the divine reality as it is beyond our understanding. The argument can’t make God more probable. It can, however, point up the value in the warrant for belief bestowed by the evidence of fine tuning. It can’t be proof of God’s existence, or lack thereof. Again, we are confronted by the reality that one’s perspective plays a huge role in how one sees God arguments.

            The major argument against fine tuning is the multi-verse, or “many worlds theory,” (MWT). Andre Linde who’s arguments I use above to document the problem of fine tuning, also appeals to the Multiverse to answer it.[10] The idea is that if you only have one space/time universe then the entire fine tuning coincidences are so amazingly against the odds, but if you have a billon such worlds, or even an unlimited supply, the odds against hitting the target just go way down. It’s not remarkable to think that out of a billion planets we just happen to be in one that hit it big for life. After all had we not been in that kind of planet we wouldn’t know about it. That idea comes from Kant’s attack on the cosmological argument. Of course there is no empirical proof to support the idea of a multi-verse. There are mathematical models that seem to support the idea. There is no real empirical proof of one, and probably never will be. It’s really an act of faith to throw away the possibly of God merely because there might be this other possibility that one clings to merely because it answers a possibility we don’t wish to accept. Moreover, even with a multi-verse the furthering of intelligent life and consciousness requires such precision that the multi-verse mechanism would have to also be fine tuned to produce a world with conscious agents in it. [11] Just knowing that other words are possible or even that they exist is not enough. We would have to know the hit rate, that is, what percentage of them bear life? That’s important because just producing one intelligent life bearing planet (not enough just to get any kind of life, but “higher order” life) would still be amazingly amazing. So we need to know what percentage because only if it’s a major percentage (maybe 15%) could we say it’s not amazing that there is a such a world.

            The multiverse is also the reverse gambler’s fallacy.

Some people think that if you roll the dice repeatedly and don't get double sixes, then you are more likely to get double sixes on the next roll. They are victims of the notorious gambler's fallacy. In a 1987 article in Mind, the philosopher Ian Hacking sees a kindred bit of illogic behind the Many Universes Hypothesis. Suppose you enter a room and see a guy roll a pair of dice. They come up double sixes. You think, "Aha, that is very unlikely on a single roll, so he must have rolled the dice many times before I walked into the room." You have committed what Hacking labels the inverse gambler's fallacy.[12]

            Another objection to the theory of fine tuning would be to propose a higher principle of organization that is responsible for the fine tuning, thus passing the problem along to a higher level. An example of this is the inflationary model of expansion. The article cited above by Linde contains his own attempt to do this by trying to answer the issues or “puzzles” he raises by use of scalar fields as part of the inflationary model.[13] That’s really just putting the problem off a level, and the mechanism itself would have to be fine tuned. "The inflationary model can succeed only by fine-tuning its parameters, and even then, relative to some natural measures on initial conditions, it may also have to fine-tune its initial conditions for inflation to work."[14] The notion that there might be higher mechanisms and deeper structures making for life bearing and life flourishing universes could in itself be understood as part of the order, and that might be seen as product of mind; it is still a matter of perspective.

            Recent discoveries have indicated that there are thousands of earth-like planets out there. The Keck observatory observe (Nov. 3, 2013) “What this means is, when you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing," said UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, who led the analysis of the Kepler and Keck Observatory data.”[15]

That sounds like a real disproof of the fine tuning argument. Life bearing planets are so plentiful they orbit every fifth star. That’s not exactly true. The study says Earth  “size” planet. That doesn’t necessarily translate into life-bearing:

The team, which also included planet hunter Geoffrey Marcy, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, cautioned that Earth-size planets in Earth-size orbits are not necessarily hospitable to life, even if they orbit in the habitable zone of a star where the temperature is not too hot and not too cold.

"Some may have thick atmospheres, making it so hot at the surface that DNA-like molecules would not survive. Others may have rocky surfaces that could harbor liquid water suitable for living organisms," Marcy said. "We don't know what range of planet types and their environments are suitable for life."[16]

Moreover, they have to get through the initial phase of just getting a galaxy set up, the things Linde spoke of such Plank density. That would be wildly improbable. We can’t assume just because there are other life bearing planets that means that we don’t live in a universe created by God. We are long past the days when we need to make assumptions such as “God only cares about earth.”

