Jeff Lowder Fine Tuning Bait and Switch

Jeff Lowder at Secular Outpost, argues against William Lane Craig's fine tuning argument. His objective is to show that even if the argument is valid it doesn't establish probability for God.

Lowdwer's syllogism of the argument:

1. The life-permitting nature of the universe’s initial conditions is either the result of chance, necessity or design. (Premise)
2. It is not the result of chance or necessity. (Premise)
3. Therefore, it is the result of design. (From 1 and 2)

This argument is clearly valid, i.e., the conclusion follows from the premises. We want to know the probability of (3). The probability of (3) will depend upon the probability of (2). If we have a very weak degree of belief that (2) is true, say we think Pr(2)=0.25, then, by itself, this argument only warrants the belief Pr(3)=0.25. N.B. I’m not claiming that (2) has an exact numerical probability equal to 0.25; that value is simply an example to illustrate the point.

Excluding it as a result of chance means showing the improbability of a given variable. For example hitting the target levels necessary for large open bodies of water on a planet. If that is extremely improbable then it's less likely that it "just happened" as the result of chance. The very fact of target levels and the extreme improbability of hitting them all argues against necessity. The universe did not have to turn out as it did. as Paul Davies Tells us:

Paul Davies:

"You might be tempted to suppose that any old rag-bag of laws would produce a complex universe of some sort, with attendant inhabitants convinced of their own specialness. Not so. It turns out that randomly selected laws lead almost inevitably either to unrelieved chaos or boring and uneventful simplicity. Our own universe is poised exquisitely between these unpalatable alternatives, offering a potent mix of freedom and discipline, a sort of restrained creativity. The laws do not tie down physical systems so rigidly that they can accomplish little, but neither are they a recipe for cosmic anarchy. Instead, they encourage matter and energy to develop along pathways of evolution that lead to novel variety-what Freeman Dyson has called the principle of maximum diversity: that in some sense we live in the most interesting possible universe."

"Some scientists have tried to argue that if only we knew enough about the laws of physics, if we were to discover a final theory that united all the fundamental forces and particles of nature into a single mathematical scheme, then we would find that this superlaw, or theory of everything, would describe the only logically consistent world. In other words, the nature of the physical world would be entirely a consequence of logical and mathematical necessity. There would be no choice about it. I think this is demonstrably wrong. There is not a shred of evidence that the universe is logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders for reality." [2]

We can eliminate necessity and even Andre Linde himself tells us the probabilities are overwhelmingly against life, meaning it is most unlikely that the universe's life bearing aspect would come about randomly.[3] That means premise two checks out and thus the argument is valid. But I think Lowder is attacking the soundness by brining arguing that the fine turning argument doesn't include all relevant material, that will change the probability factors.

At this point he's going to pull an interesting bait and switch. He's going to transpose fine tuning into design argument so he can argue the counter design argument. But first he brings up the idea that FT dies not reflect all the data:

Second, such arguments fail to embody all of the relevant, available evidence. .... It may well be the case that, by itself, the life-permitting nature of the universe’s initial conditions does make it more probable than not that the universe is designed. But that doesn’t entail that, all things considered, the total available, relevant evidence makes it more probable than not that the universe is designed. In order to defend that claim, you have to look at all of the evidence, including the evidence of evolution, biological role of pain and pleasure, nonresistant nonbelief, etc. And once you do that, it’s far from obvious that the total evidence favors theism, much less Christian theism.

What he's calling "relevant data is anti-design data, FT is a from of design but does it have the same implications such that anti-design evidence would  count against it? Most of us know that evolution is not counter evidence to God. God can use evolution so how is that counter? There is the extinction aspect. The cruelty of nature. He fleshes some of it out thusly:

We also know that so much of our universe is hostile to life due to things such as containing vast amounts of empty space, temperatures near absolute zero, cosmic radiation, and so forth. Given that our universe is life-permitting, the fact that so much of it is hostile to life is much more probable on no-design than on design. So once all of the evidence about cosmic life-permitting conditions has been fully stated, however, it’s far from obvious that facts about cosmic “fine-tuning” favor design over non-design.

That only matters because he's brining in the conventional design arguments or bait and witch. In the conventional design argument the argument turns u[on things looking designed fitting together and seeming like the result of a plan. That's why empty space life threatening aspects are taken as counter design evidence they don't paper life so they are not part of a plan. All he's really doing there is to turn the conditions that make life improbable (counts for FT) into evidence for unplanned universe. That's because he switched arguments. In FT the only appearance of planning is so many totally improbable things working out. All that empty space bad water and so on is actually pro design if the deign is FT. In other words with FT the only aspects of design are where the target levels are hit and how overwhelming  the odds against hitting them. None of his counter design stuff really matters.

see my FT argument on Religious a priori 


More on this in comment section. Please join me there and comment.

[1] Jeffery Jay Lowder, "WLC Denies That Anyone Has Ever Died a Sincere Seeker Without Finding God" Secular Out Post, January 2, 2016 (blog URL)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/01/02/wlc-denies-that-anyone-has-ever-died-a-sincere-seeker-without-finding-god/  Accessed 1/10/16
all quotations from Lowder will be from this source.

