¶1Today I make a response to Joe Schmidt about fine-tuning. First, here is the argument as I understand it. It's extremely surprising under naturalism that the laws of nature are strikingly fine-tuned to allow for life or anything particularly interesting or valuable. First, I'll show that there is no evidence at all that the constants are improbable. Then, I'll do the same for the low structures.
¶2Let's choose a random natural number n. Let me ask you a question. What is the chance that n is divisible by 7? It seems like it's pretty low at first glance, but let us do a little experiment. Take any natural number n that is non-divisible by 7.
¶3Multiply it by seven. This shows that each number non-divisible by 7 has a pairing with a number that is. Even though it looks like there are less numbers divisible by seven, the amount is the same amount, there is no way to state that one would be more or less likely than the other. Consider those four points in 2D space. Those four points seem like four unrelated pieces of information.
¶4It might seem like either each of those points needs a different explanation for its existence or there must be a creator that finally tuned and chosen each of those points. But actually those four points are just a consequence of this equation or this equation. Both those equations contain each of those four points. Those four points even though they could have been were not randomly chosen the equations were the fine-tuning argument asserts that if God did not tune those universal constants then they must each fall in a very narrow range by luck. But actually maybe the real random object here was the sequence that generates those finely tuned constants.
¶5The constants could be for example the first 26 numbers of the sequence CN. Let's take each distinct sequence a n that fails to generate the constants. Keep in mind that cn is the sequence that has constants as the first 26 numbers. For each a n, I can create a unique sequence bn that is defined as follows. For each failing sequence a n, I can find a matching unique sequence bn that generates exactly the same constants because the first 26 values will be our constants.
¶6while the rest will be a n's values. So we don't need 26 coincidences to explain it. We need one coincidence which seems to be 50% chance by that mindset. Now let's look at the law structures we have. The laws of how the universe works can be represented by a sequence of letters including digit spaces and punctuation.
¶7Take a possible universe and let us represent its law structures by the sequence of letters A N. The sequence BN will represent the current law structures of our universe. If any of the sequences is shorter than the other, add spaces until their size is equal. Let's define the sequence of letters CN as follows. Every odd letter after this first colon symbol will serve as the next letter that defines all of the universal laws.
¶8The rest will be written on a paper generated in the beginning of the universe which will be immediately destroyed. As you can see, since the counting begins after the colon and the first letter is from the sequence BN, in effect, the resulting universe will be the same as ours with a small difference we could never know about. Joe in his video brings up a lot the awesome theistic evidence as a response to objections that claim the constants are not surprising. However, the only reason theists claim finetuning is awesome evidence is because the seemingly low chance. Once you realize the chance is not really low, it's just undetermined.
¶9You can no longer rely on chance to claim it is awesome evidence. So ultimately the fine-tuning argument fails.