            Yet my purpose in discussing it is not to add an independent argument but to use it as a further support for my point that there is real distinction behind the differences in prescriptive and descriptive laws of physics, the reality being described is prescriptive in the sense that it is made up of a deeply structured order that appears to be wrought for the purpose of producing intelligent life and thus, we can understand that order as an organizing principle that is the product of mind. This is apt to be understood as argument from design and I really don’t want that. If it is a grand design then so be it, perhaps I’ve found a way to make a design argument work, but I think it’s more than that. I think the real argument has more to do with the need to understand mind as the necessary basis or organizing principle. It has never made much sense to me to think of some disembodied set of order just standing around making things happen, yet there’s no reason for it. While design argument might cast God in the anthropomorphic role of great building contractor in the sky, the realization of a mind-based organizing principle upon which the order and complexity of the universe depends might transcend that anthropomorphic image. Certainly the need for such a principle to “fix the game” of the universe and set the target levels is one more aspect that points to mind.

Sources

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[1] Collins attended Washington State University. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Notre Dame where he studied under Alvin Plantinga, and did two years in a Ph.D. program in Physics at U.T. Austin. Robin Collins' Curriculum Vita. Accessed Feb 22, 2013. URL: http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/VITA.htm 

[2] Paul Davies (2003). "How bio-friendly is the universe". Op cit

[3] Andrei Linde, “Self Reproducing Inflationary Universe.” originally published Scientific American oct 1997, 99-104, 99.  now archived as pdf: URL:

http://mukto-mona.net/science/physics/Inflation_lself_prod_inde.pdf  visited Feb 27,2013.

Linde is Russian, went to Mascow University, he was one of the originators of inflationary theory. He has been professor of physics at Standford.

[4] Ibid., 99

[5] Ibid., 99

[6] Ibid., 99-100

[7] ibid., 99-100

[8] Bradely Monton, “God, Fine Tuning and the Problem of Old Evidence.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Oxford Journals. ·  Volume 57, Issue 2 (2006)

 405-424.

[9] Matthew Kotzen, “Selection biases in Likelihood arguments.” British Journal for The Philosophy of Science. ·  Volume 63, Issue 4 , (2012) 825-839

[10] Andre Linde, Interview by Tim Folger, “Science’s Alternative to Intelligent Creator: The Multiverse Theory,” Discover Magazine, Interview dated Nov 10, 2008, but it appears in the Decemeber issue for 2008. On line version: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10-sciences-alternative-to-an-intelligent-creator#.Uyb8ts5mhsE  accessed 3/17/14.

[11] Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, NewYork: Basic Books, 2000.

[12] Jim Holt, "War of the Worlds: Do you believe in God? Or in multiple universes?" Lingua Franca, December 2000/January 2001

[13] Andre Linde, op cit. 102-104.

[14] Earman, John. Bangs, Crunches, Wimpers, and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995., p. 156

[15] Keck Observatory representative, “odds are on oodles of Earths,” published by Jet Propulsion Libratory, California Insitute of Technology for NASA on “Earth Quest.” Wesbite. Nov 4, 2013.

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/news/139  accessed 11/8/ 2013.

[16] Ibid.

Do Recent Findings Disprove the Fine Tuning Argument?

 


God is not subject empirical proof. No loss of a God arguemnt spells out disproof of God. The fine tuning argument (FT) is only indirect and probabilistic anyway. So having one less indirect warrant for belief is not so bad when we have at least 51 others to choose from [1] Nevertheless the FT is a fine argument and it is very defensible. It's loss I would feel keenly. Recent findings by NASA show there may be at least 40,000 to 8 Billion earth like planets. in the Milky way. Does that put the kibosh on the FT? O God not the "kibosh!"  I argue that it does not.

The FT says that there are target levels that have to be reached for the universe could not bear life. The odds of these being reached are so high that it clearly seems the presents of life is the result of some pre determined "fix." One can see my own version of the FT here.