[2] Paul Davies  "Physics and The Mind of G: The Tempelton Prize Address,"First Things, August 5 (1995) On line URL:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24  accessed 1/20/16

[3] Andre Linde,"The Self  Reproducing Inflationary Universe, Scientifi9c American Nov 19994, 48-55

Now Linde is confident that the new inflationary theires will explain all of this, and indeed states that their purpose is to revolve the ambiguity with which cosmologists are forced to cope. His co-author in inflationary theory. Physicist Paul Steinhardt, had doubts about it as early as his first paper on the subject (1982). He admits that the point of the theory was to eliminate fine tuning (a major God argument), but the theory only works if one fine tunes the constants that control the inflationary period.

John Horgan, “Physicist slams Cosmic Theory he Helped Conceive,” Scientific American Blogs, December 1, 2014. on line, URL http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physicist-slams-cosmic-theory-he-helped-conceive/ accessed 10/5/15. Horgan interviews Steinhardt.

“The whole point of inflation was to get rid of fine-tuning – to explain features of the original big bang model that must be fine-tuned to match observations. The fact that we had to introduce one fine-tuning to remove another was worrisome. This problem has never been resolved."

 

Answering Lowder part 2: Sincere Deniers

Björnstrand and Thulin in
Winter Light



I use this picture from a great film, Winter Light, by my favorite film director Ingmar Bergman because this piece deals with the issue are there sincere people who hear the Gospel, reject it, but are sincerely seeking. Do they die without becoming Christians but their seeking was of a quality we can say it is sincere? I use Bergman not only because I consider him to be such a man, also because that film is about sincere seeking of God when one remains an atheist. Although it's more directly about a minister who is almost an atheist.


This is part 2 in a 3 part article answering Jeff Lowder of the Secular Web and Secular outpost. He writes:

Can anyone sincerely lack belief in God? And even if they can, can anyone sincerely lack belief in God for the rest of their lives? Many people, including nontheists but not just nontheists, think the answer to both questions is plainly “yes.” But some (many?) theists, no doubt motivated by beliefs such as divine goodness, Biblical inerrancy, and Christian particularism, deny this for the second question and possibly the first. We’ll call people who deny a “yes” answer to the second question “sincere lifelong nontheist deniers” or “sincerity deniers” for short.[2]

He points out that the denial is offensive, and not hard to understand why. The denial of sincere seekers ho never find God  "...can come across as a not-so-veiled accusation that nontheists are lying when they claim they lack belief in God or that God’s existence isn’t obvious to them." He acknowledges that a believer could understand a sincere denial as self deception rather than outright lying, Moreover, he also acknowledges that the believer could see rejection of belief as temporary. The bottom line to all types of believer's take on the sincere seeker who does not find God: "In any case, what’s important to notice is that, regardless of the flavor of sincerity denial, the one thing all sincerity deniers seem to have in common is this. No one dies a sincere, nonresistant nonbeliever." In other words.  anyone who is a sincere seekers and dies not knowing God is resisting the truth (on some level, and thus the sincerity is undermined).

At that point he starts in n Craig. Craig is one who doesn't accept the sincere seeker who doesn't find God and he also denies that there could be "a sincere, lifelong theistic non-Christian (e.g., Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and so forth)." He quotes Craig in a long passage that, summed up says, people are good at deluding themselves, their rejection may not be life long, and the evidence for Christianity is good enough that they have no excuse. [3] He quotes Craig as saying: "Therefore, if a person ultimately fails to come to faith in Christ, it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties with the faith. At root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Holy Spirit on his heart."

Do I agree with that? It's a bit more complex than that. I agree in principle that there could be sincere non resisting life long seekers who don't become Christians. But I don't believe that such people will die unsaved and be lost in eternity. Such a person will not be lost because they are seeking and God would not turn them away. I believe that because I believe the Bible. There could be people who don't consciously come to Christ because they never hear or when they do hear it's too foreign they don't have a chance to really study or they don't have good Christian witnesses. People don't fail to come to Christ because the faith lacks sufficient intellectual fiber to satisfy a true investigator. Now that's not to say that case is so strong that people should believe based upon that. But it's not so stupide anyone should see through it.Of course atheists want to believe that, that's part of the self deceived nature of an ideology. Those intellectual matters can be real stumbling blocks if one doesn't understand the real decision is existential, phenomenological, and spiritual (in the heart). The intellectual matter can seem like real justifications. It's very hard for an intellectually inclined person to realize that a major decision of life is not entirely an intellectual matter,

As to the part here Craig is quoted as saying: "At root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Holy Spirit on his heart." That is true but many people think it means that the person fails to join the church and sing about Jesus because of resisting God. The person in remote regions who never hear of Christianity could be saved if  in their hearts they are seeking the good, the truth seek to do what's right or they could reject that and be lost having never heard of Jesus. That's not Craig's view as far as I know, but my view.