According to the argument an earth like planet bearing life that is capable of evolving to a state advanced enough to go off planet should be extremely rare. Finding 40 billion of them would definitely put a crimp in the argument, to say the least. New search by NASA seems to have done just that. The actual research was done by Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, who supervised Mr.Erick Petigura’s research and was a co-author of the paper along with Andrew Howard of the University of Hawaii.[2] We can say as a result that one in five, or so, stars like our own sun should have an earth like planet orbiting it. That's pretty staggering when you look up at the sky at night count out five stars and say "there's a good chance that right up there where I counted someone may be looking back at me!"

 The astronomers looked at data from the Kepler spacecraft, which observed more than 150,000 stars in a small patch of the sky. For four years it observed these stars every 30 minutes, looking for telltale dips in their brightnesses. The idea is that if a star has a planet (or planets), and we happen to see the orbit of this planet edge-on, then we’ll see a small drop in the star brightness every time the planet transits (passes directly in front of) the star.[3]

 They use light from the stars which is altered slightly by the gravitational pull of the planets. That's how they estimate that it's there and what size it is. That would also give location so they can discuss temperature. In this sample 3000 earth like stars were detected. They extrapolated from there. Overall they found 900 planets and 600 of them were earth like. [4] One estimate as high as 40 billion in whole galaxy.[5]


The definition of earth-like planet used:

By Earth-like, I mean planets roughly the size of Earth, and which are also roughly the same temperature as Earth. So we can ignore frigid iceballs far from their stars, boiling lava planets too close in, and giant and dinky planets. We want to know about potentially habitable planets, where life as we know it has a shot at getting a toe (or pseudopod) hold.[6]

 They sought planets 1-2 times the radios of earth, estimated by the extent to which the light is altered by gravity. Even larger sized planets than that can have similar gravity but the larger the planet the less clear that conditions would be like those of our own world.[7]

The new research puts the estimate at 22% of stars have earth-like planets.[8] That certainly like a disproof of the FT since it makes life bearing planets common. The problem is as has been hinted at we can't say these are life bearing. Earth like Just means size and tempature. As has been been seen size can vary and fool us. Temperature is very important to know  too.

 The temperature of the planet is important, of course, and depends on how much light the planets gets from its star. As a range, they looked for planets that received no more than four times the light the Earth receives from the Sun, and no less than 0.25 times as much. That should bracket the warm and cool edges of the “habitable zone”, where water can exist. This range may in fact be much broader; a planet can be much farther from its star and still have liquid water (see Enceladus as an example), but they wanted to be conservative.[9]

 Another crucial issue is how many have water? Water is essential for life, some think it's very rare. we don't really know. There are many caveats.

*We don't the masses of the Planets We don't know if they are solid rocks. balls of ice or balls of gas.

* Estimates on number are uncertain:

 Also, the number is more uncertain than it might have been because Kepler’s pointing system failed before it could complete its prime survey. As a result, Mr. Petigura and his colleagues had to extrapolate from planets slightly larger than Earth and with slightly smaller, tighter orbits. For the purposes of his analysis “Earth-size” was anything from one to two times the diameter of the Earth, and Earth-like orbits were between 400 and 200 days.(--Overbye).

 * So far none of them is exactly analogous

 Dr. Batalha said, “We don’t yet have any planet candidates that are exact analogues of the Earth in terms of size, orbit or star type.”[10]

 So there is still quite a way to go before we count out the FT. I would say it's taken a bloody nose but not a knock out.

sources

[1] I have two God arguments lists. One has 42 arguments. the other has 10 more.


[2] Dennis Overbye, "Far Off Planets Like Earth Dot the Galaxy," space and Cosmos, NY Times. Nov 4, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/cosmic-census-finds-billions-of-planets-that-could-be-like-earth.html?_r=0
 accessed 11/9/13.
Erick Petigura is only a graduate student working with two professors.

[3] Phil Plait "The sky may be filled with Earth like Planets,"Slate, nov 4 2013 on line copy:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/11/04/earth_like_exoplanets_planets_like_ours_may_be_very_common.html
 accessed 11/9/13.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Dennis Overbye,Op Cit.

[6] Plait, Op Cit.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Overbye, Op Cit

[9] Plait, Op Cit.

[10] Ibid.

Pruss: trade fine tuning argument for POE? Why?

 



 Alexander Pruss Philosopher at Baylor
on October 8, 2012 10:40 AM |

the prosblogian a philosophy of religion blog 

Admits we can't have a valid piror on theitsic arguements but we can have non numerical reasoning from comparing stength of evidence.

For instance, we might have the judgment that the evidential strength of the Problem of Evil (POE) as an argument against theism is no greater than the evidential strength of the Finetuning Argument (FTA) as an argument for theism. Two thoughts in support of this: (1) the low-entropy initial state of the our universe has been estimated by Penrose to be utterly incredibly unlikely (my paraphrase of his 10^(-10^123)) and some of the other anthropic coincidences come with what are intuitively extremely narrow ranges; the theist has proposed various theodicies--they may not be convincing, but it seems reasonable to say that the probability that together they answer the POE is no less, indeed quite a bit greater, than the incredibly tiny probabilities that FTA claims; (2) just as thinking about naturalistic multiverse hypotheses significantly decreases the force of FTA, thinking about theistic multiverse hypotheses significantly decreases the force of POE (cf. Turner and Kraay's work); (3) just as in the case of FTA we might worry that there is some nomic explanation of the coincidences that we haven't found, so too in the case of POE we have sceptical theism.

This means that the theist can simply sacrifice FTA to POE: the FTA either balances POE or outbalances POE (I think the latter, because of point (1) above).
Then the theist has a nice supply of other strong and serious theistic arguments, such as the cosmological, non-FTA design arguments (e.g., Swinburne's laws of nature argument), ontological, religious experience, moral epistemology (theism has a much better explanation than naturalism of how we can know objective moral truths), etc. The atheist has a few other arguments, too, but I think they are not very impressive (the Stone and other issues for the Chisholming of divine attributes, Grim-style worries about omniscience and infinity, worries about the interaction between the physical and nonphysical). At least once POE is completely out of the picture, even if FTA is lost, the theist can make a very strong case.

I don't think we have to lose either. While we can't know the ultimate reason for God's creation will probably always allude us, all we need to do is supply a logical reason for the allowance of pain to see that there is a logical reason. Even if our reason is totally speculative it's still illustration of the fact that there can be one. Thus we need not assume God is indifferent or non existence merely becuase he allows evil, pain, and suffering.

Logical Reason for POE/P/S

One such logical reason is my Soeteriological drama argument. This is the idea that God wants us to search for truth. The search doesn't have to take a life time, it could over very quickly. That is a matter that is up to the individual becuase some people are more stubborn than others. Here's what the argument looks like:

Basic assumptions


There are three basic assumptions that are hidden, or perhaps not so obivioius, but nevertheless must be dealt with here.

(1) The assumption that God wants a "moral universe" and that this value outweighs all others.


The idea that God wants a moral universe I take from my basic view of God and morality. Following in the footsteps of Joseph Fletcher (Situation Ethics) I assume that love is the background of the moral universe (this is also an Augustinian view). I also assume that there is a deeply ontological connection between love and Being. Axiomatically, in my view point, love is the basic impitus of Being itself. Thus, it seems reasonable to me that, if morality is an upshot of love, or if love motivates moral behavior, then the creation of a moral universe is essential.


(2) that internal "seeking" leads to greater internalization of values than forced compliance or complaisance that would be the result of intimidation.

That's a pretty fair assumption. We all know that people will a lot more to achieve a goal they truly beileve in than one they merely feel forced or obligated to follow but couldn't care less about.

(3)the the drama or the big mystery is the only way to accomplish that end.

The pursuit of the value system becomes a search of the heart for ultimate meaning,that ensures that people continue to seek it until it has been fully internalized.

The argument would look like this:


(1)God's purpose in creation: to create a Moral Universe, that is one in which free moral agents willingly choose the Good.

(2) Moral choice requires absolutely that choice be free (thus free will is necessitated).

(3) Allowance of free choices requires the risk that the chooser will make evil choices

(4)The possibility of evil choices is a risk God must run, thus the value of free outweighs all other considerations, since without there would be no moral universe and the purpose of creation would be thwarted.