Lowder has has three major responses to Craig's view:

First, notice that sincerity deniers are committed to a universal generalization: there has never been (and never will be) a single sincere, lifelong nontheist. If even just one sincere, lifelong nontheist existed, exists, or will exist, then this universal generalization is false. Thus, it does Craig little good to refer to former atheists who claim that they engaged in all sorts of insincere rationalizations when they claimed to be atheists. Even if that is an accurate description for those former atheists, it doesn’t follow that it applies to all atheists or, more broadly, all nontheists.

He's created his own false category to represent all Christian views. I do actually accept in principle that there could be such a person. So having example would not contradict my view. Of course all atheists want to think they fit that view. It is easy to be self deceived even the best of motives. Human psyche is too complex to let ourselves off the hook. We need to search our hearts and that can be a daunting task. We need to be sensitive to the possible conviction of the Holy Spirit.
 While I agree we can't assume all atheists are deluding themselves, we can be sure that one one is delusion proof in that way.

His second point has five sub-points. I put them all in foot note because since I agree in principle his need to prove that point goes away. To be scholarly I'll make them known, [4] The major point 2:

Second, we have strong inductive evidence that this generalization is false. There are several lines of evidence which combine to create a powerful cumulative case for the existence of sincere, lifelong nontheists. Following the outstanding work of the Canadian philosopher John Schellenberg (in his recent book The Wisdom to Doubt), we may summarize this evidence as follows.

It's not really empirical proof since these are matters of the heart. That means we can't know who is truly sincere and who is not.  That's why I keep saying I agree in principle.

His third point:

Third, the fact that human beings have an “amazing ability to rationalize things” is a double-edged sword. Those of us who reject sincerity denialism — “sincerity denial” deniers? — could just as easily argue that sincerity denial itself is an example of the amazing ability to rationalize things, such as how to reconcile the existence of nontheists–not to mention the existence of theistic non-Christians–with the doctrines of God’s moral goodness and the exclusivity of salvation through Christ.

He's right it is a two edged sword. I am acutely aware of that because I remember the rationalizations I used as an atheist to ward off belief. O I was sincere! But that means nothing to atheists they just pull the old "no true Scotsman" thing of which they accuse us. In the final analysis we can only search our own hearts and that's all we can say: I am trying to be sincere, the bury the little still small voice that says you are not. It is entirely possible to be sincere about seeking but refuse to accept because we want it on our terms.

The only safe course is to determine in your heart to trust God and seek God.  Hey I heard that. If you said "why should I?" cause it's neat.



[1] Jeff Lowdwe, "WLC Denies That Anyone Has Ever Died a Sincere Seeker Without Finding God"
Secular Outpost, January 2, 2016 , blog URL:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/01/02/wlc-denies-that-anyone-has-ever-died-a-sincere-seeker-without-finding-god/

[2] Ibid. All quotes of Lowder from this source.

[3]

[4] His 5 sub-points on major point 2. these are from Lowder quoting John Schellenberg (in his recent book The Wisdom to Doubt).

"There are several lines of evidence which combine to create a powerful cumulative case for the existence of sincere, lifelong nontheists"

(a) The prima facie evidence of nonresistant nonbelief. In Schellenberg’s words, “in the actual world persons who do not believe that there is a God, and that in at least some of these people the absence of theistic belief is not in any way the result of their own emotional or behavioral opposition towards God or relationship with God or any of the apparent implications of such a relationship.”

That is not proof. All he';s done is assert that it's so.

(b) The prima facie evidence of former believers. To paraphrase Schellenberg, such individuals, from the perspective of theism, were on the right path when they lost belief in God. In other words, if theism is true, then such individuals already were in relationship with God and the loss of belief has terminated that.

That doesn't prove they were lost, norv does it p[rove that they didn't abandon God for some emotional and illogical reason such as anger or feelings of spite.

(c) The prima facie evidence of lifelong seekers. Schellenberg describeres these individuals as people “who don’t start out in what they consider to be a relationship with God and may not even be explicitly searching for God, but who are trying to find out where they belong and, in their wanderings, are open to finding and being found by a Divine Parent–all without ever achieving their goal. These are individuals who seek but do not find.” (233) 

Again saying they sdo is  ot proof they exist. I am willing to think they do but that's not proof.

(d) The prima facie evidence of converts to nontheistic religions. Paraphrasing Schellenberg, these are individuals who investigate other serious conceptions of the Ultimate and who turn up evidence that produces religious belief in the context of nontheistic religious communities and/or on account of nontheistic religious experiences–and the truth of atheistic claims may be seen to follow by implication. (236 

(e) The prima facie evidence of isolated nontheists. Schellenberg defines these individuals as “those who have never been in a position to resist God because they have never so much as had the idea of an all-knowing and all-powerful spiritual being who is separate from a created universe but related to it in love squarely before their minds–individuals who are entirely formed by, and unavoidably live their whole lives within, what must, if God exists, be a fundamentally misleading meaning system” (238).

what I said