This leaves the atheist in the position of demanding to know why God doesn't just tell everyone that he's there, and that he requires moral behavior, and what that entails. Thus there would be no mystery and people would be much less inclined to sin.

This is the point where Soteriological Drama figures into it. Argument on Soteriological Drama:


(5) Life is a "Drama" not for the sake of entertainment, but in the sense that a dramatic tension exists between our ordinary observations of life on a daily basis, and the ultiamte goals, ends and purposes for which we are on this earth.

(6) Clearly God wants us to seek on a level other than the obvious, daily, demonstrative level or he would have made the situation more plain to us

(7) We can assume that the reason for the "big mystery" is the internalization of choices. If God appeared to the world in open objective fashion and laid down the rules, we would probably all try to follow them, but we would not want to follow them. Thus our obedience would be lip service and not from the heart.

(8) therefore, God wants a heart felt response which is internationalized value system that comes through the search for existential answers; that search is phenomenological; introspective, internal, not amenable to ordinary demonstrative evidence.


In other words, we are part of a great drama and our actions and our dilemmas and our choices are all part of the way we respond to the situation as characters in a drama.

This theory also explains why God doesn't often regenerate limbs in healing the sick. That would be a dead giveaway. God creates criteria under which healing takes place, that criteria can't negate the overall plan of a search.


This argument doesn't have to prove as the "actual reason" for God's actions. It only has to be thought of as a plausible reaosn, that's enough to know that there is a valid reason. One of the major objections has been that many people have short lives, die in birth or in childhood thus they are cheated out of the chance to have the search. The problem with that is mitigated when we realize those who die as children are not subject to miss the rewards of after life, they are not blameworthy for sin becuase they have not reach age accountability. That they are cheated out of having life is a great tragedy but a necessary consequence since the perimeters of the search much be kept in a state of neutral seeming world. In other words if God intervened all the time there would be need for a search. No  one would internalize the values of the good. The same is true of those who die after childhood but still in their youth. They don't have to a full life span. They would not get that anyway if there was no God. It's really just a complaint that life doesn't come with a guarantee.

Then of course atheist resort to the brilliant suggestion that death is so much better than life why don't we kill our children so they have a free pass to haven. Do we really to go into that one? They want to complain about missing the search on one hand but then get out of having to do it on the other.

One might question the basic concept that we need to internalize the values. That goes back to that universal atheist attitude, why doesn't God just make life to be  perpetual summer camp where I'm allowed to do whatever the hell I wish and it never has to matter? That's just the necessity of taking love and morality seriously. If we take morality seriously then we want to be moral. WE don't want to just get out of having to be good. Unless we internationalize that value we would resent God's authority. The more one delivers lip service to something in which one does not believe, the more resentful one becomes. Through the search one comes to conviction that God is real, it's not just thrust upon us, and through conviction one comes to appreciate God's grace and to care about being good.

Then of course the exit ramps have to be kept intact. In other words there must be a way for the search to pay off and the truth to be found. One such way is the clues that one can pick up on and use to make God arguments. One such clue is the fine tuning argument. So there's no need to abandon a fine arguemnt when we can answer the problem of evil.

One of the major arguments against this theodicy is the short lives argument. There are so many who die in infancy or childhood or when they are young, they never get to do much searching. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, that I believe in the age of accountability. Children and infants die before they reach a level off maturity such that they are accountable for sin. They are not in eternal danger. Of course it's a tragedy. Tragedy is part of the world, it's part of life. Secondly, some people don't need to do that much searching. A lot of people are ready to make the leap of faith without prolonging the battle of the wills to resist God. Thirdly, if the search means anything the world must be kept open ended. It must be the kind of world in which one must be able to draw conclusions form the nature of the world but not the kind in which all doubt is removed. Again, this may not be the right answer, but that's not important. What matters is the possibility that there is an answer.

The fine tuning argument need not be given up, there is no trade off. It's not a dead give away as it would be if God worked a miracle to end all pain. It's a warrant from which one might draw a rational conclusion but it's not beyond all doubt.